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"When you find your path, you must not be afraid. You need to have sufficient courage to make mistakes. Disappointment, defeat, and despair are the tools God uses to show us the way."

"The wise are wise only because they love."

"When we least expect it, life sets us a challenge to test our courage and willingness to change; at such a moment, there is no point in pretending that nothing has happened or in saying that we are not ready. The challenge will not wait. Life does not look back. A week is more than enough time for us to decide whether or not to accept our destiny."

"Terror, terror, terror. Life was a reign o terror in the shadow of the guillotine."

"The two worst strategic mistakes to make are acting prematurely and letting an opportunity slip; to avoid this, the warrior treats each situation as if it were unique and never resorts to formulae, recipes or other people's opinions."

"There is suffering in life, and there are defeats. No one can avoid them. But it's better to lose some of the battles in the struggles for your dreams than to be defeated without ever knowing what you're fighting for."

"You drown not by falling into a river, but by staying submerged in it."

"A disciple asked Hejasi: - I want to know what is the most funny thing about human beings. Hejasi said: - That they always think crooked: they’re in a hurry to grow, then lament their lost childhood, and soon lose the money they need to keep their health. "They are so anxious about the future, that they neglect the present, and thus live in neither the present nor the future." "They live as if they were never going to die, and die as if they had never lived.""

"Brazil is my way to see the world. Being born in that country means: "you don't have a wall separating the physical reality from the magical reality.""

"As an author, I should be defending ‘intellectual property’, but I’m not. Pirates of the world, unite and pirate everything I’ve ever written!"

"We warriors of light must be prepared to have patience in difficult times and to know the Universe is conspiring in our favor, even though we may not understand how."

"I ask myself: are defeats necessary? Well, necessary or not, they happen. When we first begin fighting for a dream, we have no experience and make mistakes. The secret of life, though, is to fall seven times and to get up eight times."

"If you come here, you will find a hidden treasure."

"I told you that your dream was a difficult one. It's the simple things in life that are the most extraordinary; only wise men are able to understand them."

"At a certain point in our lives, we lose control of what's happening to us, and our lives become controlled by fate. That's the world's greatest lie."

"There is one great truth on this planet: whoever you are, or whatever it is that you do, when you really want something, it's because that desire originated in the soul of the universe.... The soul of the world is nourished by people's happiness."

"E quando você quer alguma coisa, todo o Universo conspira para que você realize seu desejo."

"At that point in their lives, everything is clear and everything is possible. They are not afraid to dream, and to yearn for everything they would like to see happen to them in their lives. But, as time passes a mysterious force begins to convince them that it will be impossible for them to realize their destiny."

"Life attracts life."

"As he mused about these things, he realised that he had to choose between thinking of himself as the poor victim of a thief and as an adventurer in quest of his treasure."

"He had worked for an entire year to make a dream come true, and that dream, minute by minute, was becoming less important. Maybe cause that wasn't really his dream."

"We are afraid of losing what we have, whether it's our life or our possessions and property. But this fear evaporates when we understand that our life stories and the history of the world were written by the same hand."

"If I am really a part of your dream, you'll come back one day."

"If good things are coming, they will be a pleasant surprise," said the seer. "If bad things are, and you know in advance, you will suffer greatly before they even occur."

"The desert takes our dreams away from us, and they don't always return. We know that, and we are used to it. Those who don't return become a part of the clouds, a part of the animals that hide in the ravines and of the water that comes from the earth. They become part of everything... They become the Soul of the World."

"One is loved because one is loved. No reason is needed for loving."

"Tell your heart that the fear of suffering is worse than the suffering itself. And that no heart has ever suffered when it goes in search of its dreams, because every second of the search is a second's encounter with God and with eternity."

"Don't think about what you've left behind, the alchemist said to the boy as they began to ride across the sands of the desert. "Everything is written in the Soul of the World, and there it will stay forever.""

"If what one finds is made of pure matter, it will never spoil. If what you had found was only a moment of light, like the explosion of a star, you would find nothing on your return."

"There is only one way to learn … It's through action."

"A grain of sand is a moment of creation, and the universe has taken millions of years to create it."

"It is said that the darkest hour of the night comes just before the dawn."

"There is only one thing that makes a dream impossible to achieve: the fear of failure."

"The wise men understood that this natural world is simply a guarantee that there exists a world that is perfect. God created the world so that, through its visible objects, men could understand his spiritual teachings and the marvels of his wisdom. That's what I mean by action."

"Wherever your heart is, that is where you'll find your treasure."

"It's true that everything has its Personal Legend, but one day that Personal Legend will be realized. So each thing has to transform itself into something better, and to acquire a new Personal Legend, until, someday, the Soul of the World becomes one thing only."

"Love is the force that transforms and improves the Soul of the World. … It is we who nourish the Soul of the World, and the world we live in will be either better or worse, depending on whether we become better or worse. And that's where the power of love comes in. Because when we love, we always strive to become better than we are."

"No matter what he does, every person on earth plays a central role in the history of the world. And normally he doesn't know it."

"Your money saved us for three days. It's not often that money saves a person's life."

"Everything that happens once can never happen again. But everything that happens twice will surely happen a third time."

"The parents always insisted on telling their child that their secret friends didn't exist — perhaps because they had forgotten that they too had spoken to their angel at one time. Or, who knows, perhaps they thought they lived in a world where there was no longer any place for angels. Disenchanted, the angels had returned to God's side, knowing that they could no longer impose their presence."

"Perhaps they needn't even believe — it was enough that they needed angels, and the angels would return gladly."

"We must never forget that spiritual experience is above all a practical experience of love. And with love, there are no rules."

"The gods throw the dice, and they don't ask whether we want to be in the game or not. They don't care if when you go, you leave behind a lover, a home, a career, or a dream. The gods don't care whether you have it all, whether it seems that your every desire can be met through hard work and persistence. The gods don't want to know about your plans and your hopes. Somewhere they're throwing the dice — and you are chosen. From then on, winning or losing is only a question of luck. The gods throw the dice, freeing love from its cage. And love can create or destroy — depending on the direction of the wind when it is set free."

"Seek to live. Remembrance is for the old."

"You have to take risks … We will only understand the miracle of life fully when we allow the unexpected to happen. Every day, God gives us the sun — and also one moment in which we have the ability to change everything that makes us unhappy. Every day, we try to pretend that we haven't perceived that moment, that it doesn't exist — that today is the same as yesterday and will be the same as tomorrow. But if people really pay attention to their everyday lives, they will discover that magic moment. It may arrive in the instant when we are doing something mundane, like putting our front-door key in the lock; it may lie hidden in the quiet that follows the lunch hour or in the thousand and one things that all seem the same to us. But that moment exists — a moment when all the power of the stars becomes a part of us and enables us to perform miracles."

"Pitiful is the person who is afraid of taking risks."

"Lovers need to know how to lose themselves and then how to find themselves again."

"Love is much like a dam: if you allow a tiny crack to form through which only a trickle of water can pass, that trickle will quickly bring down the whole structure, and soon no one will be able to control the force of the current. For when those walls come down, then love takes over, and it no longer matters what is possible or impossible; it doesn't even matter whether we can keep the loved one at our side. To love is to lose control."

