Spread

"For the past 30 years our nation’s spent $5 trillion trying to erase poverty, and the result, as you know, is that we didn’t get rid of it at all. In fact, we spread it. We destroyed the self-esteem of millions of people, grinding them down in a welfare system that penalizes moms for wanting to marry the father of their children, and penalizes moms for wanting to save money. Friends, that’s not right."
--J. C. Watts, Jr. (1997)
(1957- ) US Congressman from Oklahoma (R)

Laws IV

"Corruptisima republica plurimae leges."  (The more corrupt a republic, the more laws.)
--Tacitus

Stimulans

"Hope, in its stronger forms, is a great deal more powerful stimulans to life than any sort of realized joy can ever be. Man must be sustained in suffering by a hope so high that no conflict with actuality can dash it—so high, indeed, that no fulfilment can satisfy it: a hope reaching out beyond this world."
--Friedrich Nietzsche,
"The Antichrist" (1888)

Primative

[on the possibility of contact with an alien civilization] "I think it would be a disaster. The extraterrestrials would probably be far in advance of us. The history of advanced races meeting more primitive people on this planet is not very happy, and they were the same species. I think we should keep our heads low."
--Stephen Hawking

Converting

"When you talk of Norman Mailer, right away I see van Gogh's work boots. Norman was a working man. Lord, did he work. From one end of his life to the other, he sat in solemn thought and left so much to read, so many pages with ideas that come at you like sparks spitting from a fire. He leaves them to a nation that has surrendered all its years to converting truth to an untruthful excuse for killing."
--Jimmy Breslin

Lightly II

"It’s dark because you are trying too hard. Lightly child, lightly. Learn to do everything lightly. Yes, feel lightly even though you’re feeling deeply. Just lightly let things happen and lightly cope with them. So throw away your baggage and go forward. There are quicksands all about you, sucking at your feet, trying to suck you down into fear and self-pity and despair. That’s why you must walk so lightly. Lightly my darling..."
--Aldous Huxley,
"Island"

Guidepost

"The past is a guidepost, not a hitching post."
--L. Thomas Holdcroft

Sufficient II

"A man must always live by his work, and his wages must at least be sufficient to maintain him. They must even upon most occasions be somewhat more, otherwise it would be impossible for him to bring up a family, and the race of such workmen could not last beyond the first generation."
--Adam Smith,
"The Wealth Of Nations"

Solvers

"There is a certain class of race-problem solvers who do not want the patient to get well, because as long as the disease holds out they have not only an easy means of making a living, but also an easy medium through which to make themselves prominent before the public."
-- Booker T. Washington

Responsibility VIII

"When we give our minds and our responsibility away, we give our lives away. If enough of us do it, we give the world away and that is precisely what we have been doing throughout known human history. This is why the few have always controlled the masses. The only difference today is that the few are now manipulating the entire planet because of the globalisation of business, banking and communications. The foundation of that control has always been the same : keep the people in ignorance, fear and at war with themselves,. Divide, rule and conquer while keeping the most important knowledge to yourself."
--David Icke,
"The Biggest Secret: The Book That Will Change the World"

Paralyzed

"[T]he greatest problem facing the United States today is not racism; it is the disappearance of the can-do attitude that built the country,  ... We’ve lost the sense of individual responsibility for our problems, and that’s bad enough. But what’s worse, we’re losing faith in our ability to solve our problems. This acquired sense of helplessness is catastrophic, and it has paralyzed large swaths of the American public – rural, urban and suburban. … Encouraging dependence upon government not only creates generations of helpless people; it inures them to government’s ineffectiveness."
--Laura Hollis

Solutions II

"The chief cause of problems is solutions."
--Eric Sevareid

Glass

"Casting a curious gaze down on planet Earth, extra-terrestrial beings could well be forgiven for assuming that we humans are programmed in every move we make, by a palm-sized, oblong, slab of glass. More perplexing than that, who on earth could convince them otherwise ?"
--Alex Morritt,
'Impromptu Scribe"

