John Leonard - Hear Quotes

2 Sourced Quotes

View all John Leonard Quotes

Military people have a heavy investment in rules against torture, not only because we want to protect our own POWs from reciprocal brutalities, as a former general counsel for the Department of the Navy explains here, but also because war is so terrible that it desperately requires any limits anyone can agree on, any gesture toward dignity, any mitigation suggesting civilized scruple. There isn't even persuasive evidence that torture makes its victims tell their secrets, instead of saying whatever we want to hear. From an international leader in the cause of human rights and democratic values, the U.S. has turned into an unaccountable bully.

John Leonard

The culture as a whole is losing its individual notes, its diversity. And this is… it's not only sad. It's devastating. It's devastating because routine language means routine thought. And it means unquestioning thought. It means if I can't — if new words cannot occur to me and new image does not occur to me, then what I'm doing is I'm simply repeating what I've heard.
And what we hear from an overpowering cultural force and the forces of homogenization, what we hear is sell, sell, buy, buy. That's it. That is the function.

John Leonard