Free Thoughts
Sam Smith's Favorite Quotes

A-D E-G I-L M-P Q R S T U V W X Y Z Q Questions If they can get you asking the wrong questions, they don't have to worry about the answers - Thomas Pynchon Quotations Next to the orginator of a good sentence is the first quoter of it -- Ralph Waldo Emerson The ability to quote is a serviceable substitute for wit." - W. Somerset Maugham R Race I feel sorry for someone who has to win at everything - Snoopy See Ethnicity Reading We read to discover that we are not alone. ---- Shadowlands, a film about C.S. Lewis "I'd be doing good in English if we didn't have to read." -- Student quoted by a teacher in the LA Times. I read part of it all the way through - Samuel Goldwyn Reality Wandering between two worlds, one dead, the other powerless to be born. -- Matthew Arnold Every view of things that is not strange is false - Valery Reasonableness The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore, all progress depends on the unreasonable man -- GB Shaw Human beings are the only creatures who are able to behave irrationally in the name of reason - Ashley Montagu Rebel Let them call me rebel and welcome, I feel no concern from it; but I should suffer the misery of devils, were I to make a whore of my soul - Tom Paine who was born this day in 1737 Here in America we are descended in spirit from revolutionists and rebels - men and women who dare to dissent from accepted doctrine - GOP President Dwight Eisenhower, 1954 Rebellion A determined population can not only force a domestic ruler to flee the country, but can make a would-be occupier retreat, by the use of a formidable arsenal of tactics: boycotts and demonstrations, occupations and sit-ins, sit-down strikes and general strikes, obstruction and sabotage, refusal to pay taxes, rent strikes, refusal to cooperate, refusal to obey curfew orders or gag orders, refusal to pay fines, fasts and pray-ins, draft resistance, and civil disobedience of various kinds. ~~~ Thousands of such instances have changed the world, but they are nearly absent from the history books. History texts featuring military heroes lead entire generations of the young to think that wars are the only way to solve problems of self-defense, justice, and freedom. They are kept uninformed about the world's long history of nonviolent struggle and resistance. -- Howard Zinn in "Declarations of Independence," 1990 "We did not rise up and become rebels because we believed ourselves stronger and more powerful. We rose up to demand democracy, freedom and justice because we have the reason and the dignity of history on our side" --Fifth Declaration of the Lacandon Jungle, Zapatista National Liberation Front Records This tongueless, toothless instrument, without larynx or pharynx, mimics your tones, speaks with your voice, utters your words & centuries after you have crumbled into dust, may repeat every idle thought, every fond fancy, every vain word that you choose to whisper against the thin, iron diaphragm - Thomas Edison Reform Reform committees... were morning glories. Looked lovely in the morning and withered up in a short time, while the regular machines went on flourishing forever, like fine old oaks -- Tammany Hall fixer George Washington Plunkitt Cautious, careful people, always casting about to preserve their reputation and social standing, never can bring about a reform. Those who are really in earnest must be willing to be anything or nothing in the world's estimation, and publicly and privately, in season and out, avow their sympathy with despised and persecuted ideas and their advocates, and bear the consequences. - Susan B. Anthony Religion The fact that a believer is happier than a skeptic is no more to the point than the fact that a drunken man is happier than a sober one. - George Bernard Shaw With or without religion, you would have good people doing good things and evil people doing evil things. But for good people to do evil things, that takes religion. Steven Weinberg Give a man a fish and he will eat for a day; teach a man to fish and he will eat for a lifetime; give a man religion and he will die praying for a fish. Unknown Is God willing to prevent evil, but not able? Then he is not omnipotent. Is he able, but not willing? then he is malevolent. Is he both able and willing? Then whence cometh evil? Is he neither able nor willing? Then why call him God? - Epicurus The opposite of the religious fanatic is not the fanatical atheist but the gentle cynic who cares not whether there is a god or not.- Eric Hoffer If God were alive today, He'd be an atheist - Kurt Vonnegut A man is accepted into a church for what he believes and he is turned out for what he knows. - Mark Twain As the Government of the United States of America is not, in any sense, founded on the Christian religion; as it has in itself no character of enmity against the laws, religion, or tranquility, of Mussulmen; and, as the said States never entered into any war, or act of hostility against any Mahometan nation, it is declared by the parties, that no pretext arising from religious opinions, shall ever produce an interruption of the harmony existing between the two countries. - Article 11 of the Treaty of Peace and Friendship between the US and Tripoli, 1796 Truth, in matters of religion, is simply the opinion that has survived - Oscar Wilde History teaches us that men composing all denominations of religious faith, when clothed with ecclesiastical and temporal power, have been tyrants. - Sam Houston A tyrant must put on the appearance of uncommon devotion to religion. Subjects are less apprehensive of illegal treatment from a ruler whom they consider god-fearing and pious. On the other hand, they do less easily move against him, believing that he has the gods on his side. - Aristotle We must respect the other fellow's religion, but only in the sense and to the extent that we respect his theory that his wife is beautiful and his children smart - HL Mencken But woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you shut up the kingdom of heaven against men; for you neither go in yourselves, nor do you allow those who are entering to go in. Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you devour widows' houses, and for a pretense make long prayers. Therefore you will receive greater condemnation. Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you travel land and sea to win one proselyte, and when he is won, you make him twice as much a son of hell as yourselves. -- Matthew 23:13-15 Some people are happy inside the church, some are happier outside. Those who prefer to stay outside should write Nature with a capital N. They should bless and venerate the Nature that composed mankind. That would leave a thin wall between them and those who are inside and write God with a capital G. If you knock, it can be heard on both sides. The disagreement is about the spelling of a word - Thor Heyerdahl The study of theology, as it stands in Christian churches, is the study of nothing; it is founded on nothing; it rests on nothing; it proceeds by no authorities; it has no data; it can demonstrate nothing and admits of no conclusion. - Thgmas Paine It is the test of a good religion whether you can make a joke about it - G.K. Chesterton Perceive the difference between religion and the cant of religion; piety and the pretence of piety; a humble reverence for the great truths of Scripture and an audacious and offensive obtrusion of its letter and not its spirit in the commonest dissensions and meanest affairs of life. . . It is never out of season to protest against that coarse familiarity with sacred things which is busy on the lip and idle in the heart, or the confounding of Christianity with any class of persons who. . . have just enough religion to make them hate, and not enough to make them love, one another. - Charles Dickeens, Preface to The First Cheap Edition, The Pickwick Papers, 1847 Repetition Insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result -- Albert Einstein If we always do what we've always done, we'll always get what we've always got -- Toni Worst Representation Only one part of the people are permitted to be represented. True, they may all vote for the choice of representatives, but those persons only receiving the highest number of votes may serve in a representative capacity. . . . In what way does the agent of a majority represent the political principles or financial wishes of those of opposite views who voted against him? Is this not tyranny rather than democracy? -- the tyranny of an arbitrary majority imposing its will on the forcibly excluded minority? Who can defend or justify such a system on republican grounds? . . . It is true, the minority must yield to the majority, but it does not follow as a sequence that the minority must therefore by suppressed and have no representation at all. - Joseph Medill, 1870 Research If we knew what it was we were doing, it would not be called research, would it? - Albert Einstein The only possible interpretation of any research whatever in the social sciences is: some do, some don't. - Ernest Rutherford Revolution Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable. - John F. Kennedy Revolution - An abrupt change in the form of misgovernment - Ambrose Bierce It's too soon to tell -- Chou En Lai on what he thought of the French Revolution One revolution is like one cocktail. It just gets you ready for the next - Will Rogers Revolution is a trivial shift in the emphasis of suffering; the capacity for self-indulgence changes hands. But the world does not alter its shape or its course. -- Lord Malquist in `Lord Malquist and Mr. Moon' by Tom Stoppard What do we mean by the Revolution? The War? That was no part of the Revolution. It was only an effect and consequence of it. The Revolution was in the minds of the People... - John Adams SEAGOON: ... Now what's this all about? MORIARTY: It is the revolution -- everywhere there is an armed