Friday, June 30, 2017

Recorded

"[T]he past is what is real and true, while history is merely what someone recorded."
--Andy Andrews,
"How Do You Kill 11 Million People", page 7

Thursday, June 29, 2017

Qualities

"Now more than ever before, the people are responsible for the character of their Congress. If that body be ignorant, reckless and corrupt, it is because the people tolerate ignorance, recklessness and corruption. If it be intelligent, brave and pure, it is because the people demand these high qualities to represent them in the national legislature ... If the next centennial does not find us a great nation...it will be because those who represent the enterprise, the culture, and the morality of the nation do not aid in controlling the political forces."
--James Garfield, July 4, 1876

Wednesday, June 28, 2017

Punishment II

"The punishment which the wise suffer who refuse to take part in the government, is to live under the government of worse men."
--Plato

Tuesday, June 27, 2017

Authority IV

"What matters is to emphasize the fundamental idea in my party's economic program clearly; the idea of authority. I want the authority; I want everyone to keep the property he has acquired for himself according to the principle: 'Benefit to the community precedes benefit to the individual.' But the state should retain supervision and each property owner should consider himself appointed by the state. It is his duty not to use his property against the interests of others among his own people. This is the crucial matter. The Third Reich will always retain its right to control the owners of property."
--Adolf Hitler, 1931,
as quoted in "Nazi Economics: Ideology, Theory, and Policy" (1990), by Avraham Barkai, pp. 26-27

Monday, June 26, 2017

Barbarous

"The barbarous custom of having men beaten who are suspected of having important secrets to reveal must be abolished. It has always been recognized that this way of interrogating men, by putting them totorture, produces nothing worthwhile. The poor wretches say anything that comes into their mind and what they think the interrogator wishes to know."
--Napoléon Bonaparte

Sunday, June 25, 2017

Markets

"Every war results from the struggle for markets and spheres of influence, and every war is sold to the public by professional liars and totally sincere religious maniacs, as a Holy Crusade to save God and Goodness from Satan and Evil."
--Robert Anton Wilson,
"Cosmic Trigger II : Down to Earth" (1991)

Saturday, June 24, 2017

Planning III

"There’s no point in acting surprised about it. All the planning charts and demolition orders have been on display at your local planning department in Alpha Centauri for 50 of your Earth years, so you've had plenty of time to lodge any formal complaint and it’s far too late to start making a fuss about it now. ...What do you mean you've never been to Alpha Centauri? Oh, for heaven’s sake, mankind, it’s only four light years away, you know. I’m sorry, but if you can’t be bothered to take an interest in local affairs, that’s your own lookout. Energize the demolition beams."
--Douglas Adams,
"The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy"

Friday, June 23, 2017

Effort II

"They lie about marijuana. Tell you pot-smoking makes you unmotivated. Lie! When you're high, you can do everything you normally do just as well--you just realize that it's not worth the fucking effort. There is a difference."
--Bill Hicks

Thursday, June 22, 2017

Anonymity II

"Once they notice you, Jason realized, they never completely close the file. You can never get back your anonymity. It is vital not to be noticed in the first place."
--Philip K. Dick,
"Flow My Tears, The Policeman Said" (1974)

Wednesday, June 21, 2017

Going III

"I have no idea where I'm going but here's the real question: What am I doing here in the first place?"
--Art Buchwald

Tuesday, June 20, 2017

Remorse

"Chronic remorse, as all the moralists are agreed, is a most undesirable sentiment. If you have behaved badly, repent, make what amends you can and address yourself to the task of behaving better next time. On no account brood over your wrong-doing. Rolling in the muck is not the best way of getting clean."
--Aldous Huxley,
"Brave New World"
Foreword, to the 1946 edition

Monday, June 19, 2017

Ten II

"As a writer, politician, scientist, and businessman, [Ben] Franklin had few equals among the educated of his day--though he left school at ten."
--John Taylor Gatto

Sunday, June 18, 2017

Relation

"At this late stage in the history of American capitalism I'm not sure I know how much testimony still needs to be presented to establish the relation between profit and theft."
--Lewis Lapham,
"Money And Class In America; Notes And Observations On Our Civil Religion"

Saturday, June 17, 2017

Cozy

"Sanity is a cozy lie."
--Susan Sontag

Friday, June 16, 2017

Astrology

"About astrology and palmistry: They are good because they make people feel vivid and full of possibilities. They are communism at its best. Everybody has a birthday and almost everybody has a palm."
--Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.

