Quote of the day

[iambiguous]

George Orwell from Animal Farm

Comrades, he said, here is a point that must be settled. The wild creatures, such as rats and rabbits–are they our friends or our enemies? Let us put it to the vote. I propose this question to the meeting: Are rats comrades?
The vote was taken at once, and it was agreed by an overwhelming majority that rats were comrades. There were only four dissentients, the three dogs and the cat, who was afterwards discovered to have voted on both sides.

Next up: the rats here. Friend or foe?

No sentimentality, comrade...The only good human being is a dead one.

Well, the fucking liberals anyway, right?

Such were her thoughts, though she lacked the words to express them.

THOUGH not HERE, of COURSE.

Somehow it seemed as though the farm had grown richer without making the animals themselves any richer—except, of course, for the pigs and the dogs.

Among other pigs and dogs, these guys: https://www.youtube.com/results?search_ ... berg+group

I do not understand it. I would not have believed that such things could happen on our farm. It must be due to some fault in ourselves. The solution, as I see it, is to work harder. From now onwards I shall get up a full hour earlier in the mornings.

Wage slaves of the world unite...behind Trump.

Between pigs and human beings there was not and there need not be any clash of interest whatsoever.

Let's call it, "the least best of all possible worlds".

[iambiguous]

Kathryn Stockett from The Help

Ever morning, until you dead in the ground, you gone have to make this decision. You gone have to ask yourself, "Am I gone believe what them fools say about me today?"

Here? Double or even triple it at least.

I always thought insanity would be a dark, bitter feeling, but it is drenching and delicious if you really roll around in it.

A few hours a day here, for example

Write about what disturbs you, particularly if it bothers no one else.

A few hours a day here, especially.

Ugly live up on the inside. Ugly be a hurtful, mean person.

Ugly here in particular.

I always order the banned books from a black market dealer in California, figuring if the State of Mississippi banned them, they must be good.

Start here: https://www.mississippifreepress.org/31 ... ippi-house
Sex. It's almost always about sex.
Cue Wilhelm Reich?

I'm sorry, but were you dropped on your head as an infant?

Repeatedly, for example?

[iambiguous]

Nihilism...

“Civilization is like a thin layer of ice upon a deep ocean of chaos and darkness.” Werner Herzog

Either that or a thin layer of bullshit.

“The perfectly ordinary girl and the great philosopher are alike: for both, the smallest triviality can become the vision that wipes out the world.” Yukio Mishima

Any perfectly ordinary girls and great philosophers here able to actually confirm this?

“Nothing matters very much and most things don't matter at all.” Arthur Balfour

Though, so far, that's only going back to the Big Bang.

"Certainty is not to be had. But as we learn this we become not more moral but more resigned. We become nihilists.” Allen Wheelis

Actually, believe it or not, some don't.

“If all we seek is an escape, what does that say about the world we live in?" Steven Erikson

Like escaping to and from here for example?

“Man, you see, swings between nihilism and spirituality. Man, you see, swings between utmost bliss and the feelings of utter despair. It’s a rollercoaster, our lives. One can’t just go higher, higher all the time.” Abhaidev

Figured that out yet?

[iambiguous]

Stupidity...

“The more often a stupidity is repeated, the more it gets the appearance of wisdom.” Voltaire

Spend some time here for example.

“How can you fight stupidity effectively? The answer is simple: it’s not easy.” Carl William Brown

I've completely backed away from it here of late.

“It was an accident that has endowed man with intelligence. He has made use of it: he invented stupidity.” Remy de Gourmont

Then those who have actually perfected it here.

“Caius was one of those who gloried in his ignorance, called his lack of letters purity, scorned any subtlety of thought or expression. A man for his time, indeed.” Iain Pears

Next up: a man for our time. You know the one.

“We repeatedly, and knowingly choose the same dastard, corrupt, dishonest, disqualified and criminal ones, and expect from those, the welfare of society and people; it is pure stupidity and ignorance.” Ehsan Sehgal

Donald Trump and Joe Biden. Again. Don't forget to vote?