rising. SEAGOON: Are you all in it? MORIARTY: Right in it -- you see, the United Anti-Socialist Neo-Democratic Pro-Fascist Communist Party are fighting to overthrow the Unilateral Democratic United Partisan Bellicose Pacifist Co-Belligerent Tory Labour Liberal Party. SEAGOON: Whose side are you on? MORIARTY: There are no sides -- we're all in this together-- "The Affair of the Lone Banana", The Goon Show, 1954 The first duty of a revolutionary is to get away with it. -- Abbie Hoffman The greatest challenge of the day is how to bring about a revolution of the heart -- a revolution which has to start with each one of us." - Dorothy Day, who started the Catholic Worker on this date in 1933 Reward The reward of a thing well done is to have done it. - Ralph Waldo Emerson Rexroth, Kenneth Late at night the horses stumble Around the camp and I awake. I lie on my elbow watching Your beautiful sleeping face Like a jewel in the moonlight. If you are lucky and the Nations let you, you will live Far into the twenty-first Century. I pick up the glass And watch the Great Nebula Of Andromeda swim like A phosphorescent amoeba Slowly around the Pole. Far Away in distant cities Fat-hearted men are planning To murder you while you sleep. Right We must do what we conceive to be the right thing, and not bother hour heads or burden our souls with whether we are going to be successful. Because if we don't do the right thing, we'll be doing the wrong thing, and we will just be part of the disease, and not a part of the cure -- EF Schumacher Rights From the conclusion of this war we shall be going downhill. It will not then be necessary to resort every moment to the people for support. They will be forgotten, therefore, and their rights disregarded... The shackles, therefore, . . . will be made heavier and heavier, till our rights shall revive or expire in a convulsion. -- Thomas Jefferson Reincarnation You know that if I were reincarnated, I'd want to come back as a buzzard. Nothing hates him or envies him or needs him. He is never bothered or in danger, and he can eat anything- William Faulkner Road Caminante no hay camino, se hace camino al andar - Spanish poet Machado exiled by General Franco [Walker, there is no road, the road is made by walking] Rock Most rock journalism is people who can't write, interviewing people who can't talk, for people who can't read. -- Frank Zappa, 1978 Roosevelt, Franklin I should like to have it said of my first administration that in it the forces of selfishness and of lust for power met their match. I should like to have it said of my second administration that in it these forces met their master. - Franklin Roosevelt during the 1936 election Rudeness A person who is nice to you, but rude to the waiter, is not a nice person - Dave Barry Rules There ain't no rules around here. We're trying to accomplish something. -- Thomas Edison S Sacred cows Sacred cows make the best hamburger - Abbie Hoffman Sadness An expression of deep sadness overmastered by deeper strength. - Joshua Chamberlain's description of Robert E. Lee coming to surrender to Grant Sahl, Mort Most people past college age are not atheists. It's too hard to be in society, for one thing. Because you don't get any days off. And if you're an agnostic you don't know whether you get them off or not. There are Russian spies here now. And if we're lucky, they'll steal some of our secrets and they'll be two years behind. A Yuppie is someone who believes it's courageous to eat in a restaurant that hasn't been reviewed yet. Liberals feel unworthy of their possessions. Conservatives feel they deserve everything they've stolen. He was wearing a velvet shirt open to the navel. And he didn't have one. Which is either a show business gimmick, or the ultimate rejection of mother. There were four million people in the colonies and we had Jefferson and Franklin. Now we have over 200 million and the two top guys are Clinton and Dole. What can you draw from this? Darwin was wrong! Saint When you give food to the poor, they call you a saint. When you ask why the poor have no food, they call you a communist. - Archbishop Helder Camara, Brazilian liberation theologian Scab "After god had finished the rattlesnake, the toad, the vampire, He had some awful substance left with which he made the SCAB.... A SCAB is a two-legged animal with a cork-screw soul, a water logged brain, a combination backbone of jelly & glue.... When a SCAB comes down the street, men turn their backs, angels weep in heaven, & the Devil shuts the gates of Hell to keep him out.... Judas Iscariot was a gentleman compared to a SCAB. For betraying his master, he had character enough to hang himself. A SCAB has not. - Jack London Scandals Scandal is gossip made tedious by morality - Oscar Wilde Science We've arranged a civilization in which most crucial elements profoundly depend on science and technology. We have also arranged things so that almost no one understands science and technology. This is a prescription for disaster. We might get away with it for a while, but sooner or later this combustible mixture of ignorance and power is going to blow up in our faces. -- Carl Sagan School It was not that one did not want to possess the right qualities or feel the correct emotions, but that one could not. The good and the possible never seemed to coincide. ~~ The schoolmasters with their canes, the millionaires with their Scottish castles, the athletes with their curly hair -- these were the armies of the unalterable law. It was not easy, at that date, to realize that in fact it was alterable. And according to that law I was damned. I had no money, I was weak, I was ugly, I was unpopular. I had a chronic cough, I was cowardly, I smelt. ~~ The conviction that it was not possible for me to be a success went deep enough to influence my actions till far into adult life. ~~ But this sense of guilt and inevitable failure was balanced by something else: that is, the instinct to survive. Even a creature that is weak, ugly, cowardly, smelly and in no way justifiable still wants to stay alive and happy after its own fashion. I could not invert the existing scale of values, or turn myself into a success, but I could accept my failure and make the best of it. ~~ To survive, or at least to preserve any kind of independence, was essentially criminal, since it meant breaking rules that you yourself recognized. -- George Orwell in "Such, Such Were the Joys. . . " Scorn There is no fate that cannot be surmounted by scorn - Albert Camus Seeger Pete I heard the song Of the world's last whale As I rocked in the moonlight And reefed the sail. It'll happen to you Also without fail If it happens to me Sang the world's last whale. - Pete Seeger Secrecy We dance around in a ring and suppose, But the secret sits in the middle and knows - Robert Frost What is primarily secret is what is a secret and what isn't; that is perhaps the actual state secret. - Hans Magnus Enzensberger There are some things the general public does not need to know and shouldn't. I believe democracy flourishes when the government can take legitimate steps to keep its secrets and when the press can decide whether to print what it knows. - the late Washington Post owner Katharine Graham, in a speech at the CIA Security The word `security' is a broad, vague generality whose contours should not be invoked to abrogate the fundamental law... The guarding of military and diplomatic secrets at the expense of informed representative government provides no real security for our republic. --- Justice Hugo Black, 1971 Self-respect The secure feeling that no one, as yet, is suspicious -- HL Mencken Semiotics Semiotics is in principle the discipline studying everything which can be used in order to lie - Umberto Eco Serious Here is a letter of friendly advice: 'Be serious,' it says. What it means, of course, is 'Be solemn.' Being solemn is easy. Being serious is hard ... Children almost always begin by being serious, which is what makes them so entertaining when compared to adults as a class ... Adults, on the whole, are solemn ... Being solemn has almost nothing to do with being serious ... Though Americans talk a great deal about the virtue of being serious, they generally prefer people who are solemn over people who are serious. - Russell Baker Sex I am happy now that Charles calls on my bedchamber less frequently than of old. As it is, I endure but two calls a week, and when I hear his steps outside my door I lie down on my bed, close my eyes, and think of England. -- Lady Alice Hillingdon If I squeeze into a parking place, I'm sexually satisfied - Rodney Dangerfield Shakespeare All he did was string together a lot of old, well-known quotations. - H. L. Mencken, Shelley I met a traveller from an antique land Who said, Two vast and trunkless legs of stone Stand in the desert...Near them, on the sand, Half sunk, a shattered visage lies, whose frown And wrinkled lips and sneer of cold command, Tell that its sculptor well those passions read Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things, The hand that mocked them, and the heart that fed. And on the pedestal these words appear: "My name is Ozymandius, king of kings. Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair." Nothing beside remains. Round the decay Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare The lone and level sands stretch far away. - OZYMANDIUS Ships Of all the living creatures upon ladn and sea, it is ships alone that cannot be taken in by barren pretenses, that will not put up with bad art from their masters. -- Joseph Conrad Silence Drawing on my fine command of the English language I said nothing -- Robert Benchley A closed mouth gathers no feet - Anonymous Our lives begin to end the day we become silent about things that matter. - Martin Luther King, Jr. Simplicity Things should be made as simple as possible, but not any simpler - Albert Einstein Situationists - "Live without dead time" - Vivez sans temps mort - Anonymous graffiti, Paris 1968 - "I take my desires for reality because I believe in the reality of my desires" - Anonymous graffiti, Paris 1968 - "Be realistic - demand the impossible!" - Soyez réalistes, demandez l'impossible! - Anonymous graffiti, Paris 1968 - "Beneath the paving stones - the beach!" - Sous les pavés, la plage! - Anonymous graffiti, Paris 1968 - "Down with a world in which the guarantee that we will not die of starvation has been purchased with the guarantee that we will die of boredom." - Anonymous graffiti, Paris 1968 - "People who talk about revolution and class struggle without referring explicitly to everyday life, without understanding what is subversive about love and what is positive in the refusal of constraints, such people have a corpse in their mouth"- Raoul Vaneigem, The Revolution Of Everyday Life Slaves I freed a thousand slaves. I could have freed a thousand more if only they knew they were slaves - Harriet Tubman Slump I ain't in no slump. I just ain't hittin' - Yogi Berra Smooth Smart, smooth and no good. -- Raymond Chandler Snow The lord brought it; let the lord take it away - Boston Mayor James Michael Curley after a snow storm Socialism I did have a test. . . It's on European Socialism. I mean, really, what's the point? I'm not European, I don't plan on being European, so who gives a crap if they're socialist? They could be fascist anarchists, that still wouldn't change the fact that I don't own a car. - Ferris Beuller Society I think society is one of the greatest impediments an artist can possibly have. When I was young and needed help, society wouldn't give it, because it had no confidence in what I was doing. But when, through my perseverance, society took an interest, then it wanted me not to do the next thing, but to repeat what I had done before. At every point society acts to keep you from doing what you have to do. -- John Cage, 1973 Cultured people are merely the glittering scum which floats upon the deep river of production -- Winston Churchill Social conscience If the world were merely seductive, that would be easy. If it were merely challenging, that would be no problem. ButI arise in the morning torn between a desire to improve the world and a desire to enjoy the world. This makes it hard to plan the day. -- E.B. White Soldiers Old soldiers never die. Young ones do. -- Unknown The deterioration of life under the regime of the soldier is a commonplace: but just for that reason it needs to be sharpened by explicit statement. Physical power is a rough substitute for patience and intelligence and cooperative effort in the governance of men: if used as a normal accompaniment of action instead of a last resort it is a sign of extreme social weakness. When a child is intolerably balked by another person without precisely seeing the cause of the situation and without sufficient force to carry through his own ends, he often solves the matter by a simple wish: he wishes the other person were dead. The soldier, a slave to the child's ignorance and the child's wish, differs from him only by his ability to effect a direct passage to action. Killing is the ultimate simplification of life. . . In his pathetic desire for simplicity, the soldier at the bottom extends the empire of irrationality. . . Even when the warrior's conquests are intelligently and almost beneficially made - as in the later Inca Empire of Peru - the reactions he sets in motion undermine the ends he has in view. For terrorism and fear create a low psychic state. In the act of making himself a master, the soldier helps create a race of slaves. As for the sense of self-esteem the soldier achieves through his willingness to face death, one cannot deny that it has a perverse life-enhancing quality, but it is common to the gunman and the bandit, as well as to the hero: and there is no ground for the soldier's belief that the battlefield is the only breeder of it. The mine, the ship, the blast furnace, the iron skeleton of bridge or skyscraper, the hospital ward, the childbed bring out the same gallant response: indeed, it is a far more common affair here than it is in the life of a soldier, who may spend his best years in empty drill, having faced no more serious threat of death than that from boredom. An imperviousness to life-values other than those clustered around the soldier's underlying death-wish, is one of the most sinister effects of the military discipline. Fortunately for mankind, the army has usually been the refuge of third-rate minds: a soldier of distinct intellectual capacity, a Caesar or a Napoleon, stands out as a startling exception. If the soldier's mind went into action as intensely as his body, and if his intellectual discipline were as unremitting as his drill, civilization might easily have been annihilated long ago. - Lewis Mumford, Technics and Civilization, 1934 Solitude What I must do is all that concerns me, not what people think. This rule, equally arduous in actual and in intellectual life, may serve for the whole distinction between greatness and meanness. It is the harder because you will always find those who think they know what is your duty better than you know it. It is easy in the world to live after the world's opinion; it is easy in solitude to live after our own; but the great man is he who in the midst of the crowd keeps with perfect sweetness the independence of solitude. -- Ralph Waldo Emerson Soul Well, maybe it's like Casey says: A fella ain't got a soul of his own, just a piece of a big soul, the one big soul that belongs to everybody. And then it don't matter, I'll be around. In the dark. I'll be everywhere. Wherever you can look. Whenever there's a fight so hungry people can eat, I'll be there. Whenever there's a cop beaten' up on a guy, I'll be there. I'll be in the way guys yell when they're mad, and I'll be in the way kids laugh when they're hungry and they know suppers ready. And when people are eaten' stuff they raise, and livin' in the houses they build, I'll be there, too!!!" --- Tom Joad in "The Grapes of Wrath" Space I've chased the shouting wind along, and flung My eager craft through footless halls of air. Up, up the long delirious, burning blue I've topped the windswept heights with easy grace Where never lark or even eagle flew. And, while with silent, lifting mind I've trod The high untrespassed sanctity of space, Put out my hand and touched the face of God. - John Gillespie Magee, Jr Speaking He speaks to me as if I were a public meeting -- Queen Victoria of Gladstone Spectacle In society where modern conditions of production prevail, all of life presents itself as an immense accumulation of spectacles. Everything that was directly lived has moved away into a representation - Guy Debord Speed Cool Papa Bell, a player in the Negro Baseball League was reputed to be so fast that he could turn off the light switch and be in his bed before the light went out. He also was said to be so fast that he once hit a hard drive to center field, and was hit by the ball as he slid into second. Spelling You can't help respecting someone who can spell Tuesday even if he can't spell it right. -- Winnie the Pooh The spelling of words is subordinate. Morbidness for nice spelling and tenacity for or against one letter or so means dandyism and impotence in literature - Walt Whitman Mark Twain once observed that people who spell words the same way all the time are like people who wear the same clothes every day. -As our alphabet now stands, the bad spelling, or what is called so, is generally the best, as conforming to the sound of the letters and the words. -- Benjamin Franklin I don't see any use in spelling a word right, and never did. I mean I don't see any use in having a uniform and arbitrary way of spelling words. We might as well make all olur clothes alike and cook all dishes alike. - Mark Twain I have no respect for a man who doesn't know more than one way to spell a word - Walt Whitman Spirituality Jesus' life didn't go well. He didn't reach his earning potential. He didn't have the respect of his colleagues. His friends weren't loyal. His life wasn't long. He didn't meet his soul mate. And he wasn't understood by his mother. Yet I think I deserve all those things because I'm so spiritual. -- Hugh Prather, "Spiritual Notes to Myself" Spit infinitives The English speaking world may be divided into (1) those who neither know nor care what a split infinitive is; (2) those who do not know, but care very much; (3) those who know & condemn; (4) those who know & approve; and (5) those who know & distinguish. Those who neither know nor care are the vast majority, & are a happy folk, to be envied by most of the minority classes - Francis George Fowler Sports I have never willingly chased a ball -- Robert Morley State The State is a condition, a certain relationship between human beings, a mode of human behavior; we destroy it by contracting other relationships, by behaving differently. - Gustav Landauer The very existence of the state demands that there be some privileged class vitally interested in maintaining that existence. And it is precisely the group interests of that class that are called patriotism. - Michael Bakunin, Letters on Patriotism, 1869 As the state is a soulless machine, it can never be weaned from violence to which it owes its very existence. -Mohandas K. Gandhi Satistics 47.3% of all statistics are made up on the spot. - Steven Wright Stock Market "Professional investment may be likened to those newspaper competitions in which the competitors have to pick out the six prettiest faces from a hundred photographs, the prize being awarded to the competitor whose choice most nearly corresponds to the average preferences of the competitors as a whole; so that each competitor has to pick, not the faces which he himself finds the prettiest, but those which he thinks likeliest to catch the fancy of the other competitors, all of whom are looking at the problem from the same point of view . . . We have reached the third degree when we devote our intelligences to anticipating what average opinion expects the average opinion to be. And there are some, I believe, who practice the fourth, fifth and higher degrees. - John Maynard Keynes, The General Theory Of Employment, Interest And Money. MORE Speculators may do no harm as bubbles on a steady stream of enterprise. But the position is serious when enterprise becomes the bubble on a whirlpool of speculation. When the capital development of a country becomes the by-product of the activities of a casino, the job is likely to be ill-done. - John Maynard Keynes Thre market can remain irrational for longer than you can remain solvent - John Maynard Keynes Come with me, and we will blow Lots of bubbles, as we go; Bubbles bright as ever Hope Drew from fancy -- or from soap; Bright as e'er the South Sea sent from its frothy element . . . See!