Advice II

"The patient has the right to accept your advice or to ignore it."
--Martin H. Fischer
(1879-1962)

Lovely

"What is lovely never dies, But passes into other loveliness."
--Thomas Bailey Aldrich (1836-1907)
American poet, novelist, essayist

Fate

"The fate of the country does not depend on how you vote at the polls -- the worst man is as strong as the best at that game; it does not depend on what kind of paper you drop into the ballot-box once a year, but on what kind of man you drop from your chamber into the street every morning."
--Henry David Thoreau
(1817-1862)

Friends

"The horse and the cow, the rabbit and the cat, the deer and the hare, the pheasant and the lark, please us better as friends than as meat."
--Élisée Reclus

Move

"Those who do not move, do not notice their chains."
--Rosa Luxemburg

Justify

"One might think that a period which, in a space of fifty years, uproots, enslaves, or kills seventy million human beings should be condemned out of hand. But its culpability must still be understood... In more ingenuous times, when the tyrant razed cities for his own greater glory, when the slave chained to the conqueror's chariot was dragged through the rejoicing streets, when enemies were thrown to the wild beasts in front of the assembled people, the mind did not reel before such unabashed crimes, and the judgment remained unclouded. But slave camps under the flag of freedom, massacres justified by philanthropy or by a taste for the superhuman, in one sense cripple judgment. On the day when crime dons the apparel of innocence--through a curious transposition peculiar to our times--it is innocence that is called upon to justify itself."
--Albert Camus,
"The Rebel" (1951)

Destruction

"The road to tyranny, we must remember, begins with the destruction of the truth."
--Bill Clinton
Source: speech at the University of Connecticut, Oct 15, 1997

Leisure II

"Whoever is not in the possession of leisure can hardly be said to possess independence. They talk of the dignity of work. Bosh. True Work is the necessity of poor humanity's earthly condition. The dignity is in leisure. Besides, 99 hundreths of all the work done in the world is either foolish and unnecessary, or harmful and wicked."
--Herman Melville,
Letter to Catherine G. Lansing (September 5, 1877)

Theater

"In this theater of man's life, it is reserved only for God and for angels to be lookers-on."
--Francis Bacon

Talons

"It should, it seems to me, be our pleasure and duty to make those people [the Filipinos] free, and let them deal with their own domestic questions in their own way. And so I am an anti-imperialist. I am opposed to having the eagle put its talons on any other land."
--Mark Twain,
New York Herald, October 15, 1900

CV

"School programs the schooled to type a CV. Life inspires the unschooled to type a business plan."
--Mokokoma Mokhonoana

Laughs

"My girlfriend always laughs during sex — no matter what she's reading."
--Emo Philips,

Academies

"Academies that are founded at public expense are instituted not so
much to cultivate men's natural abilities as to restrain them."
--Baruch Spinoza
(1632-1677)

Sold

"My mind is alert and my body is sensitive and I should have been richly feathered. In nature or even a farmyard I would have had sociable, cleansing dust baths with my flock mates, a need so strong that I perform 'vacuum' dust bathing on the wire floor of my cage. Free, I would have ranged my ancestral jungles and fields with my mates, devouring plants, earthworms, and insects from sunrise to dusk. I would have exercised my body and expressed my nature, and I would have given, and received, pleasure as a whole being. I am only a year old, but I am already a 'spent hen.' Humans, I wish I were dead, and soon I will be dead. Look for pieces of my wounded flesh wherever chicken pies and soups are sold."
--Karen Davis

Terms III

"Are right and wrong convertible terms, dependent upon popular opinion?"
--William Lloyd Garrison
(1805-1879) American abolitionist, journalist, and social reformer

Awakened

So now, Athenian men, more than on my own behalf must I defend myself, as some may think, but on your behalf, so that you may not make a mistake concerning the gift of god by condemning me. For if you kill me, you will not easily find another such person at all, even if to say in a ludicrous way, attached on the city by the god, like on a large and well-bred horse, by its size and laziness both needing arousing by some gadfly; in this way the god seems to have fastened me on the city, some such one who arousing and persuading and reproaching each one of you I do not stop the whole day settling down all over. Thus such another will not easily come to you, men, but if you believe me, you will spare me; but perhaps you might possibly be offended, like the sleeping who are awakened, striking me, believing Anytus, you might easily kill, then the rest of your lives you might continue sleeping, unless the god caring for you should send you another.

