no. 562

“I feel this beginning to happen...a sign that an epiphany is imminent, followed by inevitable changes. This is a very good thing. 
Nodus Tollens: The realization that the plot of your life doesn't make sense to you anymore.”

from "The Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows"

no. 561

“If humans could fly, they’d consider it exercise and never do it”

Nick Offerman

no. 560

“All governments lie, but disaster lies in wait for countries whose officials smoke the same hashish they give out.”

I. F. Stone  In a Time of Torment (1967)

no. 559

"Every day seems to deepen the severity and magnitude of our never-ending national facepalm."

John Pavlovitz in his essay, "The United States of Embarrassment"

no. 558

The pattern is astounding in its consistency:
They have no interest in contributing to the common good.
They will never build—they will only subtract.
They are incapable of creating anything meaningful or beautiful or life-giving.
They only know how to destroy.
They only know how to take.
They only know how to use up.
That is what cancerous things do.
They pollute.
They kill.

John Pavlovitz discussing Donald Trump and the Republican Party (e.i., the Party of "No")

no. 557

"If you insist that the needs of other children aren’t everyone’s responsibility, then you insist that children have no intrinsic value to society until they prove profitable. 

Eventually society will believe you."

Julius Goat on Twitter, discussing Republicans' concern for human life actually being a need to control.

no. 556

“I am opposing a social order in which it is possible for one man who does absolutely nothing that is useful to amass a fortune of hundreds of millions of dollars, while millions of men and women who work all the days of their lives secure barely enough for a wretched existence.”

Eugene Debs

no. 555

"Writing is thinking, and good, honest thinking involves revision."

Richard Russo in Everybody's Fool

no. 554

“They say nothing is impossible , but I do nothing every day”

Pooh, in the Christopher Robin movie

no. 553

 "When the facts are on your side, pound the facts. When the law is on your side, pound the law. When neither the facts nor the law is on you side, pound the table” 

old trial lawyer's adage

no. 552

"We need to become better at recognizing when an idea proposes an exclusive space, hidden as a proposal for a safe space.

An exclusive space is when full access to public life is seen as the right of a specific type of person, to the necessary exclusion of others.

People who benefit from exclusive spaces really love exclusive spaces.

A safe space is a space that becomes necessary when exclusive space already exists. It's a place that exists for that excluded other, and creates within a small specific parameter the full access to life that should already exist for them everywhere.

People who benefit from an exclusive space HATE safe spaces, it should be noted.

They point to those little pockets of safety from themselves as evidence that they themselves are victims of exclusive spaces."

Julius Goat, on Twitter

no. 551

“Everybody who votes I think is entitled to an opinion. If you don’t vote, I don’t think you’re entitled to an opinion. But I’ve always voted, all my life. I’ve never missed an election and when people say, ‘Hey, Hamill, shut up. Stick to acting,’ I said, ‘Really? I mean would you say that to a truck driver? Hey, shut up. Stick to truck driving.’ No. His vote is as important as mine and I think that’s the great equalizer. That’s what’s so great about democracy.”

Mark Hamill

no. 550

"All we need is a voluntary, free-spirited, open-ended program of procreative racial deconstruction. Everybody just gotta keep fuckin' everybody 'til they're all the same color."

Warren Beatty as Sen. Jay Billington Bulworth

no. 549

"One of the great errors of an elite education in the United States was that it taught those attending to think that intelligence and academic achievement were measures of value in some moral or metaphysical sense, equating their value with their education. Further, there are many types of intelligence, but the ones supported were academic in scope. There was little understanding of the value of social, emotional, and artistic intelligence. Those who had intellectual intelligence promulgated their type at the expense of others."

Michael Anderle in the novel "Payback Is A Bitch"

no. 548

"Life's a water slide where you die at the end."

Brian Sack's 11-year old son in a birthday card to his him.

no. 547

"Gee, I'm real sorry your mom blew up, Ricky."

Lane Myer in "Better Off Dead"

no. 546

"Jesus H. Christ and his All-girl Orchestra!"

An oath I read on Twitter.

no. 545

“I would much rather be excluded for whom I include than included for whom I exclude.”

Unknown

no. 544

"At some point, we have to start presuming that when Republicans do things with foreseeable bad consequences, it's because they want those consequences, not because they want something else."

NCSteve on Twitter

no. 543

"No, if you claimed to be embarrassed by Barack Obama but you're somehow not embarrassed by Donald Trump—I'm going to strongly suggest it was largely a pigmentation issue."

John Pavlovitz

no. 542

"Hillary Clinton wouldn't have been capable of the malice and malpractice Trump is capable of, simply because she's a rational, level-headed, intelligent, articulate, compassionate human being—and he is none of those things.”

John Pavlovitz

no. 541

"Libertarians are born on third base and spend their entire lives trying to make people believe they hit a triple."

-Lip Gallagher