---But hark my time is out -- Now, like some great water-spout, Scaterr'd by the cannon's thunder, Burst, ye bubbles, burst asunder!    [Irish economist Thomas Moore] Storytelling If a storyteller thinks enough of storytelling to regard it as a calling, unlike a historian he cannot turn from the sufferings of his characters. A storyteller, unlike the historian, must follow compassion wherever it leads him. He must be able to accompany his characters, even into smoke and fire, and bear witness to what they thought and felt even when they themselves no longer knew. - Norman Maclean, author of A River Runs Through It Style The mind skating circles around itself as it moves forward -- Robert Frost Success 80% of success is showing up -- Woody Allen To laugh often and much; to win the respect of intelligent people and the affection of children; to earn the appreciation of honest critics and endure the betrayal of false friends; to appreciate beauty; to find the best in others; to leave the world a bit better, whether by a healthy child, a garden patch or a redeemed social condition; to know even one life has breathed easier because you have lived. This is to have succeeded. - Ralph Waldo Emerson Suicide Razors pain you; Rivers are damp; Acids stain you; And drugs cause cramp. Guns aren't lawful; Nooses give; Gas smells awful; You might as well live. --- Dorothy Parker, Résumé Summer Summer afternoon - summer afternoon. To me those have always been the two most beautiful words in the English language - Henry James Superstition A visitor to Dr. Einstein's home was surprised to find a horseshoe hanging above the door. The visitor said that surely the physicist did not believe in this good luck charm. Replied Einstein, "Of course not, but I'm told it works whether you believe in it or not." Supply and demand Rats and roaches live by competition under the laws of supply and demand. It is the privilege of human beings to live under the laws of justice and mercy. - Wendell Berry Suspicion It's good to see you. It means you're not behind my back -- Henny Youngman Sweetness The worm in the radish doesn't think there is anything sweeter - Shalom Aleichem T Talking Everything has been said but not everyone has said it yet. -- Rep Morris Udall at 1988 Democratic convention Teaching There is no human reason why a child should not admire and emulate his teacher's ability to do sums, rather than the village bum's ability to whittle sticks and smoke cigarettes. The reason why the child does not is plain enough - the bum has put himself on an equality with him and the teacher has not. - Floyd Dell, born this day in 1887, novelist, bohemian and one-time companion of Edna St. Vincent Millay Never try to teach a pig how to sing. It's a waste of time and it annoys the pig. -- Paul Dickson Technology I always feared that my own TV set or iron or toaster would, in the privacy of my apartment, when no one else was around to help me, announce to me that they had taken over, and here was a list of rules I was to obey - Science fiction writer Philip K. Dick Technology: The knack of so arranging a world that we need not experience it - Max Frisch Teenagers When I was a boy of fourteen my father was so ignorant I could hardly stand to have the old man around. But when I got to be twenty one, I was astonished at how much the old man had learned in seven years -- Mark Twain Television Television: chewing gum for the eyes - Frank Lloyd Wright (maybe) Television has ruined every single thing it has touched. - Former Robert Kennedy aide Adam Walinsky Educational television should be absolutely forbidden. It can only lead to unreasonable expectations and eventual disappointment when your child discovers that the letters of the alphabet do not leap up out of books and dance around the room with royal blue chickens. -- Fran Lebowitz Television is a medium of entertainment which permits millions of people to listen to the same joke at the same time, and yet remain lonesome -- T. S. Eliot The reason television is called a medium is because nothing on it is well done.-- Fred Allen Television is a device that permits people who haven't anything to do to watch people who can't do anything - Fred Allen Never miss a chance for sex or to be on TV -- Gore Vidal It is difficult to produce a television documentary that is both incisive and probing when every twelve minutes one is interrupted by twelve dancing rabbits singing about toilet paper. - R. Serling I find television very educating. Every time somebody turns on the set, I go into the other room & read a book. - Groucho Marx Television is a device that permits people who haven't anything to do to watch people who can't do anything - Fred Allen It was 1931 that we last reported on television, and our readers must be wondering how things are shaping up. Not any too good. Engineers are working like beavers, but it appears that our homes are in no immediate danger. The cost of sending and receiving even the sappiest image is terrific; twenty-five miles is still considered a good hop; and a facial expression, however rapt, is often damaged en route. We went last week to a demonstration of television on the sixty-second floor of the R.C.A. Building, where some rather startling images were ending up after being tossed around the midtown district. We sat in a darkened room squarely in front of a receiving set and, as we understand the matter, the persons and objects which we saw were down on the third floor of the same building, where they were first photographed televisually by an iconoscope, thence sent by direct wire to the Empire State Building, and then came back on a megacycle to the sixty-second floor of R.C.A. The magical unlikelihood of this occasion was not lessened any by the fact that a stranger wearing a telephone around his neck was crawling about on all fours in the darkness at our feet. This didn't make television seem any too practical for the living room of one's own home, although of course homes are changing. - EB WHITE, NEW YORKER, 1936 Television is a triumph of equipment over people, and the minds that control it are so small that you could put them in the navel of a flea and still have enough room for a network president's heart. - Fred Allen Temptation The way to get rid of temptation is to yield to it. - Oscar Wilde Ten Commandments Say what you will about the Ten Commandments, you must always come back to the pleasant fact that there are only ten of them. - HL Mencken Terrorism Beyond the futility of armed force, and ultimately more important, is the fact that war in our time inevitably results in the indiscriminate killing of large numbers of people. To put it more bluntly, war is terrorism. That is why a "war on terrorism" is a contradiction in terms. - Howard Zinn If the Mafia attacks someone in this country, we don't bomb Italy. - Ron Paul Texas HOUSTONIANS are so used to having their contemporaries indicted, it's just part of the daily activity here. . . An indictment is normally shocking and terrible, but once this community went through Enron, nothing surprises us anymore - Betsey Parish, former society writer for the Houston Post concerning the indictment of Oscar Wyatt Thanksgiving I celebrated Thanksgiving in an old-fashioned way. I invited everyone in my neighborhood to my house, we had an enormous feast, and then I killed them and took their land.---Jon Stewart Theory In theory there is no difference between theory and practice; in practice there is - Chuck Reid Theft As through this world I've wandered I've seen lots of funny men; Some will rob you with a six-gun, And some with a fountain pen. - Woody Guthrie The law will punish a man or woman who steals the good from off the hillside, but let's the greater robber loose, who steals the hillside from the goose -- Anonymous, 18th century I asked a man in prison once how he happened to be there and he said he had stolen a pair of shoes. I told him if he had stolen a railroad he would be a United States Senator. - Mother Jones Things Things are in the saddle and ride mankind - Ralph Waldo Emerson Thinking The world that we have made as a result of the level of thinking that we have done so far, has created problems we cannot solve at the level of thinking at which we created them. - Albert Einstein Think tank THINK TANK: An organization which invents disinterested intellectual justifications for the policies of the corporate groups that fund it. The result is an unfortunate confusing of knowledge and power - John Ralston Saul Thomas, Dylan I hold a beast, an angel, and a madman in me, and my enquiry is as to their working, and my problem is their subjugation and victory, downthrow and upheaval, and my effort is their self-expression. - Dylan Thomas who died, age 39, following a six-day coma brought on by drinking 18 straight whiskeys in a New York tavern. Thought A great many people think they are thinking when they are merely rearranging their prejudices - William James I think, therefore Descartes exists. - Saul Steinberg Most of the mistakes in