no. 695

"We have two lives and the second begins when you realize you only have one.” Confusious

no. 694

“When plunder becomes a way of life for a group of men in a society, over the course of time they create for themselves a legal system that authorizes it and a moral code that glorifies it.” Frédéric Bastiat

no. 693

“Never allow someone to be your priority while allowing yourself to be their option.” - Mark Twain

no. 692

'That which can be asserted without evidence, can be dismissed without evidence.' Christopher Hitchens – author and humanist, was born on this day 1949.

no. 691

"Somehow over the last four decades, we went from looking for simple, practical solutions to literally manufacturing ridiculous drama so that we can be outraged for our entertainment all the damn time. We don't care about fixing stuff, we want to watch people shouting at each other." Stonekettle, from his article "No Happy Ending"

no. 690

no. 689

"Had I manifested magic back then, I might very well have reacted in a way not conducive to secrecy. Certainly with a ‘time to fix the world’ attitude. The problem is, it takes until after you retire from normal working life to realize that the world doesn’t want to get fixed, and trying just marks you as a threat." Timothy Ellis in "Old Magic"

no. 688

“Never write if you can speak; never speak if you can nod; never nod if you can wink. And never put it in email” Eliot Spitzer, I’m told.

no. 687

"We had an agreement to be open-minded. Open-minded does not mean you choose the most illogical solution and call it open-minded. That’s just being stupid and wrapping it up in beautiful stupid paper. Unwrap it, and you realize you have been an idiot." from Michael Anderle's book Forever Defend

no. 686

That Christianity became an imperial religion is antithetical to everything Jesus lived and taught. The Empire was never a friend to Jesus, and Jesus was never a friend to the Empire. The Empire executed Jesus with its most public and brutal method in order to display its power and eliminate a threat, and when the Jesus movement would not die, the Empire eventually co-opted the movement for its own purposes. That is what empires do. - From “Refusing the Hand of the Empire” by Mark Davies

no. 685

Christianity in the United States continues in [the] long and tragic tradition of serving as the religion of the Empire. The way of Jesus has been mistaken for the American way; including adherence to its social, political, and economic systems. Through increasingly sophisticated and ever present forms of propaganda, a form of Christianity is used to bolster loyalty to and support for the Empire. Every cry that we are a Christian nation is an echo of the imperial voice that seeks to tame Jesus and use the power of the Jesus movement to consolidate power of the Empire through the alienation of the “other,” by highlighting that their way is not our way, that “they” are not us. - From “Refusing the Hand of the Empire”

no. 684

"Great minds discuss ideas, average minds discuss events, and small minds discuss people." Eleanor Roosevelt

no. 682

no. 683

"Environmentalism without class struggle is just gardening." - Chico Mendes, Brazilian environmentalist and trade union leader (1944-1988), assassinated for trying to save the Amazon

no. 681

no. 680

“It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends upon his not understanding it”. Upton Sinclair

no. 679

...we were all living inside an enormous novel, an electronic novel, governed by instantaneity. In many ways, time didn’t exist in the sixties, just a set of endlessly proliferating presents. Time returned in the seventies, but not a sense of the future."

J. G. Ballard

no. 678

“The dangerous allure of Twitter is the illusion we can fix the world just with words.” 

@Xeni

no. 677

 "In a free society, some are guilty, but all are responsible.”

Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel

no. 676

"Don't be seduced into thinking that that which does not make a profit is without value."

Arthur Miller