Quote Only Thread

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Re: Quote Only Thread

Postby MacCruiskeen » Mon Apr 07, 2014 4:02 pm

"To be truthful about it, there was no way we could have got the public consent to have suddenly launched a campaign on Afghanistan but for what happened on September 11."


Tony Blair. July 17, 2002
"Ich kann gar nicht so viel fressen, wie ich kotzen möchte." - Max Liebermann,, Berlin, 1933

"Science is the belief in the ignorance of experts." - Richard Feynman, NYC, 1966

TESTDEMIC ➝ "CASE"DEMIC
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Re: Quote Only Thread

Postby Iamwhomiam » Mon Apr 07, 2014 6:42 pm

"I have found the Massachusetts Indians more full of humanity than the Christians."
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Re: Quote Only Thread

Postby BrandonD » Wed Apr 09, 2014 5:45 am

Freitag » Fri Feb 21, 2014 10:50 pm wrote:
The errors of a theory are rarely to be found in what it asserts explicitly; they hide in what it ignores or tacitly assumes.

-Daniel Kahneman


via EconomixComix


Excellent quote!
"One measures a circle, beginning anywhere." -Charles Fort
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Re: Quote Only Thread

Postby cptmarginal » Sat Jul 26, 2014 4:40 am

"I have described the intelligence service as a socially acceptable way of expressing criminal tendencies," he said. "A guy who has strong criminal tendencies -- but is too much of a coward to be one -- would wind up in a place like the CIA if he had the education."


Some time before dawn, I was called into the embassy for a meeting with the
first CIA officer I'd ever knowingly met. He gave no name, I didn't ask for
one. Joe had told me he was CIA, that was all I needed. The guy was short,
stocky, bald and wearing what I would come to know was a typical CIA
uniform: a khaki leisure suit. He looked at me with a mixture of bemusement
and disdain that I would also learn was typical.


A product and practitioner of Cook County politics, Donohue resembled W.C. Fields in looks and mannerisms and, you get the feeling, in ethics, too; to wit, he joined the CIA when he perceived the cold war as "a growth industry." When he spoke, his words came in melodramatic exclamations. As he pondered, he paced nervously, like a pool hustler circling the table, picking his next shot. In all these respects, Donohue was the prototypical CIA officer -- a cagey position player using a glib exterior to mask a calculating mind.



But the strange fact is that often when you look into the history of spies what you discover is something very different.

It is not the story of men and women who have a better and deeper understanding of the world than we do. In fact in many cases it is the story of weirdos who have created a completely mad version of the world that they then impose on the rest of us.


The journalist Phillip Knightley has written a really good history of spies - called The Second Oldest Profession. In it he quotes an agent describing what happened during the war years:

"The whole organisation was riddled with nepotism - dim, dreary people of utter unmemorability; sub-men who were doubled up with other sub-men to create an illusion of strength and only doubled the weakness; others made memorable only by poisonous, corrupt malevolence or crass, mulish stupidity; the whole run by a chain of command remarkable for its feebleness. The entire service was decrepit and incompetent."


But it was a world that was all made-up. Le Carre - who had himself been a spy - admitted this, and described what the true reality of the spy world was:

"For a while you wondered whether the fools were pretending to be fools as some kind of deception, or whether there was a real efficient service somewhere else.

Later in my fiction, I invented one.

But alas the reality was the mediocrity. Ex-colonial policemen mingling with failed academics, failed lawyers, failed missionaries and failed debutantes gave our canteen the amorphous quality of an Old School outing on the Orient express. Everyone seemed to smell of failure."
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Re: Quote Only Thread

Postby Elihu » Sat Jul 26, 2014 2:45 pm

How is it that the law enforcer itself does not have to keep the law? How is it that the law permits the state to lawfully engage in actions which, if undertaken by individuals, would land them in jail? why should we think that a democratic mandate can convert injustice to justice?

Frederic Bastiat from 1850:

"It is not true that the mission of the law is to regulate our consciences, our ideas, our will, our education, our sentiments, our exchanges, our gifts, our enjoyments. Its mission is to prevent the rights of one from interfering with those of another, in any one of these things. Law, because it has force for its necessary sanction, can only have the domain of force, which is justice."

Socialism, like the old policy from which it emanates, confounds Government and society. And so, every time we object to a thing being done by Government, it concludes that we object to its being done at all. We disapprove of education by the State — then we are against education altogether. We object to a State religion — then we would have no religion at all. We object to an equality which is brought about by the State then we are against equality, etc., etc. They might as well accuse us of wishing men not to eat, because we object to the cultivation of corn by the State.

