Essential

Famous quotes containing the word essential:

    The things of this world reveal their essential absurdity when they are put in the Venetian context. In the unreal realm of the canals, as in a Swiftian Lilliput, the real world, with its contrivances, appears as a vast folly.
    Mary McCarthy (1912–1989)

    The protection of a ten-year-old girl from her father’s advances is a necessary condition of social order, but the protection of the father from temptation is a necessary condition of his continued social adjustment. The protections that are built up in the child against desire for the parent become the essential counterpart to the attitudes in the parent that protect the child.
    Margaret Mead (1901–1978)

    Whether talking about addiction, taxation [on cigarettes] or education [about smoking], there is always at the center of the conversation an essential conundrum: How come we’re selling this deadly stuff anyway?
    Anna Quindlen (b. 1952)