Threat

"Why is it that millions of children who are pushouts or dropouts amount to business as usual in the public schools, while one family educating a child at home becomes a major threat to universal public education and the survival of democracy?"
--Stephen Arons
Source: Compelling Belief: The Culture of American Schooling

Amendment

"Instead of giving money to found colleges to promote learning, why don't they pass a constitutional amendment prohibiting anybody from learning anything? If it works as good as the Prohibition one did, why, in five years we would have the smartest race of people on earth!"
--Will Rogers
(1879-1935) American humorist

Always II

"Show me somebody who is always smiling, always cheerful, always optimistic, and I will show you somebody who hasn't the faintest idea what the heck is really going on."
--Mike Royko

Imagination III

"What we call imagination is actually the universal library of what’s real. You couldn’t imagine it if it weren’t real somewhere, sometime."
--Terence McKenna

Paranoid III

"Just because you're paranoid doesn't mean they aren't after you."
--Joseph Heller

Responsibility VI

"If an American is to amount to anything he must rely upon himself, and not upon the State; he must take pride in his own work, instead of sitting idle to envy the luck of others. He must face life with resolute courage, win victory if he can, and accept defeat if he must, without seeking to place on his fellow man a responsibility which is not theirs."
--Theodore Roosevelt
(1858-1919) 26th US President

Antagonist

"He that wrestles with us
strengthens our nerves,
and sharpens our skill.
Our antagonist is our helper."
--Edmund Burke
(1729-1797)

Needle II

"Anyone who can handle a needle convincingly can make us see a thread which is not there."
--E.H. Gombrich

Plant II

"[W]e must think and act not only for the moment but for our time. I am reminded of the story of the great French Marshal Lyautey, who once asked his gardener to plant a tree. The gardener objected that the tree was slow-growing and would not reach maturity for a hundred years. The Marshal replied, 'In that case, there is no time to lose, plant it this afternoon.'"
--John F. Kennedy,
Address in Berkeley at the University Of California, March 23, 1962

Monuments II

"When smashing monuments, save the pedestals--they always come in handy"
--Stanislaw Lem

Except II

"I sit on a man’s back, choking him and making him carry me, and yet assure myself and others that I am very sorry for him and wish to ease his lot by all possible means--except by getting off his back."
--Leo Tolstoy

Effective IV

"The most effective way to destroy people is to deny and obliterate their own understanding of their history."
--George Orwell

Revolutionary

"Revolutionary movements attract those who are not good enough for established institutions as well as those who are too good for them."
--George Bernard Shaw

Collective

"I believe that the human race has developed a form of collective schizophrenia in which we are not only the slaves to this imposed thought behavior, but we are also the police force of it. The reason most people don't express their individuality and actually deny it, is not fear of what prime ministers think of us or the head of the federal reserve, It's what their families and their friends down at the bar are going to think of them."
--David Icke
Source: Leading Edge Newspaper, July/August 1996

Scoundrels II

"Even the best-intentioned of great men need a few scoundrels around them; there are some things you cannot ask an honest man to do."
--La Bruyere

Silence VI

"There comes a time when silence is betrayal."
--Martin Luther King Jr.


"I didn’t come to Selma to make his job difficult.  I really did come thinking that I could make it easier. If the white people realize what the alternative is, perhaps they will be more willing to hear Dr. King"
--Malcolm X to Coretta Scott King, private meeting, early 1965, while Martin was jailed in Selma, Alabama

Expands

"As the circle of knowledge expands, so does the Sphere of darkness that encompasses it."
--Albert Einstein
(1879-1955) Physicist and Professor, Nobel Prize 1921

Liberties IV

"Whenever we take away the liberties of those whom we hate,
we are opening the way to loss of liberty for those we love."
--Wendell L. Willkie
(1892-1944) Republican presidential candidate, 1940

Stranger

"Truth would quickly cease to be stranger than fiction, once we got as used to it."
--H.L. Mencken

Cure II

"Show me a sane man and I will cure him for you"
--Carl Jung

Sane II

"When you're the only sane person, you look like the only insane person."
--Criss Jami

Horrible II

"I became insane, with long intervals of horrible sanity."
--Edgar Allan Poe

Base

"It is proof of a base and low mind for one to wish to think with the masses or majority, merely because the majority is the majority. Truth does not change because it is, or is not, believed by a majority of the people."
--Giordano Bruno (1548-1699)
Source: On Shadows of Ideas

Nat Hentoff, RIP

June 10, 1925 - January 7, 2017


"Whenever I see that kind of story, where everybody agrees, I know there's something wrong."


"Most of us lead or are led by lives of patterned regularity. Diurnally, surprises are relatively few. And except for economic or physical uncertainties, we neither face nor court significant degrees of risk because a fundamental drive in the vast majority of us is toward the attainment of as much security as is possible.

In this sense, jazzmen, of all musicians, are our surrogates for the unpredictable, our paladins of constant change."

Nannyism

"Nannyism is fascism on training wheels."
--R. L. Root

Root

"The goal of a free nation is to reveal by example the enlightened possibilities of the human race, not to wield its power of destruction and death over the helpless, the poor, the starving and the war torn masses. The goal of a free nation must be no different outside its borders than within them. In America we do not massacre whole towns because they may be the chosen domicile of a criminal or a conspiracy of criminals. Instead we carefully root out the felons and bring them to justice."
--Gerry Spence

Plunderers

"Plunderers of the world, when nothing remains on the lands to which they have laid waste by wanton thievery, they search out across the seas. The wealth of another region excites their greed; and if it is weak, their lust for power as well.

Nothing from the rising to the setting of the sun is enough for them. Among all others only they are compelled to attack the poor as well as the rich. Robbery, rape, and slaughter they falsely call empire--and where they make a desert, they call it peace."

--Tacitus

Profitable

"As long as people will accept crap, it will be financially profitable to dispense it."
--Dick Cavett

Saints

"Don't fool yourself, my dear. You're much worse than a bitch. You're a saint. Which shows why saints are dangerous and undesirable."
--Ayn Rand,
"The Fountainhead"

Break III

"The world breaks everyone and afterward many are strong at the broken places. But those that will not break it kills. It kills the very good and the very gentle and the very brave impartially. If you are none of these you can be sure it will kill you too but there will be no special hurry."
--Ernest Hemingway,
"A Farewell to Arms" (1929)

Daily II

"We can remake the world daily."
--Paul Wellstone