“One of the biggest abuses of intelligence is to believe that if you have enough of it you can reinvent the truth. Stupidity believes the same thing." Craig D. Lounsbrough

So, by all means, get them confused.

[iambiguous]

Voltaire from Candide

You are very harsh.
I have seen the world.

That'll do it.

Martin in particular concluded that man was born to live either in the convulsions of misery, or in the lethargy of boredom.

Having seen the world.

In every province, the chief occupations, in order of importance, are lovemaking, malicious gossip, and talking nonsense.

Next up: In every thread...

Let us work without reasoning, said Martin; it is the only way to make life endurable.

After all, look how that has worked out here.

And ask each passenger to tell his story, and if there is one of them all who has not cursed his existence many times, and said to himself over and over again that he was the most miserable of men, I give you permission to throw me head-first into the sea.

Actually, I would never go that far myself.
On most days.

I hold firmly to my original views. After all I am a philosopher.

Seriously.

[iambiguous]

Fyodor Dostoevsky from Crime and Punishment

It would be interesting to know what it is men are most afraid of.

Let's tell them.

But you are a great sinner, that's true, he added almost solemnly, and your worst sin is that you have destroyed and betrayed yourself for nothing.

Or, for Rudy and Mark, next to nothing?

Where was it that I read about a man condemned to death saying or thinking, an hour before his death, that if he had to live somewhere high up on a cliffside, on a ledge so narrow that there was room only for his two feet - and with the abyss, the ocean, eternal darkness, eternal solitude, eternal storm all around him - and had to stay like that, on a square foot of space, an entire lifetime, a thousand years, an eternity - it would be better to live so than die right now!

That's always a tough one.

We always imagine eternity as something beyond our conception, something vast, vast! But why must it be vast? Instead of all that, what if it's one little room, like a bath house in the country, black and grimy and spiders in every corner. and that's all eternity is? I sometimes fancy it like that.

Nope. Vast still works for me.

In a morbid condition of the brain, dreams often have a singular actuality, vividness, and extraordinary semblance of reality.

Hint, hint...

I drink because I wish to multiply my sufferings.

In other words, eventually.

[iambiguous]

Mario Puzo from The Godfather

I don't trust society to protect us, I have no intention of placing my fate in the hands of men whose only qualification is that they managed to con a block of people to vote for them.

Pick one:
1] too cynical
2] no where near cynical enough.

Tom, don't let anybody kid you. It's all personal, every bit of business. Every piece of shit every man has to eat every day of his life is personal. They call it business. OK. But it's personal as hell. You know where I learned that from? The Don. My old man. The Godfather. If a bolt of lightning hit a friend of his the old man would take it personal. He took my going into the Marines personal. That's what makes him great. The Great Don. He takes everything personal Like God. He knows every feather that falls from the tail of a sparrow or however the hell it goes? Right? And you know something? Accidents don't happen to people who take accidents as a personal insult.

The business of philosophy?

Never let anyone know what you are thinking.

Or if you think at all?

He smelled the garden, the yellow shield of light smote his eyes, and he whispered, Life is so beautiful. Yes, he thought, if I can die saying, Life is so beautiful, then nothing else is important.

Tell that to all of those on the other end of the contracts.

Behind every successful fortune there is a crime.

And some being entirely legal.

Why should I be afraid now? Strange men have come to kill me ever since I was twelve years old.

Can you say that?

[iambiguous]

Frank Herbert from Dune

Knowing where the trap is—that's the first step in evading it.

That actually seems reasonable.

You see, gentlemen, they have something to die for. They've discovered they're a people. They're awakening.

Objectively, they'll insist.

Much that was called religion has carried an unconscious attitude of hostility toward life. True religion must teach that life is filled with joys pleasing to the eye of God, that knowledge without action is empty. All men must see that the teaching of religion by rules and rote is largely a hoax. The proper teaching is recognized with ease. You can know it without fail because it awakens within you that sensation which tells you this is something you’ve always known.

Next up: what religion might possibly be here.

Thou shalt not make a machine in the likeness of a human mind.

You know, in a wholly determined universe.

Paradise on my right, Hell on my left and the Angel of Death behind.

