Against Quotes (page 67)
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We wanted to blast the world free of history.... picture yourself planting radishes and seed potatoes on the fifteenth green of a forgotten golf course. You'll hunt elk through the damp canyon forests around the ruins of Rockefeller Center, and dig clams next to the skeleton of the Space Needle leaning at a forty-five degree angle. We'll paint the skyscrapers with huge totem faces and goblin tikis, and every evening what's left of mankind will retreat to empty zoos and lock itself in cages as...
Chuck Palahniuk
I read that Monica Seles got stabbed. And although I have nothing against Monica Seles, I'm glad somebody in sports got stabbed. I like the idea of it; it's good entertainment. If we're lucky, it'll spread through sports. And show business, too! Wouldn't you like to see a guy jump up on stage and stab some famous singer? Especially a real shitty pop singer? Maybe they'll even start stabbing comedians. Fuck it, I'm ready! I never perform without my can of mace. I have a switchblade knife, too....
George Carlin
A ruler who discerning justice refuseth to it the sanction of law, demanding abnegation of rights and self-sacrifice, will not drive his subjects to these virtues, virtuous only if free, but by unnaturally making justice unlawful, will drive them rather to rebellion against all law.
J. R. R. Tolkien
Jerry-5486: "The most apparent thing that I noticed was how most of the people in this study derive their sense of identity and well-being from their immediate surroundings rather than from within themselves, and that's why they broke down—just couldn't stand the pressure—they had nothing within them to hold up against all of this.
Philip Zimbardo
Man disavows, and Deity disowns me; Hell might afford my miseries a shelter; Therefore Hell keeps her ever-hungry mouths all. Bolted against me. Hard lot! encompassed with a thousand dangers, Weary, faint, trembling with a thousand terrors, I'm called, if vanquished, to receive a sentence. Worse than Abiram's. Him the vindictive rod of angry Justice. Sent quick and howling to the centre headlong; I, fed with judgement, in a fleshy tomb, am. Buried above ground.
William Cowper
It seems - and who so astonished as they? - that they had held back material facts; that they were guilty of both suppressio veri and suggestio falsi (well-known gods against whom they often offended); further, that they were malignant in their dispositions, untrustworthy in their characters, pernicious and revolutionary in their influences, abandoned to the devils of wilfulness, pride, and a most intolerable conceit. Ninthly, and lastly, they were to have a care and to be very careful.
Rudyard Kipling
What struck me as I began to study history was how nationalist fervor--inculcated from childhood on by pledges of allegiance, national anthems, flags waving and rhetoric blowing--permeated the educational systems of all countries, including our own. I wonder now how the foreign policies of the United States would look if we wiped out the national boundaries of the world, at least in our minds, and thought of all children everywhere as our own. Then we could never drop an atomic bomb on...
Howard Zinn
I think that I shall never see. A poem lovely as a tree. A tree whose hungry mouth is pressed. Against the earth's sweet flowing breast; A tree that looks at God all day. And lifts her leafy arms to pray; A tree that may in summer wear. A nest of robins in her hair; Upon whose bosom snow has lain; Who intimately lives with rain. Poems are made by fools like me, But only God can make a tree.
Joyce Kilmer