Denial

In pretending Pluto is not a planet, we have yet another an example of a big denial trip associated with the darkness of the world. We are saying that the bottom line of reality (whatever is represented by the official planet most distant) is not Pluto: all matters of survival, life and death; sex; shared resources; and social and personal transformation; but rather, that it is Neptune: whatever you want it to be. It is about what you believe. This is a great, humorous metaphor for an era in history when the truth is whatever you want it to be.

--Eric Francis

Fetish

This is not the time to be weak and pacifist. But a gun or a bomb is always a fetish, a substitute for spiritual force, a sign of our weakness. This is the time to be strong in spirit and refuse to be enticed into literal battles in which the loser wins and the winner loses.

--Thomas Moore

Does Not Fit

The large corporation fits oddly into democratic theory and vision. Indeed, it does not fit.

--Charles Lindblom

Letting Go

I think most of the spiritual life is really a matter of relaxing--letting go, ceasing to cling, ceasing to insist on our own way, ceasing to tense ourselves up for this or against that.

--Beatrice Bruteau

Derives From...

We must first note that the Office of the Chief Executive has itself been created, with its powers, by the Constitution. There are no hereditary Kings in America and no powers not created by the Constitution. So all "inherent powers" must derive from that Constitution.

--U.S. District Judge Anna Diggs Taylor (August 17, 2006)

Error...Not

Our errors are surely not such awfully solemn things. In a world where we are so certain to incur them in spite of all our caution, a certain lightness of heart seems healthier than this excessive nervousness on their behalf.

--William James

Best Argument

I always thought the best argument against the death penalty is God's casting out of Cain, rather than putting him to death.

--Sarah Steiner

Decay

Political chaos is connected with the decay of language...one can probably bring about some improvement by starting at the verbal end.

--George Orwell

Need It

When we start deceiving ourselves into thinking not that we want something or need something, not that it is a pragmatic necessity for us to have it, but that it is a moral imperative that we have it, then is when we join the fashionable madmen, and then is when the thin whine of hysteria is heard in the land, and then is when we are in bad trouble.

--Joan Didion

Rule It

The urge to save humanity is almost always a false face for the urge to rule it.

--H.L. Mencken

Flying Blues

For thousands of years human beings dreamed of flying, but it took us less than a century to get sick of it.

--Walter Kirn

Ripe Fruit

Men talk about Bible miracles because there is no miracle in their lives. Cease to gnaw that crust. There is ripe fruit over your head.

--Henry David Thoreau

How Did They...?

But how did such people attain power in the first place? Maybe it's the result of our infantilized media culture, in which politicians, like celebrities, are judged by the way they look, not the reality of their achievements.

--Paul Krugman

In Wait

Even in the most civilized societies the demagogues are always in wait, ready and testing. They are indefatigable and we will never entirely prevail over them. And that is okay. But if we stop resisting them, they will prevail over us. And that is not okay.

---Milos Forman

Ultimate Test

The ultimate test of a man's conscience may be his willingness to sacrifice something today for future generations whose words of thanks will not be heard.

--Senator Gaylord Nelson