thinking are inadequacies of perception rather than mistakes of logic - Edward de Bono A invitation to thought rather than . . . a machine for solving crises. -- Description by Robert Skidelsky of John Maynard Keynes' General Theory I had just dozed off into a stupor when I heard what I thought was myself talking to myself. I didn't pay much attention to it, as I knew practically everything I would have to say to myself, and wasn't particularly interested. - Robert Benchley Time It was Grandfather's [watch] and when Father gave it to me he said, Quentin, I give you the mausoleum of all hope and desire. . . I give it to you not that you may remember time, but that you might forget it now and then for a moment and not spend all your breath trying to conquer it. Because no battle is ever won he said. They are not even fought. The field only reveals to man his own folly and despair, and victory is an illusion of philosophers and fools." - William Faulkner, The Sound & the Fury THERE IS HARDLY TIME There is hardly time To do the things I ought to do. The intentions and the duties and the shoulds Overrun my hands and back and mind Like black ants On chokecherry branches: Running always, in all directions, And never being nearer finished. I do not know what things Would best be done the first. The sparrows ought be driven from the eaves; The rotted fence posts lean And no one brought the wire To the shed, since all the corn was checked. Big blocks, unsplit, are all that are left In the wood pile. I do, not know what things Would best be done the first. I think I may run up To the north pasture now, To see if the wind that blows there Is stirring leaves and moving branches And whispering the grass As it did yesterday. Cecil D. Wade [We can find no source information on this poem or poet. Any help would be appreciated] Who controls the past controls the future. Who controls the present controls the past. - George Orwell Tired I'm sick and tired of being sick and tired - Civil rights activist Fannie Lou Hamer Toasts May the roof above us never fall in and may we friends gathered below never fall out -- Irish toast May you have a fair wind and a following sea May you have the hindsight to know where you've been, the foresight to know where you're going and the insight to know when you're going too far. -- Irish toast May you have warm words on a cold evening, a full moon on a dark night, and a smooth road all the way to your door -- Irish toast May your trails be crooked, lonesome, dangerous, leading to the most amazing view. May your mountains rise into & above the clouds, May your rivers flow without end, meandering through pastoral valleys tinkling with bells, past temples & castles & poets' towers into a dark primeval forest where tigers belch & monkeys howl, through miasmal & mysterious swamps & down into a desert of red rock, blue mesas, domes & pinnacles & grottos of endless stone, & down again into a deep vast ancient unknown chasm where bars of sunlight blaze on profiled cliffs, where deer walk across the white sand beaches, where storms come & go as lightning clangs upon the high crags, where something more beautiful & more full of wonder than your deepest dreams waits for you -- beyond that next turning of the canyon walls. - Edward Abbey Tolerance The allowance of that which is not wholly approved; appropriately, the allowance of religious opinions and modes of worship in a state, when contrary to or different from those of the established church or belief." -- 1828 definition of tolerance by Daniel Webster Totalitarianism "There have been three totalitarian forces in our lifetime. The totalitarianism of fascism, of communism, and now of capitalism." - French farmer-activist José Bové There is, of course, no reason why the new totalitarianisms should resemble the old . . . In an age of advanced technology, inefficiency is the sin against the Holy Ghost. A really efficient totalitarian state would be one in which the all-powerful executive of political bosses and their army of managers control a population of slaves who do not have to be coerced, because they love their servitude." -- Aldous Huxley Totalitarianism demands the continuous alteration of the past, and in the long run probably demands a disbelief in the very existence of objective truth. The friends of totalitarianism in this country usually tend to argue that since absolute truth is not attainable, a big lie is no worse than a little lie. It is pointed out that all historical records are biased and inaccurate, or, on the other hand, that modern physics has proved that what seems to us the real world is an illusion, so that to believe in the evidence of one's senses is simply vulgar philistinism. A totalitarian society which succeeded in perpetuating itself would probably set up a schizophrenic system of thought, in which the laws of common sense held good in everyday life and in certain exact science, but could be disregarded by the politician, the historian and the sociologist. -- George Orwell, "The Prevention of Literature." "A society becomes totalitarian when it sstructure becomes flagrantly artificial: that is, when it ruling class has lost its functin but suceeds in clinging to power by force or fraud. Such a society, no matter how long it persists, can never afford to become either tolerant or intellectually stable. It can never permit either the truthful recording of fats, or the emotional sincerity, that literary creation demands. -- George Orwell, "The Prevention of Literature." The highest form of literary subtlety, in a corrupt social order, is to tell the plain truth-- Edward Abbey Tragedy There are enough sad endings in life without buying a ticket to one -- Joe Rauh on why he didn't like to go to sad plays. Train There isn't a train I wouldn't take, no matter where it's going. - Edna St Vincent Millay Travelling Every moment is travel - if understood -- Disraeli Travelling is a fool's paradise. . .I pack my trunk, embrace my friends, embark on the sea, and at last wake up in Naples, and there bedise me is the stern fact, the sad self, unrelenting, identical, that I fled from. . .My giant goes with me wherever I go. -- RW Emerson Worth seeing, yes. Worth going to see, no. -- Samuel Johnson on being asked whether Rome was worth seeing. Whether anyone needs a change or not he is going to get it and he should have the right to choose between experiencing it at home or at some distant and alien spot. My rut is my own -- not a common one and mostly in my head. Besides, if I should go away I would miss something. -- Henry Beetle Hough, editor of the Martha's Vinyard Gazette He who travels to be amused, or to get something which he does not carry, travels away from himself and grows old even in youth among old things. - RW Emerson Treaty The hand that signed the treaty bred a fever, And famine grew, and locusts came; Great is the hand that holds dominion over Man by a scribbled name. - Dylan Thomas Trust Trust everyone but get cash for your cotton. -- Southern saying What I tell you three times is true - Lewis Carroll Truman, Harry I fired [General MacArthur] because he wouldn't respect the authority of the President. That's the answer to that. I didn't fire him because he was a dumb son of a bitch, although he was, but that's not against the law for generals. If it was, half to three-quarters of them would be in jail - Harry S Truman Truth The truth is more important than the facts. - Frank Lloyd Wright Believe those who are seeking the truth. Doubt those who find it. - Andre Gide Most everybody I see knows the truth but they just don't know that they know it. - Woody Guthrie When you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth - Sherlock Holmes You should never have your best trousers on when you go out to fight for freedom and truth -- Henrik Ibsen, "Enemy of the People" In an age of universal deceit, telling the truth is a revolutionary act -- George Orwell Tell the truth and run -- George Seldes Whoever tells the truth is chased out of nine villages -- Turkish saying The men the American people admire most extravagantly are the most daring liars; the men they detest most violently are those who try to tell them the truth." -- H. L. Mencken Whitney, what you're saying may get you a foundation grant, but it won't get you into the Kingdom of Truth -- Martin Luther King to the National Urban League's Whitney Young after the latter rebuked King for opposing the Vietnam War It's easier to tell the truth than to lie, 'cause then you don't have to remember what you said -- Jerry 'Bama ' Washington I don't know if it happened exactly like this, but I do know this story is true -- American Indian story teller Nothing is too wonderful to be true -- Michael Faraday Never believe anything until it has been officially denied. -- Claud Cockburn It takes two to speak the truth; one to speak and another to hear - Henry David Thoreau All the durable truths that have come into the world within historic times have been opposed as bitterly as if they were so many waves of smallpox - H.L. Mencken. The truth is rarely pure and never simple. Modern life would be very tedious if it were either, and modern literature a complete impossibility - Oscar Wilde Trust Don't trust anybody over 30 -- Jack Weinberg, 1960s free speech activist Tyranny It is tyranny's trademark to erase what came before, lest anyone trace the road back and realize that the present has become far, far worse than anything in the past. - Paul William Roberts Nothing is more surprising to those who consider human affairs with a philosophical eye than to see the easiness with which the many are governed by the few, and to observe the implicit submission with which men resign over their own sentiments and passions to those of their rulers -- David Hume It was the very soul of our old aristocratic policy that even a tyrant must never figure as a tyrant. He may break down everybody's fences and steal everybody's