Monday, July 31, 2017

Kick

"When you hit a wall--of your own imagined limitations--just kick it in."
--Sam Shepard
(November 5, 1943 - July 27, 2017)

Sunday, July 30, 2017

Technologies

"I've come up with a set of rules that describe our reactions to technologies:
1. Anything that is in the world when you’re born is normal and ordinary and is just a natural part of the way the world works.
2. Anything that's invented between when you’re fifteen and thirty-five is new and exciting and revolutionary and you can probably get a career in it.
3. Anything invented after you're thirty-five is against the natural order of things."
--Douglas Adams, "The Salmon of Doubt"

Saturday, July 29, 2017

Reward

"It is wrong to expect a reward for your struggles. The reward is the act of struggle itself, not what you win. Even though you can't expect to defeat the absurdity of the world, you must make that attempt. That's morality, that's religion. That's art. That's life."
--Phil Ochs

Friday, July 28, 2017

Liberty's

"Liberty's view of the government could be summed up in a few short phrases:
If it works, work with it.
If it doesn't, work against it.
If it works you over, abolish it."
--Angel Shamaya

Thursday, July 27, 2017

Relationships

"Never give children a chance of imagining that anything exists in isolation. Make it plain from the very beginning that all living is relationship. Show them relationships in the woods, in the fields, in the ponds and streams, in the village and in the country around it. Rub it in."
--Aldous Huxley,
"Island" (1962).

Wednesday, July 26, 2017

Natural IV

"Liberty consists in the freedom to do everything which injures no one else; hence the exercise of the natural rights of each man has no limits except those which assure to the other members of the society the enjoyment of the same rights."
--Marquis de Lafayette,
"Declaration Of The Rights Of Man" (1789)

Tuesday, July 25, 2017

Journey II

"Just because we cannot see clearly the end of the road, that is no reason for not setting out on the essential journey."
--John F. Kennedy

Monday, July 24, 2017

Sentence

"School is a twelve-year jail sentence where bad habits are the only curriculum truly learned. I teach school and win awards doing it. I should know."
--John Taylor Gatto,
"Dumbing Us Down: The Hidden Curriculum of Compulsory Schooling"

Sunday, July 23, 2017

Dimmest

"Americans have only the dimmest notion of what their constitutional freedoms are - and what it took to get them...[and] the willingness to surrender what we're supposed to be fighting for is a recurring part of our history."
--Nat Hentoff

Saturday, July 22, 2017

Depraved II

"It is an honorable calling that you have chosen. Some of you will soon be defending poor, helpless insurance companies who are constantly being sued by greedy, vicious widows and orphans trying to collect on their policies. Others will work tirelessly to protect frightened, beleaguered oil companies from being attacked by depraved consumer groups."
--Art Buchwald,
Commencement address, Tulane University School of Law

Friday, July 21, 2017

Beat II

"I'm going to be me as I am, and you can beat me or jail me or even kill me, but I'm not going to be what you want me to be."
--Steve Biko

Beat

"I'm going to be me as I am, and you can beat me or jail me or even kill me, but I'm not going to be what you want me to be."
--Steve Biko

Thursday, July 20, 2017

Enemy

"The federal government views the Constitution as its enemy."
--Andrew Napolitano

Wednesday, July 19, 2017

Sects

"The fact is that those who are enslaved to their sects are not merely devoid of all sound knowledge, but they will not even stop to learn!"
--Claudius Galenus of Pergamum (Galen)

Tuesday, July 18, 2017

Diagnosing II

"Politics is the art of looking for trouble, finding it everywhere, diagnosing it incorrectly and applying the wrong remedies."
--Groucho Marx

Monday, July 17, 2017

Zombies

"I'm like my zombies. I won't stay dead!"
--George A. Romero
February 4, 1940 - July 16, 2017 (or maybe not...)

Sunday, July 16, 2017

Space

"The danger of asteroid or comet impact is one of the best reasons for getting into space...I'm very fond of quoting my friend Larry Niven: 'The dinosaurs became extinct because they didn't have a space program. And if we become extinct because we don't have a space program, it'll serve us right!'"
--Arthur C. Clarke,
"Meeting of the Minds : Buzz Aldrin Visits Arthur C. Clarke" by Andrew Chaikin (February 27, 2001)

Saturday, July 15, 2017

Standing IV

"People were standing up everywhere shouting, 'This is me! This is me!' Every time you looked at them they stood up and told you who they were, and the truth of it was that they had no more idea who or what they were than he had. They believed their flashing signs, too. They ought to be standing up and shouting, 'This isn't me! This isn't me!' They would if they had any decency. 'This isn't me!' Then you might know how to proceed through the flashing bullshit of this world."
--Philip Roth,
"American Pastoral"

Friday, July 14, 2017

Rationed

"It is true that liberty is precious; so precious that it must be carefully rationed".
--Vladimir Lenin

Thursday, July 13, 2017

Profound

"The more profound problem, however, is the degree to which many academic intellectuals, especially in the humanities, have lost their ability to distinguish the 'state' from 'society'."
--Stephen Cox
(1948-) American professor of literature, editor of Liberty magazine
Source: "Assumptions of Power" Reason magazine, March, 1993

