Your Quote of the Day

I was always amazed that I was alive, and the opposite will be no surprise. W. A. Narod

“Your assumptions are your windows on the world. Scrub them off every once in a while, or the light won't come in.”
― Isaac Asimov

The latter part of a wise person's life is occupied with curing the follies, prejudices and false opinions they contracted earlier.
Jonathan Swift

Those are rhetorical questions that most citizens of the world face.

It wasn't a series of rhetorical questions, it was a quotation from Tony Benn where he specifically mentioned powerful men like Stalin, Hitler and Rupert Murdoch.

“People don't care how much you know until they know how much you care”
― Theodore Roosevelt

I have no faith in human perfectability. I think that human exertion will have no appreciable effect upon humanity.
Man is now only more active - not more happy - nor more wise, than he was 6000 years ago.
Edgar Allan Poe

“I am fond of pigs. Dogs look up to us. Cats look down on us. Pigs treat us as equals.”
― Winston S. Churchill

“Take it moment by moment, and you will find that we are all, as I’ve said before, bugs in amber.”
― Kurt Vonnegut

“Raise your children so that other people actually like them”
Jorden Peterson

"When the poor give to the rich, the devil laughs."
--from THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF BENVENUTO CELLINI (1558-1563) by Benvenuto Cellini

“Sometimes people hold a core belief that is very strong. When they are
presented with evidence that works against that belief, the new
evidence cannot be accepted. It would create a feeling that is
extremely uncomfortable, called cognitive dissonance. And because it
is so important to protect the core belief, they will rationalize,
ignore and even deny anything that doesn't fit in with the core belief.”
― Frantz Fanon, Black Skin, White Masks

That is very true. We can observe that even in our own family and friends. I don't know what happened to me, because I was raised in the same household as my siblings, but I'm the only atheist amongst christians married to christians. I married a buddhist. My mother was not happy when I married my wife in the buddhist church in San Francisco. Not a smile. That was some 56 years ago, and I still think about the time I spent in the US Air Force from 1955 to 1959. I've lived in more different places than any of my family members. I was thinking about this subject a few days ago, and tried to remember where I have lived. Here's the list I remember, but not necessarily in chronological order, because I've lived in Sacramento Oakland and Chicago at several different times. Sacramento, Tule Lake Concentration Camp during WWII, Sacramento, Oakland, Sacramento, Travis AFB, Ben Guerir AFB (Morocco), Walker AFB NM, Chicago, Sacramento, Oakland, Berkeley, Fremont, Naperville IL, and Sunnyvale. I know some people in Sacramento who never left there except for the time during WWII when we were sent to concentration camp. I think I've done more traveling than most, because I have traveled to 88 countries.

I came from southern conservative roots and am the only one of my blood kin to be a liberal. I don't even look like any of them, unless you figure in my children. Being raised in California made no difference, because our neighbors were also transplanted Okies. I'm just lucky.

“Every empire, however, tells itself and the world that it is unlike all other empires, that its mission is not to plunder and control but to educate and liberate."

(Los Angeles Times, July 20, 2003)”
― Edward W. Said

“The sin which is unpardonable is knowingly and wilfully to reject truth, to fear knowledge lest that knowledge pander not to thy prejudices.”
― Aleister Crowley, Magick: Liber Aba: Book 4

More than a "sin," prejudices are ignorance of the worst kind.

"Sorry, I forgot what dimension I was in."
- Indigo Child images

“The essence of Christianity is told us in the Garden of Eden history. The fruit that was forbidden was on the tree of knowledge. The subtext is, 'All the suffering you have is because you wanted to find out what was going on. You could be in the Garden of Eden if you had just kept your ******* mouth shut and hadn't asked any questions.”
― Frank Zappa