"There's nothing deeper than love. In fairy tales, the princesses kiss the frogs, and the frogs become princes. In real life, the princesses kiss princes, and the princes turn into frogs."

"Life takes us by surprise and orders us to move toward the unknown — even when we don't want to and when we think we don't need to."

"Love is always new. Regardless of whether we love once, twice, or a dozen times in our life, we always face a brand-new situation. Love can consign us to hell or to paradise, but it always takes us somewhere. We simply have to accept it, because it is what nourishes our existence. If we reject it, we die of hunger, because we lack the courage to reach out a hand and pluck the fruit from the branches of the tree of life. We have to take love where we find it, even if it means hours, days, weeks of disappointment and sadness. The moment we begin to seek love, love begins to seek us. And to save us."

"If pain must come, may it come quickly. Because I have a life to live, and I need to live it in the best way possible. If he has to make a choice, may he make it now. Then I will either wait for him or forget him."

"Waiting is painful. Forgetting is painful. But not knowing which to do is the worst kind of suffering."

"Even if loving meant leaving, or solitude, or sorrow, love was worth every penny of its price."

"I am going to sit here with you by the river. If you go home to sleep, I will sleep in front of your house. And if you go away, I will follow you — until you tell me to go away. Then I'll leave. But I have to love you for the rest of my life."

"Every Warrior of the Light has suffered for the most trivial of reasons. Every Warrior of the Light has, at least once, believed he was not a Warrior of the Light. Every Warrior of the Light has failed in his spiritual duties. Every Warrior of the Light has said "yes" when he wanted to say "no." Every Warrior of the Light has hurt someone he loved. That is why he is a Warrior of the Light, because he has been through all this and yet has never lost hope of being better than he is. Each stone, each bend cries welcome to him. He identifies with the mountains and the streams, he sees something of his own soul in the plants and the animals and the birds of the field. Then, accepting the help of God and of God's signs, he allows his personal legend to guide him toward the tasks that life has reserved for him. On some nights, he has nowhere to sleep, on others he suffers from insomnia. "That's just how it is," thinks the warrior. "I was the one who chose to walk this path." In these words lies all his power: He chose the path along which he is walking and so has no complaints."

"Warriors of the light are not perfect. Their beauty lies in accepting this fact and still desiring to grow and to learn."

"A warrior of the light never confuses tension with anxiety."

"On 11 November 1997, Veronika decided that the moment to kill herself had — at last! — arrived."

"She believed herself to be completely normal. Two very simple reasons lay behind her decision to die, and she was sure that, were she to leave a note explaining, many people would agree with her. The first reason: everything in her life was the same and, once her youth was gone, it would be downhill all the way, with old age beginning to leave irreversible marks, the onset of illness, the departure of friends. She would gain nothing by continuing to live; indeed, the likelihood of suffering only increased. The second reason was more philosophical: Veronika read the newspapers, watched TV, and she was aware of what was going on in the world. Everything was wrong, and she had no way of putting things right — that gave her a sense of complete powerlessness."

"When she opened her eyes, Veronika did not think "this must be heaven". Heaven would never use a fluorescent tube to light a room, and the pain — which started a fraction of a second later — was typical of the Earth. Ah, that Earth pain — unique, unmistakable."

"I'll tell everyone that the children are my reason for living, when in reality my life is their reason for living."

"Veronika brought her interior monologue to a close and made a promise to herself: she would not leave Villete alive. It was best to put an end to everything now, while she was still brave and healthy enough to die."

"Look me in the eye and never forget what I'm about to tell you. There are only two prohibitions, one according to man's law, the other according to God's. Never force a sexual relationship on anyone, because that is considered to be rape. And never have sexual relations with children, because that is the worst of all sins. Apart from that, you're free. There's always someone who wants exactly what you want."

"The great problem with poisoning by Bitterness was that the passions — hatred, love, despair, enthusiasm, curiosity — also ceased to manifest themselves. After a while, the embittered person felt no desire at all. They lacked the will either to live or to die, that was the problem."

"You are someone who is different, but who wants to be the same as everyone else. And that in my view is a serious illness. God chose you to be different. Why are you disappointing God with this kind of attitude?"

"You have two choices: to control your mind or to let your mind control you."

"When we meet someone and fall in love, we have a sense that the whole universe is on our side. And yet if something goes wrong, there is nothing left! How is it possible for the beauty that was there only minutes before to vanish so quickly? Life moves very fast. It rushes from heaven to hell in a matter of seconds."

"My aim is to understand love. I know how alive I felt when I was in love, and I know that everything I have now, however interesting it might seem, doesn't really excited me. But love is a terrible thing: I've seen my girlfriends suffer and I don't want the same thing to happen to me. … Although my aim is to understand love, and although I suffer to think of people to whom I gave my heart, I see that those who touched my heart failed to arouse my body, and that those who aroused my body failed to touch my heart."

"I can choose either to be a victim of the world or an adventurer in search of treasure. It's all a question of how I view my life."

"Life always waits for some crisis to occur before revealing itself at its most brilliant."

"In love, no one can harm anyone else; we are each of us responsible for our own feelings and cannot blame someone else for what we feel. It hurt when I lost each of the various men I fell in love with. Now, though, I am convinced that no one loses anyone, because no one owns anyone. That is the true experience of freedom: having the most important thing in the world without owning it."

"Anyone who is in love is making love the whole time, even when they're not. When two bodies meet, it is just the cup overflowing. They can stay together for hours, even days. They begin the dance one day and finish it the next, or — such is the pleasure they experience — they may never finish it. No eleven minutes for them."

"I learned something recently: our true friends are those who are with us when the good things happen. They cheer us on and are pleased by our triumphs. False friends only appear at difficult times, with their sad, supportive faces, when, in fact, our suffering is serving to console them for their miserable lives..."

"You want to know if the heart of a man or a woman can contain enough love for more than one person? … I think it's perfectly possible as long as one of those people doesn’t turn into … a Zahir."

"In my world, everything is possible and everything is relative."

"Everyone believes that the main aim in life is to follow a plan. They never ask if that plan is theirs or if it was created by another person. They accumulate experiences, memories, things, other people's ideas, and it is more than they can possibly cope with. And that is why they forget their dreams."

"Stop being who you were and become who you are."

"A brush with death always helps us to live our lives better."

"That’s the problem, we do get used to things."

"That is how I would have acted before my accident, but now my personal history had become unimportant. It had stopped being history and was once more becoming a legend, a search, an adventure, a journey into and away from myself. I was once more in a time which the things around me were changing and that is how I wanted it to be for the rest of my days."

"Athena's great problem was that she was a woman of the twenty-second century living in the twenty-first, and making no secret of the fact, either. Did she pay a price? She certainly did. But she would have paid a still higher price if she had repressed her natural exuberance. She would have been bitter, frustrated, always concerned about "what other people might think," always saying, "I'll just sort these things out, then I'll devote myself to my dream," always complaining "that the conditions are never quite right.""

"All my life I've learned to suffer in silence."

"What is a teacher? I'll tell you: it isn't someone who teaches something, but someone who inspires the student to give of her best in order to discover what she already knows."

