"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
One of the few statements from Søren Kierkegaard I have thought well enough of to repeat ---- From Either/Or, Part I
"A fire broke out backstage in a theatre. The clown came out to warn the public. They thought it was a joke and applauded. He repeated it; the acclaim was even greater. I think that's just how the world will come to an end: to the general applause from those who believe it's a joke."
“We are here to help each other get through this thing, whatever it is.”
~Kurt Vonnegut, A Man Without a Country
Eugene V. Debs Museum
DebsMuseum
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While there is a lower class, I am in it; while there is a criminal element, I am of it; while there is a soul in prison, I am not free.
Isaac Asimov /
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"They won't listen. Do you know why? Because they have certain fixed notions about the past. Any change would be blasphemy in their eyes, even if it were the truth. They don't want the truth; they want their traditions."
"Let's all join the wide discourse
Of who fucks who
And who does worse."
Line from 18th Century bawdy verse.
Not much has changed.
“It took many years of vomiting up all the filth I''d been taught about myself, and half-believed, before I was able to walk on the Earth as though I had a right to be here.” —James Baldwin
"My father was a slave, and my people died to build this country, and I am going to stay here, and have a part of it just like you. And no Fascist-minded people will drive me from it. Is that clear?" —Paul Robeson
"Accountability feels like an attack when you're not ready to acknowledge how your behavior harms others." --Tamara Renaye
“I allow myself to hope that the world will emerge from its present troubles, that it will one day learn to give the direction of its affairs, not to cruel swindlers and scoundrels, but to men possessed of wisdom and courage. I see before me a shining vision: a world where none are hungry, where few are ill, where work is pleasant and not excessive, where kindly feeling is common, and where minds released from fear create delight for eye, ear and heart. Do not say this is impossible. It is not impossible. I do not say it can be done tomorrow, but I do say that it could be done within a thousand years, if only men would bend their minds to the achievement of the kind of happiness that should be distinctive of man.”
— Bertrand Russell, Human Society in Ethics and Politics (1954), Part II: The Conflict of Passions, Ch. X: Prologue or Epilogue?, p. 238
“To love. To be loved. To never forget your own insignificance. To never get used to the unspeakable violence and the vulgar disparity of life around you. To seek joy in the saddest places. To pursue beauty to its lair. To never simplify what is complicated or complicate what is simple. To respect strength, never power.
Above all, to watch. To try and understand. To never look away. And never, never to forget.”
~Arundhati Roy, ‘The Cost of Living’
I been reading the philosophers.
They are really strange, funny, wild guys, gamblers.
Descartes came along and said, these fellows have been talking pure crap. He said that mathematics was the model for absolute self-evident truth. Mechanism.
Then Hume came along with his attack on the validity of scientific causal knowledge.
And then came Kierkegaard:
“I stick my finger into existence-it smells of nothing.
Where am I?”
And then along came Sartre who claimed that existence was absurd.
I love this boys.
They rock the world.
Didn’t they get headaches thinking that way?
Didn’t a rush of blackness roar between their teeth?
Charles Bukowski from the novel: “The Captain is out to lunch and the sailors have taken over the ship.”
"You can easily judge the character of a man by how he treats those who can do nothing for him." --Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
