Persisting

"[F]or it is not having insufficient knowledge, but persisting a long time in insufficient knowledge that is shameful; since the one is assumed to be a disease common to all, but the other is assumed to be a flaw to an individual."
--Marcus Tullius Cicero

Insidious II

"Then I went in and shot the televisor, that insidious beast, that Medusa, which freezes a billion people to stone every night, staring fixedly, that Siren which called and sang and promised so much and gave, after all, so little, but myself always going back, going back hoping and waiting until--bang!"
--Ray Bradbury,
"The Murderer" (1953)

Needs

"Society's needs come before the individual's needs."
--Adolf Hitler
Source: Attributed by A. E. Samaan in "From a Race of Masters to a Master Race"

Secure III

"A caged canary is secure; but it is not free. It is easier for free men to resist terrorism from afar than tyranny from within."
--Chuck Baldwin

Holidays

"...reality, however utopian, is something from which people feel the need of taking pretty frequent holidays...."
--Aldous Huxley,
"Brave New World"

Functioning

"A functioning police state needs no police."
--William S. Burroughs

Mustn't

"What is meant by: 'We mustn't give in to the terrorists'? We gave in to them the moment the first bombs fell on Afghanistan."
--Terry Jones (February 1, 1942 - January 21, 2020),
One of the founders of Monty Python
As quoted in The Daily Telegraph, December 1, 2001

Embraced

"Our nation was born in genocide when it embraced the doctrine that the original American, the Indian, was an inferior race. Even before there were large numbers of Negroes on our shore, the scar of racial hatred had already disfigured colonial society. From the sixteenth century forward, blood flowed in battles over racial supremacy. We are perhaps the only nation which tried as a matter of national policy to wipe out its indigenous population. Moreover, we elevated that tragic experience into a noble crusade. Indeed, even today we have not permitted ourselves to reject or feel remorse for this shameful episode. Our literature, our films, our drama, our folklore all exalt it. Our children are still taught to respect the violence which reduced a red-skinned people of an earlier culture into a few fragmented groups herded into impoverished reservations."
--Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.

Extremists

"The question is not if we will be extremists, but what kind of extremists we will be. The nation and the world are in dire need of creative extremists."
--Martin Luther King, Jr.

Important III

"It may be true that the law cannot make a man love me, but it can stop him from lynching me, and I think that's pretty important."
--Martin Luther King Jr.

Wait II

"Frankly, I have yet to engage in a direct action campaign that was 'well timed' in the view of those who have not suffered unduly from the disease of segregation. For years now I have heard the word 'Wait!' It rings in the ear of every Negro with piercing familiarity. This 'Wait' has almost always meant 'Never.' We must come to see, with one of our distinguished jurists, that 'justice too long delayed is justice denied.'"
--Martin Luther King, Jr.,
Letter From Birmingham City Jail
April 16, 1963

Train II

"Education must also train one for quick, resolute and effective thinking. To think incisively and to think for one’s self is very difficult. We are prone to let our mental life become invaded by legions of half truths, prejudices, and propaganda. At this point, I often wonder whether or not education is fulfilling its purpose. A great majority of the so-called educated people do not think logically and scientifically. Even the press, the classroom, the platform, and the pulpit in many instances do not give us objective and unbiased truths. To save man from the morass of propaganda, in my opinion, is one of the chief aims of education. Education must enable one to sift and weigh evidence, to discern the true from the false, the real from the unreal, and the facts from the fiction."
--Martin Luther King, Jr.,
"The Purpose Of Education"
The Maroon Tiger,
Moorehouse College,
January - February, 1947 Issue

Realization II

"They say to each of us, black and white alike, that we must substitute courage for caution. They say to us that we must be concerned not merely about who murdered them, but about the system, the way of life, the philosophy which produced the murderers. Their death says to us that we must work passionately and unrelentingly for the realization of the American dream."
--Martin Luther King, Jr.,
"Eulogy For The Martyred Children"
September 18, 1963, Birmingham, Alabama
Delivered at funeral service for three of the children--Addie Mae Collins, Carol Denise McNair, and Cynthia Diane Wesley--killed in the bombing. A separate service was held for the fourth victim, Carole Robertson

Irony

"[W]e have been repeatedly faced with the cruel irony of watching Negro and white boys on TV screens as they kill and die together for a nation that has been unable to seat them together in the same schools."
--Martin Luther King, Jr.,
"Beyond Vietnam" speech,
April 4, 1967

Socialists

"We are socialists, we are enemies, mortal enemies of the present capitalistic economic system with its exploitation of the economically weak, with its unjust wages, with its immoral evaluation of individuals according to wealth and property instead of responsibility and achievement, and we are determined under all circumstances to abolish this system!"
--Gregor Strasser
(1892-1934) early prominent German Nazi official and politician who was murdered during the Night of the Long Knives in 1934
Source: "Thoughts about the Tasks of the Future", 1926 pamphlet by Gregor Strasser