How is it that the strange idea of making the law produce what it does not contain — prosperity, in a positive sense, wealth, science, religion — should ever have gained ground in the political world? The modern politicians, particularly those of the Socialist any school, found their different theories upon one common hypothesis; and surely a more strange, a more presumptuous notion, could never have entered a human brain.

They divide mankind into two parts. Men in general, except one, form the first; the politician himself forms the second, which is by far the most important.

The social organs are constituted so as to enable them to develop harmoniously in the grand air of liberty. Away, then, with quacks and organizers! Away with their rings, and their chains, and their hooks, and their pincers! Away with their artificial methods! Away with their social laboratories, their governmental whims, their centralization, their tariffs, their universities, their State religions, their inflationary or monopolizing banks, their limitations, their restrictions, their moralizations, and their equalization by taxation! And now, after having vainly inflicted upon the social body so many systems, let them end where they ought to have begun — reject all systems, and try of liberty — liberty, which is an act of faith in God and in His work.
But take heart, because I have overcome the world.” John 16:33
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Re: Quote Only Thread

Postby cptmarginal » Wed Sep 24, 2014 2:04 am

"The whole organisation was riddled with nepotism - dim, dreary people of utter unmemorability; sub-men who were doubled up with other sub-men to create an illusion of strength and only doubled the weakness; others made memorable only by poisonous, corrupt malevolence or crass, mulish stupidity; the whole run by a chain of command remarkable for its feebleness. The entire service was decrepit and incompetent."


"For a while you wondered whether the fools were pretending to be fools as some kind of deception, or whether there was a real efficient service somewhere else.

Later in my fiction, I invented one.

But alas the reality was the mediocrity. Ex-colonial policemen mingling with failed academics, failed lawyers, failed missionaries and failed debutantes gave our canteen the amorphous quality of an Old School outing on the Orient express. Everyone seemed to smell of failure."


Malcom Muggeridge:

“Ah, those first OSS arrivals in London!” wrote veteran British intelligence officer Malcolm Muggeridge. “How well I remember them arriving like jeune filles en fleur straight from a finishing school, all fresh and innocent to start work in our frowsty old intelligence brothel. All too soon they were ravished and corrupted, becoming indistinguishable from seasoned pros who had been in the game for a quarter century or more.”


(found quoted here: http://anonym.to/?http://www.foia.cia.g ... nal?page=5 )
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Re: Quote Only Thread

Postby cptmarginal » Wed Sep 24, 2014 2:14 am

Remarks as Delivered by Secretary of Defense Donald H. Rumsfeld, The Pentagon - Monday, September 10, 2001

There's a myth, sort of a legend, that money enters this building and disappears, like a bright light into a black hole, never to be seen again. In truth, there is a real person at the other end of every dollar, a real person who's in charge of every domain, and that means that there will be real consequences from, and real resistance to, fundamental change. We will not complete this work in one year, or five years, or even eight years. An institution built with trillions of dollars over decades of time does not turn on a dime. Some say it's like turning a battleship. I suspect it's more difficult.

[...]

Now, like you, I've read that there are those who will oppose our every effort to save taxpayers' money and to strengthen the tooth-to- tail ratio. Well, fine, if there's to be a struggle, so be it. But keep in mind the story about the donkey, the burro, and the ass. The man and the boy were walking down the street with the donkey and people looked and laughed at them and said, "Isn't that foolish—they have a donkey and no one rides it." So the man said to the boy, "Get on the donkey; we don't want those people to think we're foolish." So they went down the road and people looked at the boy on the donkey and the man walking alongside -- "Isn't that terrible, that young boy is riding the donkey and the man's walking." So they changed places, went down the road, people looked and said, "Isn't that terrible, that strong man is up there on the donkey and making the little boy walk." So they both got up on the donkey, the donkey became exhausted, came to a bridge, fell in the river and drowned. And of course the moral of the story is, if you try to please everybody, you're going to lose your donkey. [Laughter.]

So as we all remember that if you do something, somebody's not going to like it, so be it. Our assignment is not to try to please everybody.


