Mason Cooley Quotes
Aimless drifting also fulfills an intention.
Cooley, Mason. The Columbia Dictionary of Quotations. Edited by Robert Andrews, Columbia University Press, 1993.
The delegates to the 1787 Constitutional Convention were all men with different opinions. So the intent of the Framers might mean: The intent of the individual who proposed the section, the men who spoke on that section, the majority who voted to keep it in the document. This would be hard enough if there were a transcript of the debate, but there was not. We only have the notes of Madison and a few others at different times. And even they did not know the intentions on a given issue of delegates who did not speak. George Washington, for example, never spoke for or against any particular section of the Constitution. We can infer his intentions from other writings sometimes, but what about the delegates who did not write as much or whose letters and papers have not been found or preserved? The judges who must decide on constitutionality do the best that they can, and there is ALWAYS disagreement when judges make such a judgments and render an opinion.
Mason Cooley was an American aphorist known for his witty aphorisms. One of these such aphorisms Cooley developed was "The time I kill is killing me." He was professor emeritus of French, speech and world literature at the College of Staten Island. He was also an assistant professor of English at Columbia University from 1959 to 1967 and an adjunct professor from 1980 to 1988. He received his B.A. from San Diego State University and his Ph.D. from Oxford.
