no. 424

"A ship in a harbor is safe, but that is not what ships are built for."

W.T. Shedd

no. 423

“Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and it never will.”

Frederick Douglas

no. 422

In all social systems there must be a class to do the menial duties, to perform the drudgery of life. That is, a class requiring but a low order of intellect and but little skill. Its requisites are vigor, docility, fidelity. Such a class you must have, or you would not have that other class which leads progress, civilization, and refinement…. Fortunately for the South, she found a race adapted to that purpose to her hand. A race inferior to her own, but eminently qualified in temper, in vigor, in docility, in capacity to stand the climate, to answer all her purposes. We use them for our purpose, and call them slaves.

Senator James Henry Hammond, a South Carolina plantation owner, in a senate floor speech from 1858 (a statement made pre-civil war, obviously).

Tell me, just how different is this idea from the idea currently being used to justify our current level of income inequality; that the rich somehow "deserve" their wealth while the poor "deserve" their poverty.

no. 421

“In keeping silent about evil, in burying it so deep within us that no sign of it appears on the surface, we are implanting it, and it will rise up a thousand fold in the future. When we neither punish nor reproach evildoers, we are not simply protecting their trivial old age, we are thereby ripping the foundations of justice from beneath new generations.”

Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, The Gulag Archipelago 1918-1956


Or as my friend Mark Davis put it, "Silence is to injustice what oxygen is to fire."

no. 420

"Not seeing things as the are" is the field where the other causes of suffering germinate.

The Yoga Sutra of Patanjali, ca. 200 BC

no. 419

Vickram beamed at me. "Oh yes, madame. I am always happy. It is like this: What happens to us in life is for God to decide. But whether to be happy or not - that is our choice."

Anne Cushman, from Enlightenment For Idiots, p. 67

no. 418

"Euphemism is the opposite of swearing. Swearwords work because they carry an emotional charge derived from their direct reference to taboo objects, orifices, and actions. Euphemisms exist to cover up those same taboos, to disguise or erase the things that prompt such strong feelings."

Melissa Mohr, Holy Shit, p.197

no. 417

via


If I had been paying attention, I would have made this quote number 420. That folks, is poor planning.

no. 416

“Anyone who has ever struggled with poverty knows how extremely expensive it is to be poor.”

James Baldwin

no. 415

no. 414

"I find it interesting that while destroying the NEA seems to be one foundations of education “reform”, no one has suggesting destroying the AMA for healthcare reform."

Jake the snake commenting at Balloon Juice.

no. 413

This man, whom I once thought of as a romantic hero--a brave shining white knight, or the dark knight as he said. He’s not a hero, he’s a man with serious, deep emotional flaws, and he’s dragging me into the dark. Can I not guide him into the light?

"That pretty much sums up everything that's wrong here. This love conquers all bullshit that so much of modern pop culture seems to be built around. You can't change a man into a better person by just staying in an abusive relationship: staying in the relationship is just positive reinforcement of his abusive tendencies. The idea that we should glorify an abusive relationship into a romantic one is just fucked up and wrong."

Samurai Frog, from one of his in-depth, chapter-by-chapter dissections of "50 Shades Of Grey"

no. 412

Conservative, n - A person who believes that the poor are to blame for their problems while his own problems are the fault of the government.

Gin And Tacos

no. 411

April is the cruelest month, breeding
Lilacs out of the dead land, mixing
Memory and desire, stirring
Dull roots with spring rain...

T. S. Eliot



It's also my birthday month

no. 410

“Plot idea: 97% of the world’s scientists contrive an environmental crisis, but are exposed by a plucky band of billionaires & oil companies.”

Scott Westerfeld

no. 409

“In the end, we will remember not the words of our enemies, but the silence of our friends.”

Martin Luther King Jr.

no. 408

"If you still dream about having a Rolex when you turn 50, your life failure".

Boulet, responding to French publicist Jaques Seguela, who said "If you dont own a Rolex when you turn 50, your life is a failure", while defending the purchase of a 13,000 Euro Rolex by French President Nicolas Sarkozy.

no. 407

“If you wait by the river long enough, the bodies of your enemies will float by.”

Sun Tzu

no. 406

"But all forms of prejudice are based on the same principle: you pre-judge somebody based on one most likely irrelevant fact, and you refuse to change your opinion based on actual, observable fact. It's the opposite of rational, liberal-minded thinking—and we don't mean liberal in any political sense. We mean liberal in the way Austen (and other writers of her time) used it: open-minded, willing to change your ideas, and interested in facts rather than opinions. You know—exactly the opposite of prejudiced."

from a Shmoop discussion of Pride And Prejudice

no. 405