"Why do we kill people who are killing people to show that killing people is wrong?"
-- Holly Near.
"He who joyfully marches to music in rank and file has already earned my contempt. He has been given a large brain by mistake, since for him the spinal cord would suffice."
-- Albert Einstein.
"Think for yourself. Question authority. Throughout human history, as our species has faced the frightening, terrorizing fact that we do not know who we are, or where we are going in this ocean of chaos, it has been the authorities, the political, the religious, the educational authorities who attempted to comfort us by giving us order, rules, regulations, informing, forming in our minds their view of reality. To think for yourself you must question authority and learn how to put yourself in a state of vulnerable, open-mindedness; chaotic, confused, vulnerability to inform yourself. Think for yourself. Question authority."
-- attributed to Timothy Leary.
"I want to be ripped apart by music. I want it to be something that feeds and replenishes, or that totally sucks the life out of you. I want to be dashed against the rocks."
-- Jeff Buckley.
“Publish and perish..”
--Giordano Bruno, as quoted by Ramamurti Shankar, in Quantum Mechanics
"In the province of the mind, what is believed to be true is true or becomes true, within limits to be found experientially and experimentally. These limits are further beliefs to be transcended. In the province of the mind, there are no limits."
-- John Lilly.
“Whereas psychology considered masochism as a disease, pre-nineteenth century religion regarded it as a cure. The ancients were in touch with the spiritual, physical and emotional value of masochism. For them, it was an essential part of reality; a combination of the soul in a tortured state, rapturous delight, exquisite pain and unbearable passion that brought them closer to experiencing union with something greater than their individual egos.”
-- Dorothy C. Hayden, CSW in Masochism as a Spiritual Path.
“The state can’t give you free speech and the state can’t take it away. You’re born with it like your eyes, like your ears. Freedom is something you assume, then you wait for someone to try and take it away. The degree to which you resist is the degree to which you are free.”
-- Old Campbell, from Ani Defranco poster.
“Men occasionally stumble on the truth, but most of them pick themselves up and hurry off as if nothing had happened.”
-- Sir Winston Churchill.
"Biologically the species is the accumulation of the experiments of all its successful individuals since the beginning."
-- H.G. Welles.
“We are the products of editing, rather than of authorship.”
-- George Wald.
“A tool is amoral; it has no morality, and is inherently neither good or bad. The intent of the user of the tool, however, may be either good or bad. So the tool can always be used either way, for beneficial purposes or for evil purposes. It's the hand that wields the knife that is moral or immoral; it is not the knife. The same cutting tool can be used by the surgeon to heal, or the murderer to kill. Human intent differentiates amorality into morality and immorality.”
-- Thomas E. Beardon, interview.
“Everything that can be invented has been invented.”
-- the Commissioner of the U.S. Office of Patents, Charles H. Duell, 1899.
“Keep your face to the sunshine and you can never see the shadow.”
-- Helen Keller.
“I am impregnated with myself, and when I know myself, I'll deliver.”
-- Anna Gross.
“Making love with you
Is like drinking sea water.
The more I drink
The thirstier I become,
Until nothing can slake my thirst
But to drink the entire sea.”
- Marichiko.
“Anything more than the truth would be too much.”
-- Robert Frost.
“1. Out of clutter, find simplicity.
2. From discord, find harmony.
3. In the middle of difficulty, lies opportunity.”
-- Albert Einstein, The Three Rules of Work
“You can only find truth with logic if you have already found it without it.”
-- G. K. Chesterton.
“Some of the world's greatest feats were accomplished by people not smart enough to know they were impossible.”
-- Doug Larson
“If you understand, things are as they are. If you do not understand, things are as they are.”
-- Gensha.
“`Freedom’ is just another word for `nothing left to lose’.”
-- Janis Joplin.
“Knowing is not enough;
We must Apply.
Willing is not enough;
We must Do.”
-- Goethe.
“Monitor your thoughts; they become words.
Monitor your words; they become actions.
Monitor your actions; they become habits.
Monitor your habits, they become character.
Keep track of your character,
For it becomes your future.”
-- ixoyc.
“Never offend people with style when you can offend them with substance.”
-- Sam Brown, Washington Post, January 26, 1977
“What is the seal of attained freedom?.-- No longer being ashamed in front of oneself.”
- Nietzsche, Aphorism 275.
“Paul Slazinger says, incidentally, that the human condition can be summed up in just one word, and this is the word: Embarrassment.”
-- Kurt Vonnegut.
“Courage is resistance to fear, mastery of fear, not absence of fear.”
-- Mark Twain.
“Against boredom, even the gods themselves struggle in vain.”
-- Nietzsche.
“You can trust the Americans to do the right thing, after they have tried every other alternative.”
-- Winston Churchill, 1941.
“What doesn't kill you, makes you stronger.”
-- Nietzsche, Twilight of the Idols.
“If you suffer and forgive those who made you suffer, you are the stronger of the two.”
-- Derek Ivany.
“The soul that can speak through the eyes
can also kiss with a gaze.
Isolation is aloneness that feels forced
upon you, like a punishment.
Solitude is aloneness you choose and embrace.
