Responsibility V

But this Nation was not founded solely on the principle of citizens' rights. Equally important, though too often not discussed, is the citizen's responsibility. For our privileges can be no greater than our obligations. The protection of our rights can endure no longer than the performance of our responsibilities. Each can be neglected only at the peril of the other. I speak to you today, therefore, not of your rights as Americans, but of your responsibilities. They are many in number and different in nature. They do not rest with equal weight upon the shoulders of all. Equality of opportunity does not mean equality of responsibility. All Americans must be responsible citizens, but some must be more responsible than others, by virtue of their public or their private position, their role in the family or community, their prospects for the future, or their legacy from the past. Increased responsibility goes with increased ability, for "of those to whom much is given, much is required."
--John F. Kennedy
May 18, 1963, speech at Vanderbilt University

Suppose III

At the University of Natal in Durban, I was told the church to which most of the white population belongs teaches apartheid as a moral necessity. A questioner declared that few churches allow black Africans to pray with the white because the Bible says that is the way it should be, because God created Negroes to serve. 'But suppose God is black', I replied. 'What if we go to Heaven and we, all our lives, have treated the Negro as an inferior, and God is there, and we look up and He is not white? What then is our response?' There was no answer. Only silence. 
--Robert F. Kennedy
"Suppose God is Black", interview in Look Magazine (August 23, 1966)

Muddy

"They muddy the water, to make it seem deep."
--Friedrich Nietzsche
[1844-1900]

Cowboy

"On December 16th, 1961 the world turned upside down and inside out, and I was born screaming at America. It was the tail end of the American Dream. Just before we lost our innocence irrevocably when the TV eye brought the horror of our lives into our homes for all to see. I was told when I grew up I could be anything I wanted a fireman, a policeman, a doctor, even president it seemed, and for the first time in the history of mankind something new called an astronaut. But like many kids growing up on a steady diet of westerns I always wanted to be the cowboy hero that lone voice in the wilderness fighting corruption and evil wherever I found it, and standing for freedom, truth, and justice. And in my heart of hearts I still track the remnants of that dream wherever I go in my never ending ride into the setting sun."
--Bill Hicks

Ambition III

"It was true that I didn't have much ambition, but there ought to be a place for people without ambition, I mean a better place than the one usually reserved. How in the hell could a man enjoy being awakened at 6:30 a.m. by an alarm clock, leap out of bed, dress, force-feed, shit, piss, brush teeth and hair, and fight traffic to get to a place where essentially you made lots of money for somebody else and were asked to be grateful for the opportunity to do so?"
--Charles Bukowski
"Factotum" (1975)

Single-Mindedness

"Single-mindedness is all very well in cows or baboons; in an animal claiming to belong to the same species as Shakespeare it is simply disgraceful."
--Aldous Huxley,
"Do What You Will" (1929).

Precious

"Their life appears just as precious to them as is ours to us...the gift of life carries with it the gift of the right of life, in the sense at least of an equal right to life with all other creatures of the divine power and grace."
--Rev. Francis Wood

Deciphering

"Ivanov came to quite the same conclusion, though life supplied him with quite different material to think about. He puts it like this: many lives have a mystical sense, but not everyone reads it right; more often than not it is given to us in cryptic form, and when we fail to decipher it we despair because our lives seem meaningless--the secret of a great life is often a man’s success in deciphering the mysterious symbols vouchsafed to him, understanding them, and so learning to walk in the true path."
--Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
"The Oak and the Calf" (1975)

Theory

"But frankly--may I so speak?--your CIA people’s theory strikes me as a miserable bundle of random suspicions, a few separate facts strung together by an intricate structure of ad hoc theorizing, in which everyone is credited with enormous powers for intrigue. A much simpler view can be entertained with more common sense, and as a CIA employee you must be aware that, like all intelligence agencies, it lacks the faculty of common sense."
--Philip K. Dick,
"Clans of the Alphane Moon" (1964)

Couldn't

"You go up to a man, and you say, 'How are things going, Joe?' and he says, 'Oh fine, fine--I couldn't be better.'  And you look into his eyes, and you see things really couldn't be much worse. When you get right down to it, everybody's having a perfectly lousy time of it, and I mean everybody. And the hell of it is, nothing seems to help much."
--Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.,
"The Sirens Of Titan" (1959)

Party IV

"The last half of the 20th century will seem like a wild party for rich kids, compared to what's coming now. The party's over, folks. . . [Censorship of the news] is a given in wartime, along with massive campaigns of deliberately-planted "Dis-information". That is routine behavior in Wartime--for all countries and all combatants — and it makes life difficult for people who value real news."
--Hunter S. Thompson,
"When War Drums Roll" (September 17, 2001)

Forbidden II

"A forbidden writing is thought to be a certain spark of truth, that flies up in the face of them who seek to tread it out."
--Sir Francis Bacon
(1561-1626) Philosopher, British Lord Chancellor
Source: The Advancement of Learning, 1605

Lesson

"The lesson of report cards, grades, and tests is that children should not trust themselves or their parents but should instead rely on the evaluation of certified officials. People need to be told what they are worth."
-- John Taylor Gatto,
"Dumbing Us Down: The Hidden Curriculum of Compulsory Schooling"

