What is authentic?

Famous quotes containing the word authentic:

    In a secular age, an authentic miracle must purport to be a hoax, in order to gain credit in the world.
    Angela Carter (1940–1992)

    O, when degree is shaked,
    Which is the ladder of all high designs,
    The enterprise is sick. How could communities,
    Degrees in schools, and brotherhoods in cities,
    Peaceful commerce from dividable shores,
    The primogeniture and due of birth,
    Prerogative of age, crowns, scepters, laurels,
    But by degree stand in authentic place?
    Take but degree away, untune that string,
    And hark what discord follows. Each thing meets
    In mere oppugnancy.
    William Shakespeare (1564–1616)

    There are obvious places in which government can narrow the chasm between haves and have-nots. One is the public schools, which have been seen as the great leveler, the authentic melting pot. That, today, is nonsense. In his scathing study of the nation’s public school system entitled “Savage Inequalities,” Jonathan Kozol made manifest the truth: that we have a system that discriminates against the poor in everything from class size to curriculum.
    Anna Quindlen (b. 1952)