context

It follows that the one thing we should not do to the men and women of past time, and particularly if they ghost through to us as larger than life, is to take them out of their historical contexts. To do so is to run the risk of turning them into monsters, whom we can denounce for our (frequently political) motives__n insidious game, because we are condemning in their make-up that which is likely to belong to a whole social world, the world that helped to fashion them and that is deviously reflected or distorted in them. Censure of this sort is the work of petty moralists and propagandists, not historians (p. 5).

What's writ is what's read, yet the meaning is gone, since context is what gives each quote its own home.

To read fiction means to play a game by which we give sense to the immensity of things that happened, are happening, or will happen in the actual world. By reading narrative, we escape the anxiety that attacks us when we try to say something true about the world. This is the consoling function of narrative _ the reason people tell stories, and have told stories from the beginning of time.

Community is a context and can either facilitate or inhibit the movement of change for the individual.

Life does not change if you only modify the content, your life will change if you will dare to alter the context.

You see the first thing we love is a scene. For love at first sight requires the very sign of its suddenness; and of all things, it is the scene which seems to be seen best for the first time: a curtain parts and what had not yet ever been seen is devoured by the eyes: the scene consecrates the object I am going to love. The context is the constellation of elements, harmoniously arranged that encompass the experience of the amorous subject...Love at first sight is always spoken in the past tense. The scene is perfectly adapted to this temporal phenomenon: distinct, abrupt, framed, it is already a memory (the nature of a photograph is not to represent but to memorialize)... this scene has all the magnificence of an accident: I cannot get over having had this good fortune: to meet what matches my d

...Data itself... was tolerable. It was the constant nerve-web-expanding pain of context that would kill him.

I love the comic opportunities that come up in the context of a father-son relationship.

In legal language, a covenant generally denotes an agreement between two or more parties. But in a religious context, a covenant is much more significant. It is a sacred promise with God. He fixes the terms.

I always loved designing, but the context needs to be right, and have a positive perspective.

Power is the chance to impose your will within a social context, even when opposed and regardless of the integrity of that chance.

Nothing is original. Steal from anywhere that resonates with inspiration or fuels your imagination. Devour old films, new films, music, books, paintings, photographs, poems, dreams, random conversations, architecture, bridges, street signs, trees, clouds, bodies of water, light and shadows. Select only things to steal from that speak directly to your soul. If you do this, your work (and theft) will be authentic. Authenticity is invaluable; originality is non-existent. And don__ bother concealing your thievery - celebrate it if you feel like it. In any case, always remember what Jean-Luc Godard said: __t__ not where you take things from - it__ where you take them to." #53 - Winter, January 22, 2004 ]

Now, Richard Pryor was unique. Many misunderstood his humor. He lit up the hallway, but they didn't understand his use of profanity. He didn't use it just to be using it; he used it in the context of his satire.

With television, we vault ourselves into a continuous, incoherent present.

When there is no news, we will give it to you with the same emphasis as if there were.

Agriculture must mediate between nature and the human community, with ties and obligations in both directions. To farm well requires an elaborate courtesy toward all creatures, animate and inanimate. It is sympathy that most appropriately enlarges the context of human work. Contexts become wrong by being too small - too small, that is, to contain the scientist or the farmer or the farm family or the local ecosystem or the local community - and this is crucial.

Leaders set the context and create the conditions in which individuals and organizations thrive.

The world is better served by syncretic economists and policymakers who can hold multiple ideas in their heads than by __ne-handed_ economists who promote one big idea regardless of context.