Captive

"We’re the most captive nation of slaves that ever came along. The moral timidity of the average American is quite noticeable. Everybody’s afraid to be thought in any way different from everyone else."
--Gore Vidal

Great III

"The world today has 6.8 billion people. That’s heading up to about 9 billion. Now if we do a really great job on new vaccines, health care, reproductive health services, we could lower that by perhaps 10 or 15 percent."
--Bill Gates

Madness III

"Men have called me mad; but the question is not yet settled, whether madness is or is not the loftiest intelligence--whether much that is glorious--whether all that is profound--does not spring from disease of thought--from moods of mind exalted at the expense of the general intellect."
--Edgar Allan Poe

Chess

"A computer once beat me at chess, but it was no match for me at kick boxing."
--Emo Philips

Unwarrantable

"If the use of animal food be, in consequence, subversive to the peace of human society, how unwarrantable is the injustice and the barbarity which is exercised toward these miserable victims. They are called into existence by human artifice that they may drag out a short and miserable existence of slavery and disease, that their bodies may be mutilated, their social feelings outraged. It were much better that a sentient being should never have existed, than that it should have existed only to endure unmitigated misery."
--Percy Bysshe Shelley

So

"So the commander-in-chief is not the commander-in-chief at all. He is just a problem. You do not want to inform him in the first place, because he might say no. That is the truth of it. When he did say no, you disregarded it. And then you call him the commander-in-chief."
--Senator Frank Church to former CIA Counterintelligence Head James Angleton (1975)

Landscapes

"We believe the picture painters of the mass media are artfully creating landscapes for us which deliberately hide the real picture. In this book we will show you how to discover the "hidden picture" in the landscapes presented to us daily through newspapers, radio and television."
--Gary Allen
(1936-1986) American journalist
Source: None Dare Call it Conspiracy, p. 7 (1972)

Time II

"Time is the best teacher; unfortunately it kills all its students!"
--Author Unknown

Curse

"The worst curse to befall anyone is stagnation, a banal existence, the quiet desperation that comes out of a need for conformity."
--Deepak Chopra, "The Return of Merlin"

Perception

"I used to be employed as a field engineer servicing [a major broadcast network's] distribution equipment, specifically their affiliates' satellite dishes. I've had many talks with TV newsmen. The most telling was one who confessed that he didn't think he could continue his job and live with himself because he daily saw 'the difference between what I am forced to report and what's really happening.' He told me that, at the first meeting with 'corporate's' news director [from the corporate holding company that owned the station, not the network], the ND told them that 'our job as reporters was to shape public opinion.' When someone protested that their job was to discover and report the truth, the ND responded, 'Whatever the public's perception is is the truth and it's your job to make sure that they have the proper perceptions.' That man's statement is always in the back of my mind whenever I see or read anything in the 'news,' that the job of reporters today is not to report hard, verifiable facts but rather to shape public opinion using selected facts presented in carefully arranged fashion."
--Chris Meissen

Rules III

"A good teacher must know the rules;
a good pupil, the exceptions."
--Martin H. Fischer
(1879-1962) German-born American physician and author
Source: Fischerisms (1944), Edited by Howard Fabing and Ray Marr

Slow

"You are a slow learner, Winston."

"How can I help it? How can I help but see what is in front of my eyes? Two and two are four."

"Sometimes, Winston. Sometimes they are five. Sometimes they are three. Sometimes they are all of them at once. You must try harder. It is not easy to become sane."

--George Orwell, "1984"

Abuse

"THE most widespread form of child abuse in the United States is parents' sending children to the government to be educated."
--Neal Boortz

Nurture

"Nurture your mind with great thoughts; to believe in the heroic makes heroes."
--Benjamin Disraeli

Is The Donald trumped? Clinton scheming to seize White House through backdoor

Is The Donald trumped? Clinton scheming to seize White House through backdoor: Next month, Donald J. Trump, with hand on Bible, will be sworn in as the 45th President of the United States. Or will he? The recent talk about recounting votes and 'faithless electors' suggests this highly contentious power struggle is far from over.

Mirror

"Art is the magic mirror you make to reflect your invisible dreams in visible pictures. You use a glass mirror to see your face: you use works of art to see your soul. But we who are older use neither glass mirrors nor works of art. We have a direct sense of life. When you gain that you will put aside your mirrors and statues, your toys and your dolls."
--George Bernard Shaw,
The She-Ancient, in Pt. V

Nothing

Harry Hartounian: Boy, I wish I could get that excited about nothing.

Navin R. Johnson: Nothing? Are you kidding? Page 73 - Johnson, Navin R.! I'm somebody now! Millions of people look at this book every day! This is the kind of spontaneous publicity - your name in print - that makes people. I'm in print! Things are going to start happening to me now.

--Steve Martin's "The Jerk"

Different III

"Schools have not necessarily much to do with education...
they are mainly institutions of control,
where basic habits must be inculcated in the young.
Education is quite different and has little place in school."
--Sir Winston Churchill