He is a worthy enemy - but that's just to say, he would not be worthy an he were not able; but he would not be an enemy were he not evil.

...but businessmen check them out - and those two were merchants.  If they stray too far from the facts, they go bankrupt.

For this 'honor' that thou dost hold dear, this 'face' thou speakest of , is most truly but thine own opinion of thyself.  We commonly suppose that 'tis what others think of us, but 'tis not so.  'Tis simply that most of us have so little regard for ourselves, that we believe others opinions of us to be more important than our own.  Therefore have we the need to save our countenances - our 'faces,' which term means only what others see of us.  Yet we know that only by what they say they think of us - so our 'faces,' when all is truly said, are others' opinions of us.  We feel we must demand others' respect, or we cannot respect ourselves.

Let me tell you what that is - a rationalization.  It's giving something the appearance of rationality, of reason, when it doesn't have the reality of it.  It's finding a way to justify what you want to do, any way.  It's finding an excuse from somthing you've already done - a way to make it seem to be good, when it really isn't.  That's all you're doing here - tying to find a way to make the wrong things you want to do, seem right.  All your arguments really boil down to, 'I want power, so I'm going to take it.' ...

Now thou dost begin to comprehend.  All folk must be allowed to speak their minds, whether thou dost think them wise or foolish - and thou must weigh what they do say, on chance that the most unlikely of them may be right.  Therefore thou must needs see it enshrined in the highest Law of the Land....  If thou dost not, evil men may keep good folk from learning of their evil deeds.

By punishing all who speak against them in even the slightest way...  If thou dost let the law prohibit certain words, then evil men will punish folk that they dislike, by claiming they did speak the words prohibited.

You're right, of course - the really wealthy will keep their privileges, no matter who sits on the throne.

I hereby confess to writing deathless prose, on occasion - and even immortal verse, now and then.  But when I do, I do it alone, with only a split of vin ordinaire for company, and I do it for me, myself, only.  It's pure self-indulgence, of course - 'art for art's sake' really means 'art for the artist's sake.'  It's the sheer personal gratification of doing something as well as I can possibly do it, of expressing my feelings, my view of existence, my self - and it's for me, alone.  Oh, I don't mind if other people read it, and it's nice if they like it.  Sure, I enjoy praise; I'm human, too.  But that's just a by-product, a side issue....  This - this is another matter.  It's another thing entirely.  This script, I wrote for other people, and I make it with a host of other people.  If no one else ever hears it or sees it, it will have failed.  Worse: it'll be absurd, without purpose.  Without an audience, it's incomplete.

Aye, but by choice, not by coercion.  When rightness rules by force, it doth cease to be right.

I know - every educated man should be a critic... and if you're not willing to learn, you have no right to criticize.

Because... it's the only way he can avoid massive guilt.  Once he gave in to temptation, he became a convert to his own particular vice, with all the fanaticism of any convert.  You might say he's acquired a vested interest in sin, and to disown it would be to ruin him.

You have cause for bitterness....  But please... remember that it wasn't the Faith that committed those actions - it was the man who used that Faith for his own worldly purposes!

But you don't get cheers by insulting your audience, nor return engagements either...

The point is taken....  Yes - if the words of the song justify the behavior they wish to practice but have been taught not to, they will wish to believe those words.  From there, it is only a very small step to persuade oneself that they are true.

Because they were real illusions....  Be sure, children - illusions can do as much harm as anything else in this world.  By clouding your perception of reality, illusions can kill.

Would the young folk so test those to whose words they hearken.  We should always question authority before we accept it.

Mayhap through over-familiarity.  We treasure least what we have known too long.

There are more miracles than we realize, then, for they are all about us, and need not be great and mighty.  Grace comes to all who are open to it; miracles hap in places far removed from fame.  'Tis only the few that catch the eye of mighty folk that do astound us all.

...yet I tell the of mine own knowledge, that the ecstasy of the flesh alone is a great anticipation and ascension into a moment's thrill that is far less than its expectation.  'Tis therefore that lechers forever pursue new conquests - they are ever in search of that which can only be gained by those in love.  I cannot speak of the fullest ecstasy that is accorded true lovers, but from what I hear of it, it surpasseth mere lust as the ocean surpasseth the lake.

