Relay

"Life isn't a race. It's a relay."
--Dick Gregory

Ludicrous

"Ludicrous concepts...like the whole idea of a 'war on terrorism'. You can wage war against another country, or on a national group within your own country, but you can't wage war on an abstract noun. How do you know when you've won? When you've got it removed from the Oxford English Dictionary?"
--Terry Jones,
The Observer, February 23, 2003

Compliment

Christopher Hitchens: "Let me ask a question to Mr Heston: can he tell me, clockwise, what countries have frontiers and borders with Iraq, starting from Kuwait?"

Charlton Heston: "Yes indeed I can (...). Kuwait, Bahrain, Turkey, Russia, uh... Iran."

Christopher Hitchens: "Exactly, you don't know where it is, in other words, do you? You have no idea where the country is on the map, and you're in favour of bombing it now rather than later, on the whim of a President."

Bob Cain: "Mr Hitchens, if I may interject, I'm not sure [about the relevance] of the instantaneous command of the geography of a region."

Christopher Hitchens: "Oh, I don't know, I think if you're in favour of bombing a country, you might pay it the compliment of knowing where it is."

--War in the Gulf with Bob Cain, CNN, February 5, 1991

Bystanders

"It is from the bystanders (who are in the vast majority) that we receive the propaganda that life is not worth living, that life is drudgery, that the ambitions of youth must he laid aside for a life which is but a painful wait for death. These are the ones who squeeze what excitement they can from life out of the imaginations and experiences of others through books and movies. These are the insignificant and forgotten men who preach conformity because it is all they know. These are the men who dream at night of what could have been, but who wake at dawn to take their places at the now-familiar rut and to merely exist through another day. For them, the romance of life is long dead and they are forced to go through the years on a treadmill, cursing their existence, yet afraid to die because of the unknown which faces them after death. They lacked the only true courage: the kind which enables men to face the unknown regardless of the consequences."
--Hunter S. Thompson,
"The Proud Highway: Saga of a Desperate Southern Gentleman, 1955-1967"

Hate II

Oderint Dum Metuant ("let them hate, so long as they fear").
--Lucius Accius, also known as Lucius Attius
"Atreus" (play)

Untruths

"I looked at Mum and realized--twang!--that she was telling an untruth. A big untruth. And I remember thinking in that instant how thrilling and grown-up it must be to say something so completely untrue, as opposed to the little amateur fibs I was already practiced at--horrid little apprentice sinner that I was --like the ones about you'd already said your prayers or washed under the fingernails. Yes, I was impressed. I too must learn to say these gorgeous untruths. Imaginary kings and queens would be my houseguests when I was older."
--Christopher Buckley,
"Losing Mum and Pup"

Signs III

"Nothing is more important than who controls the signs. To change the world, it is necessary to change the signs that are used to condition people."
--Adam Weishaupt,
"Hypersex"

Respect II

"You have no respect for excessive authority or obsolete traditions. You're dangerous and depraved, and you ought to be taken outside and shot!"
--Joseph Heller,
"Catch-22"

Safest

"I believe this thought, of the possibility of death--if calmly realised, and steadily faced would be one of the best possible tests as to our going to any scene of amusement being right or wrong. If the thought of sudden death acquires, for you, a special horror when imagined as happening in a theatre, then be very sure the theatre is harmful for you, however harmless it may be for others; and that you are incurring a deadly peril in going. Be sure the safest rule is that we should not dare to live in any scene in which we dare not die."
--Lewis Carroll,
"Sylvie and Bruno" (1889)

Rule

"Any fool can make a rule
And every fool will mind it."
--Henry David Thoreau

Gone but not forgotten. Rush Limbaugh, January 12, 1951 - February 17, 2021

What, you thought there would be some insightful quote from Limbaugh? Happy Hunting on that. Meanwhile, let us never forget this particular part of his legacy:

Rush Limbaugh Detained With Viagra

U.S. Department of State 2006 Trafficking in Persons Report - Dominican Republic

Occupied

"Decades from now, if we are exquisitely lucky enough to tell a thrilling story about how humanity came together in the nick of time to intercept the metaphorical meteor, the pivotal chapter will not be the highly produced cinematic moment when Barack Obama won the Democratic primary and told an adoring throng of supporters that this would be 'the moment when the rise of the oceans began to slow and our planet began to heal.' No, it will be the far less scripted and markedly more scrappy moment when a group of fed-up young people from the Sunrise Movement occupied the offices of Pelosi after the midterm elections, calling on her to get behind the plan for a Green New Deal--with Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez dropping by the sit-in to cheer them on."
--Naomi Klein,
"The Game-Changing Promise of a Green New Deal"
The Intercept (November 27, 2018)

Genius IV

"The genius of our ruling class is that it has kept a majority of the people from ever questioning the inequity of a system where most people drudge along paying heavy taxes for which they get nothing in return."
--Gore Vidal