"You are what you believe yourself to be. Don't be like those people who believe in "positive thinking" and tell themselves that they're loved and strong and capable. You don't need to do that because you know it already. And when you doubt it — which happens, I think, quite often at this stage of evolution — do as I suggested. Instead of trying to prove that you're better than you think, just laugh. Laugh at your worries and insecurities. View your anxieties with humor. It will be difficult at first, but you'll gradually get used to it. Now go back and meet all those people who think you know everything. Convince yourself that they're right, because we all know everything, it's merely a question of believing. Believe."

"Love simply is. That is the testament of Athena or Sherine or Hagia Sofia — love is. No definitions. Love and don't ask too many questions. Just love."

"You feel that nothing you have learned has put down roots, that while you’re capable of entering the magical universe, you cannot remain submerged in it. You feel that all of this may be nothing but a fantasy dreamed up by people to fend off their fear of death."

"I have only one certainty: there exists a parallel spiritual universe that impinges on the world in which we live. Apart from that, everything else seems absurd to me—sacred books, revelations, guides, manuals, ceremonies … and, what is worse, they appear to have no lasting effects."

"That’s because, like everyone else on the planet, you believed that time would teach you to grow closer to God. But time doesn’t teach; it merely brings us a sense of weariness and of growing older."

"In magic—and in life—there is only the present moment, the now. You can’t measure time the way you measure the distance between two points. “Time” doesn’t pass. We human beings have enormous difficulty in focusing on the present; we’re always thinking about what we did, about how we could have done it better, about the consequences of our actions, and about why we didn’t act as we should have. Or else we think about the future, about what we’re going to do tomorrow, what precautions we should take, what dangers await us around the next corner, how to avoid what we don’t want and how to get what we have always dreamed of."

"Past and future exist only in our memory. The present moment, though, is outside of time, it’s Eternity. In India, they use the word ‘karma,’ for lack of any better term. It isn’t what you did in the past that will affect the present. It’s what you do in the present that will redeem the past and thereby change the future."

"You think that you exist because you’re unhappy. Other people exist merely as a function of their problems and spend all their time talking compulsively about their children, their wives and husbands, school, work, friends. They never stop to think: I’m here. I am the result of everything that happened and will happen, but I’m here. If I did something wrong, I can put it right or at least ask forgiveness. If I did something right, that leaves me happier and more connected with the now”."

"you discover that your old “I,” along with everything you ever learned, is absolutely no use at all in the face of those new challenges, and you begin to realize that buried deep in your unconscious mind there is someone much more interesting and adventurous and more open to the world and to new experiences."

"Our life is a constant journey, from birth to death. The landscape changes, the people change, our needs change, but the train keeps moving. Life is the train, not the station. And what you’re doing now isn’t traveling, it’s just changing countries, which is completely different Understand what is going on inside you and you will understand what is going on inside everyone else."

"Whenever I refused to follow my fate, something very hard to bear would happen in my life. Tragedy always brings about radical change in our lives, a change that is associated with the same principle: loss. When faced by any loss, there’s no point in trying to recover what has been; it’s best to take advantage of the large space that opens up before us and fill it with something new."

"What did I do to deserve this?"

"Lord, preserve me from tragedy and I will follow your desires."

"Here I am, trying to persuade myself that I always give the best of myself, and nature is telling me exactly the opposite: anyone truly committed to life never stops walking."

"Hell is when we look back during that fraction of a second and know that we wasted an opportunity to dignify the miracle of life. Paradise is being able to say at that moment: “I made some mistakes, but I wasn’t a coward. I lived my life and did what I had to do.” However, there’s no need to anticipate my particular hell and keep going over and over the fact that I can make no further progress in what I understand to be my “Spiritual Quest.” It’s enough that I keep trying. Even those who didn’t do all they could have done have already been forgiven; they had their punishment while they were alive by being unhappy when they could have been living in peace and harmony. We are all redeemed and free to follow the path that has no beginning and will have no end."

"Routine has nothing to do with repetition. To become really good at anything, you have to practice and repeat, practice and repeat, until the technique becomes intuitive."

"What can’t be cured must be endured."

"Every note leaves in each of us a memory, but it is the melody as a whole that tells a story, the story of someone wanting to get closer to another person and who keeps on trying, despite repeated rejections."

"I can’t tell someone that their dreams are impossible."

"If I were to persuade just one person to stop fighting for something they were convinced was worthwhile, I would end up persuading myself, and my whole life would be diminished."

"So, in my relationships with men, I’ve always sought suffering, conflict, and despair."

"Don’t let yourself be destroyed by a force that was placed in our hearts in order to make everything better."

"The light of love flows out of my soul, but it can go nowhere because it’s blocked by pain. I could inhale and exhale every morning for the rest of my life, but that wouldn’t solve anything."

"What hurts us is what heals us."

"Life has been very hard on me, but, at the same time, it has taught me a great deal."

"To live is to experience things, not sit around pondering the meaning of life."

"What we aim to do is calm the spirit and get in touch with the source from which everything comes, removing any trace of malice or egotism. If you spend too much time trying to find out what is good or bad about someone else, you’ll forget your own soul and end up exhausted and defeated by the energy you have wasted in judging others."

"Lao-tzu’s words, was: place all your feelings outside of yourself and you will be renewed."

"I don’t believe in God as you imagine Him to be, but I believe in many things that you could never even dream of."

"I think to myself that this really isn’t something I should concern myself with."

"“No one can learn to love by following a manual, and no one can learn to write by following a course. I’m not telling you to seek out other writers but to find people with different skills from yourself, because writing is no different from any other activity done with joy and enthusiasm”."

"If I had to give you one piece of advice, it would be this: don’t be intimidated by other people’s opinions."

"Only mediocrity is sure of itself, so take risks, and do what you really want to do."

"Seek out people who aren’t afraid of making mistakes and who, therefore, do make mistakes. Because of that, their work often isn’t recognized, but they are precisely the kind of people who change the world and, after many mistakes, do something that will transform their own community completely”."

"If someone is giving us something, that’s because we’re incapable of getting it for ourselves."

"Love is the only thing that will save us, independent of any mistakes we may make. Love is always stronger."

"Time neither moves nor is stationary. Time changes."

"We learn in the past, but we are not the result of that. We suffered in the past, loved in the past, cried and laughed in the past, but that’s of no use to the present. The present has its challenges, its good and bad side. We can neither blame nor be grateful to the past for what is happening now. Each new experience of love has nothing whatsoever to do with past experiences. It’s always new."

"People aren’t used to that way of thinking. They want everything to stay the same—and the consequence of that is pain,”."

"We are not the person other people wish we were. We are who we decide to be."

"It’s always easy to blame others. You can spend your entire life blaming the world, but your successes or failures are entirely your own responsibility. You can try to stop time, but it’s a complete waste of energy."

"If you rely only on experience, you’ll simply keep applying old solutions to new problems. I know a lot of people who feel they have an identity only when they’re talking about their problems. That way, they exist, because their problems are linked to what they judge to be their history."

