5.24.2009

All My Favorites

Here are a bunch of little bits of wisdom I forgot I had once collected:

" it's sacrilege to waste the talent for idleness. "
william faulkner


"neither am i good or bad. / i'd give up my halo for a horn and the horn for the hat i once had. / i'm only breathing." ian anderson

"as long as the protest remains civil and well-mannered, as long as we - the self-appointed opinion-makers - all continue to behave in respectable ways, as long as we continue to mindlessly defer to institutions that hav e themselves begun to cynically drop any pretence of being moral, just, or respectable - why should the government listen? it's doing just fine . . . if you're a writer, you tend to keep those aching eyes open. every day you are reminded that there is no such thing as innocence. and every day you have to think of new ways of saying old and obvious things. things about love and greed. things about politics and governance. about power and powerlessness. things that must be said over and over again." arundhati roy


"the hottest places in hell are reserved for those who, in times of great moral crises, maintain their neutrality." dante alighieri


"I am deemed a radical because I believe that partisan politics should be left to the wayside when hundreds of thousands of people are dying for a war based on lies that is supported by Democrats and Republican alike. It amazes me that people who are sharp on the issues and can zero in like a laser beam on lies, misrepresentations, and political expediency when it comes to one party refuse to recognize it in their own party. Blind party loyalty is dangerous whatever side it occurs on. People of the world look on us Americans as jokes because we allow our political leaders so much murderous latitude and if we don?t find alternatives to this corrupt "two" party system our Representative Republic will die and be replaced with what we are rapidly descending into with nary a check or balance:
a fascist corporate wasteland." cindy sheehan.


"They stand torpid in cages, in violent motion / unmoved / but alert! / predatory minds, un- / affected / UNINCONVENIENCED / unsexed, up / and down (with wing motion) This is how / the money's made . . . Oh I could cry! / cry upon your young shoulder for what I know." william carlos williams


"all i'm writing is just what i feel, that's all, and not really using too many good . . . i don't really round it off too good. i just keep it almost naked." jimi hendrix


"and there are only a tiny handful of politicians who will raise the banner of subordinating corporate power to the sovereignty of the american people. the debates are sterile. the debates are exercises in parallel news conferences repeating ad infinitum the same words and phrases of evasion. they will not confront the corporate crime wave. they will not confront the destruction of our democracy. they will not confront the usurpation of our electoral processes" ralph nader


"the soldier is applauded who refuses to serve in an unjust war by those who do not refuse to sustain the unjust government which makes the war . . . thus, under the name of Order and Civil Government, we are all made at last to pay homage to and support our own meanness. after the first blush of sin comes its indifference; and from immoral it becomes, as it were, unmoral, and not quite unnecessary to that life which we have made. the broadest and most prevalent error requires the most disinterested virtue to sustain it.
action from principle, the perception and the performance of right, changes things and relations; it is essentially revolutionary, and does not consist wholly with anything which was. it not only divided States and churches, it divides families; ay, it divides the individual, separating the diabolical in him from the divine" thoreau.




"fifty thousand men were sent to do the will of one. / his claim was phrased quite simply, though he never voiced it loud, / i am he, the chosen one. / in his name they could slaughter, for his name they could die. / though many there were believed in him, still more were sure he lied, / but they'll fight the battle on." genesis

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