Tuesday, October 31, 2017

Archetype II

"Dr Lecter, my candidate for the male archetype of 1951-2000, will never win any Nice Guy awards, I fear, but he symbolizes our age as totally as Bloom symbolized his. Hannibal's wit, erudition, insight into others, artistic sensitivity, scientific knowledge etc. make him almost a walking one man encyclopedia of Western civilization. As for his "hobbies" as he calls them — well, according to the World Game Institute, since the end of World War II, in which 60,000,000 human beings were murdered by other human beings, 193,000,000 more humans have been murdered by other humans in brush wars, revolutions, insurrections etc. What better symbol of our age than a serial killer? Hell, can you think of any recent U.S. President who doesn't belong in the Serial Killer Hall of Fame? And their motives make no more sense, and no less sense, than Dr Lecter's Darwinian one-man effort to rid the planet of those he finds outstandingly loutish and uncouth."
--Robert Anton Wilson

Monday, October 30, 2017

Drilled

"Schools train individuals to respond as a mass. Boys and girls are drilled in being bored, frightened, envious, emotionally needy, generally incomplete. A successful mass production economy requires such a clientele. A small business, small farm economy like that of the Amish requires individual competence, thoughtfulness, compassion, and universal participation; our own requires a managed mass of leveled, spiritless, anxious, familyless, friendless, godless, and obedient people who believe the difference between Cheers and Seinfeld is a subject worth arguing about."
--John Taylor Gatto,
"The Underground History of American Education: An Intimate Investigation Into the Prison of Modern Schooling"

Sunday, October 29, 2017

Dock

"A time will come when a politician who has willfully made war and promoted international dissension will be as sure of the dock and much surer of the noose than a private homicide. It is not reasonable that those who gamble with men's lives should not stake their own."
--H.G. Wells,
"The Salvaging of Civilization" (1921)

Saturday, October 28, 2017

Specialists

"Ethical control may survive in small groups, but the control of the population as a whole must be delegated to specialists--to police, priests, owners, teachers, therapists, and so on, with their specialized reinforcers and their codified contingencies."
--B.F. Skinner,
"Beyond Freedom and Dignity" (1971)

Friday, October 27, 2017

Darkness II

"If we go as far as we can into the darkness, regardless of the consequences, I believe a midnight truth will free us from our bondage to violence and bring us to the light of peace."
--James W. Douglass,
"JFK and the Unspeakable: Why He Died and Why It Matters"

Thursday, October 26, 2017

Do II

"I am always doing that which I cannot do, in order that I may learn how to do it."
--Pablo Picasso

Wednesday, October 25, 2017

Down III

"Nothing can be more readily disproved than the old saw, 'You can't keep a good man down.' Most human societies have been beautifully organized to keep good men down."
--John W. Gardner
(1912-2002) US Secretary of Health, Education, and Welfare under President Lyndon Johnson, President of the Carnegie Corporation, founder Common Cause and Independent Sector

Tuesday, October 24, 2017

Safe IV

"All presidents but Jefferson have argued that their first job was to keep us safe. All presidents but Jefferson were wrong. If you read the Constitution, you will see that the President's first job - as Jefferson understood well - is to keep us free."
--Andrew Napolitano

Monday, October 23, 2017

Happen III

"Things don't just happen. They are made to happen."
--John F. Kennedy

Sunday, October 22, 2017

Transformation

"One aspect of modern life which has gone far to stifle men is the rapid growth of tremendous corporations. Enormous spiritual sacrifices are made in the transformation of shopkeepers into employees... The disappearance of free enterprise has led to a submergence of the individual in the impersonal corporation in much the same manner as he has been submerged in the state in other lands."
--William O. Douglas,
Speech at annual dinner of Fordham University Alumni Association, New York City (February 9, 1939)

Saturday, October 21, 2017

Saint

"The real saint", Baudelaire pretends to think, "is he who flogs and kills people for their own good."   His argument will be heard. A race of real saints is beginning to spread over the earth for the purposes of confirming these curious conclusions about rebellion.
--Albert Camus,
"The Rebel" (1951)

Friday, October 20, 2017

Ideal V

"A total population of 250-300 million people, a 95% decline from present levels, would be ideal."
--Ted Turner,
CNN founder

Thursday, October 19, 2017

Commerce

"They blink. They make noises," said Moreno. "The head moves, the eyes are wide and looking around." Still Moreno would cut. Some would survive as far as the tail cutter, the belly ripper, the hide puller. They die," said Moreno, "piece by piece." "In fact, if one person is unkind to an animal it is considered to be cruelty, but where a lot of people are unkind to animals, especially in the name of commerce, the cruelty is condoned and, once large sums of money are at stake, will be defended to the last by otherwise intelligent people."
--Ruth Harrison,
author of "Animal Machines"

Wednesday, October 18, 2017

Better III

"People ask me to predict the future, when all I want to do is prevent it. Better yet, build it. Predicting the future is much too easy, anyway. You look at the people around you, the street you stand on, the visible air you breathe, and predict more of the same. To hell with more. I want better."
--Ray Bradbury,
"Beyond 1984: The People Machines" (1979).