"It takes a huge effort to free yourself from memory, but when you succeed, you start to realize that you’re capable of far more than you imagined. You live in this vast body called the Universe, which contains all the solutions and all the problems. Visit your soul; don’t visit your past. The Universe goes through many mutations and carries the past with it. We call each of those mutations a ‘life,’ but just as the cells in your body change and yet you remain the same, so time does not pass, it merely changes."

"Never. We never lose our loved ones. They accompany us; they don’t disappear from our lives. We are merely in different rooms. For example, I can’t see who is in the next carriage, but it contains people traveling in the same time as me, as you, as everyone. The fact that we can’t speak to them or know what’s going on in that other carriage is completely irrelevant. They are there. So what we call ‘life’ is a train with many carriages. Sometimes we’re in one, sometimes we’re in another, and sometimes we cross between them, when we dream or allow ourselves to be swept away by the extraordinary."

"Love always triumphs over what we call death. That’s why there’s no need to grieve for our loved ones, because they continue to be loved and remain by our side."

"Life is one long training session in preparation for what will come. Life and death lose their meaning; there are only challenges to be met with joy and overcome with tranquility."

"First develop a strategy that utilizes everything around you. The best way to prepare for a challenge is to cultivate the ability to call on an infinite variety of responses."

"I forgive the tears I was made to shed,"

"I forgive the pain and the disappointments,"

"I forgive the betrayals and the lies,"

"I forgive the slanders and intrigues,"

"I forgive the hatred and the persecution,"

"I forgive the blows that hurt me,"

"I forgive the wrecked dreams,"

"I forgive the stillborn hopes,"

"I forgive the hostility and jealousy,"

"I forgive the indifference and ill will,"

"I forgive the injustice carried out in the name of justice,"

"I forgive the anger and the cruelty,"

"I forgive the neglect and the contempt,"

"I forgive the world and all its evils.”"

"I will be capable of loving, regardless of whether I am loved in return,"

"Of giving, even when I have nothing,"

"Of working happily, even in the midst of difficulties,"

"Of holding out my hand, even when utterly alone and abandoned,"

"Of drying my tears, even while I weep,"

"Of believing, even when no one believes in me."

"The world is divided into those who understand me and those who don’t. In the case of the latter, I simply leave them to torment themselves trying to gain my sympathy."

"I love you like a river that creates the right conditions for trees and bushes and flowers to flourish along its banks. I love you like a river that gives water to the thirsty and takes people where they want to go."

"I love you like a river that understands that it must learn to flow differently over waterfalls and to rest in the shallows. I love you because we are all born in the same place, at the same source, which keeps us provided with a constant supply of water. And so, when we feel weak, all we have to do is wait a little. The spring returns, and the winter snows melt and fill us with new energy."

"I love you like a river that begins as a solitary trickle in the mountains and gradually grows and joins other rivers until, after a certain point, it can flow around any obstacle in order to get where it wants."

"I receive your love, and I give you mine. Not the love of a man for a woman, not the love of a father for a child, not the love of God for his creatures, but a love with no name and no explanation, like a river that cannot explain why it follows a particular course but simply flows onward. A love that asks for nothing and gives nothing in return; it is simply there. I will never be yours, and you will never be mine; nevertheless, I can honestly say: I love you, I love you, I love you."

"I am not a foreigner, because I haven’t been praying to return safely home. I haven’t wasted my time imagining my house, my desk, my side of the bed. I am not a foreigner, because we are all traveling, we are all full of the same questions, the same tiredness, the same fears, the same selfishness, and the same generosity. I am not a foreigner, because, when I asked, I received."

"When I knocked, the door opened. When I looked, I found."

"Life is a dream from which we wake only when we meet death."

"The papyruses are Greek translations of texts written between the end of the First century BC and AD 180, and they constitute a body of work also known as the Apocryphal Gospels because they are not included in the Bible as we know it today. Now, why is that? In AD 170, a group of bishops decided which texts would form part of the New Testament... other books.. were omitted either because they were written by women (for example, the Gospel according to Mary Magdalene) or because they depicted a Jesus who was aware of his divine mission and whose passage through death would, therefore, be less drawn out and painful."

"In 1974, the English archaeologist Sir Walter Wilkinson discovered another manuscript, this time written in three languages: Arabic, Hebrew, and Latin...On 30 November 2011, I received a copy of the text that he had mentioned at that first meeting. I transcribe it here."

"Now that I am at the end of my life, I leave for those who come after me everything that I learned while I walked the face of this Earth. May they make good use of it."

"A week ago, our commanders held a meeting. The French soldiers are infinitely superior and far better equipped than ours. We were given a choice: to abandon the city or fight to the death, because we will certainly be defeated. Most of us decided to stay. The Muslims are, at this moment, gathered at the Al-Aqsa mosque, the Jews chose to assemble their soldiers in Mihrab Dawud, and the Christians... were charged with defending the southern part of the city... Judging from the enemy’s movements, we assume that they will attack tomorrow morning, spilling our blood in the name of the Pope, the ‘liberation’ of the city and the ‘divine will’."

"This evening, in the same square where, a millennium ago, the Roman governor, Pontius Pilate, handed Jesus over to the mob to be crucified, a group of men and women of all ages went to see the Greek, whom we all know as the Copt... He did not seek to join any particular religion, and no one tried to persuade him otherwise. The Copt believes only in the present moment and what he calls Moira - the unknown god, the Divine Energy..."

"Many centuries ago, a man was judged and condemned in this square.. On the road to the right, while he was walking towards his death, he passed a group of women. When he saw them weeping, he said: “Weep not for me, weep for Jerusalem.” He prophesied what is happening now. As from tomorrow, harmony will become discord. Joy will be replaced by grief. Peace will give way to a war that will last into an unimaginably distant future... They can destroy the city, but they cannot destroy everything the city has taught us, which is why it is vital that this knowledge does not suffer the same fate as our walls, houses and streets. But what is knowledge?’"

"It isn’t the absolute truth about life and death, but the thing that helps us to live and confront the challenges of day-to-day life. It isn’t what we learn from books, which serves only to fuel futile arguments about what happened or will happen; it is the knowledge that lives in the hearts of men and women of good will.... I am a learned man and yet...still don’t know quite what to say to you. But I will ask the Divine Energy to purify my heart."

"You will ask me questions and I will answer them. That is what the teachers of Ancient Greece did; their disciples would ask them questions about problems they had not considered before and the teachers would answer them... We will speak, therefore, about our daily lives, about the difficulties we have had to face. That is all the future will be interested in, because I do not believe very much will change in the next thousand years.’"

"Does a man who spent years preparing to climb the highest mountain in the world feel defeated when, on reaching that mountain, he discovers that nature has cloaked the summit in storm clouds? The man says... "...the weather will change and, one day, I will make it to the top. Meanwhile, you’ll still be here waiting for me.”"

"Does a young man, rejected by his first love, declare that love does not exist? The young man says to himself: “I’ll find someone better able to understand what I feel. And then I will be happy for the rest of my days.""

"In the cycle of nature there is no such thing as victory or defeat; there is only movement. The winter struggles to reign supreme, but in the end is obliged to accept spring’s victory, which brings with it flowers and happiness."