Walking III

"We're all just walking each other home."
--Ram Dass

Screen

"I have this feeling that whoever’s elected president, no matter what promises you make on the campaign trail--blah, blah, blah--when you win, you go into this smoky room with the twelve industrialist, capitalist scumfucks that got you in there, and this little screen comes down ... and it’s a shot of the Kennedy assassination from an angle you’ve never seen before, which looks suspiciously off the grassy knoll ... and then the screen comes up, the lights come on, and they say to the new president, ‘Any questions?' 'Just what my agenda is.'"
--Bill Hicks

Chaos IV

"There is great chaos under heaven; the situation is excellent."
--Chairman Mao [Attributed]

Possibilities

"Two possibilities exist: either we are alone in the Universe or we are not. Both are equally terrifying."
--Arthur C. Clarke

Waste

"The difference between a democracy and a dictatorship is that in a democracy you vote first and take orders later; in a dictatorship you don't have to waste your time voting."
--Charles Bukowski

Heading

"If you do not change direction, you may end up where you are heading."
--Lao Tzu

Tough

"I know that sounds tough, but as I said, if you’re not tough inside, the world will always push you around anyway."
--Robert Kiyosaki,
"Rich Dad Poor Dad: What the Rich Teach Their Kids About Money-That the Poor and the Middle Class Do Not!"

Fate II

"Man blames fate for other accidents, but feels personally responsible when he makes a hole in one."
--Charles Dickens

Generations II

"Whole generations have forgotten history."
--Pierre Salinger

Robots

"Most frequently asked question at my AI talks: Will robots be conscious?

We slaughter 60 billion animals/year, but are concerned for robots?"

--Piero Scaruffi

Sense IV

"He had learned the worst lesson that life can teach - that it makes no sense."
--Philip Roth,
"American Pastoral"

Incurable II

"...an optimistic mind-set finds dozens of possible solutions for every problem that the pessimist regards as incurable."
--Robert Anton Wilson,
"Cosmic Trigger"

Peeling

"We all know nations that can be identified by the flight of writers from their shores. These are regimes whose fear of unmonitored writing is justified because truth is trouble. It is trouble for the warmonger, the torturer, the corporate thief, the political hack, the corrupt justice system, and for a comatose public. Unpersecuted, unjailed, unharrassed writers are trouble for the ignorant bully, the sly racist, and the predators feeding off the world’s resources. The alarm, the disquiet, writers raise is instructive because it is open and vulnerable, because if unpoliced it is threatening. Therefore the historical suppression of writers is the earliest harbinger of the steady peeling away of additional rights and liberties that will follow."
--Toni Morrison (February 18, 1931 - August 5, 2019),
"Burn This Book" (2009)

Bring

"Education means to bring out wisdom. Indoctrination means to push in knowledge."
--Dick Gregory

Fortunate

"Fortunate the man who, at the right moment meets the right friend; fortunate also the man who at the right moment meets the right enemy. I do not approve the extermination of the enemy; the policy of exterminating or, as it is barbarously said, liquidating enemies, is one of the most alarming developments of modern war and peace, from the point of view of those who desire the survival of culture. One needs the enemy... A country within which the divisions have gone too far is a danger to itself: a country which is too well united - whether by nature or by device, by honest purpose or by fraud and oppression - is a menace to others."
--T.S. Eliot,
Notes towards the definition of culture (1948)

Furniture

"She viewed ethnic cleansing, famine and genocide as direct threats to her furniture."
--Arundhati Roy,
"The God Of Small Things"

Count

"If you can count your money, you don't have a billion dollars."
--John Paul Getty

Jazz

"Don't believe that jazz about there's nothing you can do, 'turn on and drop out, man'--because you've got to turn on and drop in, or they're going to drop all over you."
--John Lennon