I yet dream of a union in which husband and wife are so firmly delighted in one another that they act in concert, and take so much pleasure in one another's company that the bondage of never doing what one wishes, but ever tempering thine own desires by another's whims, seems of little moment.

From all I have seen and heard, a wedding is not the magic charm we think it.  A priest's blessing, and an exchange of rings, will not make a wild boy instantly into a prudent husband, nor transform a flirtatious lass at once into a demure and loyal wife.  And, assuredly, a wedding will not make two folk who are unsuited to fall in Iove.

Well, his parents had had their episodes, that was true.  Marriage was not an end to a struggle, but a beginning to a long process of working together, against vanities and false pride and arrogance.  And that intimacy was a prize to be won, again and again, every day.  It was not the fruit of a magic spell worked by a priest at the altar.  He knew that well, and was braced for it, even eager....

It took a few minutes to scroll through the catalog and find the painkiller, though, then a minute or two more convincing the machine that it really did want to take coins, not the credit card I no longer had.  I winced at the noise it made coughing up the tube, and the man taking live orders charged me for the cup of water.  That was all there was to his mart, just the machine and his window, in a storefront six feet wide.  Talk about low overhead.  And minimizing shoplifting.

His gambit is obvious, of course....  If he can create a great deal of public furor over the more undesirable aspects of popular culture, he can distract the citizenry to the point at which they will become so involved in debating freedom to blast out sound and massacre lyric verse, that they will ignore the duller and more wearisome aspects the actions of the Assembly.

Speech is speech, whether it comes from the pulpit, the lectern, or the stage - or the music box, for that matter.  The old bastard knew that, and was deliberately trying to impose his own definition on it for his own purposes - which had nothing to do with the survival of democracy or even of morality.  He knew damn well that if he could get the public to swallow censorship on the stage, it was only a matter of time before he'd be trying to censor conversation between friends, and enforcing it with wiretaps and agents provocateurs.

... You see, my boy, everyone really approves of censorship, underneath it all - as long as it's our enemies who are being censored.  We all want to keep our opponents from saying things we don't like.  Our opinions, however, should be free from the slightest vestige of censorship.  But the only way to protect our own right to free speech is to protect everybody else's, and the people in power always forget that.  So once they've gained office, they begin to try to silence the opposition and if they're in the government, they may actually be able to do it.  So there is constant pressure to limit open discussion, and it always comes in by decrying the immorality of the opposition's statements.

Doctrine by its nature is fallible.  When it becomes inflexible, it opens itself to mistakes.  You can't live your life by principles alone; you have to have compassion, too.  If you don't, the best principles in the world can be corrupted into inhumanity.  It's people who matter, not causes.

They're all actors, you see, and can never quite remember when they're offstage.  There's an audience available, so every one of them must have his or her say.

...I could guess they were playing the old game of squeeze-the-hand, trying to determine social status according to who could mash whose hand.  The whole ritual made me impatient; somehow I'd always thought that when men grew up, they left childish games behind.  But as I grew up myself, I saw that the petty competitions survived as rituals of competitive life.  I began to realize that those little struggles, like the enthusiasm for competitive sports, weren't really childish at all, but adult rituals to which children were introduced and guided early on.  The male of the species is built to battle other males - it goes back to the apes and way before them, for whatever reason.  We demonstrate our civilization by sublimating that drive into games, in which the risks are controlled and the likelihood of injury minimized.  The man who cheers at a football game is a living testament to evolution, and the dominance games that men live by all their lives are just part of the animal nature that still pervades all but two of our drives.  Boys are little men, not the other way around; it's just that they're more obvious, more open, and more honest about it than their elders are.

...but playwrights have always had to write to please the audience available, with the minimum offense given... except for those brave enough few artists who have let the chips fall where they may, and have managed to avoid starvation only because of the infatuation of academic critics.

The notion that some people routinely get up at four o'clock in the morning is enough to give me shivers.  I mean, that's usually maybe two hours after I've gone to bed!  Maybe no hours at all, some night.

I found out later that that was a loaded question.  The straight answer was that there are a lot of people in show business who never stop to ask themselves what they're doing to their audience.  Some of 'em don't give a damn, as long as they make money.  Some of them care a lot, but have very different ideas from mine about what's good for the folks out there in the dark.  Most of 'em laugh at the idea that a show can have any effect on people.  I guess they're the ones who really think the argument over censorship is silly.