Quote Only Thread

[smiths]

"one of my regrets is to have conceded too much to objectivity.
objectivity is at times an accommodation.
today things are clear and we must call something 'concentrationnare' if that is what it is, even if it is socialism.
in one sense i shall never again be polite"

albert camus, notebook, 1949

[Sweejak]

"If I told you I thought the world was controlled by a handful of capitalists and corporate bosses, you would say I was a left-winger, but if I told you who I thought the capitalists and corporate bosses were, you would say I was far right."
- Anonymous Anarchist Black Blocker

[Stephen Morgan]

I can't decide my favourite, so here's three:

*Sun can’t bribe George to come out of his £1/4m villa on the Algarve*
Traitor George Galloway refused to talk to the Sun at his Portugal hideaway yesterday - even after we offered him a tempting wad of 50,000 Iraqi dinars.
-- "The Sun", 23 April, 2003

...but as records of courts and justice are admissible, it can easily be proved that powerful and malevolent magicians once existed and were a scourge to mankind. The evidence (including confession) upon which certain women were convicted of witchcraft and executed was without a flaw; it is still unimpeachable. The judges' decisions based on it were sound in logic and in law. Nothing in any existing court was ever more thoroughly proved than the charges of witchcraft and sorcery for which so many suffered death. If there were no witches, human testimony and human reason are alike destitute of value.
-- Ambrose Bierce

We have no interest in oppressing other people. We are not moved by hatred against any other nation. We bear no grudge. I know how grave a thing war is. I wanted to spare our people such an evil. It is not so much the country; it is rather its leader. He has led a reign of terror. He has hurled countless people into the profoundest misery. Through his continuous terrorism, he has succeeded in reducing millions of his people to silence. The Czech maintenance of a tremendous military arsenal can only be regarded as a focus of danger. We have displayed a truly unexampled patience, but I am no longer willing to remain inactive while this madman ill-treats millions of human beings.
-- Adolf Hitler, April 14, 1939, justifying the German invasion of Czechoslovakia

Gosh, that does sound familiar.

[chiggerbit]

Imagine the Iowa hog farmer cracking open and meeting Abraham Lincoln, Thomas Paine, John Kenneth Galbraith, Walter Lippmann, Johannes Gutenberg, John Stuart Mill, Thomas Jefferson and Marshall McLuhan -- all before finishing the introduction.

Dana Millbank, May 30, 2007, on al Gore's book, "Assault on Reason,", as she pontificates on why the American public won't like a smart candidate.

[chiggerbit]

"We're all neo-cons now."

A giddy Chris Mathews on the toppling of Saddam's statue.

[ParisianAttackMonkey]

The whole individualist what-you-can-do-to-save-the-earth guilt trip is a myth. We, as individuals, are not creating the crises, and we can't solve them. Take our crazy energy consumption. For the past 15 years the story has been the same every year: individual consumption — residential, by private car, and so on — is never more than about a quarter of all consumption; the vast majority is commercial, industrial, corporate, by agribusiness and government. So, even if we all took up cycling and wood stoves it would have a negligible impact on energy use, global warming and atmospheric pollution. I mean, sure, go ahead and live a responsible environmental life; recycle, compost, ride a push-bike; but do it because it is the right, moral thing to do — not because it's going to save the planet.

If we really want to understand why this happened we have to ask ourselves another question: `Why is it that we seem willing to live with the threat of apocalypse rather than trying to seriously alter a world where consumption, of anything, is seen as unrelieved virtue, production, of anything, is regarded as a social and economic necessity, and more, of anything (like children or cars or chemicals or PhDs or golf courses or recycling centres), is unquestioningly accepted?'


-Kirkpatrick Sale

[chiggerbit]

"The trouble with the world is that the stupid are cocksure and the intelligent are full of doubt."

-Bertrand Russell

[bean fidhleir]

The way to control your sheep or cow is to give him a large, spacious meadow.

-Shunryu Suzuki

[judasdisney]

“The trust of the innocent is the liar’s most useful tool.”— Stephen King

[chlamor]

This crippling of individuals I consider the worst evil of capitalism. Our whole educational system suffers from this evil. An exaggerated competitive attitude is inculcated into the student, who is trained to worship acquisitive success as a preparation for his future career.

[chiggerbit]

"Sweet fancy Moses, what a weird and crazy site."

Saith TheWraith, from DemocraticUnderground, about RigorousIntuition

[Jeff]

"Imagination is always the fabric of social life and the dynamic of history. The influence of real needs and compulsions, of real interests and materials, is indirect because the crowd is never conscious of it." - Simone Weil

[brownzeroed]

Patterns repeat across space, time, scale and fields. Recursion is an expression of the fundamental laws of nature, and it is to be seen both at the physical and the abstract levels as also across relational entities. Recursionism provides a way of knowing since it helps us to find meaning by a shift in perspective and by abstraction...
--Subhash Kak

[chiggerbit]

"The idea of America is great. All the elements were there. We just never made it, despite constant propaganda to the contrary. Many progressives look to the periodic triumphs, such as the Civil Rights movement, the labor victories of the '30's and 40's, progressive policies of the New Deal etc, and feel these represent America, instead of what they were-miraculous anomalies, speed bumps on the road to outright fascism."

Our own sunny here at RI, July 23, 2007

[judasdisney]

"Hey, wait a minute, there's one guy holding up both puppets!" -Bill Hicks