Pick one: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_r ... traditions
Or add yours to the list.

The thing the ecologically illiterate don't realise about an ecosystem is that it's a system. A system! A system maintains a certain fluid stability that can be destroyed by a misstep in just one niche. A system has order, flowing from point to point. If something dams that flow, order collapses. The untrained might miss that collapse until it was too late. That's why the highest function of ecology is the understanding of consequences.

Next up: the consequences of my system.

[iambiguous]

Viet Thanh Nguyen from The Sympathizer

Remember that the best medical treatment is a sense of relativism. No matter how badly you might feel, take comfort in knowing there's someone who feels much worse.

Good luck with that. Though bad luck I suppose for those who feel much worse.

Movies were America’s way of softening up the rest of the world, Hollywood relentlessly assaulting the mental defenses of audiences with the hit, the smash, the spectacle, the blockbuster, and, yes, even the box office bomb. It mattered not what story these audiences watched. The point was that it was the American story they watched and loved, up until the day that they themselves might be bombed by the planes they had seen in American movies.

Nope, not my story. And no bombs today.

If we forgot our resentment, if we forgot revenge, if we acknowledged that we are all puppets in someone else's play, if we had not fought a war against each other, if some of us had not called ourselves nationalists or communists or capitalists or realists, if our bonzes had not incinerated themselves, if the Americans hadn't come to save us from ourselves, if we had not bought what they sold, if the Soviets had never called us comrades, if Mao had not sought to do the same, if the Japanese hadn't taught us the superiority of the yellow race, if the French had never sought to civilize us, if Ho Chi Minh had not been dialectical and Karl Marx not analytical, if the invisible hand of the market did not hold us by the scruffs of our necks, if the British had defeated the rebels of the new world, if the natives had simply said , Hell no, on first seeing the white man, if our emperors and mandarins had not clashed among themselves, if the Chinese had never ruled us for a thousand year, if they had used gunpowder for more than fireworks, if the Buddha had never lived, if the Bible had never been written and Jesus Christ never sacrificed, if you needed no more revisions, and if I saw no more of these visions, please, could you please just let me sleep?

Spot Benjamin Button in there yet?

What do those who struggle against power do when they seize power? What does the revolutionary do when the revolution triumphs? Why do those who call for independence and freedom take away the independence and freedom of others? And is it sane or insane to believe, as so many around us apparently do, in nothing? We can only answer these questions for ourselves. Our life and our death have taught us always to sympathize with the undesirables among the undesirables. Thus magnetized by experience, our compass continually points toward those who suffer.

Unless, of course, he's wrong. Anyone here know?

Isn't that what education is all about? Getting the student to sincerely say what the teacher wants to hear?

Sure, some tried that on me.

The unseen is almost always underlined with the unsaid.

Next up: the unbelievable.

[iambiguous]

Suicide...

“Killing oneself is, anyway, a misnomer. We don't kill ourselves. We are simply defeated by the long, hard struggle to stay alive. When somebody dies after a long illness, people are apt to say, with a note of approval, "He fought so hard." And they are inclined to think, about a suicide, that no fight was involved, that somebody simply gave up. This is quite wrong.” Sally Brampton

Trust me: very few things are quite right and quite wrong when it comes to snuffing it. A failure to communicate you'll either grasp someday or you won't.

“It is not seen as insane when a fighter, under an attack that will inevitable lead to his death, chooses to take his own life first. In fact, this act has been encouraged for centuries, and is accepted even now as an honorable reason to do the deed. How is it any different when you are under attack by your own mind?” Emilie Autumn

Go figure. Then get back to us.

“The only difference between a suicide and a martyrdom really is the amount of press coverage.” Chuck Palahniuk

And, no, not starting with 9/11.

“Let them think what they liked, but I didn't mean to drown myself. I meant to swim till I sank -- but that's not the same thing.” Joseph Conrad

Unless, of course, dead is dead.

“Some people are just not meant to be in this world. It's just too much for them.” Phoebe Stone

Ask me if I'm one of them.

“Suicide is man's way of telling God, 'You can't fire me - I quit!'” Bill Maher

That's either an important distinction for some or it's not.