land, but he must do it by Act of Parliament and not with a great two-handed sword. And if he meets the people he's dispossessed, he must be very polite to them and enquire after their rheumatism. That's what kept the British Constitution going -- enquiring after the rheumatism. -- G K Chesterton The limit of tyrants are prescribed by the endurance of those whom they oppress -- Frederick Douglass Typographical errors An American editor worries his hair gray to see that no typographical mistakes appear on the pages of his magazine. The Chinese editor is wiser than that. He wants to leave his readers the supreme satisfaction of discovering a few typographical mistakes for themselves. More than that, a Chinese magazine can begin printing serial fiction and forget about it halfway. In America it might bring the roof down on the editors, but in China it doesn't matter simply because it doesn't matter." -- L:in Yutang, Chinese writer of the 1930s The typographical errors in this issue are there on purpose. This publication tries to provide something for everyone and some people are always looking for mistakes. -- Anonymous U Unawareness Her mind lives tidily, apart From cold and noise and pain, And bolts the door against her heart, Out wailing in the rain -- Dorothy Parker Understanding You do not really understand something unless you can explain it to your grandmother - Albert Einstein Universe The universe is made of stories, not of atoms - MURIEL RUKEYSER The human mind is not capable of grasping the Universe. We are like a little child entering a huge library. The walls are covered to the ceilings with books in many different tongues. The child knows that someone must have written these books. It does not know who or how. It does not understand the languages in which they are written. But the child notes a definite plan in the arrangement of the books, a mysterious order which it does not comprehend, but only dimly suspects. - Albert Einstein There is a theory which states that if ever anyone discovers exactly what the Universe is for and why it is here, it will instantly disappear and be replaced by something even more bizarrely inexplicable. There is another theory which states that this has already happened. - Douglas Adams Universities Universities are of course hostile to geniuses, which, seeing and using ways of their own, discredit the routine, as churches and monastaries persecutr youthful saints - Ralph Waldo Emerson Vonnegut, Kurt We are what we pretend to be, so we must be careful about what we pretend to be.- Mother Night (1961) Tiger got to hunt, Bird got to fly; Man got to sit and wonder why, why, why? Tiger got to sleep, Bird got to land; Man got to tell himself he understand Cat's Cradle (1963) High school is closer to the core of the American experience than anything else I can think of. - Introduction to Our Time Is Now: Notes From the High School Underground (1970) You know - we've had to imagine the war here, and we have imagined that it was being fought by aging men like ourselves. We had forgotten that wars were fought by babies. When I saw those freshly shaved faces, it was a shock. "My God, my God -" I said to myself, "it's the Children's Crusade." - Slaughterhouse-Five (1969) [When] I was a student at the University of Chicago, I had a conversation with my thesis advisor about the arts in general. At that time, I had no idea that I personally would go into any sort of art. He said, "You know what artists are?" I didn't. "Artists," he said, "are people who say, "I can't fix my country or my state or my city, or even my marriage. But by golly, I can make this square of canvas, or this eight-and-a-half-by-eleven piece of paper, or this lump of clay, or these twelve bars of music, exactly what they ought to be!'" - Timequake (1997) Artists use frauds to make human beings seem more wonderful than they really are. Dancers show us human beings who move much more gracefully than human beings really move. Films and books and plays show us people talking more entertainingly than people really talk, make paltry human enterprises seem important. Singers and musicians show us human beings making sounds far more lovely than human beings really make. Architects give us temples in which something marvelous is obviously going on. Actually, practically nothing is going on. - "When I Was Twenty-One" in Wampeters, Foma and Granfaloons (1974) 1. Find a subject you care about. 2. Do not ramble, though. 3. Keep it simple. 4. Have the guts to cut. 5. Sound like yourself. 6. Say what you mean to say. 7. Pity the readers. - quoted in Science Fictionisms (1995) compiled by William Rotsler We are human only to the extent that our ideas remain humane. - Breakfast of Champions (1973) And so on. - Breakfast of Champions (1973) One of the few good things about modern times: If you die horribly on television, you will not have died in vain. You will have entertained us. - "Cold Turkey" So it goes. Slaughterhouse-Five (1969) Hello, babies. Welcome to Earth. It's hot in the summer and cold in the winter. It's round and wet and crowded. At the outside, babies, you've got about a hundred years here. There's only one rule that I know of, babies - 'God damn it, you've got to be kind. Robert Kennedy, whose summer home is eight miles from the home I live in all year round, was shot two nights ago. He died last night. So it goes. Martin Luther King was shot a month ago. He died, too. So it goes. And every day my Government gives me a count of corpses created by military science in Vietnam. So it goes." Any reviewer who expresses rage and loathing for a novel is preposterous. He or she is like a person who has put on full armor and attacked a hot fudge sundae. I want to stay as close to the edge as I can without going over. Out on the edge you see all kinds of things you can't see from the center. Laughter and tears are both responses to frustration and exhaustion. I myself prefer to laugh, since there is less cleaning up to do afterward. Life happens too fast for you ever to think about it. If you could just persuade people of this, but they insist on amassing information. Beware of the man who works hard to learn something, learns it, and finds himself no wiser than before. . . He is full of murderous resentment of people who are ignorant without having come by their ignorance the hard way. One of the few good things about modern times: If you die horribly on television, you will not have died in vain. You will have entertained us. Thanks to TV and for the convenience of TV, you can only be one of two kinds of human beings, either a liberal or a conservative. There is a tragic flaw in our precious Constitution, and I don't know what can be done to fix it. This is it: Only nut cases want to be president. Here is a lesson in creative writing. First rule: Do not use semicolons. They are transvestite hermaphrodites representing absolutely nothing. All they do is show you've been to college. Charm was a scheme for making strangers like and trust a person immediately, no matter what the charmer had in mind. Here's what I think the truth is: We are all addicts of fossil fuels in a state of denial, about to face cold turkey. Another flaw in the human character is that everybody wants to build and nobody wants to do maintenance. We are what we pretend to be, so we must be careful what we pretend to be. Like so many Americans, she was trying to construct a life that made sense from things she found in gift shops. How nice--to feel nothing, and still get full credit for being alive. What the Gospels actually said was: don't kill anyone until you are absolutely sure they aren't well connected. The acceptance of a creed, any creed, entitles the acceptor to membership in the sort of artificial extended family we call a congregation. It is a way to fight loneliness. Any time I see a person fleeing from reason and into religion, I think to myself, There goes a person who simply cannot stand being so goddamned lonely anymore. I am an atheist (or at best a Unitarian who winds up in church quite a lot). True terror is to wake up one morning and discover that your high school class is running the country. Who is more to be pitied, a writer bound and gagged by policemen or one living in perfect freedom who has nothing more to say? We could have saved the Earth but we were too damned cheap. When the last living thing has died on account of us, how poetical it would be if Earth could say, in a voice floating up perhaps from the floor of the Grand Canyon, "It is done." People did not like it here. Yutang, Lin A good traveller is one who does not know where he is going to, and a perfect traveller does not know where he came from. All women's dresses are merely variations on the eternal struggle between admitted desire to dress and the unadmitted desire to undress. Besides the noble art of getting things done, there is the noble art of leaving things undone. The wisdom of life consists in the elimination of non-essentials. Hope is like a road in the country; there was never a road, but when many people walk on it, the road comes into existence. If you can spend a perfectly useless afternoon in a perfectly useless manner, you have learned how to live. Society can exist only on the basis that there is some amount of polished lying and that no one says exactly what he thinks. The wise man reads both books and life itself. This I conceive to be the chemical function of humor: to change the character of our thought. Where there are too many policemen, there is no liberty. Where there are too many soldiers, there is no peace. Where there are too many lawyers, there is no justice. In the West, the insane are so many that they are put in an asylum, in China the insane are so unusual that we worship them. How many of us are able to distinguish between the odors of noon and midnight, or of winter and summer, or of a windy spell and a still one? If man is so generally less happy in the cities