"Others, even though they were defeated and feel humiliated by the things the winners are saying about them, will allow themselves to shed a few tears but will never succumb to self-pity. They know that this is a merely a pause in the fighting and that, for the moment, they are at a disadvantage. They try to work out what they did wrong and what they did right. They take advantage of this moment of defeat to rest, heal their wounds, devise new strategies and equip themselves better. Then the day dawns when a new battle knocks on their door. They are still afraid, but they have to act, either that or remain for ever lying on the ground. They get up and face their opponent, remembering the suffering they have endured and which they no longer wish to endure..."

"If victory is not theirs this time, it will be the next time. And if not the next time, then the time after that... The important thing is to get back on your feet. Only he who gives up is defeated. Everyone else is victorious."

"The defeated are those who never fail. Defeat means that we lose a particular battle or war. Failure does not allow us to go on fighting."

"Defeat is for those who, despite their fears, live with enthusiasm and faith. Defeat is for the valiant. Only they will know the honour of losing and the joy of winning."

"Those who were never defeated seem happy and superior, masters of a truth they never had to lift a finger to achieve. They are always on the side of the strong. They’re like hyenas, who only eat the leavings of lions."

"Without solitude, Love will not stay long by your side... Without solitude, no plant or animal can survive, no soil can remain productive for any length of time, no child can learn about life, no artist can create, no work can grow and be transformed."

"Solitude is not the absence of Love, but its complement...Solitude is not the absence of company, but the moment when our soul is free to speak to us and help us decide what to do with our life."

"Therefore, blessed are those who do not fear solitude, who are not afraid of their own company, who are not always desperately looking for something to do, something to amuse themselves with, something to judge... If you are never alone, you cannot know yourself... And if you do not know yourself, you will begin to fear the void."

"That feeling of uselessness is no respecter of age and never asks permission, but corrodes people’s souls, repeating over and over: ‘No one is interested in you, you’re nothing, the world doesn’t need your presence.’"

"In a desperate attempt to give meaning to life, many turn to religion, because a struggle in the name of a faith is always a justification for some grand action, which could transform the world. ‘We are doing God’s work,’ they tell themselves. And they become devout followers, then evangelists, and finally, fanatics. They don’t understand that religion was created in order to share the mystery and to worship, not to oppress or convert others."

"Nothing in this world is useless in the eyes of God. Not a leaf from a tree falls, not a hair from your head, not even an insect dies because it was of no use. Everything has a reason to exist... Don’t try to be useful. Try to be yourself: that is enough, and that makes all the difference. A life is never useless. Each soul that came down to Earth is here for a reason."

"We are afraid to change because we think that, after much effort and sacrifice, we know our present world. And even though that world might not be the best of all worlds and even though we may not be entirely satisfied with it, at least it won’t give us any nasty surprises. We won’t go wrong. When necessary, we will make a few minor adjustments so that everything continues the same."

"It’s nice to dream that we will have plenty of time in the future to do our travelling and that, one day, we will. It cheers us up because we know that we are capable of doing more than we do. Dreaming carries no risks. The dangerous thing is trying to transform your dreams into reality."

"Joy. That is one of the main blessings of the All-Powerful. If we are happy, we are on the right road."

"When they are lying in their tents, unable to sleep and overwhelmed by sadness and regret, they say to themselves: Tomorrow, and only tomorrow, will I take another step. Besides, I can always turn back, because I know the road, but one more step won’t make much difference.’ Until one day, without warning, the road stops testing the traveller and begins to treat him generously. The traveller’s troubled spirit takes pleasure in the beauties and the challenges of the new landscape."

"What continues to trouble him is not what happens, but a fear that he won’t know how to deal with it. Once he has decided to follow his path and has no alternative, he discovers that he has great will power and that events bend to his decisions."

"People always say: ‘It’s inner beauty that matters, not outer beauty.’ Well, that’s not true. If it were, why would flowers put so much energy into attracting bees? And why would raindrops transform themselves into a rainbow when they encounter the sun? Because nature longs for beauty, and is only satisfied when beauty can be exalted."

"Outer beauty is inner beauty made visible, and it manifests itself in the light that flows from our eyes. It doesn’t matter if a person is badly dressed or doesn’t conform to our idea of elegance, or isn’t even concerned about impressing other people. The eyes are the mirror of the soul and reflect everything that seems to be hidden; and, like a mirror, they also reflect the person looking into them. So if the person looking into someone’s eyes has a dark soul, he will see only his own ugliness."

"In order to hear Love’s words, you must allow Love to approach. However, when it does draw near, we fear what it might say to us, because Love is free and is not ruled by our will or by what we do...True Love, however, is the love that seduces and will never allow itself to be seduced... Love transforms, love heals. But sometimes it lays deadly traps and ends up destroying the person who decided to surrender himself completely. How can the force that moves the world and keeps the stars in their places be, at once, so creative and so devastating?"

"We are used to thinking that what we give is the same as what we receive, but people who love, expecting to be loved in return, are wasting their time. Love is an act of faith, not an exchange... Life is too short for us to keep important words, for example, ‘I love you’, locked in our hearts. But do not always expect to hear the same words back. We love because we need to love. Otherwise, love loses all meaning and the sun ceases to shine."

"Sometimes, when loneliness seems about to crush everything, the only way to resist is to keep on loving."

"Our great goal in life is to love. The rest is silence."

"We need to love. Even when it leads us to the land where the lakes are made of tears, to that secret, mysterious place, the land of tears!"

"It is better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all."

"We love because Love sets us free, and we say things that we once never even had the courage to whisper to ourselves."

"No one can go back, but everyone can go forward. And tomorrow, when the sun rises, all you have to say to yourselves is: I am going to think of this day as the first day of my life."

"My smile is my way of saying: ‘You can destroy my body, but not my soul.’"

"For the first time, I will smile without feeling guilty, because joy is not a sin... For the first time, I will avoid anything that makes me suffer, because suffering is not a virtue."

"Love rules, but no one knows where it has its throne; in order to know that secret place, you must first submit to Love."

"And if I’m alone in bed, I will go over to window, look up at the sky and feel certain that loneliness is a lie, because the Universe is there to keep me company."

"Men and women whisper to each other because they have turned a sacred gesture into a sinful act. If two bodies merely join together, that is not sex, it is merely pleasure. Sex goes far beyond pleasure. In sex, relaxation and tension go hand in hand, as do pain and pleasure, shyness and the courage to go beyond one’s limits... It isn’t enough to imagine everything that might happen if we allowed ourselves to join not just our bodies, but our souls as well."

"Let us plunge together, then, down the dangerous path of surrender. It may be dangerous, but it is the only path worth following."

"Let us forget all that we are taught about how it is noble to give and humiliating to receive. Because for most people, generosity consists only in giving, but receiving is also an act of love. Allowing someone else to make us happy will make them happy too."

"We were born alone and we will die alone. But, while we are on this planet, we must accept and glorify our act of faith through other people."

"Elegance tends to be mistaken for superficiality and mere appearance. Nothing could be further from the truth: some words are elegant, others can wound and destroy, but all are written with the same letters. Flowers are elegant, even when hidden among the grasses in a meadow. The gazelle when it runs is elegant, even when it is fleeing from a lion. Elegance is not an outer quality, but a part of the soul that is visible to others... Elegance lies not in the clothes we wear, but in the way we wear them... It isn’t in the way we wield a sword, but in the dialogue we hold that could avoid a war. But every tribe, every people, has values that they associate with elegance: hospitality, respect, good manners."

