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1 " Positively, the delinquent behavior seems to speak clearly enough. It asks for what we can’t give, but it is in this direction we must go. It asks for manly opportunities to work, make a little money, and have self-esteem; to have some space to bang around in, that is not always somebody’s property; to have better schools to open for them horizons of interest; to have more and better sex without fear or shame; to share somehow in the symbolic goods (like the cars) that are made so much of; to have a community and a country to be loyal to; to claim attention and have a voice. These are not outlandish demands. Certainly they cannot be satisfied directly in our present system; they are baffling. That is why the problem is baffling, and the final recourse is to a curfew, to ordinances against carrying knives, to threatening the parents, to reformatories with newfangled names, and to 1,100 more police on the street. "
― Paul Goodman , Growing Up Absurd
2 " The Awakening Land" p614 But what in God's name did folks today want to make the whole world over like they were for? In her time in the woods, everybody she knew was egged on to be his own special self. He could live and think like he wanted to and no two humans you met up with were alike. Each had his own particular beliefs and his reasons for owning to them. Folks were a joy to talk to then, for all were different. Even the simple-minded were original in their own notions. They either mad you laugh or gave you pause. But folks in Americus today seemed mighty tiresome and getting more so. If you saw one, you saw most. If you heard one talk, it's likely you heard the rest. They were creacked on living like everybody else, according to the fashion, and if you were so queer and outlandish as to go your own way and do what you liked, it bothered their 'narve strings' so they were liable to lock you up in one of their newfangled asylums or take you home where they could hold you down to their way of doing... "
3 " If only I had some grease I could fix some kind of a light," Ma considered. " We didn't lack for light when I was a girl before this newfangled kerosene was ever heard of." " That's so," said Pa. " These times are too progressive. Everything has changed too fast. Railroads and telegraph and kerosene and coal stoves--they're good things to have, but the trouble is, folks get to depend on 'em. "
4 " Way back in 1831, Michael Faraday, one of the founders of our modern understanding of electromagnetism, was asked by an inquiring politician about the usefulness of this newfangled " electricity" stuff. His apocryphal reply: " I know not, but I wager that one day your government will tax it" . "
5 " If this fails to convince, I being out my secret weapon, announcing with portentous deliberation that Barbara. Damn. Walters. Does. Not. Drive. Heard of her?This sort of accusatory conversion of course almost never goes down with native New Yorkers, people who, like Barbara Walters, live in that barbaric third world country that is Manhattan, and thus have yet to hear of newfangled American Advances like automobiles, happiness, and yards. "
― Sarah Vowell , Take the Cannoli
6 " Maybe the conference was an inversion layer of another kind, bringing me face-to-face with old friends and old places. With cancer and the Gap and the Old Man, railing about newfangled players and spicy food. Bringing me face-to-face early with death and old age and change. "
― Connie Willis , The Best of Connie Willis: Award-Winning Stories
7 " In deference to American traditions, my family put our oven to rare use at Thanksgiving during my childhood, with odd roast-turkey experiments involving sticky-rice stuffing or newfangled basting techniques that we read about in magazines. "