Wednesday, July 12, 2017

Reason V

"If logic and reason, the hard, cold products of the mind, can be relied upon to deliver justice or produce the truth, how is it that these brain-heavy judges rarely agree? Five-to-four decisions are the rule, not the exception. Nearly half of the court must be unjust and wrong nearly half of the time. Each decision, whether the majority or minority, exudes logic and reason like the obfuscating ink from a jellyfish, and in language as opaque. The minority could have as easily become the decision of the court. At once we realize that logic, no matter how pretty and neat, that reason, no matter how seemingly profound and deep, does not necessarily produce truth, much less justice. Logic and reason often become but tools used by those in power to deliver their load of injustice to the people. And ultimate truth, if, indeed, it exists, is rarely recognizable in the endless rows of long words that crowd page after page of most judicial regurgitations."
--Gerry Spence,
"How to Argue & Win Every Time: At Home, At Work, In Court, Everywhere, Everyday"

Tuesday, July 11, 2017

Amnesia

"Happily for the busy lunatics who rule over us, we are permanently the United States of Amnesia. We learn nothing because we remember nothing."
--Gore Vidal,
"The State of the Union," The Nation (September 13, 2004)

Monday, July 10, 2017

Extremism

"Observe, in politics, that the term extremism has become a synonym of 'evil,' regardless of the content of the issue (the evil is not what you are extreme about, but that you are 'extreme'--i.e., consistent)."
--Ayn Rand,
"The Virtue of Selfishness" (1964)

Sunday, July 09, 2017

Colossal

"The silent colossal National Lie that is the support and confederate of all the tyrannies and shams and inequalities and unfairnesses that afflict the peoples--that is the one to throw bricks and sermons at."
--Mark Twain,
"My First Lie, and How I Got Out of It", in The Man That Corrupted Hadleyburg and Other Stories and Essays (1900).

Saturday, July 08, 2017

Creation II

"Ultimately a hero is a man who would argue with the gods, and so awakens devils to contest his vision. The more a man can achieve, the more he may be certain that the devil will inhabit a part of his creation."
--Norman Mailer,
"The Presidential Papers" (1963)
Preface

Friday, July 07, 2017

Radiation

"Radiation, unlike smoking, drinking, and overeating, gives no pleasure, so the possible victims object."
--Issac Asimov,
The Journal of NIH Research (1990),

Thursday, July 06, 2017

Oppressing

"If you're not careful, the newspapers will have you hating the people who are being oppressed, and loving the people who are doing the oppressing."
--Malcolm X

Wednesday, July 05, 2017

How III

"How Do You Kill 11 Million People?
Lie to them."
--Andy Andrews,
"How Do You Kill 11 Million People: Why The Truth Matters More Than You Think", page 21

Note: The "daily quotes" from June 28th through today have all been from that excellent book.  Highly recommended, about a 15 - 30 minute read.  But it will haunt you far longer...

Tuesday, July 04, 2017

Singing

"We heard stories of what was happening to the Jews, but we tried to distance ourselves from it, because we felt, what could anyone do to stop it?

Each Sunday morning, we would hear the train whistle blowing in the distance, then the wheels coming over the tracks.  We became disturbed when we heard cries coming from the train as it passed by.  We realized that it was carrying Jews like cattle in the cars!

Week after week the whistle would blow.  We dreaded to hear the sound of those wheels because we knew that we would hear the cries of the Jews enroute to a death camp.  Their screams tormented us.

We knew the time the train was coming and when we heard the whistle blow we began singing hymns.  By the time the train came past our church, we were singing at the top of our voices.  If we heard the screams, we sang more loudly and soon we heard them no more."

--Erwin W. Lutzer,
"When A Nation Forgets God"

Monday, July 03, 2017

Protection III

"Jews: At last it can be reported to you that the Russians are advancing on our eastern front. I apologize for the hasty way we brought you into our protection. Unfortunately, there was little time to explain. You have nothing to worry about. We want only the best for you. You will leave here shortly and be sent to very fine places indeed. You will work there, your wives will stay at home, and your children will go to school. You will have wonderful lives. We will all be terribly crowded on the trains, but the journey is short. Men? Please keep your families together and board the railcars in an orderly manner. Quickly now, my friends, we must hurry!"
--Adolf Eichmann

Sunday, July 02, 2017

Balanced II

"Have you ever wondered why America doesn’t have a balanced budget? Have you ever in your life heard of a politician who wasn’t for a balanced budget? 

Have you ever heard a politician speak in favor of a complicated tax code that ordinary citizens would find difficult to understand? Then why do we have a complicated tax code that ordinary citizens find difficult to understand? 

Meet the 545 men and women who enact every law, propose every budget, and set every policy enforced on the citizens of the United States of America: one president, nine Supreme Court justices, one hundred senators, and 435 members of the House of Representatives. 

By the way, have you ever noticed that if any one of us lies to them, it is a felony? But if any one of them lies to us, it is considered politics."

--Andy Andrews, 
"How Do You Kill 11 Million People", page 43-44

Saturday, July 01, 2017

Ages

"Why do the ages of our world’s greatest civilizations average around two hundred years?

Why do these civilizations all seem to follow the same identifiable sequence--from bondage to spiritual faith, from spiritual faith to courage, from courage to liberty, from liberty to abundance, from abundance to complacency, from complacency to apathy, from apathy to dependence, and finally from dependence back into bondage?"

--Andy Andrews,
"How Do You Kill 11 Million People", page 46