"Arrogance attracts hatred and envy. Elegance arouses respect and Love. Arrogance causes us to humiliate our fellow man or woman. Elegance teaches us to walk in the light. Arrogance complicates words, because it believes that intelligence is only for the chosen few. Elegance transforms complex thoughts into something that everyone can understand."

"When we are walking our chosen path, we walk elegantly, emanating light."

"The weak are wicked. Goodness can only be expected from the strong."

"God is where you let Him in."

"May love be your guide in every moment of your life."

"Coelho’s books include eight novels, two s, several collections of occasional writing, a volume of quotations, and “Warrior of the Light: A Manual,” a book of s. They have sold nearly a hundred million copies. Bellboys, waitresses, and policemen recognize his face; in the aftermath of the Monica Lewinsky scandal, President Clinton was photographed carrying a copy of “The Alchemist.” In his writings, Coelho, who is Catholic—though he says he does not “kiss the hand of the Pope, that’s for sure”—presents himself as a searcher and a sage, a hybrid of Carlos Castaneda and Kahlil Gibran. His cosmology, which includes angels and devils, signs, omens, and, for each person, a destiny called his Personal Legend, promises that whatever is sought—love, money, inspiration—can be readily attained. Quotidian events, like weather and coincidence, he sees as miraculous."

"The Alchemist, by Paulo Coelho. I like it because it is hopeful and inspiring. It tells the story of a boy who embarks on a journey to find a treasure, but as he goes along, he learns from every part of his journey and every person he meets. In the end, he finds his treasure in a very interesting place. His story tells you that you should believe in yourself and continue your journey."

"Poker is poker."

"Now it happens to have been the Social Democrats who have regimented the important institutions in society, but it would have been dangerous whichever party it had been. Development and diversity depend on independent initiatives and competition. When everyone thinks alike not much gets thought."

"Basically, what I believe in is neither capitalism nor globalization... I believe in man's capacity for achieving great things and in the combined force resulting from encounters and exchanges. I plead for greater liberty and a more open world... because it provides a setting which liberates individuals and their creativity as no other system can. It spurs the dynamism which has led to human, economic, scientific, and technical advances, and which will continue to do so. Believing in capitalism does not mean believing in growth, the economy, or efficiency. Desirable as these may be, these are only the results. Belief in capitalism is, fundamentally, belief in mankind."

"My aim is freedom and voluntary relations in all fields. The market economy is the result of this in the economic realm; in the cultural realm it means freedom of expression; in politics, democracy and the rule of law; in social life, the right to live according to one's own values and to choose one's company."

"Since 1965 [....] the richest fifth of the world's population increased its average income by 75 percent. For the poorest fifth of the world's population, the increase has been faster still, with average incomes more than doubling during the same period."

"In the affluent world we have had capitalism in one form or another for a couple of centuries. That is how countries of the West became "the affluent world." Capitalism has given people both the liberty and the incentive to create, produce, and trade, thereby generating preosperity."

"As a result of this continuous improvement of productivity through the division of labor and technical advancement, one hour's labor today is worth about 25 times more than it was in the mid-19th century [....] Growth and productivity alone are capable of raising real wages in the long run."

"Is the problem here lack of access to clean water? No. Is it starvation? No. Is it laziness? Definitely not. No, it's poverty due to lack of growth, due to lack of reform. Everything else is just a symptom of that. In fact, even the biggest horrors - famine and war - have political causes. No democracy has ever been afflicted by a famine, and no two democracies have ever made war on each other. Africa has been subjected by socialism, gangster rule and protectionism. Africa has not been too globalized; it has been too marginalized."

"We have no leadership, no captain at the helm as it were. We are, in effect, being led from disaster to disaster by a headless horseman run amok with stuffed pockets and an empty conscience."

"I think the Internet is to MSM what TV was to yellow journalism."

"Many have defined the neocon movement based on the highly intellectual, albeit warped, musings of Strauss and Bloom. Yet one could hardly call the current leadership intellectual or even capable of digesting this philosophy. Even neocon thinkers are jumping off the ship. Do you believe this is simply trickle-down Machiavellianism in much the same way that Communism trickled down as an aberration of its original intent?"

"No oath of office or obligation of duty demands that a particular political party be supported, preserved, defended, protected, and adhered to — because no political party defines what an American is."

"Perhaps [Condoleezza Rice] would have made a more timely cameo in New Orleans had a Chevron tanker caught fire. Jane Crow seems to be just as willing as old Jim was."

"I say we pardon the turkeys, but not our elected officials."

"If you consider, for example, that democracy is much like a religion then 9/11 is akin to finding the body of God."

"Our duty - as citizens - to the Constitution transcends every other point of disagreement that every person and/or every group of people can have with one another, no matter how deeply felt. Watching our entire country implode under the self-serving ideologies of those so eager to claim everything but the Constitution as their guide leaves at least half of us without a home. We may live on the same land, but our nation and the citizens of that nation have been exiled into a national wilderness."

"Stop any person on the street and they will tell you their own version of what it means to be an American, perhaps accurately, but mostly not. Some might say that being an American means wearing the US flag as a lapel pin. Others might say that in order to be defined as an American, one must attend the right church and be the right type of Christian. Still others will tell you that supporting the troops and, above that even, supporting the President is what makes one American. Some might even venture that being born in this country or of parents who are citizens of this country is surely enough. On this last point there is some truth, but only in terms of rights, not responsibilities. As such, it presents only half of the equation."

"Fair and balanced is doublespeak for bite-out-chunks-of-truth until only irrelevancy is left, byte-sized, entertaining irrelevancy."

"If man was devolving into a psychotic pit of rotted plasma, [Karl] Rove would be the Alpha of such grime."

"But the very fact that matter in the cosmos is still moving, rather than at rest, is the single most surprising thing about the universe."

"But sometimes reality chooses not to conform to our preferences."

"It can't be stressed enough that the multiverse is utterly hypothetical—but that doesn't mean it isn't real."

"Even if we don't know the answer, a change of perspective can help us improve the question."

"In contrast to the arbitrarily complicated evolution of a (nonintegrable) classical system, all a quantum state ever does is move in circles."

"The mystery of the arrow of time comes down to this: Why were the conditions in the early universe set up in a particular way, in a configuration of low entropy that enabled all of the interesting and irreversible processes to come?"

"Inflation is a simple idea: imagine that the universe begins in a tiny patch of space dominated by the potential energy of some scalar field, a kind of super-dense dark energy. This causes that patch to expand at a terrifically accelerated rate, smoothing out the density and diluting away any unwanted relics. Eventually the scalar field decays into ordinary matter and radiation, reheating the universe into a conventional Big Bang state, after which things proceed as normal."

"There probably are more forces than we know about, but they’re only going to be of direct interest to physicists, I’m afraid. No tractor beams."

"All of my advice comes from remembering what I did wrong and then telling people not to do it. ... Don't wait to read the most recent research papers. ... Wonder how you could do better. ... Do your own research projects. Take the initiative. ... Ask your own questions — try to answer them. ... At some point you stop being a student and you start being a scientist. ... And it's a completely different skill set ...""