than in the country, it is because all these variations and nuances of sight and smell and sound are less clearly marked and lost in the general monotony of gray walls and cement pavements. The three great American vices seem to be efficiency, punctuality, and the desire for achievement and success. They are the things that make the Americans so unhappy and so nervous. A man who has to be punctually at a certain place at five o'clock has the whole afternoon from one to five ruined for him already. By association with natures enormities, a man's heart may truly grow big also. There is a way of looking upon a landscape as a moving picture and being satisfied with nothing less big as a moving picture, a way of looking upon tropic clouds over the horizon as the backdrop of a stage and being satisfied with nothing less big as a backdrop, a way of looking upon the mountain forests as a private garden and being satisfied with nothing less as a private garden, a way of listening to the roaring waves as a concert and being satisfied with nothing less as a concert, and a way of looking upon the mountain breeze as an air-cooling system and being satisfied with nothing less as an air-cooling system. So do we become big, even as the earth and firmaments are big. Like the 'Big Man' described by Yuan Tsi (A.D. 210-263), one of China's first romanticists, we 'live in heaven and earth as our house.' Such religion as there can be in modern life, every individual will have to salvage from the churches for himself. I feel, like all modern Americans, no consciousness of sin and simply do not believe in it. All I know is that if God loves me only half as much as my mother does, he will not send me to Hell. That is a final fact of my inner consciousness, and for no religion could I deny its truth. It is not so much what you believe in that matters, as the way in which you believe it and proceed to translate that belief into action. When there are too What is patriotism but the love of the food one ate as a child? Art is both creation and recreation. Of the two ideas, I think art as recreation or as sheer play of the human spirit is more important. V Verbal He was living proof of verbal association, shooting off tangentially along new lines of thought suggested to him in mid-paragraph, even mid-sentence, as if terrified that his life might end with things unspoken. The way to deal with this, Pascoe learned by trial and error, was to ignore all irrelevancies and use key-phrases... as verbal sheepdogs to drive him back in the required direction. -- Reginald Hill, 'Deadheads' Victory Victory goes to the player who makes the next-to-last mistake. - Chessmaster Savielly Grigorievitch Tartakower Vietnam The war in Vietnam is going well and will succeed. - Defense Secretary Robert McNamara, 1963 Violence Violence may murder the murderer, but it doesn't murder murder. Violence may murder the liar, but it doesn't murder lies; it doesn't establish truth.... Violence may go to the point of murdering the hater, but it doesn't murder hate. It may increase hate. It is always a descending spiral leading nowhere. This is the ultimate weakness of violence: It multiplies evil and violence in the universe. It doesn't solve any problems. - Martin Luther King Jr. Violence can never provide the answer. The ultimate weakness of violence is that it is a descending spiral, begetting the very thing it seeks to destroy. Instead of diminishing evil, it multiplies it. Through violence you may murder the liar, but you cannot murder the lie, nor establish the truth. Through violence you may murder the hater, but you do not murder hate. In fact, violence merely increases hate. So it goes. Returning violence for violence multiplies violence, adding deeper darkness to a night already devoid of stars. Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that. - Martin Luther King If in the first act you introduce a gun, by the third act you have to use it - Anton Chekhov We are mad, not only individuals but nations also. We restrain manslaughter and individual murders; but what of war and the so-called glory of killing whole peoples? . . . Deeds of cruelty are done every day by command of the Senate and popular assembly, and servants of the state are ordered to do what is forbidden to the private citizen. The same deeds which would be punished by death if committed in secret are applauded when done openly by soldiers in uniform. -- Seneca, Letters 95, c. 63 AD You know what I think about violence. For me it is profoundly moral, more moral than compromise and negotiation - Benito Mussolini If history shows that a violent response to an act of terrorism begets more terrorism, then why is a violent response the predominant choice of the experts and politicians of the world? - Beau Grosscup Virtue What is virtue but the lack of strong temptation; better to leave us with our lie of being good - Stephen Dobyns The act of defending any of the cardinal virtues has today all the exhilaration of vice -- G.K. Chesterton Vonnegut, Kurt Like so many Americans, she was trying to construct a life that made sense from things she found in gift shops. W Walking Everywhere is walking distance if you have the time- Steven Wright War There is no moral difference between a Stealth bomber and a suicide bomber. They both kill innocent people for political reasons. --Tony Benn A wonderful time - the War: when money rolled in and blood rolled out. But blood was far away from here-- Money was near. - Langston Hughes I know not with what weapons World War III will be fought, but World War IV will be fought with sticks and stones. - Albert Einstein War is, at first, the hope that one will be better off; next, the expectation that the other fellow will be worse off; then, the satisfaction that he isn't any better off; and, finally, the surprise at everyone's being worse off - Karl Kaus O Lord our Father, our young patriots, idols of our hearts, go forth to battle - be Thou near them! With them, in spirit, we also go forth from the sweet peace of our beloved firesides to smite the foe. O Lord our God, help us to tear their soldiers to bloody shreds with our shells; help us to cover their smiling fields with the pale forms of their patriot dead; help us to drown the thunder of the guns with the shrieks of their wounded, writhing in pain; help us to lay waste their humble homes with a hurricane of fire; help us to wring the hearts of their unoffending widows with unavailing grief; help us to turn them out roofless with their little children to wander unfriended the wastes of their desolated land in rags and hunger and thirst, sports of the sun flames of summer and the icy winds of winter, broken in spirit, worn with travail, imploring Thee for the refuge of the grave and denied it-for our sakes who adore Thee, Lord, blast their hopes, blight their lives, protract their bitter pilgrimage, make heavy their steps, water their way with their tears, stain the white snow with the blood of their wounded feet! We ask it, in the spirit of love, of Him Who is the Source of Love, and Who is ever-faithful refuge and friend of all that are sore beset and seek His aid with humble and contrite hearts. Amen. - Mark Twain LITTLE SONG OF THE MAIMED Lend me your arm to replace my leg The rats ate it for me at Verdun At Verdun I ate lots of rats but they didn't give me back my leg and that's why I was given the croix de guerre and a wooden leg and a wooden leg - Benjamin Peret A great war leaves the country with three armies - an army of cripples, an army of mourners, and an army of thieves. - German proverb On they came, with the old swinging route step and swaying battle flags. Before us in proud humiliation stood the embodiment of manhood; men whom neither toils and sufferings, nor the fact of death, nor disaster, nor hopelessness could bend from their resolve; standing before us now, thin, worn, and famished, but erect, and with eyes looking level into ours, waking memories that bound us together as no other bond...So thin, so pale, purged of the mortal - as if knowing pain or joy no more. How could we help falling on our knees, all of us together, and praying God to pity and forgive us all! - General Joshua Chamberlain on the surrender at Appomattox, back when American won its wars somewhat more graciously than at present You can no more win a war than you can win an earthquake - Jeanette Rankin War is a sociological safety valve that cleverly diverts popular hatred for the ruling classes into a happy occasion to mutilate or kill foreign enemies. - Ernest Becker Of course, the people don't want war. Why would some poor slob on a farm want to risk his life in a war when the best that he can get out of it is to come back to his farm in one piece? That is understood. But, after all, it is the leaders of the country who determine the policy and it is always a simple matter to drag the people along, whether it is a democracy or a fascist dictatorship or a parliament or a communist dictatorship . . . That is easy. All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger. It works the same way in any country. - Hermann Goering to Nuremberg psychologist Gustave Gilbert If we fix it so's you can't make money on war, we'll all forget what we're killing folks for - Woody Guthrie As a matter of general principle, I believe there can be no doubt that criticism in time of war is essential to the maintenance of any kind of democratic government. Perhaps nothing today distinguishes democratic government in England so greatly from the totalitarianism of Germany as the freedom of criticism which has existed continuously in the House of Commons and elsewhere in England. Of course that criticism should not give any information to the enemy. But too many people desire to suppress criticism simply because they think that it will give some comfort to the enemy to know that there is such criticism. If that comfort makes the enemy feel better for a few moments, they