I started my first blog over 5 years ago(and I know some of you still remember it…). One of my favorite plug-ins for that site was a random quote box. Each time visitors refresh the page, a different quote pops up. I recently dug up a document with all these quotes. I think they’re all great, but to read through them like this, I think also reflects a stage in my life and books I was reading. Enjoy.

“people cannot stand too much reality.” ~ Carl Jung

“Depopulation should be the highest priority of foreign policy towards the third world, because the US economy will require large and increasing amounts of minerals from abroad, especially from less developed countries.” ~ Henry Kissinger, 1974

“Those who would give up freedom for safety deserve neither.” B. Franklin

“Music expresses that which cannot be put into words and that which cannot remain silent.” – Victor Hugo

“Evil is what ever distracts” ~ Franz Kafka

“You can be up to your boobies in white satin, with gardenias in your hair and no sugar cane for miles, but you can still be working on a plantation.” Billie Holiday

“The most potent weapon in the hands of the oppressor is the mind of the oppressed.” — Steve Biko

“Our behavior is a function of our experience. We act according to the way we see things. If our experience is destroyed, our behavior will be destroyed, we have lost our own selves.” ~ R.D. Laing

“Hell is the too-late realization that everything and everyone are interdependent. This realization is our only salvation.” ~ Derrick Jensen

“The most striking difference between ancient and modern sophists is that the ancients were satisfied with a passing victory of argument at the expense of truth, whereas the moderns want a more lasting victory at the expense of reality” ~ Hannah Arendt

“Start with what is right rather than what is acceptable” ~ Franz Kafka

“That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends [Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness], it is the Right of the People to alter or abolish it…” ~ The Declaration of Independence of the United States Of America

“It’s life that matters, nothing but life—the process of discovering, the everlasting and perpetual process, not the discovery, at all.” ~ Fyodor Dostoyevsky

“We kill when we close our eyes to poverty, affliction, or infamy. We kill when, because it is easier, we countenance, or pretend to approve of the atrophied social, political, educational, and religious institutions, instead of resolutely combating them.” ~ Herman Hesse

“The part of the mind that is dark to us in this culture, that is sleeping in us, that we name unconscious,” is the knowledge that we are inseparable from all other being sin the universe.” ~ Susan Griffin

“The struggle of man against power is the struggle of memory against forgetting.” ~ Milan Kundera

“Schools are institutions for indoctrination and for imposing obedience. Far from creating independent thinkers, schools have always, throughout history, played an institutional role in systems of control and coercion.” ~Chomsky

“Let the white race perish! They seize your land, they corrupt your women, they trample on your dead! Back! whence they came, upon a trail of blood, they must be driven! Back! back—ay, into the great water whose accursed waves brought them to our shores. Burn their dwellings! Destroy their stock! Slay their wives and children! The red-man owns the country, and the pale-face must never enjoy it! War now! War forever! War upon the living! War upon the dead! Dig their very corpses from the graves! Our country must give no rest to a white man’s bones.” ~ Tecumseh

“When a white man kills an Indian in a fair fight it is called honorable, but when an Indian kills a white man in a fair fight it is called murder. When a white army battles Indians and wins it is called a great victory, but if they lose it is called a massacre and bigger armies are raised. If the Indian flees before the advance of such armies, when he tries to return he finds that white men are living where he lived. If he tries to fight off such armies, he is killed and the land is taken anyway. When an Indian is killed, it is a great loss which leaves a gap in our people and a sorrow in our heart; when a white is killed three or four others step up to take his place and there is no end to it. The white man seeks to conquer nature, to bend it to his will and to use it wastefully until it is all gone and then he simply moves on, leaving the waste behind him and looking for new places to take. The whole white race is a monster who is always hungry and what he eats is land.” ~ Tecumseh’s brother, Chiksika (who is just as cool as Tecumseh)

nar·cis·sism
n.
1. Excessive love or admiration of oneself. See Synonyms at conceit.
2. A psychological condition characterized by self-preoccupation, lack of empathy, and unconscious deficits in self-esteem.
3. Erotic pleasure derived from contemplation or admiration of one’s own body or self, especially as a fixation on or a regression to an infantile stage of development.
4. The attribute of the human psyche charactized by admiration of oneself but within normal limits.

I just kinda thought this was funny, though perhaps a bit sad too.

HAVANA (AP) — Cuba has ordered jailed punk rocker Gorki Aguila, an outspoken critic of Fidel Castro and the communist government, to stand trail on Friday for “social dangerousness,” a charge that could carry up to four years in prison.

Authorities arrested the 39-year-old lead singer of the band Porno para Ricardo at his Havana home on Monday as he was working on a new album. Cuban law defines “social dangerousness” as behavior contrary to “communist morality,” and authorities use the charge to detain offenders before they have a chance to commit a crime.

To the druids, it means this.

To you, Flagstaff, it probably means this.

I, on the other hand, am happy enough to play outside and howl under the beautiful yellow moon.

Last week, just before I hopped in the shower, I noticed a giant water beetle perched on my towel, which was neatly folded on the rack. I don’t know much about beetles. Maybe it wasn’t a water beetle, but it was black, six legs, and about 2 inches long. Anyway, I couldn’t bring myself to kill it and, knowing how cold it was outside, I knew throwing it outside would have been more cruel than smashing it.