no. 56

"Hitler is not an aberration in history; he is a cautionary tale."

Samurai Frog

no. 55

"I think it’s nice that Voldemort always waits until the end of the school year to try and kill Harry.

Despite his flaws, Voldemort really cares about Harry’s education."

Hannah

no. 54

"The first step towards getting somewhere is to decide that you are not going to stay where you are."

John Pierpont

no. 53

"Whoever controls the media, the images, controls the culture."

- Allen Ginsberg

no. 52

Everyone is entitled to his own opinion, but not his own facts.

Daniel Patrick Moynihan (1927-2003) - former US Senator (D-NY) and sociologist. Quote sourced from Robert Sobel’s review of Past Imperfect: History According to the Movies.

no. 51

"Remember team, there is no 'I' in 'go fuck yourself!'"

Jerry Murphy

no. 50

"Patriotism is the virtue of the vicious."

Oscar Wilde

no. 49

"Against the assault of laughter nothing can stand."

Mark Twain

no. 48

"I think you're stating something we've discussed on this site before. That the Enlightenment experiment in both democracy AND in capitalism (two very different things) that made the 20th Century what it was--was essentially an experiment in ENGINEERING. A system--a sort of machine if you will--was CONSTRUCTED which magnificently channeled human motivation INTO self-sustaining, beneficent directions.

Now in the 21st century, the right-wing is cheerfully dismantling the Great Machine under the bizarre theory that because that machine worked so well, it has proven that human motivation NATURALLY tends toward self-sustaining, beneficent directions, and that machines actually get in the way of this process.

It's analogous to a claim that the functioning of the internal combustion engine proves that the best way to make use of hydrocarbons for motive power is uncontrolled explosions--that the engine itself is somehow retarding the process."

LarryHart commenting at Contrary Brin

no. 47

"Selfishness is not living as one wishes to live, it is asking others to live as one wishes to live."

Oscar Wilde

no. 46

"Descartes popularized the idea that reality is limited to what we can measure. Economists have taken this error farther by thinking that value is the same as money, so they don't notice that many of the foundations of value and wealth in our society are declining.

...the dominant culture uses money not just to measure material value, but to measure human value and moral value: the more money that passes through your hands, the more successful and virtuous you are. By this logic, Jesus Christ was a parasite and Bernard Madoff was God."

via Ran Prieur, dated Oct 3, 2009, referring to an article at The Archdruid Report.

no. 45

"I have never made but one prayer to God, a very short one. 'O Lord, make my enemies ridiculous.' And God granted it."

Voltaire

no. 44

"We have always known that heedless self-interest was bad morals, now we know that it is bad economics."

Franklin Delano Roosevelt, Jan. 20, 1937

no. 43

"The current recession is a nightmare for people who have lost their jobs, homes, and savings; and it’s part of a continuing nightmare for the poor. That’s why we have to do all we can to get the economy back on track. But most other Americans are now discovering they can exist surprisingly well buying fewer of the things they never really needed to begin with."

Robert Reich

no. 42

"There may be times when we are powerless to prevent injustice, but there must never be a time when we fail to protest."

Elie Wiesel

no. 41

"Last week, I listened to audiobooks while cleaning. My earbuds kept falling out while I was cleaning the bathroom, and I was reminded of something I read or heard someone say about listening to dharma tapes while driving. I wish I could remember the source and share it, but it escapes me in the moment. But in a nutshell, it was suggested that when we drive, we could just drive. Maybe it is not the time to listen to anything... maybe it is a gift of time with ourselves where we can be quiet and focus on the wheel beneath our hands and the pedals beneath our feet and the road ahead. As my earbuds kept falling out I thought about this... how I was trying to make cleaning 'not cleaning'"

from Zen Under the Skin via Zen Filter

no. 40

"People will now go to films with subtitles, you know. They're not afraid of them. It's one of the upsides of text-messaging and e-mail. Maybe the only good thing to come of it."

Kristen Scott Thomas

no. 39

"Ambition drove many men to become false; to have one thought locked in the breast, another ready on the tongue."

Sallust

no. 38

“The sad exhaustion of an event named to repeat itself forever.”

@ibogost summing up 9-11 in a single evocative phrase.

via Gerry Canavan

no. 37

"The poor have occasionally objected to being governed badly; the rich have always objected to being governed at all."

G.K. Chesterton