are welcome to it as far as I am concerned, because the maintenance of the right of criticism in the long run will do the country maintaining it a great deal more good than it will do the enemy, and will prevent mistakes which might otherwise occur. - GOP Senator Robert Taft The loud little handful - as usual - will shout for the war. The pulpit will - warily and cautiously - object... at first. The great, big, dull bulk of the nation will rub its sleepy eyes and try to make out why there should be a war, and will say, earnestly and indignantly, "It is unjust and dishonorable, and there is no necessity for it." Then the handful will shout louder. A few fair men on the other side will argue and reason against the war with speech and pen, and at first will have a hearing and be applauded, but it will not last long; those others will outshout them, and presently the antiwar audiences will thin out and lose popularity. Before long, you will see this curious thing: the speakers stoned from the platform, and free speech strangled by hordes of furious men... Next the statesmen will invent cheap lies, putting the blame upon the nation that is attacked, and every man will be glad of those conscience-soothing falsities, and will diligently study them, and refuse to examine any refutations of them; and thus he will by and by convince himself that the war is just, and will thank God for the better sleep he enjoys after this process of grotesque self-deception. - Mark Twain, "The Mysterious Stranger" (1910) O Lord our Father, our young patriots, idols of our hearts, go forth to battle - be Thou near them! . . . O Lord our God, help us to tear their soldiers to bloody shreds with our shells; help us to cover their smiling fields with the pale forms of their patriot dead; help us to drown the thunder of the guns with the shrieks of their wounded, writhing in pain; help us to lay waste their humble homes with a hurricane of fire; help us to wring the hearts of their unoffending widows with unavailing grief; help us to turn them out roofless with their little children to wander unfriended the wastes of their desolated land in rags and hunger and thirst. . . broken in spirit, worn with travail, imploring Thee for the refuge of the grave and denied it - for our sakes who adore Thee, Lord, blast their hopes, blight their lives, protract their bitter pilgrimage, make heavy their steps, water their way with their tears, stain the white snow with the blood of their wounded feet! We ask it, in the spirit of love, of Him Who is the Source of Love, and Who is ever-faithful refuge and friend of all that are sore beset and seek His aid with humble and contrite hearts. Amen. - Mark Twain The war made possible for us the solution of a whole series of problems that could never have been solved in normal times. - Joseph Goebbels, quoted in "The Goebbels Diaries 1942-43" They have always taught and trained you to believe it to be your patriotic duty to go to war and to have yourselves slaughtered at their command. But in all the history of the world you, the people, have never had a voice in declaring war, and strange as it certainly appears, no war by any nation in any age has ever been declared by the people. - Eugene Debs, Socialist candidate for president, June 16, 1918. The speech led to Debs's being stripped of his citizenship and sent to jail for 10 years Even the final decision of a war is not to be regarded as absolute. The conquered nation often sees it as only a passing evil, to be repaired after time by political combination - Carl von Clausewitz War would end if the dead could return - Stanley Baldwin There never was a good war or bad peace. - Benjamin Franklin We thought we were done with these things But we were wrong. We thought, because we had power, we had wisdom. We thought the long train would run to the end of Time. We thought the light would increase. Now the long train stands derailed And the bandits loot it. Now the boar and the asp have power in our time. Now the night rolls back on the West And the night is solid. Our fathers and ourselves sowed dragon's teeth. Our children know and suffer the armed men. - Stephen Vincent Benet, 1935 The sea is calm to-night. The tide is full, the moon lies fair. . . The Sea of Faith Was once, too, at the full, and round earth's shore Lay like the folds of a bright girdle furl'd. But now I only hear Its melancholy, long, withdrawing roar, Retreating, to the breath Of the night-wind, down the vast edges drear And naked shingles of the world. Ah, love, let us be true To one another! for the world, which seems To lie before us like a land of dreams, So various, so beautiful, so new, Hath really neither joy, nor love, nor light, Nor certitude, nor peace, nor help for pain; And we are here as on a darkling plain Swept with confused alarms of struggle and flight, Where ignorant armies clash by night.- Matthew Arnold When the rich make war, it's the poor that die. - Jean-Paul Sartre The war party in the United States seeks to justify our entrance into the bloody conflict on the ground that it is in the interest of democracy. But every man and every woman knows that there is a struggle going on today in every civilized nation between democracy and autocracy. Every nation has its war party. It is not the party of democracy. It is the party of autocracy. It seeks to dominate absolutely. It is commercial, imperialistic, ruthless. It tolerates no opposition. . . In times of peace, the war party insists on making preparation for war. As soon as prepared for war, it insists on making war. If there is no sufficient reason for war, the war party will make war on one pretext, then invent another, possibly more effective, pretext after war is on. Before war is declared, the war party assumes the divine right to denounce and silence all opposition to war as unpatriotic and cowardly. After Congress has been bullied into a declaration of war, the politicians, the press, and the mercenaries of the war party assume authority to deny the right of American citizens to discuss the necessity for the war, or the ultimate object and purpose of the declaration of war. . .People are being unlawfully arrested, thrown into jail, denied the right to employ counsel, or to communicate with their friends, or even to inform their families of their whereabouts, subjected to unlawful search, threatened, intimidated, examined, and cross-examined. The most sacred constitutional rights guaranteed to every American citizen are violated in the name of democracy.It appears to be the purpose of those conducting this procedure to throw the country into a state of terror, to coerce public opinion, stifle criticism, suppress discussion of the issues of the war, and put a quietus on all opposition. It is time for the American people to assert and maintain their rights. . . . - Senator Robert LaFolette, 1917 Statesmen will invent cheap lies, putting blame upon the nation that is attacked, and every man will be glad of those conscience-soothing falsities, and will diligently study them, and refuse to examine any refutations of them; and thus he will by and by convince himself that the war is just, and will thank God for the better sleep he enjoys after this process of grotesque self-deception. - Mark Twain If any question why we died, Tell them, because our fathers lied. - Rudyard Kipling Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed. This world in arms is not spending money alone. It is spending the sweat of its laborers, the genius of its scientists, the hopes of its children . . . This is not a way of life at all, in any true sense. Under the cloud of threatening war, it is humanity hanging from a cross of iron. - Dwight D. Eisenhower, April 16, 1953, before the American Society of Newspaper Editors Wars throughout history have been waged for conquest and plunder. In the Middle Ages when the feudal lords who inhabited the castles whose towers may still be seen along the Rhine concluded to enlarge their domains, to increase their power, their prestige and their wealth they declared war upon one another. But they themselves did not go to war any more than the modern feudal lords, the barons of Wall Street go to war. The feudal barons of the Middle Ages, the economic predecessors of the capitalists of our day, declared all wars. And their miserable serfs fought all the battles. The poor, ignorant serfs had been taught to revere their masters; to believe that when their masters declared war upon one another, it was their patriotic duty to fall upon one another and to cut one another's throats for the profit and glory of the lords and barons who held them in contempt. And that is war in a nutshell. The master class has always declared the wars; the subject class has always fought the battles. The master class has had all to gain and nothing to lose, while the subject class has had nothing to gain and all to lose - especially their lives. They have always taught and trained you to believe it to be your patriotic duty to go to war and to have yourselves slaughtered at their command. But in all the history of the world you, the people, have never had a voice in declaring war, and strange as it certainly appears, no war by any nation in any age has ever been declared by the people. And here let me emphasize the fact-and it cannot be repeated too often-that the working class who fight all the battles, the working class who make the supreme sacrifices, the working class who freely shed their blood and furnish the corpses, have never yet had a voice in either declaring war or making peace. It is the ruling class that invariably does both. They alone declare war and they alone make peace. - Eugene Debs With the shock of war ~ the State comes into its own again. The government, with no mandate from the people, without consultation of the people, conducts all the negotiations, the backing and filling, the menaces and explanations, which slowly bring it into collision