Experience hath shewn that even
under the best forms of government those entrusted with power have, in time, and by slow
operations, perverted it into tyranny.
No country has culturally institutionalized the creative and infinite
reinvention of oneself quite so deeply as the United States.
The man who does not read good books has no advantage over the man who
cannot read them.
Once a certain level of
institutionalization is reached, schools make people more stupid, while hospitals
make them sick.
There is no dead matter. Lifelessness
is only a facade concealing forms of life unknwon to us.
You can safely assume that
you've created God in your own image, when it turns out that God hates all the same people
you do.
Oderint dum metuant (Let them hate us, so long as they fear
us.)
Beverly Hills is the only ghetto in America where the rats don’t
live in the walls.
Technology possesses a mediative power which can minimize or even
eliminate the competitive follies which absorb so large a share of human activity.
It is useless to attempt to reason a man out of a thing he was never
reasoned into.
Any reviewer who expresses rage or loathing for a novel is
preposterous. He or she is like a person who has just put on full armor and attacked a hot
fudge sundae or banana split.
There are more signs than trees in America. There are more signs than
leaves. So I think of myself as a painter of American landscape.
–Anais Nin.
Read the great books, just the great ones. Ignore the others.
There’s not enough time.
The books that the world calls immoral are the books that show the
world its own shame.
A man's character is not his fate. A man's fate is the joke that his
life plays on his character.
No, I don't know that atheists should be considered as citizens, nor
should they be considered patriots. This is one nation under God.
The Jews are a nervous people. Nineteen centuries of Christian love
have taken a toll.
The fact is that more people have been slaughtered in the name of
religion than for any other single reason. That, THAT my friends, is true perversion.
There is a race between mankind and the universe. Mankind is trying to
build bigger, better, faster, and more foolproof machines. The universe is trying to build
bigger, better, and faster fools. So far the universe is winning.
Many people never stop to realize that a tree is a living thing, not
that different from a tall, leafy dog that has roots and is very quiet.
Any possible universe could be explained as the work of some sort of
designer. Even a universe that is completely chaotic...could be supposed to have been
designed by an idiot.
Here lies a man who was given a medal for killing two men, and a
dishonorable discharge for loving one.
–Tsao Hsueh-chin.
Who will say with confidence that sexual abuse is more permanently
damaging to children then threatening them with the eternal and unquenchable fires of
hell?
Various Children on Various Points of Christian Belief:
Whenever you are in doubt, or when the self becomes too much with you,
apply the following test. Recall the face of the poorest and the weakest woman whom you
have seen and ask yourself if the step you contemplate is going to be of any use to her.
Will she gain anything by it? Will it restore her to a control over her own life and
destiny? In other words, will it lead to help for the hungry and spiritually starving
millions? Then you will find your doubts and yourself melting away.
Many of these quotes are from this excellent site:
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