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Anyone who has the power to make you believe absurdities has the power to make you commit atrocities. Voltaire

Write drunk, edit sober. Hemingway

D-503: “Do you realise that what you are suggesting is revolution?”

I-330: “Of course, it’s revolution. Why not?”

D-503: “Because there can’t be a revolution. Our revolution was the last and there can never be another. Everybody knows that.”

I-330: “My dear, you’re a mathematician: tell me, which is the last number?”

D-503: “But that’s absurd. Numbers are infinite. There can’t be a last one.”

I-330: “Then why do you talk about the last revolution?”

(Source: cuntymint)

Some hold that, owing to the necessity of knowing the primary premises, there is no scientific knowledge. Others think there is, but that all truths are demonstrable. Neither doctrine is either true or a necessary deduction from the premises. The first school, assuming that there is no way of knowing other than by demonstration, maintain that an infinite regress is involved, on the ground that if behind the prior stands no primary, we could not know the posterior through the prior (wherein they are right, for one cannot traverse an infinite series): if on the other hand – they say – the series terminates and there are primary premises, yet these are unknowable because incapable of demonstration, which according to them is the only form of knowledge. And since thus one cannot know the primary premises, knowledge of the conclusions which follow from them is not pure scientific knowledge nor properly knowing at all, but rests on the mere supposition that the premises are true. The other party agree with them as regards knowing, holding that it is only possible by demonstration, but they see no difficulty in holding that all truths are demonstrated, on the ground that demonstration may be circular and reciprocal.

Our own doctrine is that not all knowledge is demonstrative: on the contrary, knowledge of the immediate premises is independent of demonstration. (The necessity of this is obvious; for since we must know the prior premises from which the demonstration is drawn, and since the regress must end in immediate truths, those truths must be indemonstrable.) Such, then, is our doctrine, and in addition we maintain that besides scientific knowledge there is its original source which enables us to recognize the definitions.

The sky we see at any moment defines not a single past but multiple overlapping pasts of different depths. The star’s image from 100 years ago and the galaxy image from 100 million years ago reach us at the same time. All of those “thens” define the same “now” for us. ?

Till at last the child’s mind is these suggestions, and the sum of the suggestions is the child’s mind. And not the child’s mind only. The adult’s mind too-all his life long. The mind that judges and desires and decides-made up of these suggestions. But all these suggestions are our suggestions… Suggestions from the State. Aldous Huxley, Brave New World

The struggle against terrorism will not be won through killing, no matter how many people we assassinate. You don’t fight malaria by seeking to kill every mosquito on the planet, but rather by draining the swamps. Similarly, you can’t eliminate terrorism by seeking to kill every terrorist (and in the process killing a lot of innocent others as well), but only by draining the swamps of hatred that have been built up as a response to the suffering generated by global inequities and injustices. So the struggle to eliminate terror will only be won when we in the West can show genuine love, caring, and generosity toward everyone else on the planet. A strategy of generosity, not a strategy of domination, is the path forward. Rabbi Michael Lerner (via azspot)

(via -iwilldestroyyou)

The power of instruction is seldom of much efficacy except in those happy dispositions where it is almost superfluous. Edward Gibbon

Appearing cheerful is vital in a society where all of life monitored by an employer, a credit rating bureau or the media’s projection of the world, and mediated by the financialization of life’s every aspect. Every action and movement is a transaction, some as large as the mortgage, others as small as the purchase of a bus token, or the cost of a cell phone call, gasoline, vehicle maintenance and parking costs for movement within the sprawling asphalt grids we call communities. Even respite from work with its vacation “leisure destinations” put on the credit card, and even the greatest commons of all, nature, has a cost of access, whether it be admission to national parks or the cost of camping and other “recreational equipment.” In the background a tabulator relentlessly calculates our bill for the thoroughly transactional and mediated life. Quit paying the bills and you are disappeared. Erased from the screens of a society of watchers watching each other — or watching celebrities, those godlike creatures dwelling on the Olympus of the most watched … and dreaming of perhaps being watched on Oprah by even more watchers than already watch us for some fleeting few seconds. There is a flickering screen or monitor in front of and between every citizen of the mediated society of watchers. Whether we watch television or other media matters not, we dwell among the watchers in a surveillance society of our peers. We dress appropriately, speak middle class English, not urban street slang or redneck, and look as prosperous as possible, or as hip as possible, or as learned or pious or whatever within our peer groups, and for outsider groups. No jokers, smokers or midnight tokers allowed in Mainstream American society and culture, which consists of working, consuming and “appearing to be,” but never purely being. We flow willingly through the transactional circuitry of the wealth economy like ghosts, optimistic and eerily cheerful, encountering one another through the hierarchical commodity affinity groups we call our peers, people who consume the same things we do, and have the same purchased identity and “lifestyle” we do. Swimmers in a sea of mass produced goods and mass produced identities through consumption of those goods, we strive for uniqueness, but not very hard, lest we lose the commodities we’ve acquired. Joe Bageant

Time is a drug. Too much of it kills you. Terry Pratchett (Small Gods)

(Source: kari-shma, via -iwilldestroyyou)

Instead of “lol”, try “lsimhbiwfefmtlol”… Laughing silently in my head because it wasn’t funny enough for me to actually laugh out loud. Someone…

God created war so that Americans would learn geography. Mark Twain

(Source: paxmachina, via -iwilldestroyyou)

Politics is like sports…where both teams suck. :-)

(Source: dxo, via jmarie3-deactivated20110901-dea)