Thursday, June 15, 2017

Simple

"To accept anything on trust, to preclude critical application and development, is a grievous sin; and in order to apply and develop, 'simple interpretation' is obviously not enough."
--Vladimir Lenin,
(January-March, 1900, "Uncritical Criticism", Collected Works, 3, Marxists)

Wednesday, June 14, 2017

Despicable

"Nothing is more despicable than respect based on fear."
--Albert Camus
(1913-1960)

Tuesday, June 13, 2017

Materialism

"We must rapidly begin the shift from a 'thing-oriented' society to a 'person-oriented' society. When machines and computers, profit motives and property rights are considered more important than people, the giant triplets of racism, materialism, and militarism are incapable of being conquered."
--Martin Luther King, Jr.

Monday, June 12, 2017

Humor

"That's part of our policy, is not to be taken seriously, because I think our opposition, whoever they may be, in all their manifest forms, don't know how to handle humor. You know, and we are humorous, we are, what are they,Laurel and Hardy. That's John and Yoko, and we stand a better chance under that guise, because all the serious people, like Martin Luther King, and Kennedy, and Gandhi, got shot."
--John Lennon,
BBC interview with David Wigg (May 8, 1969)

Sunday, June 11, 2017

Chose II

"The framers of the constitution knew human nature as well as we do. They too had lived in dangerous days; they too knew the suffocating influence of orthodoxy and standardized thought. They weighed the compulsions for restrained speech and thought against the abuses of liberty. They chose liberty."
--William O. Douglas,
[Beauharnais v.Illinois, 342 U.S. 250, 287 (1952) (dissenting)]

Saturday, June 10, 2017

Skid II

"Life should not be a journey to the grave with the intention of arriving safely in a pretty and well preserved body, but rather to skid in broadside in a cloud of smoke, thoroughly used up, totally worn out, and loudly proclaiming 'Wow! What a Ride!'"
--Hunter S. Thompson,
The Proud Highway: Saga of a Desperate Southern Gentleman, 1955-1967

Friday, June 09, 2017

Working III

"I have four children, and I want them to grow up in a country that has a working First Amendment."
--Frank Zappa,
CBS Morning News (September 18, 1985)

Thursday, June 08, 2017

Intestine

"The three branches of government number considerably more than three and are not, in any sense, 'branches' since that would imply that there is something they are all attached to besides self-aggrandizement and our pocketbooks. ... Government is not a machine with parts; it's an organism. When does an intestine quit being an intestine and start becoming an asshole?"
--P. J. O'Rourke
(1947- ) US humorist, journalist, & political commentator

Wednesday, June 07, 2017

Exploitation

"All government, in its essence, is organized exploitation, and in virtually all of its existing forms it is the implacable enemy of every industrious and well-disposed man."
--H. L. Mencken

Tuesday, June 06, 2017

Together II

"What I think is--what I think is quite clear is that we can work together in the last analysis and that what has been going on in the United States over the period of the last three years, the division, the violence, the disenchantment with our society, the division whether it's between black and white, between the poor and the more affluent or between age groups or over the war in Vietnam that we can start to work together. We are a great country and selfish country and a compassionate country."
--Robert F. Kennedy,
November 20, 1925 - June 6, 1968

Monday, June 05, 2017

Imponderables

"Circumstances of crimes vary. So do motives. And so do prospects for rehabilitation. The number of imponderables makes it impossible to sentence by formula and still sentence justly."
--Robert F. Kennedy

Sunday, June 04, 2017

Progress VII

"He’s perfectly entitled to his point of view. He’s perfectly entitled to express his point of view, and he’s perfectly entitled to disagree with me, and that’s the only way we’re going to make progress in this country--if people stand up and speak their minds."
--Robert F. Kennedy,
Ball State University,
April 4, 1968

Saturday, June 03, 2017

Another day, another act of "terrorism".

I guess when a WASP does the same thing, it's an Act Of Love?

When "doctors" medicate people to oblivion who then fall asleep or go off the deep end and plow through a crowd that's *two* Acts Of Love.

Why are the lives of some only valuable when taken by certain perpetrators?

Once again, the masses are being led by the nose, played by the master puppeteers...

Not that they really are masters of the craft, but it's sooooo much effort to use our ability to think...some prefer to let that ability to remain dormant...

The Mighty-Wurlitzer-How The CIA Played-America


TLC

Solemn

"We all owe our very existence to the knowledge and talent and effort of those who have gone before us. We have a solemn obligation to repay that debt in the coin in which it was given--to work to meet our responsibilities to that greater part of mankind which needs our assistance--to the deprived and the downtrodden, the insulted and injured."
--Robert F. Kennedy,
Stellenbosch University Speech,
June 7, 1966

Friday, June 02, 2017

Degraded

"Whenever any American's life is taken by another American unnecessarily - whether it is done in the name of the law or in the defiance of the law, by one man or a gang, in cold blood or in passion, in an attack of violence or in response to violence - whenever we tear at the fabric of the life which another man has painfully and clumsily woven for himself and his children, the whole nation is degraded."
--Robert F. Kennedy

Thursday, June 01, 2017

Achievement

"The future is not a gift. It is an achievement."
--Robert F. Kennedy