Tuesday, October 17, 2017

Non-Conformists

"Now let's repeat the non-conformists' oath: I promise to be different! (audience repeats) I promise to be unique! (audience repeats) I promise not to repeat things other people say! (audience repeats, laughs) Good!"
--Steve Martin,
comedy album "A Wild and Crazy Guy"

Monday, October 16, 2017

Roads III

"No single decision you ever made has led in a straight line to where you find yourself now. You peeked down some roads and took a few steps before turning back. You followed some roads that came to a dead end and others that got lost at too many intersections. Ultimately, all roads are connected to all other roads."
--Deepak Chopra,
"The Book of Secrets: Unlocking the Hidden Dimensions of Your Life"

Sunday, October 15, 2017

Victims

"Vladimir Nabokov said the two great evils of the 20th century were Marx and Freud. He was absolutely correct. Freud has saturated our culture. People operate on Freudian theory in almost everything they do and they're completely unaware of it. I'm really sensitive to how Freudian theory seized the day, because as a novelist I once wrote characters with complete Freudian backgrounds. The basic assumption of Freud is that none of us is responsible for what we are: What we are is a consequence of what our parents did to us, what our culture did to us, what society did to us, the injustices we've suffered. So, in essence, we're victims.

What we do as a society is seek simple answers. Freudianism is a simple answer: If what everybody does is simply a result of what was done to them as a child by their parents, or their culture, then they're not really responsible. All we have to do is put them through a 12-step program and they'll cease being a serial killer or whatever. That's so grossly simplistic. And yet it has dominated the thinking of our century, especially our legal system."

--Dean Koontz,
as quoted in Nick Gillespie & Lisa Snell, "Contemplating Evil: Novelist Dean Koontz on Freud, fraud, and the Great Society", Reason magazine, 1996

Saturday, October 14, 2017

Indispensible

"When the government violates the people's rights, insurrection is, for the people and for each portion of the people, the most sacred of the rights and the most indispensible of duties."
--Marquis de Lafayette

Friday, October 13, 2017

Bad II

"A huge tyrannosaurus ate our lawyer,
Well, I suppose that proves... they're really not all bad"

--Weird Al Yankovic,
"Jurassic Park"

Thursday, October 12, 2017

Inconvenient II

"Our society tends to regard as a sickness any mode of thought or behavior that is inconvenient for the system and this is plausible because when an individual doesn't fit into the system it causes pain to the individual as well as problems for the system. Thus the manipulation of an individual to adjust him to the system is seen as a cure for a sickness and therefore as good."
--Theodore J. Kaczynski

Wednesday, October 11, 2017

Gadgets

"In our new age of terrifying, lethal gadgets, which supplanted so swiftly the old one, the first great aggressive war, if it should come, will be launched by suicidal little madmen pressing an electronic button. Such a war will not last long and none will ever follow it. There will be no conquerors and no conquests, but only the charred bones of the dead on an uninhabited planet."
--William L. Shirer,
"The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich: A History of Nazi Germany"

Tuesday, October 10, 2017

Garbage

"The lowest form of popular culture - lack of information, misinformation, disinformation, and a contempt for the truth or the reality of most people's lives - has overrun real journalism. Today, ordinary Americans are being stuffed with garbage".
--Carl Bernstein

Monday, October 09, 2017

Memory

"My people are few. They resemble the scattering trees of a storm-swept plain...There was a time when our people covered the land as the waves of a wind-ruffled sea cover its shell-paved floor, but that time long since passed away with the greatness of tribes that are now but a mournful memory."
--Chief Seattle,
The Chief Seattle's Speech

Sunday, October 08, 2017

Superior III

"The most important message of a crucifix, to me anyway, was how unspeakably cruel supposedly sane human beings can be when under orders from a superior authority."
--Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.,
"Hocus Pocus" (1990)

Saturday, October 07, 2017

Wolfe

"The Wolfe knowes,
what the ill beast thinkes."
--George Herbert

Friday, October 06, 2017

China

"Happiness is the china shop; love is the bull."
--H.L. Mencken

Sensibilities

"If we set the precedent of limiting the First Amendment, in order to protect the sensibilities of those who are offended by flag burning, what will we say the next time someone is offended by some other minority view, or by some other person's exercise of the freedom the Constitution is supposed to protect?"
--Edward Kennedy,
Constituent letter (1997)

Wednesday, October 04, 2017

Whim

"Life is a whim of several billion cells to be you for a while."
--Groucho Marx

Tuesday, October 03, 2017

Imperialism

"Imperialism is a system of exploitation that occurs not only in the brutal form of those who come with guns to conquer territory. Imperialism often occurs in more subtle forms, a loan, food aid, blackmail . We are fighting this system that allows a handful of men on earth to rule all of humanity."
--Thomas Sankara

Cheek

"When you take your case to Washington, D.C., you’re taking it to the criminal who’s responsible; it’s like running from the wolf to the fox. They’re all in cahoots together. They all work political chicanery and make you look like a chump before the eyes of the world. Here you are walking around in America, getting ready to be drafted and sent abroad, like a tin soldier, and when you get over there, people ask you what are you fighting for, and you have to stick your tongue in your cheek."
--Malcom X

Sunday, October 01, 2017

Folly IV

"The easy confidence with which I know another man's religion is folly teaches me to suspect that my own is also."
--Mark Twain