Peter Kropotkin: Quote for September 30, 2011

The law is an adroit mixture of customs that are beneficial to society, and could be followed even if no law existed, and others that are of advantage to a ruling minority, but harmful to the masses of men, and can be enforced on them only by terror.

-- Peter Kropotkin

Categories: Peter Kropotkin

Victor Hugo: Quote for September 29, 2011

Do you hear the people sing
Lost in the valley of the night?
It is the music of a people
Who are climbing to the light.

For the wretched of the earth
There is a flame that never dies.
Even the darkest night will end
And the sun will rise.

-- Victor Hugo

from: Les Misérables (Book 1862)

Categories: Victor Hugo, Les Misérables

Edward Abbey: Quote for September 28, 2011

We are slaves in the sense that we depend for our daily survival upon an expand-or-expire agro-industrial empire—a crackpot machine—that the specialists cannot comprehend and the managers cannot manage. Which is, furthermore, devouring world resources at an exponential rate. We are, most of us, dependent employees.

-- Edward Abbey

Categories: Edward Abbey

Thomas Paine: Quote for September 27, 2011

ome writers have so confounded society with government, as to leave little or no distinction between them; whereas they are not only different, but have different origins ... Society is in every state a blessing, but Government, even in its best state, is but a necessary evil; in its worst state, an intolerable one.

-- Thomas Paine

Categories: Thomas Paine

Franz Kafka: Quote for September 26, 2011

The Revolution evaporates, & leaves behind only the slime of a new bureaucracy. The chains of tormented mankind are made out of red tape.

-- Franz Kafka

Categories: Franz Kafka

Lydia Maria Child: Quote for September 25, 2011

Nature made us individuals, as she did the flowers and the pebbles; but we are afraid to be peculiar, and so our society resembles a bag of marbles, or a string of mold candles. Why should we all dress after the same fashion? The frost never paints my windows twice alike.

-- Lydia Maria Child

Categories: Lydia Maria Child

Karl Marx: Quote for September 24, 2011

Anyone who knows anything of history knows that great social changes are impossible without feminine upheaval. Social progress can be measured exactly by the social position of the fair sex, the ugly ones included.

-- Karl Marx

Categories: Karl Marx

Edmund Burke: Quote for September 23, 2011

There is a boundary to men's passions when they act from feelings; but none when they are under the influence of imagination.

-- Edmund Burke

Categories: Edmund Burke

Fred Rodell: Quote for September 21, 2011

In tribal times, there were the medicine men. In the Middle Ages, there were the priests. Today, there are the lawyers. For every age, a group of bright boys, learned in their trades and jealous of their learning, who blend technical competence with plain and fancy hocus-pocus to make themselves masters of their fellow men. For every age, a pseudo-intellectual autocracy, guarding the tricks of the trade from the uninitiated, and running, after its own pattern, the civilization of its day.

-- Fred Rodell

Categories: Fred Rodell

Dr. Lorraine Day: Quote for September 20, 2011

The media's goal is to "promote both sides of the issue until confusion reigns" and the individual throws up his hands in exasperation concluding that is impossible to know what is truth.

-- Dr. Lorraine Day

Categories: Dr. Lorraine Day

Henry Ford: Quote for September 19, 2011

Thinking is the hardest work there is, which is the probable reason why so few engage in it.

-- Henry Ford

Categories: Henry Ford

Madame Blavatsky: Quote for September 18, 2011

To act wisely when the time for action comes, to wait patiently when it is time for repose, put man in accord with the tides. Ignorance of this law results in periods of unreasoning enthusiasm on the one hand, and depression on the other.

-- Madame Blavatsky

Categories: Madame Blavatsky

Edgar Cayce: Quote for September 17, 2011

To do good is to think constructively, to think creatively. What is creative, what is constructive, ye may ask? That which never hinders, which never makes for the bringing of any harm to others.

-- Edgar Cayce

from: Reading 1206-13

Categories: Edgar Cayce

Akhenaton: Quote for September 16, 2011

Be upright in thy whole life; be content in all its changes; so shalt thou make thy profit out of all occurrences; so shall everything that happeneth unto thee be the source of praise.

-- Akhenaton

Categories: Akhenaton

Florence Scovel Shinn: Quote for September 15, 2011

Every great work, every great accomplishment, has been brought into manifestation through holding to the vision, and often just before the big achievement, comes apparent failure and discouragement.

-- Florence Scovel Shinn

Categories: Florence Scovel Shinn

Malcolm X: Quote for September 14, 2011

I'm for truth, no matter who tells it. I'm for justice, no matter who it is for or against. I'm a human being, first and foremost, and as such I'm for whoever and whatever benefits humanity as a whole.

-- Malcolm X

Categories: Malcolm X

Naomi Wolf: Quote for September 13, 2011

When we quietly go about our business as our rights are plundered, when we yield to passivity and switch on the wii and hand over our power, we are not acting like true Americans. Indeed, at those moments we are giving up our citizenship.

-- Naomi Wolf

Categories: Naomi Wolf

Eric Hoffer: Quote for September 12, 2011

If the Communists win Europe and a large part of the world, it will not be because they know how to stir up discontent or how to infect people with hatred, but because they know how to preach hope.

-- Eric Hoffer

Categories: Eric Hoffer

David Ray Griffin: Quote for September 11, 2011

It is already possible to know, beyond a reasonable doubt, one very important thing: the destruction of the World Trade Center was an inside job, orchestrated by terrorists within our own government.

-- David Ray Griffin

Categories: David Ray Griffin

Walter Lippmann: Quote for September 10, 2011

When distant and unfamiliar and complex things are communicated to great masses of people, the truth suffers a considerable and often a radical distortion. The complex is made over into the simple, the hypothetical into the dogmatic, and the relative into an absolute.

-- Walter Lippmann

Categories: Walter Lippmann

Seneca the Younger: Quote for September 9, 2011

Religion is regarded by the common people as true, by the wise as false, and by the rulers as useful.

-- Seneca the Younger

Categories: Seneca the Younger

Virginia Woolf: Quote for September 8, 2011

Few people ask from books what books can give us. Most commonly we come to books with blurred and divided minds, asking of fiction that it shall be true, of poetry that it shall be false, of biography that it shall be flattering, of history that it shall enforce our own prejudices. If we could banish all such preconceptions when we read, that would be an admirable beginning.

-- Virginia Woolf

Categories: Virginia Woolf

John Taylor Gatto: Quote for September 7, 2011

Whatever an education is, it should make you a unique individual, not a conformist; it should furnish you with an original spirit with which to tackle the big challenges; it should allow you to find values which will be your road map through life; it should make you spiritually rich, a person who loves whatever you are doing, wherever you are, whomever you are with; it should teach you what is important, how to live and how to die.

-- John Taylor Gatto

Categories: John Taylor Gatto

John Gilmore: Quote for September 6, 2011

Truth: the most deadly weapon ever discovered by humanity. Capable of destroying entire perceptual sets, cultures, and realities. Outlawed by all governments everywhere. Possession is normally punishable by death.

-- John Gilmore

Categories: John Gilmore

Gore Vidal: Quote for September 5, 2011

As societies grow decadent, the language grows decadent, too. Words are used to disguise, not to illuminate, action: you liberate a city by destroying it. Words are to confuse, so that at election time people will solemnly vote against their own interests.

-- Gore Vidal

Categories: Gore Vidal