I think great things can come out of solitude,
out of going to a place where all is quiet except
the beating of your heart.”
-- Leanne M. Laskas.
“Don't look back. Something might be gaining on you.”
-- Leroy Paige.
“Good judgment comes from experience. Experience comes from bad judgment.”
-- Higdon's Law.
"There is no difference in principle between sharpening perception with an external instrument, such as a microscope, and sharpening it with an internal instrument, such as one of these...drugs. If they are an affront to the dignity of the mind, the microscope is an affront to the dignity of the eye and the telephone to the dignity of the ear. Strictly speaking, these drugs do not impart wisdom at all, any more than the microscope alone gives knowledge. They provide the raw materials of wisdom, and are useful to the extent that the individual can integrate what they reveal into the whole pattern of his behavior and the whole system of his knowledge."
-- Alan Watts, The Joyous Cosmology.
"Shamanism and similar areas of research have gained in significance because they postulate new ideas about mind and spirit. They speak of things like vastly expanding the realm of consciousness ... the belief, the knowledge, and even the experience that our physical world of the senses is a mere illusion, a world of shadows, and that the three-dimensional tool we call our body serves only as a container or dwelling place for Something infinitely greater and more comprehensive than that body and which constitutes the matrix of the real life."
-- Holger Kalweit, Dreamtime and Inner Space.
"You're basically killing each other to see who's got the better imaginary friend."
- Rich Jeni, on going to war over religion.
"I read somewhere that 77 per cent of all the mentally ill live in poverty. Actually, I'm more intrigued by the 23 per cent who are apparently doing quite well for themselves."
- Emo Philips.
“Never eat erotic pussy.”
-- Hedgehog-looking lad at Mentor Eat-N-Park.
“Thousands of people die every day in Kosovo, and here we are, worried about a few dead kids in Colorado.”
-- Buck, at Mentor Eat-N-Park.
“Have a cigarette -- don’t grab your boobs, have a cigarette.”
-- seat to the left during bar rush, Mentor Eat-N-Park, 3/14/99.
“There is no doubt that if we lived in a police state, it would be easier to catch terrorists. If we lived in a country that allowed the police to search your home at any time for any reason; if we lived in a country that allowed the government to open your mail, eavesdrop on your phone conversations, or intercept your email communications; if we lived in a country that allowed the government to hold people in jail indefinitely based on what they write or think, or based on mere suspicion that they are up to no good, then the government would no doubt discover and arrest more terrorists… But that probably would not be a country in which we would want to live. And that would not be a country for which we could, in good conscience, ask our young people to fight and die. In short, that would not be America. Preserving our freedom is one of the main reasons that we are now engaged in this new war on terrorism. We will lose that war without firing a shot if we sacrifice the liberties of the American people.”
-- Senator Russ Feingold in 10/25/01 Senate debate.
"This law is based on the faulty assumption that safety must come at the expense of civil liberties. The USA Patriot Act gives law enforcement agencies nationwide extraordinary new powers unchecked by meaningful judicial review."
-- Laura W. Murphy, Director of the ACLU's Washington National Office.
"I am playing with my Self, I am playing with the world's soul, I am the dialogue between my Self and el espiritu del mundo. I change myself, I change the world."
-- Gloria Anzaldua, Bordlands/LaFrontera: The New Mestiza.
"You either need to force yourself onto new tracks, or fucking de-rail the whole thing and change analogies."
-- Wise Man Omin Channing to Rewired.
"Speech is obscured by the gloss of this world. The net exists because of the fish. Once you catch the fish you can then forget the net. The rabbit snare exists because of the rabbit. Trap the rabbit and you can leave the snare. Words exist because of the meaning. Get the meaning and then you can forget the words. Where can I locate someone who forgets words, so that communication will be possible?"
-- Chuang Tzu.
“A committee is the only life form with 12 stomachs and no brain.”
-- Kirby.
“The chief cause of unhappiness and failure is trading what we want most for what we want in the moment.”
-- Success Hotline Online.
“An eye for an eye -- and the whole world would be blind.”
- Kahlil Gibran
“Trying to control life is like trying to control the ocean. The best you can hope for is to move with it, catch hints of the rhythm and not get caught in the undertow.”
-- Austin.
“One must still have chaos in oneself to be able to give birth to a dancing star.”
-- Nietzsche.
“Which are you trying to drink: the water or the wave?”
-- John Fowles, The Magus.
“Every problem contains within it it’s own solution.”
-- from an episode of Wonder Years.
"Every cloud has it's vast, bottomless pit of despair."
-- Plucky Duck.
"Life is like a beautiful melody, only all the lyrics are messed up."
-- Anon.
“Hey Tammy, you know what they say, don’t you? Never trust a person who eats a bagel after 10pm.”
- Adam, in Mentor Eat-N-Park, 2/14/98.
“Tell me is there something eluding you, sunshine?
Is this not what you expected to see?
If you’d like to find out what’s behind these cold eyes
you’ll just have to claw your way through the disguise.”
-- Pink Phloyd.
"When the going gets weird, the weird turn pro."
-- Hunter S. Thompson.
![:\](https://bluelight.org/xf/BL_Images/Orig_Emoji/wrygrin.gif "wry grin :\")