Word: dictum
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...objections to the present course and rate of improvement-indeed to the whole idea of material progress as an absolute value-have been stirred, too, by a continued, if unequal, philosophic conflict over the nature of man. In one view-long predominant and customarily summed up by Descartes' dictum, "I think, therefore I am"-thought and instinct are separate and man at his best is a rational animal. In the other view, often pilloried under the pejorative name Romanticism, thought and feeling are rightly and forever intermingled. Systems are to be avoided, individuality is stressed-which often made Romantics...
...attack techniques, taking notes on Israeli defenses and reaction times, and filing away the information to be used in future battle plans. "We were also experimenting with public opinion all through this period," Arafat's top aide told TIME Correspondent Edward Hughes last week. According to the dictum of Mao Tse-tung, guerrilla fighters must be able to live among a friendly population like fish in water. But El Fatah at that time "had no audience. Without the people to listen to us, we had no sea to swim in-the fish had no oxygen...
...their son and daughter refuse to join in the whiteballing. When a racist threatens them, they angrily announce that black is not only beautiful but necessary, smear him with black paint and begin advancing, tarbrushes in hand, on the audience. Playwright Israel Horovitz thoroughly comprehends Freud's dictum that laughter is a release from tension. With fusillades of obscenities and insult humor, he keeps the audience too jittery and hysterical to realize that they have only been watching an intellectual Don Rickles...
...European money crisis only dramatized what many experts have long regarded as an unassailable dictum: the free world's monetary system is overdue for an overhaul. That system-the internationally agreed basis for exchanging one currency for another-was born 24 years ago in the resort town of Bretton Woods, N.H. Imbued with a sense of wartime unity and mindful that competitive currency devaluations had deepened and prolonged the Depression of the '30s, the delegates from 45 nations took only three weeks to devise the fundamentals...
...there is no visible thematic link between the speeches, though a mood of melancholy and decay permeates the evening. Each speaker seems to be addressing himself, a form of alienation that succeeds wonderfully in alienating the audience. It may be that Albee had in mind Walter Pater's dictum that "all art constantly aspires towards the condition of music." The kind of music one gets in Box-Mao is the dead space between notes...