Well, shucks!
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Re: Quote Only Thread

Postby Nordic » Sat Sep 27, 2014 8:54 pm

Never was there an art form directed so exclusively to children…the music business is peculiar only in that it caters almost exclusively to children.~ Dr. Alan Bloom

Whoever controls the media controls the mind. The media is the message and the message is me. ~Jim Morrison

If one listens to the wrong kind of music, he will become the wrong kind of person. ~Aristotle
"He who wounds the ecosphere literally wounds God" -- Philip K. Dick
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Re: Quote Only Thread

Postby stefano » Wed Oct 08, 2014 9:55 am

Jacob Bacharach wrote:A brutal and unfair society requires a population that conceives of the intellect in terms of taking instruction. Even in my own student days, when testing was far less important, I can recall teachers and exam proctors stalking up and down the aisles between desks warning us of the dire consequences of not carefully reading the instructions. A culture thus educated develops mental habits that revolve around taking and interpreting commands. Its sense of duty and ethics isn’t is this right, but rather, am I doing this right?
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Re: Quote Only Thread

Postby cptmarginal » Wed Oct 08, 2014 10:36 pm

Meetings With Remarkable Men:

Yelov was unusually devoted to his friends. He was ready, as is said, to give his soul for anyone to whom he became attached. When Yelov and Pogossian became friends they were so attached to one another as may God grant all brothers to be. But the external manifestation of the friendship of these two was quite particular and difficult to explain.

The more they loved each other, the ruder they were to each other. But under this rudeness was hidden such a tender love that anyone who saw it could not fail to be touched to the depths of his heart. Several times I, who knew what was beneath some rudeness or other, was so moved that I could not hold back the tears which involuntarily came to my eyes.

For instance, a scene such as the following would occur. Yelov would happen to be a guest in some house where he was offered candy. According to convention he would be obliged to eat it so as not to offend the person who offered it. However, even though very fond of candy, he would not eat it for anything in the world but would hide it in his pocket to take to Pogossian. And then he would not give it to him simply, but with every kind of mockery and a volley of insults.

He usually did so as follows: during conversation at dinner, he would, as if unexpectedly, find the candy in his pocket and would offer it to Pogossian saying: ‘How the devil did this garbage happen to be in my pocket? Here, gobble up this muck; you’re an expert in swallowing everything that’s no good to anyone else.’ Pogossian would take it, also scolding: ‘Such a delicacy is not for a snout like yours. You can only gorge yourself on acorns like your brothers, the pigs.’ And while Pogossian was eating the candy, Yelov with a disdainful expression would say: ‘Look how he is gobbling the sweet stuff: how he relishes it like a Karabakh ass munching thistles! Now, after this, he’ll be running after me like a little dog merely because I gave him this loathsome rubbish.’ And the talk would continue in this fashion.


:lol:
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Re: Quote Only Thread

Postby Elihu » Tue Dec 09, 2014 10:17 pm

It seems that the time has come to point the moral; and in so
doing, we come in sight of the one and only service that Americans
can render-not the American Government, but such
Americans as are candid enough and flexible enough to have
learned a good many things in the past four years, and to
have forgotten a good many as well. This service consists in
pointing out that matters at stake in Europe can not be
settled by machinery alone; they must be settled by a wider
culture, a firmer will, and a better spirit. The League of Nations
is machinery, and so is the World Court; machinery,
44
moreover, devised for an entirely different purpose from that
to which the interventionists would invoke it. This is plain
to everyone; as plain as that a reaper is not designed to pull
a train. The thing is to abandon a blind and unintelligent
faith in machinery, and to give oneself over to the promotion
of a culture competent really to envisage a world order of
peace and freedom erected upon the only basis able to sustain
it, the basis of social justice. Those who do this are the true
interventionists; they proffer Europe the only real help that
Americans can give. The interventionists here, and those
abroad who ask our aid, never show, we regret to say, that
they are concerned by the injustices that afflict Eur.ope; they
are concerned only by the inconveniences arising from her
condition. Even the British liberals who lately addressed a
communication to Americans at large, show hardly more than
a perfunctory concern with injustice, but an enormous concern
wi th inconvenience.
The time has come, in our opinion, to disallow all this and
to reaffirm the revolutionary doctrine set forth in the Declaration
of Independence, that the Creator has endowed human
beings with certain inalienable rights; to give more interest to
principIes and less to machinery; to think less about acting and
organizing and instituting, and more about establishing a
culture that will afford a proper foundation for national
action. The time has come, in short, for inaugurating a really
moral movement instead of protracting the succession of
ludicrous and filthy hypocrisies which have so long passed for
moral movements; for an interest in justice and a belief in
human rights wherever there are human beings-in Egypt and
Haiti, India and Santo Domingo, quite as much as in Corfu or
the Ruhr. It is all very 'well to go about establishing
justice and human rights, in the time of it; but the first step
towards establishing them is to believe in them, and that is
the step to be taken now. FREEMAN, 124-6
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Re: Quote Only Thread

Postby cptmarginal » Tue Feb 10, 2015 4:41 pm

http://www.american-buddha.com/lit.crim ... ts.toc.htm

AFTERWORD [1]: The True Patriots

In his otherwise admirable fight against the scourge of drugs, fraud, illegal arms sales, and abuse of government power, Mr. Kwitny has maliciously maligned and assassinated the character of some truly great American heroes and in so doing has besmirched the reputations of the military and intelligence services of this nation. My purpose here is to defend the honor of those men and the services they represent.