--Socrates, from Plato's account of the trial of Socrates

Think IV

"Don't let them tell you what to think, no matter how 'different' your own views may be in relation to the official line. If you are not different in this world of stunning uniformity what on earth are you doing? Baaaaaaa,"
--David Icke

Complicated II

"Women are NOT that complicated. Just drag us to the bedroom, throw us on the bed and clean the goddamn house while we take a nap."

--Sherae Brown, formerly Sherae O'Shaughnessy:

Wing

"They cripple the bird's wing, and then condemn it for not flying as fast as they."
--Malcolm X

Slashing

"Woe to that nation whose literature is disturbed by the intervention of power. Because that is not just a violation against 'freedom of print', it is the closing down of the heart of the nation, a slashing to pieces of its memory. The nation ceases to be mindful of itself, it is deprived of its spiritual unity, and despite a supposedly common language, compatriots suddenly cease to understand one another."
--Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

Elective

"An elective despotism was not the government we fought for; but one which should not only be founded on free principles, but in which the powers of government should be so divided and balanced among several bodies of magistracy, as that no one could transcend their legal limits, without being effectually checked and restrained by others."
--Thomas Jefferson

Caterpillar

"Just when the caterpillar thought her life was over, she began to fly."
--Author Unknown

Acquiring

"The '80s were about acquiring — acquiring wealth, power, prestige. I know. I acquired more wealth, power, and prestige than most. But you can acquire all you want and still feel empty. What power wouldn't I trade for a little more time with my family? What price wouldn't I pay for an evening with friends? It took a deadly illness to put me eye to eye with that truth, but it is a truth that the country, caught up in its ruthless ambitions and moral decay, can learn on my dime. I don't know who will lead us through the '90s, but they must be made to speak to this spiritual vacuum at the heart of American society, this tumor of the soul."
--Lee Atwater
Interview in Life (January 1991)

Invariable

"It is the invariable habit of bureaucracies, at all times and everywhere, to assume...that every citizen is a criminal. Their one apparent purpose, pursued with a relentless and furious diligence, is to convert the assumption into a fact. They hunt endlessly for proofs, and, when proofs are lacking, for mere suspicions. The moment they become aware of a definite citizen, John Doe, seeking what is his right under the law, they begin searching feverishly for an excuse for withholding it from him."
--H. L. Mencken
(1880-1956) American Journalist, Editor, Essayist, Linguist, Lexicographer, and Critic

Facing II

"Congress is continually appointing fact-finding committees,
when what we really need are some fact-facing committees."
--Roger Allen

Happy II

"You can't make everyone happy. You are not a pizza."
--Author Unknown

Darkest

"The truth, when you finally chase it down is almost always far worse than your darkest visions and fears."
--Hunter S. Thompson

Aware

"So debated Doremus, like some hundreds of thousands of other craftsmen, teachers, lawyers, what-not, in some dozens of countries under a dictatorship, who were aware enough to resent the tyranny, conscientious enough not to take its bribes cynically, yet not so abnormally courageous as to go willingly to exile or dungeon or chopping-block--particularly when they 'had wives and families to support.'"
--Sinclair Lewis
"It Can't Happen Here" (1935)

Broken II

"'I've broken an arm before, but no one wanted to shoot me!' Suzie says. 'I mean, when you go to the emergency room I hope to God the doctors don't decide it might cost too much to care for.'"
--Suzie Schwab co-owner of East Maui Animal Refuge

Embrace II

"I say, embrace fear as a friend. It is nature's gift to us. It is the best weapon for liberty. We do not give our permission to be enslaved by acknowledging its presence. Instead, it permits us to escape into the forest if we must. But it does not prevent the boy from rising off the ground one more time to defeat the bully. Fear is presented to us as a signal of danger. It permits us to escape or to fight with power beyond our ability."
--Gerry Spence
"Give Me Liberty! Freeing Ourselves in the Twenty-First Century" (1998)

Literary

"We do not, of course, write literary criticism at all now. Academe has won the battle in which Wilson fought so fiercely on the other side. Ambitious English teachers now invent systems that have nothing to do with literature or life but everything to do with those games that must be played in order for them to rise in the academic bureaucracy. Their works are empty indeed. But then, their works are not meant to be full. They are to be taught, not read. The long dialogue has broken down. Fortunately, as Flaubert pointed out, the worst thing about the present is the future. One day there will be no... But I have been asked not to give the game away. Meanwhile, I shall drop a single hint: Only construct!"
--Gore Vidal
"Edmund Wilson: This Critic and This Gin and These Shoes", closing lines
Published in "United States - Essays 1952-1992" (1992)