[iambiguous]

George Orwell from Animal Farm

I saw a little boy, perhaps ten years old, driving a huge cart-horse along a narrow path, whipping it whenever it tried to turn. It struck me that if only such animals became aware of their strength we should have no power over them, and that men exploit animals in much the same way as the rich exploit the proletariat.

Let's just wait until the workers of the world unite. Any day now, right?

Day and night we are watching over your welfare. It is for YOUR sake that we drink that milk and eat those apples. Do you know what would happen if we pigs failed in our duty? Jones would come back! Yes, Jones would come back! Surely, comrades, cried Squealer almost pleadingly

Next up: the pigs fail in their duty here.

And remember, comrades, your resolution must never falter. No argument must lead you astray.

Much less my arguments.

...And the behaviour of the cat was somewhat peculiar. It was soon noticed that when there was work to be done the cat could never be found. She would vanish for hours on end, and then reappear at meal-times, or in the evening after work was over, as though nothing had happened. But she always made such excellent excuses , and purred so affectionately , that it was impossible not to believe in her good intentions.

Skin the bastard?

The result of preaching totalitarian doctrines is to weaken the instinct by means of which free peoples know what is or is not dangerous.

Their totalitarian doctrines especially.

The sinister fact about literary censorship in England is that it is largely voluntary. Unpopular ideas can be silenced, and inconvenient facts kept dark, without the need for any official ban.

What say the Brits here? Fortunately, that sort of crap could never happen here in America.

[iambiguous]

Barbara Kingsolver from The Poisonwood Bible

Every life is different because you passed this way and touched history. Even the child Ruth May touched history. Everyone is complicit. The okapi complied by living, and the spider by dying. It would have lived if it could. Listen: being dead is not worse than being alive. It is different, though. You could say the view is larger.

No one wants to believe this more than I do. Or, for that matter, to even understand what it means.

Oh, mercy. If it catches you in the wrong frame of mind, the King James Bible can make you want to drink poison in no uncertain terms.

Or make hundreds of others drink it.

I know how people are, with their habits of mind. Most will sail through from cradle to grave with a conscience clean as snow...I know people. Most have no earthly notion of the price of a snow-white conscience.

Next up: the people we think we know here.

Illusions mistaken for truth are the pavement under our feet. They are what we call civilization.

Though our own illusions least of all.

Every life is different because you passed this way and touched history.

You do the math.
I'll do the politics.

I wonder that religion can live or die on the strength of a faint, stirring breeze. The scent trail shifts, causing the predator to miss the pounce. One god draws in the breath of life and rises; another god expires.

The rest is where I take it.

[promethean75]

"There is nothing more terrible than a barbaric slave class, who have learned to regard their existence as an injustice, and now prepare to take vengeance, not only for themselves, but for all generations." - Nietzsche, Friedrich

That's precisely why I would be a Marxist if I were one. To do something in society short of genocide that would get them to shut the fuck up already.

If u can't tolerate the slave, prevent him from being one" - 75, promethean

[iambiguous]

Kathryn Stockett from The Help

It weren’t too loo long before I seen something in me, had changed. A bitter seed was planted inside of me. And I just didn’t feel so, accepting, anymore.

We've got quite a few of them here, don't we?

...it always sound scarier when a hollerer talk soft.

How low will he go here?

I tell myself that's what you get when you put thirty-one toilets on the most popular girl's front yard. People tend to treat you a little differently than before.

Thirty one even.

I don't know what to say to her. All I know is, I ain't saying it. And I know she ain't saying what she want a say either and it's a strange thing happening here cause nobody saying nothing and we still managing to have us a conversation.

Nobody saying nothing here. Over and over and over again, right?

The day your child says she hates you, and every child will go through the phase, it kicks like a foot in the stomach.

I think she did. A few times even.

When you little, you only get asked two questions, what’s your name and how old you is, so you better get em right.

I always did. And look where that got me.

[iambiguous]

Nihilism...

