Monday, April 30, 2018

Unique II

"Always remember you're unique, just like everyone else"
--Steven Wright

Sunday, April 29, 2018

Negates

"The human mind has a primitive ego defense mechanism that negates all realities that produce too much stress for the brain to handle. It’s called Denial."
--Dan Brown ,
"Inferno" (Robert Langdon, #4)

Saturday, April 28, 2018

Amiss

Something is amiss.

When children shoot up other children in school, it's a national tragedy, and a week of mourning.

When grown men are killing unarmed young, yes unarmed young, it bespeaks the leagues of fear residing in these men's hearts; that they've created a world in which they themselves have become useless.

Then it makes front page, and it becomes business as usual.

Something is amiss here.

If adults don't truly grow up, then their young may never get the chance.

--Justin K. McFarlane Beau

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RIP Alfie Evans, - May 9, 2016 - April 28, 2018

TLC

Friday, April 27, 2018

Tolerance III

"Evil preaches tolerance until it is dominant, then it tries to silence good."
--Archbishop Charles J. Chaput

Thursday, April 26, 2018

Suits

"We seldom stop to think that we are still creatures of the sea, able to leave it only because, from birth to death, we wear the water-filled space suits of our skins."
--Arthur C. Clarke,
"Space and the Spirit of Man" (1965)

Wednesday, April 25, 2018

Powerless

"But whether the Constitution really be one thing, or another, this much is certain - that it has either authorized such a government as we have had, or has been powerless to prevent it. In either case, it is unfit to exist."
--Lysander Spooner

Tuesday, April 24, 2018

Pygmies

"The rules when the giants play are the same as when the pygmies enter the market."
--William O. Douglas,
Dissenting, Scherk v. Alberto-Culver Co., 417 U.S. 506, 526 (1974)

Monday, April 23, 2018

Experiments

"Why are scientists now using lawyers in laboratory experiments instead of rats? Three reasons: (1) lawyers are more plentiful than rats, (2) there is no danger the scientists will become attached to the lawyers, and (3) there are some things rats just won't do."
--Gerry Spence

Sunday, April 22, 2018

Tremble

"For those who believe in God, most of the big questions are answered. But for those of us who can't readily accept the God formula, the big answers don't remain stonewritten. We adjust to new conditions and discoveries. We are pliable. Love need not be a command or faith a dictum. I am my own God. We are here to unlearn the teachings of the church, state and our educational system. We are here to drink beer. We are here to kill war. We are here to laugh at the odds and live our lives so well that Death will tremble to take us."
--Charles Bukowski,
"The Meaning of Life: The Big Picture", Life Magazine (December 1988)

Saturday, April 21, 2018

Windy

"All the windy ways of men
Are but dust that rises up,
And is lightly laid again."
--Alfred Tennyson,
"The Vision of Sin" (1842)

Friday, April 20, 2018

Disregarding

"I wonder if being sane means disregarding the chaos that is life, pretending only an infinitesimal segment of it is reality."
--Rabih Alameddine,
"Koolaids: The Art of War"

Thursday, April 19, 2018

Charter

"...there is no provision in the Charter itself that contemplates ending war. It is true the Charter provides for force to bring peace, but such use of force is itself war... The Charter is a war document not a peace document... Not only does the Charter Organization not prevent future wars, but it makes it practically certain that we shall have future wars, and as to such wars it takes from us the power to declare them, to choose the side on which we shall fight, to determine what forces and military equipment we shall use in the war, and to control and command our sons who do the fighting."
--J. Reuben Clark, Jr.
One-time U.S. Under-secretary of State, and Ambassador to Mexico
Source: Regarding the U.N. Charter, September 20th, 1945

Wednesday, April 18, 2018

Scary

"Almost everyone I've talked to says, ‘We’re going to move to Houston.’ What I’m hearing, which is sort of scary, is they all want to stay in Texas. Everyone is so overwhelmed by the hospitality.

And so many of the people in the arena here, you know, were underprivileged anyway, so this, this is working very well for them."

--Barbara Bush, September 5, 2005
Interview following a visit to the Astrodome where Hurricane Katrina refugees were being kept

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"Why should we hear about body bags and deaths? It’s not relevant. So why should I waste my beautiful mind on something like that?"