"When exactly does an observation occur? ... What were the laws of physics doing before there was anyone measuring things? And what do you mean by a measurement, anyway? Does it have to be a consciousness human being? ... Can a rock or a virus or an earthworm do an observation?"

"People don't like to read papers — they like to read titles."

"... I just want to understand the large-scale story that string gas cosmology is trying to sell us. We have nine dimensions of space — they are all very small — and in three dimensions they start unwinding and getting bigger. Is that the basic idea?"

"The broader ontology typically associated with atheism is naturalism—there is only one world, the natural world, exhibiting patterns we call the “laws of nature,” and which is discoverable by the methods of science and empirical investigation. There is no separate realm of the supernatural, spiritual, or divine; nor is there any cosmic teleology or transcendent purpose inherent in the nature of the universe or in human life. “Life” and “consciousness” do not denote essences distinct from matter; they are ways of talking about phenomena that emerge from the interplay of extraordinarily complex systems. Purpose and meaning in life arise through fundamentally human acts of creation, rather than being derived from anything outside ourselves. Naturalism is a philosophy of unity and patterns, describing all of reality as a seamless web."

"Meaning in life can’t be reduced to simplistic mottos. In some number of years I will be dead; some memory of my time here on Earth may linger, but I won’t be around to savor it."

"Poetic naturalism is a philosophy of freedom and responsibility. The raw materials of life are given to us by the natural world, and we must work to understand them and accept the consequences. The move from description to prescription, from saying what happens to passing judgment on what should happen, is a creative one, a fundamentally human act. The world is just the world, unfolding according to the patterns of nature, free of any judgmental attributes. The world exists; beauty and goodness are things that we bring to it."

"What we’re seeing is a manifestation of the layered nature of our descriptions of reality. At the deepest level we currently know about, the basic notions are things like “spacetime,” “quantum fields,” “equations of motion,” and “interactions.” No causes, whether material, formal, efficient, or final. But there are levels on top of that, where the vocabulary changes."

"The momentary or Laplacian nature of physical evolution doesn’t have much relevance for the choices we face in our everyday lives. For poetic naturalism, the situation is clear. There is one way of talking about the universe that describes it as elementary particles or quantum states, in which Laplace holds sway and what happens next depends only on the state of the system right now."

"Metaphysical principles are tempting shortcuts but not reliable guides. There are good reasons why things often seem to happen for reasons—and also reasons why that’s not a bedrock principle."

"The “reasons” and “causes” why things happen, in other words, aren’t fundamental; they are emergent. We need to dig in to the actual history of the universe to see why these concepts have emerged."

"What we can’t do is demand that the universe scratch our explanatory itches. Curiosity is a virtue, and it’s good to look for answers to “Why?” questions whenever we might be able to find them, or when we think that asking such questions might help us to understand things better. But we should be at peace with the possibility that, for some questions, the answer doesn’t go any deeper than “That’s what it is.” We’re not used to that—our intuition assures us that every event can be explained in terms of some reason why. To understand why we have that impression, we need to dig more deeply into how our actual universe has evolved."

"Our growing affluence has allowed us to shift from being bargain shoppers buying branded (or even unbranded) commodities to becoming mini-connoisseurs, flexing our taste with a thousand little indulgences that sets us apart from others."

"For the first time in history, hits and niches are on equal economic footing, both just entries in a database called up on demand, both equally worthy of being carried. Suddenly, popularity no longer has a monopoly on profitability."

"The world of shelf space is a zero-sum game: One product displaces another."

"We are turning from a mass market back into a niche nation, defined now not by our geography but by our interests."

"In an era without the constraints of physical shelf space and other bottlenecks of distributions, narrowly targeted goods and services can be as economically attractive as mainstream fare."

"A Long Tail is just culture unfiltered by economic scarcity."

"Talent is not universal but it is widely spread: Give enough people the capacity to create, and inevitably gems will emerge."

"Never underestimate the power of a million amateurs with keys to the factory."

"The Web is the ultimate marketplace of ideas, governed by the laws of big numbers."

"The ultimate cost reduction is eliminating atoms entirely and dealing only in bits."

"For a generation of customers used to doing their buying research via search engine, a company’s brand is not what the company says it is, but what Google says it is."

"In a world of infinite choice, context—not content—is king. (Chris Anderson quoting Rob Reid)"

"Broadly, the Long Tail is about abundance. Abundant shelf space, abundant distribution, abundant choice."

"Remember, in the tyranny of physical space, an audience too thinly spread is the same as no audience at all."

"Blockbusters are the exception, not the rule, and yet we see an entire industry through their rarefied air."

"We are entering an era of unprecedented choice. And that’s a good thing."

"Order it wrong and choice is oppressive; order it right and it’s liberating."

"This is the end of spoon-fed orthodoxy and infallible institutions, and the rise of messy mosaics of information that require—and reward—investigation."

"Fundamentally, a society that asks questions and has the power to answer them is a healthier society than one that simply accepts what it’s told from a narrow range of experts and institutions."

"It this terrible simplification that there is one Africa, and things go on in one way in Africa. We have to stop that, it is not respectful, and it's not very clever to think that way. I had the fortune to live and work for a time in the United States. I found out that Salt Lake City and San Francisco were different. And so it is in Africa, it's a lot of difference. What do we think it would be concurrency? And what is concurrency? In Sweden, we have no concurrency. We have serial monogamy. Vodka New Year's Eve, new partner for the spring, vodka Midsummer Eve, new partner for the fall, vodka, and it goes on like this, you know, and you collect a big number of ex's, and we've got a terrible chlamydia epidemic."

"“There’s no room for facts when our minds are occupied by fear.”"

"“Mr. Vice President. No numbers, no bubbles.”"

"If I had not grown up in Stockerau, in the boonies of Lower Austria, than I would not be what I am now. The germ cell of burgeoning nerdism is difference. The yearning to be understood, to find opportunities to share experiences, to not be left alone with one's bizarre interest. At the same time one derives an almost perverse pleasure from wallowing in this deficit. Nerds love deficiency: that of the other, but also their own. Nerds are eager explorers, who enjoy measuring themselves against one another and also compete aggressively. And yet the nerd's existence also comprises an element of the occult, of mystery. The way in which this power is expressed or focused is very important."

"Historically speaking, the first wave of the punk/new wave (approximately 1976-1983) was primarily a movement of creative abuse of hardly-ever-used consumer media technology. Parents (usually technophile Baby boomer dads) bought expensive equipment like 8-track recorders, Super-8 and Polaroid cameras and later VHS camcorders and only used it to "document" birthday parties and other eminently boring ceremonies. But the rebellious teens found interesting new things to do with the dust-collecting media tech, and it started one of the biggest DIY revolutions of the 20th century. So punk (years before cyperpunk) was a movement of youngsters goofing around with (aka appropriating) consumer tech."

