People seem good while they are oppressed, but they only wish to become oppressors in their turn: life is nothing but a competition to be the criminal rather than the victim.
-- Bertrand Russell
I reverently believe that the maker who made us all makes everything in New
England, but the weather. I don't know who makes that, but I think it must be
raw apprentices in the weather-clerks factory who experiment and learn how, in
New England, for board and clothes, and then are promoted to make weather for
countries that require a good article, and will take their custom elsewhere
if they don't get it.
-- Mark Twain
The most improper job of any man is bossing other men. Not one in a million is fit for it, and least of all those who seek the opportunity.
-- J. R. R. Tolkien
That government is best which governs not at all; and when men are prepared for it, that will be the kind of government which they will have.
-- Henry David Thoreau
Abundant cheap credit would drastically alter the balance of power between capital and labor, and returns on labor would replace returns on capital as the dominant form of economic activity.
-- Kevin Carson
Instead of entrusting the defence of your interests to others, see to the matter by yourselves. Instead of trying to choose advisers that will guide you in future actions, do the thing yourselves, and do it now! Men of good will shall not have to look long in vain for the opportunity. To put on others' shoulders the responsibility of one's actions is cowardice.
-- Elisee Reclus
The peoples' revolution will arrange its revolutionary organization from the bottom up and from the periphery to the centre, in keeping with the principle of liberty.
-- Mikhail Bakunin
When I was younger, I could remember anything, whether it had happened
or not; but my faculties are decaying now and soon I shall be so I
cannot remember any but the things that never happened. It is sad to
go to pieces like this but we all have to do it.
-- Mark Twain
Q: How many DEC repairman does it take to fix a flat?
A: Five; four to hold the car up and one to swap tires.
Q: How long does it take?
A: It's indeterminate.
It will depend upon how many flats they've brought with them.
Q: What happens if you've got TWO flats?
A: They replace your generator.
Write on my gravestone: "Infidel, Traitor" -- infidel to every church that compromises with wrong; traitor to every government that oppresses the people.
-- Wendell Phillips
The wise man knows that the words "The happiness of the people," have no meaning. Happiness is internal and individual. It can only be produced within oneself.
-- Han Ryner
The camel died quite suddenly on the second day, and Selena fretted
sullenly and, buffing her already impeccable nails -- not for the first
time since the journey begain -- pondered snidely if this would dissolve
into a vignette of minor inconveniences like all the other holidays spent
with Basil.
-- Winning sentence, 1983 Bulwer-Lytton bad fiction contest.
A consistent anarchist must oppose private ownership of the means of production, and the wage-slavery which is a component of this system, as incompatible with the principle that labor must be freely undertaken and under the control of the producer.
-- Noam Chomsky
The really wholesome, joyous life of the individual or group is not built up with the aid of power and programs that seek to enclose it within artificial constructs and written laws.
-- Nestor Makhno
October.
This is one of the peculiarly dangerous months to speculate in stocks in.
The others are July, January, September, April, November, May, March, June,
December, August, and February.
-- Mark Twain, "Pudd'nhead Wilson's Calendar"
Children, by nature, are keen, passionate and curious. What was referred to as laziness is often merely an awakening of sensitivity, a psychological inability to submit to certain absurd duties, and a natural result of the distorted, unbalanced education given to them. This laziness, which leads to an insuperable reluctance to learn, is, contrary to appearances, sometimes proof of intellectual superiority and a condemnation of the teacher.
-- Octave Mirbeau
All I know is what the words know, and dead things, and that
makes a handsome little sum, with a beginning and a middle and
an end, as in the well-built phrase and the long sonata of the dead.
-- Samuel Beckett
I think my basic viewpoint is that everything the left and right say about each other is true. And the reason it's true is because they have so much in common.
-- Bob Black
I'm for truth, no matter who tells it. I'm for justice, no matter who it's for or against. I'm a human being first and foremost, and as such I am for whoever and whatever benefits humanity as a whole.
-- Malcolm X
We might mention the monumental hypocrisy of the regulation of credit unions in the United States, which require that their membership must share some common bond, like working for the same employer.
-- Kevin Carson
We must fight authority and privilege, while taking advantage from the benefits that civilization has conferred. We must not destroy anything that satisfies human need however badly -- until we have something better to put in its place.