--Barbara Bush,
Interview, Good Morning America, March 18, 2003

Tuesday, April 17, 2018

Subsidy

"Today, the people who would use guns to violate rights have little trouble getting them, while those who would use them to defend their rights have increasing trouble getting them. ... Gun control is in effect a subsidy for criminals."
--Sheldon Richman
V.P. of Future of Freedom Foundation, author
Source: The Right to Life Equals the Right to Possess Firearms, The Tyranny of Gun Control, 41 (Future of Freedom Foundation 1997).

Monday, April 16, 2018

Optimum

"The optimum population is modeled on the iceberg--eight ninths below the water line, one ninth above."
--Aldous Huxley,
"Brave New World"
The Controller, Mustapha Mond

Sunday, April 15, 2018

Prominent

"The more laws and order are made prominent, the more thieves and robbers there will be."
--Lao Tzu (Laozi)

Saturday, April 14, 2018

Suspensions

"Since the eighteenth century the immense expansion of the worlds wealth has come about as a result of a correspondingly immense expansion of credit, which in turn has demanded increasingly stupendous suspensions of disbelief."
--Lewis H. Lapham,
"Money And Class In America" (1989)

Friday, April 13, 2018

Accidents II

"There are no accidents... there is only some purpose that we haven't yet understood."
--Deepak Chopra,
"The Return of Merlin"

Thursday, April 12, 2018

Future II

"What have future generations ever done for us?"
--Groucho Marx

Wednesday, April 11, 2018

King

"I am, indeed, a king, because I know how to rule myself."
--Pietro Aretino
(1492-1556) Italian author, playwright, poet and satirist
May 10, 1537

Tuesday, April 10, 2018

Exploit

"The more we exploit nature, The more our options are reduced, until we have only one: to fight for survival."
--Mo Udall

Monday, April 09, 2018

Genius III

"I've come to believe that genius is an exceedingly common human quality, probably natural to most of us. I didn't want to accept that notion--far from it: my own training in two elite universities taught me that intelligence and talent distributed themselves economically over a bell curve and that human destiny, because of those mathematical, seemingly irrefutable scientific facts, was as rigorously determined as John Calvin contended."
--John Taylor Gatto,
"Dumbing Us Down: The Hidden Curriculum of Compulsory Schooling"

Sunday, April 08, 2018

Largess

"A democracy cannot exist as a permanent form of government. It can only exist until the majority discovers it can vote itself largess out of the public treasury. After that, the majority always votes for the candidate promising the most benefits with the result the democracy collapses because of the loose fiscal policy ensuing, always to be followed by a dictatorship, then a monarchy."
--Alexander Fraser Tytler (Attributed)

Fears II

"He who fears being conquered is certain of defeat."
--Napoléon Bonaparte

Friday, April 06, 2018

Melody

"Life is like a beautiful melody, only the lyrics are messed up."
--Hans Christian Andersen

Thursday, April 05, 2018

Incredulity

"Only the small secrets need to be protected. The big ones are kept secret by public incredulity."
--Marshall McCluhan

Wednesday, April 04, 2018

Core III

"Whilst the earlier forms of oppression confronted by Gandhi and King were in decline, when King turned his attention to economic injustice, it was another matter. He had come to realize that the fundamental, underlying injustice in American life was the exclusion of the poor of all races and cultures from the opportunity to attain even the bare minimum of the necessities of life. Martin King, then, entered a new and different arena. He was involved no longer in fighting regional, social injustice but rather in attempting to confront the core issue of economic injustice in American society, which went hand in hand with waging a costly war and the growth of militarism. This new struggle brought him into direct conflict with the federal government and its numerous agency surrogates whose mission it was to serve and protect American corporate interests at home and abroad. The new post-war corporate colonialism was very far from being a spent force in 1968. If his opposition to the war was unacceptable to the corporate beneficiaries, the Poor People's Campaign was intolerable. Not only could it turn into a revolution which could only be stopped, if at all, by the massacre of Americans but, in the very least, millions of Americans would unavoidably be required to see for themselves the previously unseen massive number of their impoverished fellow citizens."
--William F. Pepper,
"An Act of State: The Execution of Martin Luther King"

Tuesday, April 03, 2018

Lightning

"Lightning makes no sound until it strikes."
--Martin Luther King Jr.,
"Why We Can't Wait"

Monday, April 02, 2018

Chisels

"Wars are poor chisels for carving out peaceful tomorrows."
--Martin Luther King Jr.

Sunday, April 01, 2018

Ships

"We may have all come on different ships, but we’re in the same boat now."
--Martin Luther King Jr.