[...]

He preposterously describes Nugan Hand's relatively small operation as "mammoth." If Nugan Hand was "mammoth," then what word is left to accurately describe Citicorp, a New York banking firm ten thousand (10,000) times the size of Nugan Hand?


You tell me...
The new way of thinking is precisely delineated by what it is not.
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Re: Quote Only Thread

Postby conniption » Tue May 12, 2015 7:50 pm

"Revolutions are often initiated by idealists, carried out by fanatics and hijacked by scoundrels."


These observations by philosopher Thomas Carlyle still ring true about many of the revolutions we've seen in recent years. To what extent can revolutionary goals be achieved through violence, and when is the cost of change too high? Oksana is joined by influential philosopher Slavoj Zizek to analyse these issues. Link
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Re: Quote Only Thread

Postby identity » Tue May 12, 2015 9:14 pm

from Life Histories of the Dobe !Kung [Bushmen] - Food, Fatness, and Well-being over the Life-span (Nancy Howell, 2010)

What can a family do when their Caloric Balance as a household is
in the negative range? Parents can work harder, by collecting more often
and/or more efficiently, carrying more food home at the end of
day, and perhaps by broadening the species they will collect and eat
(Harris and Ross, 1987). In the short run, parents can consume
less, so that there is more for their children, but that strategy doesn’t
work in the long run. In order to keep working, the parents must be
well nourished. Mostly, families are forced to accept that there are
periods of time in their lives when their households are not selfsufficient
units, and that if they are net recipients of calories today,
they and their household members may be net providers at other
times in their life, so they need not feel guilty or humiliated by their
needs. In the short term, parents of large families are both maximally
successful (the winners of the competition for fitness) and are debtors
to the community in which they live, harried and pleased at their
situation at the same time.

I believe that it is from this conflict that the !Kung etiquette about
modesty in hunting success and the fierce egalitarianism of the !Kung
arises. When someone has more than they need immediately, whether it
is a piece of clothing or a supply of food, they need to be aware of the
people around them who have need for that surplus and share it without
holding back. That person will be under scrutiny and subject to criticism
as long as the surplus is held
. Likewise, when one has a shortage
of food or other possessions, the culture urges them to speak out, to ask
for a share of what others have. The greater the need, the louder and
longer the verbal demands for help should be, whether the giver is close,
distant, or no kin at all, until the surplus is distributed
.
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Re: Quote Only Thread

Postby identity » Fri May 15, 2015 3:07 pm

from Nicolas Bouvier's wonderful The Way of the World - Two men in a car from Geneva to the Khyber Pass (in 1953!)

Bayburt (Turkey)

Thierry remarked that up here it was as though the landscape turned its back on
human habitation.
All the same, there was a village: straggling, a leprous yellow scarcely distinguishable
from the soil of the plateau; black caps, bare feet, scurvy dogs, trachoma,
and, emerging from a building like a swarm of buzzing flies, groups
of dark little girls. They looked sidelong at us, wearing black stockings, black
smocks, tight plaits and big, white celluloid collars – absurdly ugly collars, but
reassuring because they represented school. And wretched as they were, these
urchins were learning a bit of arithmetic, the alphabet, how to keep tidy, not to rub
their eyes with dirty hands, and to take the regular doses of quinine the teacher
handed out. These were definitely weapons. One felt that even here, Atatürk had
passed by with his teacher’s cane, his wolfish air and his terrible blackboard. In
the poor tea house where we rested, a fly-swat hung like a sword beside his colour
portrait.

Needless to say the people here dreamed only of cars, water on tap, loudspeakers,
consumer goods. In Turkey they point out such things, and you must learn to
look at them with a new eye. The splendid wooden mosque – which you can find
if you search – nobody would think of showing you, being less aware of what
they have than of what they lack. They lack technology: we want to get out of the
impasse into which too much technology has led us, our sensibilities saturated to
the nth degree with Information and a Culture of distractions. We’re counting on
their formulae to revive us; they’re counting on ours to live.
Our paths cross without
mutual understanding, and sometimes the traveller gets impatient, but there is
a great deal of self-centredness in such impatience.
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