-- Errico Malatesta
The true Southern watermelon is a boon apart, and not to be mentioned with
commoner things. It is chief of the world's luxuries, king by the grace of God
over all the fruits of the earth. When one has tasted it, he knows what the
angels eat. It was not a Southern watermelon that Eve took; we know it because
she repented.
-- Mark Twain, "Pudd'nhead Wilson's Calendar"
Persons attempting to find a motive in this narrative will be prosecuted;
persons attempting to find a moral in it will be banished; persons attempting
to find a plot in it will be shot. By Order of the Author
-- Mark Twain, "The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn"
Man thought that the important thing was to have, and did not know that the important thing is to be. The true perfection of man lies, not in what man has, but in what man is.
-- Oscar Wilde
Q: Why don't Scotsmen ever have coffee the way they like it?
A: Well, they like it with two lumps of sugar. If they drink
it at home, they only take one, and if they drink it while
visiting, they always take three.
We live in a nightmare of falsehoods, and there are few who are sufficiently awake and aware to see things as they are. Our first duty is to clear away illusions and recover a sense of reality.
-- Nikolai Berdyaev
Well, anyway, I was reading this James Bond book, and right away I realized
that like most books, it had too many words. The plot was the same one that
all James Bond books have: An evil person tries to blow up the world, but
James Bond kills him and his henchmen and makes love to several attractive
women. There, that's it: 24 words. But the guy who wrote the book took
*thousands* of words to say it.
Or consider "The Brothers Karamazov", by the famous Russian alcoholic
Fyodor Dostoyevsky. It's about these two brothers who kill their father.
Or maybe only one of them kills the father. It's impossible to tell because
what they mostly do is talk for nearly a thousand pages. If all Russians talk
as much as the Karamazovs did, I don't see how they found time to become a
major world power.
I'm told that Dostoyevsky wrote "The Brothers Karamazov" to raise
the question of whether there is a God. So why didn't he just come right
out and say: "Is there a God? It sure beats the heck out of me."
Other famous works could easily have been summarized in a few words:
* "Moby Dick" -- Don't mess around with large whales because they symbolize
nature and will kill you.
* "A Tale of Two Cities" -- French people are crazy.
-- Dave Barry
Stop! There was first a game of blindman's buff. Of course there was.
And I no more believe Topper was really blind than I believe he had eyes
in his boots. My opinion is, that it was a done thing between him and
Scrooge's nephew; and that the Ghost of Christmas Present knew it. The
way he went after that plump sister in the lace tucker, was an outrage
on the credulity of human nature.
A syndicalist is more likely to be a professor than a proletarian, more likely to be a folk singer than a factory worker. Organizers on principle, syndicalists are disunited and factionalized. Remarkably, this dullest of all anarchisms attracts some of the most irrational and hysterical adherents.
-- Bob Black
When [the synthesis anarchist organization] develops itself fully (as happened in Spain in '36) it begins to dangerously resemble a party. Synthesis becomes control.
-- Alfredo Bonanno
This perversion of the ethical values soon crystallized into the all-dominating slogan of the Communist Party: THE END JUSTIFIES ALL MEANS.
-- Emma Goldman
I am sorry to see friends impelled by passion drifting to the idea of vengeance, which is so little scientific, so sterile. But armed defense of a right is not violence.
-- Elisee Reclus
It is easy to find fault, if one has that disposition. There was once a man
who, not being able to find any other fault with his coal, complained that
there were too many prehistoric toads in it.
-- Mark Twain, "Pudd'nhead Wilson's Calendar"
We tried many times before to speed on the social revolution in Spain; attempted to stir up the feelings of the people and to raise the banner of libertarian communism.
-- Frederica Montseny
Everybody who has ever worked for a corporation knows that corporations conspire all the time. Politicians conspire all the time, pot-dealers conspire not to get caught by the narcs, the world is full of conspiracies. Conspiracy is natural primate behavior.
-- Robert Anton Wilson
Ever since FDR and Truman crafted the postwar order at the end of WWII, the central goal of U.S. security policy has been to globalize the economy, expand the volume of international trade and maintain institutional arrangements for propping up global corporate rule.
-- Kevin Carson
Rest in peace, poor Mata! Someone who never knew you has sworn to avenge you. And the memory of your blood-drenched eyes will drive his dagger; the vision of your mutilated body will render his bomb more effective.
-- Bruno Filippi
Oddbean new post about login | logout
Notes by ₿riann | export