Discovery

"Sherman made the terrible discovery that men make about their fathers sooner or later... that the man before him was not an aging father but a boy, a boy much like himself, a boy who grew up and had a child of his own and, as best he could, out of a sense of duty and, perhaps love, adopted a role called Being a Father so that his child would have something mythical and infinitely important: a Protector, who would keep a lid on all the chaotic and catastrophic possibilities of life.
--Tom Wolfe,
"The Bonfire of the Vanities"

Progress VIII

"It would be advisable to think of progress in the crudest, most basic terms: that no one should go hungry anymore, that there should be no more torture, no more Auschwitz. Only then will the idea of progress be free from lies."
--Theodor W. Adorno

Broke

"Poor is a state of mind you never grow out of, but being broke is just a temporary condition."
--Dick Gregory

Stream II

"Eugenics without birth control seems to us a house builded [sic] upon the sands. It is at the mercy of the rising stream of the unfit."
--Margaret Sanger,
"Birth Control and Racial Betterment"
The Birth Control Review (1919)

Constantly

"People are strange: They are constantly angered by trivial things, but on a major matter like totally wasting their lives, they hardly seem to notice."
--Charles Bukowski

Background

"Do not separate text from historical background. If you do, you will have perverted and subverted the Constitution, which can only end in a distorted, bastardized form of illegitimate government."
--James Madison
(1751-1836), Father of the Constitution for the USA, 4th US President

Pyramids

"As for the pyramids, there is nothing to wonder at in them so much as the fact that so many men could be found degraded enough to spend their lives constructing a tomb for some ambitious booby, whom it would have been wiser and manlier to have drowned in the Nile, and then given his body to the dogs."
--Henry David Thoreau

Facilitation

"It is a tragedy to see the medical profession move from suicide prevention to suicide facilitation. The right-to-die movement presents euthanasia as compassionate. But disparaging human life as expendable is not compassionate. The term 'compassion' literally means 'to suffer with' (com=with, passion=suffer). True compassion means being willing to suffer on behalf of others, loving them enough to bear the burden of caring for them."
--Nancy Pearcey

Common IV

"We must always remember that, as Americans, we all have a common enemy -- an enemy that is dangerous, powerful and relentless. I refer, of course, to the federal government."
--Dave Barry,
Washington Post, December 19, 2004

Produce

"Think of the things killing us as a nation: narcotic drugs, brainless competition, dishonesty, greed, recreational sex, the pornography of violence, gambling, alcohol, and the worst pornography of all -- lives devoted to buying things, accumulation as a philosophy -- all of these are addictions of dependent personalities. That is what our brand of schooling must inevitably produce."
--John Taylor Gatto

Immortality IV

"I came to the Greeks early, and I found answers in them. Greece's great men let all their acts turn on the immortality of the soul. We don't really act as if we believed in the soul's immortality and that's why we are where we are today."
--Edith Hamilton

Modicum

"I suspect that a major goal of the reform campaign is to make the work of a teacher so degrading and insulting that the dignified and the truly educated teachers will simply leave while they still retain a modicum of self-respect."
--Chris Hedges,
"Why the United States Is Destroying Its Education System" (Truthdig, April 10, 2011)

Harmony

"Taking a close look at what is around us, there is some sort of a harmony . It is the harmony of overwhelming and collective murder. And we in comparison to the articulate vileness and baseness and obscenity of all this jungle, we in comparison to that enormous articulation, we only sound and look like badly pronounced and half-finished sentences out of a stupid suburban novel, a cheap novel. And we have to become humble in front of this overwhelming misery and overwhelming fornication, overwhelming growth, and overwhelming lack of order. Even the stars up here in the sky look like a mess. There is no harmony in the universe. We have to get acquainted to this idea that there is no harmony as we have conceived it. But when I say this all full of admiration for the jungle. It is not that I hate it, I love it, I love it very much, but I love it against my better judgment."
--Werner Herzog,
"Burden Of Dreams" (1982)

Routed

"Pompey had fought brilliantly and in the end routed Caesar's whole force... but either he was unable to or else he feared to push on. Caesar [said] to his friends: 'Today the enemy would have won, if they had had a commander who was a winner.'"
--Lucius Mestrius Plutarchus,
"The Life of Pompey"

Voyage II

"My life might have been passed in ease and luxury, but I preferred glory to every enticement that wealth placed in my path. Oh, that some encouraging voice would answer in the affirmative! My courage and my resolution is firm; but my hopes fluctuate, and my spirits are often depressed. I am about to proceed on a long and difficult voyage, the emergencies of which will demand all my fortitude: I am required not only to raise the spirits of others, but sometimes to sustain my own, when theirs are failing."
--Mary Shelley,
"Frankenstein"
Robert Walton in "Letter 1"