21-01-2022, 02:16 PM
"You have comfy baby-stories you tell yourselves to explain why you're not good people. What sin you committed or how you didn't do what this or that god told you.
Instead of learning how not to be bad, you learn how to be forgiven & carried off to heaven. Most of you find it easier to believe in the baby-stories than to learn from history & science, because it takes brains & hard study to understand history & science, but the stories are easy & comfy.
People who want things easy & comfy resent people who study things. They teach their children the comfy stories & tell them not to worry about studying, just buy a ticket to go to heaven & gradually, everyone becomes as ignorant as everyone else."
Sheri Tepper, The Margarets.
"Every gun that is made, every warship that is launched, every rocket fired signifies in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger & are not fed, those who are cold & are not clothed. This world in arms is not spending money alone. It is spending the sweat of it's labourers, the genius of its scientists, the hopes of its children. This is not the way of life in any true sense. Under the clouds of war it is humanity hanging on a cross of iron."
Dwight Eisenhower.
"To live without identity, except as a human being. Because life, the birth & death essence of life, is flow, not security. It cuts all ground from beneath our feet, it picks us up & carries us where it will until at last it dumps us down into death. And only in living beyond the tribe, identifying beyond the nation-state - & its ruthless, proud identity - is there room for the heart, where lies freedom. "
The bird woman, Kerry Hardie
"It is a chronic & progressive disease. It is classified as such by the American medical association & the World health organisation. It can be arrested, placed in remission, but is incurable.
As with most diseases, the belief is that the cause is genetic. Addicts/alcoholics are born with a gene or gene structure, precisely which is not yet known, that when activated, causes the disease to present itself in an individual.
Once this happens, & at this point there is no way to know if or when it will happen, the addict is at the mercy of the disease. It cannot be controlled, it cannot be held in check by force of will, the decision to use or not to use, is not a decision that can be made because the disease makes the decision for you. The inability to control & the lack of choice is but a symptom of the disease."
A million little pieces, James Frey
"Now, I've always felt a holy terror for tanks & bombs, & I've never seen anything in them but the most complete expression of the worst traits of humankind.
I hate wars & revolutions - these dramas of redemptive violence that turn upon themselves like endlessly long screws & haul entire generations through the same murderous absurdities, apparently without ERROR signals going off in anybody's head."
The attack, Yasmina Khadra
Instead of learning how not to be bad, you learn how to be forgiven & carried off to heaven. Most of you find it easier to believe in the baby-stories than to learn from history & science, because it takes brains & hard study to understand history & science, but the stories are easy & comfy.
People who want things easy & comfy resent people who study things. They teach their children the comfy stories & tell them not to worry about studying, just buy a ticket to go to heaven & gradually, everyone becomes as ignorant as everyone else."
Sheri Tepper, The Margarets.
"Every gun that is made, every warship that is launched, every rocket fired signifies in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger & are not fed, those who are cold & are not clothed. This world in arms is not spending money alone. It is spending the sweat of it's labourers, the genius of its scientists, the hopes of its children. This is not the way of life in any true sense. Under the clouds of war it is humanity hanging on a cross of iron."
Dwight Eisenhower.
"To live without identity, except as a human being. Because life, the birth & death essence of life, is flow, not security. It cuts all ground from beneath our feet, it picks us up & carries us where it will until at last it dumps us down into death. And only in living beyond the tribe, identifying beyond the nation-state - & its ruthless, proud identity - is there room for the heart, where lies freedom. "
The bird woman, Kerry Hardie
"It is a chronic & progressive disease. It is classified as such by the American medical association & the World health organisation. It can be arrested, placed in remission, but is incurable.
As with most diseases, the belief is that the cause is genetic. Addicts/alcoholics are born with a gene or gene structure, precisely which is not yet known, that when activated, causes the disease to present itself in an individual.
Once this happens, & at this point there is no way to know if or when it will happen, the addict is at the mercy of the disease. It cannot be controlled, it cannot be held in check by force of will, the decision to use or not to use, is not a decision that can be made because the disease makes the decision for you. The inability to control & the lack of choice is but a symptom of the disease."
A million little pieces, James Frey
"Now, I've always felt a holy terror for tanks & bombs, & I've never seen anything in them but the most complete expression of the worst traits of humankind.
I hate wars & revolutions - these dramas of redemptive violence that turn upon themselves like endlessly long screws & haul entire generations through the same murderous absurdities, apparently without ERROR signals going off in anybody's head."
The attack, Yasmina Khadra
in order to be old & wise, you must first be young & stupid. (I'm still working on that.)