12-02-2022, 10:23 AM
"The stock exchange is something very different. There is no economy & no production of goods & services. There are only fantasies in which people from one hour to the next decide that this or that company is worth so many billions, more or less. IT doesn’t have a thing to do with reality or with the Swedish economy.
“So you’re saying that it doesn’t matter if the Stock exchange drops like a rock?”
“No, it doesn’t matter at all”, Blomberg said.....
“It only means that a bunch of heavy speculators are now moving their shareholdings from Swedish companies to German ones. So it’s the financial gnomes that some tough reporter should perhaps identify & expose as traitors. They’re the ones who are systematically & perhaps damaging the Swedish economy in order to satisfy the profit interests of their clients.”
The girl with the dragon tattoo, Stieg Larsson
"We human beings seem always to have found it comforting to have someone to look down on – a bottom level of fellow creatures who are very vulnerable, but who can somehow be blamed & punished for all or any troubles."
Parable of the talents, Octavia Butler
"I'll tell you what they don't want. They don't want a population of citizens capable of critical thinking. They don't want well-informed, well-educated people capable of critical thinking. They're not interested in that. That doesn't help them. That's against their interests. They don't want people who are smart enough to sit around the kitchen table and figure out how badly they're getting fucked by a system that threw them overboard 30 fucking years ago.
"You know what they want? Obedient workers people who are just smart enough to run the machines and do the paperwork but just dumb enough to passively accept all these increasingly shittier jobs with the lower pay, the longer hours, reduced benefits, the end of overtime and the vanishing pension that disappears the minute you go to collect it. And, now, they're coming for your Social Security. They want your fucking retirement money. They want it back, so they can give it to their criminal friends on Wall Street. And you know something? They'll get it. They'll get it all, sooner or later, because they own this fucking place. I t's a big club, and you ain't in it. You and I are not in the big club."
George Carlin
"Here bread is still the staff of life, a well of sweet water is more than jewels, a tree is shade, a piece of fertile ground id earth that will grow food, & hands are still marvellous creative instruments that can take the raw, rough stuff of rock & soil & water & make from it warmth & comfort, & beauty too. Perhaps they are so impressive a people because their normal expression – I realize this as I look around the crowded schoolroom – is one of quiet dignity. And I realize too that although I have seen these faces show grief, anger, bewilderment, laughter, pride, passion & sometimes resignation, what gives the faces a nobility almost unnatural in our age is the complete absence of resentment & pettishness, or those tell-tale lines that mark the frustration of little egos."
Charmian Clift
“So you’re saying that it doesn’t matter if the Stock exchange drops like a rock?”
“No, it doesn’t matter at all”, Blomberg said.....
“It only means that a bunch of heavy speculators are now moving their shareholdings from Swedish companies to German ones. So it’s the financial gnomes that some tough reporter should perhaps identify & expose as traitors. They’re the ones who are systematically & perhaps damaging the Swedish economy in order to satisfy the profit interests of their clients.”
The girl with the dragon tattoo, Stieg Larsson
"We human beings seem always to have found it comforting to have someone to look down on – a bottom level of fellow creatures who are very vulnerable, but who can somehow be blamed & punished for all or any troubles."
Parable of the talents, Octavia Butler
"I'll tell you what they don't want. They don't want a population of citizens capable of critical thinking. They don't want well-informed, well-educated people capable of critical thinking. They're not interested in that. That doesn't help them. That's against their interests. They don't want people who are smart enough to sit around the kitchen table and figure out how badly they're getting fucked by a system that threw them overboard 30 fucking years ago.
"You know what they want? Obedient workers people who are just smart enough to run the machines and do the paperwork but just dumb enough to passively accept all these increasingly shittier jobs with the lower pay, the longer hours, reduced benefits, the end of overtime and the vanishing pension that disappears the minute you go to collect it. And, now, they're coming for your Social Security. They want your fucking retirement money. They want it back, so they can give it to their criminal friends on Wall Street. And you know something? They'll get it. They'll get it all, sooner or later, because they own this fucking place. I t's a big club, and you ain't in it. You and I are not in the big club."
George Carlin
"Here bread is still the staff of life, a well of sweet water is more than jewels, a tree is shade, a piece of fertile ground id earth that will grow food, & hands are still marvellous creative instruments that can take the raw, rough stuff of rock & soil & water & make from it warmth & comfort, & beauty too. Perhaps they are so impressive a people because their normal expression – I realize this as I look around the crowded schoolroom – is one of quiet dignity. And I realize too that although I have seen these faces show grief, anger, bewilderment, laughter, pride, passion & sometimes resignation, what gives the faces a nobility almost unnatural in our age is the complete absence of resentment & pettishness, or those tell-tale lines that mark the frustration of little egos."
Charmian Clift
in order to be old & wise, you must first be young & stupid. (I'm still working on that.)