Attraction

"Those who fail to exhibit positive attitudes, no matter the external reality, are seen as maladjusted and in need of assistance. Their attitudes need correction. Once we adopt an upbeat vision of reality, positive things will happen. This belief encourages us to flee from reality when reality does not elicit positive feelings. These specialists in 'happiness' have formulated something they call the 'Law of Attraction.' It argues that we attract those things in life, whether it is money, relationships or employment, which we focus on. Suddenly, abused and battered wives or children, the unemployed, the depressed and mentally ill, the illiterate, the lonely, those grieving for lost loved ones, those crushed by poverty, the terminally ill, those fighting with addictions, those suffering from trauma, those trapped in menial and poorly paid jobs, those whose homes are in foreclosure or who are filing for bankruptcy because they cannot pay their medical bills, are to blame for their negativity. The ideology justifies the cruelty of unfettered capitalism, shifting the blame from the power elite to those they oppress. And many of us have internalized this pernicious message, which in times of difficulty leads to personal despair, passivity and disillusionment."
--Chris Hedges

Sea II

"There is nothing so good as a burial at sea. It is simple, tidy, and not very incriminating."
--Alfred Hitchcock

AI and Artificial Intelligence

 An excellent discussion of the perils of AI, or Artificial Intelligence

AI is Programming people to go after President Trump - With Cyrus Parsa

As usual, technology used to ultimately enslave, not to free.  As throughout human history, the choice of whether and how to use technology is ours.

Conned

"If somebody else is making the rules for you, no matter how good the payoff is for you, you're being conned."
--Jon Rappoport

Methods II

"Undoubtedly the public is becoming aware of the methods which are being used to mold its opinions and habits. If the public is better informed about the processes of its life, it will be so much the more receptive to reasonable appeals to its own interests. No matter how sophisticated, how cynical the public may become about publicity methods, it must respond to the basic appeals, because it will always need food, crave amusement, long for beauty, respond to leadership. If the public becomes more intelligent in its commercial demands, commercial firms will meet the new standards. If it becomes weary of the old methods used to persuade it to accept a given idea or commodity, its leaders will present their appeals more intelligently. Propaganda will never die out. Intelligent men must realize that propaganda is the modern instrument by which they can fight for productive ends and help to bring order out of chaos."
--Edward L. Bernays,
"Propaganda"

Tolerate

"You have to be able to tolerate what you don't necessarily like so you can be free."
--Larry Flynt
(November 1, 1942 - February 10, 2021)

Inertia II

"Total physical and mental inertia are highly agreeable, much more so than we allow ourselves to imagine. A beach not only permits such inertia but enforces it, thus neatly eliminating all problems of guilt. It is now the only place in our overly active world that does."
--John Kenneth Galbraith
Foreword to "The Beach Book" by Gloria Steinem (1963);
reprinted in Galbraith's "A View From The Stands" (1986)

Productive

"Nothing is less productive than to make more efficient what should not be done at all."
--Peter Drucker (1909-2005)
American writer, management consultant, and self-described "social ecologist."
Widely considered to be the father of "modern management".

Surprising

"Is it surprising that prisons resemble factories, schools, barracks, hospitals, which all resemble prisons?"
--Michel Foucault,
"Discipline & Punish" (1977)
as translated by Alan Sheridan

Ramblin'

"We still have great comedy out there. There's always ramblin' Joe Biden. What the fuck? Joe says shit that even people with Tourette's go 'no...'"

--Robin Williams,

"Weapons of Self Destruction" (2010)

Again

"O, let America be America again --
The land that never has been yet --
And yet must be -- the land where every man is free."

--Langston Hughes

Object III

"We seldom consider how much of our lives we must render in return for some object we barely want, seldom need, buy only because it was put before us...And this is understandable given the workings of our system where without a job we perish, where if we don't want a job and are happy to get by we are labeled irresponsible, non-contributing leeches on society. But if we hire a fleet of bulldozers, tear up half the countryside and build some monstrous factory, casino or mall, we are called entrepreneurs, job-creators, stalwarts of the community. Maybe we should all be shut away on some planet for the insane. Then again, maybe that is where we are."
--Ferenc Máté,
"A Reasonable Life: Toward a Simpler, Secure, More Humane Existence"

Murdered

"With the tools of democracy, democracy was murdered and lawlessness made 'legal.' Raw power ruled, and its only real goal was to destroy all other powers besides itself."
--Eric Metaxas,
"Bonhoeffer: Pastor, Martyr, Prophet, Spy"

Rite

"No tribal rite has yet been recorded which attempts to keep winter from descending; on the contrary: the rites all prepare the community to endure, together with the rest of nature, the season of the terrible cold."
--Joseph Campbell,
"The Hero With A Thousand Faces" (1949)

Sewer

"What is the worst thing about living near an open sewer? It is not that you sicken at the stench of it every time you leave your front door. It is that the noisome vapors are so pervasive, and you have lived with them so long, you no longer notice it. What is the worst thing about living in the rubble of a civilization? It is not that you shed a tear for the noble churches and courts and town halls you once knew, as you recall years filled with religious services, parades, block parties, and all the bumptious folderol of an ordinary civic life. It is that you do not even suspect that such things existed."
--Anthony M. Esolen,
"What Would Our Ancestors Think of Us?"