Sunday, December 31, 2017

Meticulously

"Law reflects but in no sense determines the moral worth of a society. The values of a reasonably just society will reflect themselves in a reasonably just law. The better the society, the less law there will be. In heaven there will be no law, and the lion shall lie down with the lamb. The values of an unjust society will reflect themselves in an unjust law. The worse the society, the more law there will be. In hell there will be nothing but law, and due process will be meticulously observed."
-- Grant Gilmore,
"The Ages of American Law"

Saturday, December 30, 2017

Dangerous VI

"Education is dangerous - Every educated person is a future enemy."
--Hermann Goring

Friday, December 29, 2017

Mediocre

"If the art of war were nothing but the art of avoiding risks, glory would become the prey of mediocre minds.... I have made all the calculations;fate will do the rest."
--Napoléon Bonaparte,
Statement at the beginning of the 1813 campaign, as quoted in "The Mind of Napoleon" (1955) by J. Christopher Herold

Thursday, December 28, 2017

Programmed

". . . in America, we have achieved the Orwellian prediction - enslaved, the people have been programmed to love their bondage and are left to clutch only mirage-like images of freedom, its fables and fictions. The new slaves are linked together by vast electronic chains of television that imprison not their bodies but their minds. Their desires are programmed, their tastes manipulated, their values set for them."
--Gerry Spence

Wednesday, December 27, 2017

Brains

"Why so many of us a million years ago purposely knocked out major chunks of our brains with alcohol from time to time remains an interesting mystery. It may be we were trying to give evolution a shove in the right direction--in the direction of smaller brains."
--Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.,
"Galápagos" (1985)

Tuesday, December 26, 2017

Disrespectful

"A child who is allowed to be disrespectful to his parents will not have true respect for anyone."
--Billy Graham

Monday, December 25, 2017

Send

"If you want to end the war then Instead of sending guns, send books. Instead of sending tanks, send pens. Instead of sending soldiers, send teachers."
--Malala Yousafzai
(17 year-old Noble Peace Laureate)

Sunday, December 24, 2017

Saving II

"The minister gave out his text and droned along monotonously through an argument that was so prosy that many a head by and by began to nod — and yet it was an argument that dealt in limitless fire and brimstone and thinned the predestined elect down to a company so small as to be hardly worth the saving."
--Mark Twain,
"The Adventures Of Tom Sawyer"

Saturday, December 23, 2017

Cup

"Let us not seek to satisfy our thirst for freedom by drinking from the cup of bitterness and hatred."
--Martin Luther King Jr.

Friday, December 22, 2017

Mars

"We don’t give a damn to the insects on our Earth, but if we could find even a single insect on Mars, the whole world would cherish it like crazy!"
--Mehmet Murat ildan

Thursday, December 21, 2017

Music

"If good music has charms to soothe the savage breast, bad music has no less powerful spells for filling the mildest breast with rage, the happiest with horror and disgust. Oh, those mammy songs, those love longings, those loud hilarities! How was it possible that human emotions intrinsically decent could be so ignobly parodied."
--Aldous Huxley,
"Do What You Will" (1928)

Wednesday, December 20, 2017

Sharpest

"The press must grow day in and day out--it is our Party's sharpest and most powerful weapon."
--Joseph Stalin,
Speech at The Twelfth Congress of the R.C.P.(B.) (April 19, 1923)

Tuesday, December 19, 2017

Dreams III

"Except in dreams, you're never really free."
--Warren Zevon,
''Desperados Under the Eaves"

Monday, December 18, 2017

Toleration

"It is sometimes said that toleration should be refused to the intolerant. In practice this would destroy it... The only remedy for dogmatism and lies is toleration and the greatest possible liberty of expression."
--Joyce Cary
(1888-1957)
Source: "Power in Men" (1939)

Sunday, December 17, 2017

Passive III

"It sounds like they’re saying passive life is good, he thought. But there is no such thing as passive life. That’s a contradiction."
--Philip K. Dick,
"A Scanner Darkly" (1977)

Saturday, December 16, 2017

Administration

"The problem of our age is the proper administration of wealth, so that the ties of brotherhood may still bind together the rich and poor in harmonious relationship."
--Andrew Carnegie,
"Wealth", article in North American Review, June 1889

Friday, December 15, 2017

War

"I loved when Bush came out and said, 'We are losing the war against drugs.'  You know what that implies? There's a war being fought, and the people on drugs are winning it."
--Bill Hicks

