Celebration of All

Modern society seems to me a celebration of all the things that lead away from the truth, make truth hard to live for, and discourage people from even believing that it exists.

--Sogyal Rinpoche

Help Forget

Modern man is drinking and drugging himself out of awareness or he spends his time shopping, which is the same thing. As awareness calls for types of heroic dedication that his culture no longer provides for him, society contrives to help him forget.

--Ernest Becker

The Unexpected

A thing long expected takes the form of the unexpected when at last it comes.

--Mark Twain

Only One

There are 32 ways to write a story, but only one plot: Things are not as they seem.

--Jim Thompson

Looks Into You

Whoever fights monsters should see to it that in the process he does not become a monster. And when you look long into an abyss, the abyss also looks into you.

--Friedrich Nietzsche

Central Acts

A reader who identifies with the characters in a novel is not reacting in a naïve way that ought to be outgrown or transcended, but is performing one of the central acts of literary understanding.

--Edward Mendelson

Two or Three

There are only two or three human stories, and they go on repeating themselves as fiercely as if they had never happened before.

--Willa Cather

What Matters

Concepts do matter. The right thought arises from a true sensing within the heart of consciousness.

--Brian Donohue

Yawn Across The Country

The strange thing is that we have become sort of constitutional couch potatoes. The Congress just gave the President despotic powers and you could hear the yawn across the country as people turned to Dancing With the Stars. It's otherworldly....People clearly don't realize what a fundamental change it is about who we are as a country.

--Jonathan Turley (George Washington University professor and constitutional expert)

Tools Of Conquest

The tools of conquest do not necessarily come with bombs and explosions and fallout. There are weapons that are simply thoughts, attitudes, prejudices, to be found only in the minds of men. For the record, prejudices can kill and suspicion can destroy, and a thoughtless, frightened search for a scapegoat has a fallout all its own--for the children, and the children yet unborn.

--Rod Serling

Anything But

How can anybody look at the figure of Christ on the cross and think that's anything but a condemnation of torture? For the thinking person, it clearly is. But for the fundamentalist, that image creates anxiety about death and makes them cling to their hierarchical values even more.

--Amanda Marcotte

Who Knows God's Word?

The most detestable wickedness, the most horrid cruelties, and the greatest miseries that have afflicted the human race have had their origin in this thing called revelation, or revealed religion.

--Thomas Paine

Lack

It is not the lack of love, but a lack of friendship that makes unhappy marriages.

--Friedrich Nietzsche

Our Understanding

It is not our will that is being tested, but our understanding of reality.

--George Soros

A Triumph

All the analysis in the world doesn't allow the person to find out who he is and why he is here on earth, why he has to die, and how he can make his life a triumph.

--Ernest Becker

Working Class Hero

They keep you doped with religion and sex and TV.
And you think you're so clever and classless and free.
But you're still fucking peasants as far as I can see.

--John Lennon

R-E-S-P-E-C-T

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 are smart.

--H. L. Mencken

Good Night, America

Good night, America, how are you?
Don't you know me I'm your native son,
I'm the train they call The City of New Orleans,
I'll be gone five hundred miles when the day is done.

--Steve Goodman

No Vice, No Virtue

Extremism in the defense of liberty is no vice. And moderation in the pursuit of justice is no virtue.

--Barry Goldwater

Take That

And there you have it: from "compassionate conservative" to the abolition of common law, and all in a mere six years. Take that, Mao.

--Ellis Weiner

Fair Game

When a society throws away 900 years of common law, there's no telling what might happen. It's like using a tactical nuke. Suddenly, things that we, and our parents, and our grandparents were raised to consider too deviant to mention are now fair game.

--Lindsay Beyerstein

That Jewel

Is the relinquishment of the trial by jury and the liberty of the press necessary for your liberty? Will the abandonment of your most sacred rights tend to the security of your liberty? Liberty, the greatest of all earthly blessings--give us that precious jewel, and you may take everything else!...Guard with jealous attention the public liberty. Suspect everyone who approaches that jewel.

--Patrick Henry