“Let me tell you a secret about the human condition. Nihilism leads to spirituality. And spirituality leads to nihilism. It is never in between for long. It is always a see-saw in action. Yes, my dear child, one can’t remain mystical all the time, for hopelessness creeps into even the most positive of minds. But this hopelessness, this cynicism too is not permanent. Man, you see, swings between nihilism and spirituality. Man, you see, swings between utmost bliss and the feelings of utter despair. It’s a rollercoaster, our lives. One can’t just go higher, higher all the time.” Abhaidev

Woman too, he suspected. These days.

…the major enemy of black survival in America has been and is neither oppression nor exploitation but rather the nihilistic threat—that is, loss of hope and absence of meaning. For as long as hope remains and meaning is preserved, the possibility of overcoming oppression stays alive. The self-fulfilling prophecy of the nihilistic threat is that without hope there can be no future, that without meaning there can be no struggle.” Cornel West

Cue Ralph Elison among others.

"Have you ever heard of the madman who on a bright morning lighted a lantern and ran to the market-place calling out unceasingly: "I seek God! I seek God!"—As there were many people standing about who did not believe in God, he caused a great deal of amusement. Why! is he lost? said one. Has he strayed away like a child? said another. Or does he keep himself hidden? Is he afraid of us? Has he taken a sea-voyage? Has he emigrated?—the people cried out laughingly, all in a hubbub. The insane man jumped into their midst and transfixed them with his glances. "Where is God gone?" he called out. "I mean to tell you! We have killed him,—you and I! We are all his murderers! But how have we done it? How were we able to drink up the sea? Who gave us the sponge to wipe away the whole horizon? What did we do when we loosened this earth from its sun? Whither does it now move? Whither do we move? Away from all suns? Do we not dash on unceasingly? Back-wards, sideways, forewards, in all directions? Is there still an above and below? Do we not stray, as through infinite nothingness? Does not empty space breathe upon us? Has it not become colder? Does not night come on continually, darker and darker? Shall we not have to light lanterns in the morning? Do we not hear the noise of the grave-diggers who are burying God? Do we not smell the divine putrefaction?—for even Gods putrefy! God is dead! God remains dead! And we have killed him! How shall we console ourselves, the most murderous of all murderers? The holiest and the mightiest that the world has hitherto possessed, has bled to death under our knife,—who will wipe the blood from us? With what water could we cleanse ourselves? What lustrums, what sacred games shall we have to devise? Is not the magnitude of this deed too great for us? Shall we not ourselves have to become Gods, merely to seem worthy of it? There never was a greater event,—and on account of it, all who are born after us belong to a higher history than any history hitherto!"—Here the madman was silent and looked again at his hearers; they also were silent and looked at him in surprise. At last he threw his lantern on the ground, so that it broke in pieces and was extinguished. "I come too early," he then said, "I am not yet at the right time. This prodigious event is still on its way, and is travelling,—it has not yet reached men's ears. Lightning and thunder need time, the light of the stars needs time, deeds need time, even after they are done, to be seen and heard. This deed is as yet further from them than the furthest star,—and yet they have done it!"—It is further stated that the madman made his way into different churches on the same day, and there intoned his Requiem æternam deo. When led out and called to account, he always gave the reply: "What are these churches now, if they are not the tombs and monuments of God?” Friedrich Nietzsche

And then there's my own rendition of all this, isn't there?

“Japanese people today think of money, just money: Where is our national spirit today? The Jieitai must be the soul of Japan. The nation has no spiritual foundation. That is why you don’t agree with me. You will just be American mercenaries. There you are in your tiny world. You do nothing for Japan. I salute the Emperor. Long live the emperor!” Yukio Mishima

Capitalism, let's call it. Money, the new God, let's say.

“You have to take an interest in something in life, I told myself. I wondered what could interest me, now that I was finished with love. I could take a course in wine tasting, maybe, or start collecting model aeroplanes.” Michel Houellebecq

Or post here.

“I’ve always been suspicious of the assumption that great intelligence would be an unqualified benefit— that the madness that so often accompanies it can be cavalierly dismissed. So I asked the question: Suppose there were an entire subpopulation of extreme geniuses, well beyond anything that would occur naturally. What would that really look like?” Andrew M. Ryan

Anyone here foolish enough to actually know?