Thursday, December 14, 2017

Jurisdiction

"As long as you’re fighting on the level of civil rights, you’re under Uncle Sam’s jurisdiction. You’re going to his court expecting him to correct the problem. He created the problem. He’s the criminal. You don’t take your case to the criminal; you take your criminal to court."
--Malcolm X

Wednesday, December 13, 2017

Controlled II

"It is a mistake to suppose that the whole issue is how to free man. The issue is to improve the way in which he is controlled."
--B.F. Skinner

Tuesday, December 12, 2017

Professionals

"Professionals built the Titanic, amateurs built the ark."
--Author Unknown

Monday, December 11, 2017

Remedy III

"There is only one remedy for ignorance and thoughtlessness, and that is literacy. Millions and millions of children would today stand in no need of sex education or consumer education or anti-racism education or any of those fake educations, if they had had in the first place 'an' education."
--Richard Mitchell
(1929-2002) Professor at Glassboro State College, NJ, author, founder and publisher of The Underground Grammarian
Source: The Underground Grammarian

Sunday, December 10, 2017

Balance IV

"The lack of balance between the birth-rate of the 'unfit' and the 'fit,' admittedly the greatest present menace to the civilization, can never be rectified by the inauguration of a cradle competition between these two classes. The example of the inferior classes, the fertility of the feeble-minded, the mentally defective, the poverty-stricken, should not be held up for emulation to the mentally and physically fit, and therefore less fertile, parents of the educated and well-to-do classes. On the contrary, the most urgent problem to-day is how to limit and discourage the over-fertility of the mentally and physically defective."
--Margaret Sanger,
"The Pivot of Civilization"

Saturday, December 09, 2017

Architects

"All are architects of Fate,
Working in these walls of Time;
some with massive deeds and great,
Some with ornaments of rhyme."
--Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

Friday, December 08, 2017

Compassion III

"We need a little more compassion, and if we cannot have it then no politician or even a magician can save the planet."
--Tenzin Gyatso, 14th Dalai Lama

Thursday, December 07, 2017

Grotesque 1.5

"The statesmen will invent cheap lies, putting the blame upon the nation that is attacked, and every man will be glad of those conscience-soothing falsities, and will diligently study them, and refuse to examine any refutations of them; and thus he will by and by convince himself that the war is just, and will thank God for the better sleep he enjoys after this process of grotesque self-deception."
--Mark Twain,
"The Mysterious Stranger" (1910)

Wednesday, December 06, 2017

Ice

"For those of you who don't understand Reaganomics, it's based on the principle that the rich and the poor will get the same amount of ice. In Reaganomics, however, the poor get all of theirs in winter."
--Mo Udall

Tuesday, December 05, 2017

Consensus III

"Let's be clear: the work of science has nothing whatever to do with consensus. Consensus is the business of politics. Science, on the contrary, requires only one investigator who happens to be right, which means that he or she has results that are verifiable by reference to the real world. In science consensus is irrelevant. What is relevant is reproducible results. The greatest scientists in history are great precisely because they broke with the consensus."
--Michael Crichton
(1942-2008) American author, producer, director, and screenwriter

Monday, December 04, 2017

Damages

"Mass schooling damages children. We don’t need any more of it. And under the guise that it is the same thing as education, it has been picking our pockets just as Socrates predicted it would thousands of years ago. One of the surest ways to recognize real education is by the fact that it doesn't cost very much, doesn't depend on expensive toys or gadgets. The experiences that produce it and the self-awareness that propels it are nearly free. It is hard to turn a dollar on education. But schooling is a wonderful hustle, getting sharper all the time."
--John Taylor Gatto,
"Dumbing Us Down: The Hidden Curriculum of Compulsory Schooling"

Sunday, December 03, 2017

Opportunity III

"Time is that wherein there is opportunity, and opportunity is that wherein there is no great time. Healing is a matter of time, but it is sometimes also a matter of opportunity. However, knowing this, one must attend to medical practice not primarily to plausible theories, but to experience combined with reason. For a theory is a composite memory of things apprehended with sense perception."
--Hippocrates

Saturday, December 02, 2017

Effective V

"Hunger is the most effective disease."
--Pol Pot

Friday, December 01, 2017

Question II

"I think the problem, to be quite honest with you, is that you've never actually known what the question is."
--Douglas Adams,
"The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy"