2001:December:14
2001
They who can give up essential liberty to purchase a little
temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety.
-- Benjamin Franklin
If people are good only because they fear punishment, and hope for reward, then we are a sorry lot indeed.
--Albert Einstein
When it shall be said in any country in the world, my POOR are happy,
neither distress nor ignorance is to be found among them; my JAILS are
empty of prisoners, my streets of BEGGARS; the AGED are not in want,
the taxes are not oppressive . . . when these things can be said,
then may that country boast its constitution and its government."
- Thomas Paine
As nightfall does not come at once, neither does oppression.
In both instances, there's a twilight where everything remains seemingly unchanged,
and it is in such twilight that we must be aware of change in the air, however slight,
lest we become unwitting victims of the darkness.
-- Supreme Court Justice William O. Douglas
I see in the near future a crisis approaching that unnerves me and causes me to tremble for the safety of my country.
As a result of the war, corporations have been enthroned and an era of corruption in high places will follow, and the money power of the country will endeavor to prolong its reign by working upon the prejudices
of the people until all wealth is aggregated in a few hands, and the Republic is destroyed.
I feel at this moment more anxiety for the safety of my country than ever before, even in the midst of war.
-- Abraham Lincoln, In a letter written to William Elkin less than five months before he was assassinated.
"I wish Bill Gates the best, I really do. I just think he and Microsoft are a bit narrow. He'd be a broader guy if he had dropped acid once or gone off to an ashram when he was younger."
-- Steve Jobs, Co-founder of Apple Computers, 1997
Small is the number of them that see with their own eyes and feel with their own hearts .
"We're going to have the best-educated American people in the world!" - Dan Quayle
with its blue light and amyl-nitrate atmosphere, withdraw your jamlover from my niddling platzer, woke up in the middle of the night drenched in fear, Wonder Bread bag shoes and singing Helter Skelter, writing skills improve but some problems still linger, Yeah it's my inner child man. Fucks me up hardcore, you can get up to vice president and die or, you have a piaster you're worth a piaster, you know the urge to want to kill the messenger, You know who you are you deadmeat motherfucker!, you may be a lover but you ain't no dancer, you put your bra on backwards and it fits better, you sometimes work undercover as a sofa, You want anarchy? Go live in Nicaragua, you will develop a craving for bananas, you'd be showing your penis to a court of law, you'd swear the juice is laced with cottony fibers, you've handcuffed yourself to the refrigerator
- some guy on the internet
I am a holder of the paleolithic work ethic... hunt and gather what
you need to feed and shelter your people: 2-3 hours a day...
Then hang out and tell stories, make art, dream, roll in the hay with
your partners, and live in the blazingly bright natural world.
-- Steve Self
At a time like this, scorching irony, not convincing argument, is needed. O! Had I the ability,
and could reach the nation's ear, I would today, pour out a fiery stream of biting ridicule, blasting
reproach, withering sarcasm, and stern rebuke. For it is not light that is needed, but fire;
it is not the gentle shower, but thunder. We need the storm, the whirlwind, the earthquake.
The feeling of the nation must be quickened; the conscience of the nation must be roused;
the propriety of the nation must be startled; the hypocrisy of the nation must be exposed;
its crimes against God and man must be proclaimed and denounced.
-- Frederick Douglass
