no. 601

“Hatred is always self hatred, and there is something suicidal about it.” 

James Baldwin

no. 600

"When the speech condemns a free press, you are hearing the words of a tyrant."

Thomas Jefferson...

Or perhaps not. Good phrase nonetheless.

no. 599

I wondered... if the people who had moved the jobs, whoever those people had actually been, ever came back to the city now , even to just drive through. And I wondered, when they did, what kind of feelings they might have, how they would explain the situation to themselves in a way that left them feeling like good people. Profit fed the life we lived, I knew that and saw the necessity of it. But those people had made a god of profit, it seemed to me, and according to the rules of their religion, if it was profitable to close the factory and ship the jobs overseas, then it was morally right. In order to keep from feeling guilty, they had, I supposed, devised all sorts of ways of thinking about what they did and didn't do, all sorts of clever rationalizations. It occurred to me that, in a different arena, I might be in the habit of doing the same thing.

Roland Merullo, from Breakfast With Buddha

no. 598

"Skepticism of authority is a built in prerequisite for a thinking person"

John Cusack on Twitter

no. 597

“In the end the Party would announce that two and two made five, and you would have to believe it. It was inevitable that they should make that claim sooner or later: the logic of their position demanded it." 

George Orwell, 1984

no. 596

"Murphy was an optimist".

Unknown

no. 595

Do you know how to tell the difference between cow shit and bullshit?
You throw it up in the air, if it comes down, its cow shit. If it doesn’t, its bullshit!

Old joke, apparently

no. 594

“It's only illegal when individuals do it. When governments and big business do it, it's perfectly legal. And if it isn’t, it very soon is."

Timothy Ellis in “Hero To The Rescue”

no. 593

"You can let your anger drive you, but don't let it steer." 

Daniel Keyes Moran

no. 592

"When the media is owned by those who believe they have the right to choose leaders, and who also believe that only the rich have the right to make decisions, the media ceases to be an objective reporting tool, and becomes an instrument of criminal conspiracy."

Timothy Ellis in "Hire A Hero"

no. 591

"I wonder not to see men wicked, but I often wonder to see them not ashamed."

Johnathan Swift

no. 590

“One thing I was coming to believe. If your number is up, you should have at least one last good bonk, before you go.”

From Tim Ellis’ book “Make Or Break The Hero”

no. 589

"Some men rob you with a six-gun -- others rob you with a fountain pen."

Woody Guthrie

no. 588

“Of course it is important to the political and social sciences that the essence of totalitarian government, and perhaps the nature of every bureaucracy, is to make functionaries and mere cogs in the administrative machinery out of men, and thus to dehumanize them. And one can debate long and profitably on the rule of Nobody, which is what the political form known as bureau-cracy truly is. . . When Hitler said that a day would come in Germany when it would be considered a “disgrace” to be a jurist, he was speaking with utter consistency of his dream of a perfect bureaucracy.”

From Hannah Arendt’s  1963 book, “Eichman in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil.”

no. 587

“The demagogue doesn't lead radicals, he radicalizes his supporters. With each outrage he drags them down by association until they feel they have no one else, and no one else will have them. It works.”

Garry Kasparov

no. 586

“...that laws and institutions must go hand in hand with the progress of the human mind. As that becomes more developed, more enlightened, as new discoveries are made, new truths disclosed, and manners and opinions change with the change of circumstances, institutions must advance also, and keep pace with the times. We might as well require a man to wear still the coat which fitted him when a boy, as civilized society to remain ever under the regimen of their barbarous ancestors." 

Thomas Jefferson

no. 585

“Implicit faith saves an infinity of trouble. How happy were we in submitting to the government, adopting the prejudices, and aping the manners of a nation, which we conceived to be the glory of the world, and the perfection of human nature?”

Francis Hopkinson, founding father from New Jersey

no. 584

"In corrupt systems, a few bad actors cost everyone else billions in order to bring in millions – the savings a factory can realize from dumping pollution in the water supply are much smaller than the costs we all bear from being poisoned by effluent. But the costs are widely diffused while the gains are tightly concentrated, so the beneficiaries of corruption can always outspend their victims to stay clear."

Cory Doctorow in "Zuck's Empire of Oily Rags"

no. 583

“But the liberal attitude does not say that you should oppose authority. It says only that you should be free to oppose authority, which is quite a different thing. The essence of the liberal outlook in the intellectual sphere is a belief that unbiased discussion is a useful thing and that men should be free to question anything if they can support their questioning by solid arguments. The opposite view, which is maintained by those who cannot be called liberals, is that the truth is already known, and that to question it is necessarily subversive.”

Bertrand Russell

no. 582

"Jesus never asked Christians to make a Christian nation"

Brandi Miller on Huffington Post