"I think that the figure of the nerd provides a beautiful template for analyzing the transformation of the disciplinary society into the control society. The nerd, in his cliche form, first stepped out upon the world stage in the mid-1970s, when we were beginning to hear the first rumblings of what would become the Cambrian explosion of the information society. The nerd must serve as comic relief for the future-anxieties of Western society. And the transformation I'm talking about is already in full swing: the police gaze of 19th- and 20th-century disciplinary society made visible the individual, which is illuminated by power. In our burgeoning technological control society, the individual is x-rayed and algorithmized. Even worse: the individuals x-ray themselves, willingly putting themselves on display."

"Jesus died for our SIMMs."

"Privacy is a bourgeois fantasy."

"The widespread inability to understand technological artifacts as fabricated entities, as social and cultural phenomena, derives from the fact that in retrospect only those technologies that prove functional for a culture and can be integrated into everyday life are 'left over.' However, the perception of what is functional, successful and useful is itself the product of social and cultural--and last but not least--political and economic processes. Selection processes and abandoned products and product forms are usually not discussed."

"In a media-based society (and of course there is no such thing as a non-media-based society consisting of more than one person) it is the signs and significants, the meanings and habits and conventions of speaking and thinking, the images and stereotypes which control everything. It is important to analyze how it is represented and of course what is not represented or how it lacks representation. It's not so much Rupert Murdoch – whose assholeness I will not dispute – that we should attack, but rather something I would call the cultural grammar of the public space. Power is formed within such a grammar. Access and non-access to each and every thing is regulated in its realm. Meanings are negotiated there."

"The human is a narrative being. We construct emotional machines, so-called “stories”, to communicate, to share the world in which we live and make it collectively experienceable. And we are pretty good at doing that. Since the primordial soup at some point mendelized into primate brains, we have either been fleeing from big cats or telling others about our escapes from the clutches of big cats. Sitting around the campfire, interpreting and breaking down the world, charging it with aura. Initially this was all very mythopoeic, and slowly it became more differentiated. But even in the post-Enlightenment age, world interpretations are not necessarily particularly rational. Good stories sell well, and the best stories are the ones that hit you in the gut, regardless of whether they would hold up to a Wikipedia check or not."

"Oh, Tolkien, that miserable Catholic. He even hated refrigerators. A technophobic academic who probable would have fucked Ireland, if Ireland were fuckable."

"Companies like Nike already use Graffiti as a standard variety in their marketing campaigns and the first people who read Naomi Klein's 'No Logo' were marketing gurus who wanted to know what they shouldn't do."

"Since the advent of modernism, artists have been seeking to loosen the entanglement of work and subject, because they saw themselves pushed into a role that they did not necessarily want to occupy: one which offered freedom and independence on the upside, but in combination with isolation and powerlessness on the downside. While the workers of the Fordist factory developed collectivist strategies to pursue their goals, the particularities of the artist's existence – cast as productive eccentricity and manic-depressive individualism – made it more difficult for artists to organize to achieve their demands and improve their precarious living and working conditions. It was only with great difficulty that this group, condemned to autonomy, could free itself from the prison of its freedom."

"The information age is an age of permanently getting stuck. Greater and greater speed is demanded. New software, new hardware, new structures, new cultural techniques. Life-long learning? Yes. But the company can't fire the secretary every six months, just because she can't cope with the new version of Excel. They can count their keystrokes, measure their productivity … but! They will never be able to sanction their inability! Because that is immanent."

"I think that Man in creating God somewhat overestimated his abilities."

"Imagination is an abuse of power."

"The great gender unifier is your asshole."

"Computer games are embedded in the cultural framework of technological developments. In the study of technological development and creativity, focusing attention on the failure, the error, the breakdown, the malfunction means opening the black box of technology. Studies have convincingly demonstrated that the widespread inability to understand technological artifacts as fabricated entities, as social and cultural phenomena, derives from the fact that in retrospect only those technologies that prove functional for a culture and can be integrated into everyday life are "left over." However, the perception of what is functional, successful and useful is itself the product of social and cultural--and last but not least--political and economic processes. Selection processes and abandoned products and product forms are usually not discussed. According to Langdon Winner, there is a sense in which all technical activity contains an inherent tendency toward forgetfulness."

"Contemporary art -- the field we are usually working in because there's money -- is mostly concerned with systems or systematic concepts. In the context of their work, artists adapt models of individual art-specific or economic or political systems like in a laboratory, to reveal the true nature of these systems by deconstructing them. So would it be fair to say that by their chameleon-like adaptation they are attempting to generate a similar system? Well... the corporate change in the art market has aged somewhat in the meantime and looks almost as old as the 'New Economy'. Now even the last snotty brat has realized that all the hogwash about the creative industries, sponsoring, fund-raising, the whole load of bullshit about the beautiful new art enterprises, was not much more than the awful veneer on the stupid, crass fanfare of neo-liberal liberation teleology. What is the truth behind the shifting spheres of activity between computer graphics, web design and the rest of all those frequency-orientated nerd pursuits? A lonely business with other lonely people at their terminals. And in the meantime the other part of the corporate identity has incidentally wasted whole countries like Argentina or Iceland. That's the real truth of the matter."

"I always wonder what the official web site of the GDR would look like if they were still around. Would they use Flash? Or HTML5?"

"The future is like the Jetsons, plus rape."

"Long time ago I called the greasy stuff on touch displays "hackerfat"... but it's better to change that to "socialsmear"."

"I blame society for Zack Snyder's career."

"The Capitalist system is a highly adaptable entity. And so it isn't surprising that alternative spaces and forms of living provided interesting ideas that could be milked and marketed. So certain structural features of these "indie" movement outputs were suddenly highly acclaimed, applied and copy-pasted into capitalist developing laboratories. These qualities fit best into the tendency in which -- by the end of the seventies -- bourgeois society started to update and re-launch using the experiences gained through countercultural projects. Mainstream harvested the knowledge that was won in these projects and used it. Normalizing dissent."

"The emergence of new media (and therefore artistic) formats is certainly interesting. But etching information into copper plates is just as exciting. We think that the perpetual return of 'the new', to cite Walter Benjamin, is nothing to write home about - except perhaps for the slave-drivers in the fashion industry. We've never been interested in the new just in itself, but in the accidental occurrence. In the moment where things don't tally, where productive confusion arises. That's why in the final analysis, although we've laughed a lot with Stewart Home, we even reject the meta-criticism of innovation-fixation articulated in 'neoism'. The new sorts itself out when it lands in the museum. Finito."

"I always loved the grand dichotomies of life. Dogs and cats. Cats and mice. Like Tom and Jerry. But as someone who grew up in Central Europe I never understood how a mouse can live inside a wall. Walls are made of bricks! They are not hollow. Way later I came to understand, when I learned that US-American houses are just made of wood, and their walls are really hollow."

"Christianity is a death cult gone horribly wrong."

"Everything in German sounds like a war crime. And everything in Austrian German sounds like a war crime served with whipped cream."

"Hasta la victoria siempre! Never forget! And let anthropomorphized kiwis puke evil provitamins on Jean-Luc Picard!"

"Did you know that if you removed all nerve cells from your brain and laid them out end-to-end in a straight line, you would die?"

"Whenever I go to a botanical garden, I think of killing people with a spade."

"Monotheism is a dictatorship. The number of the beast is 1."

"Vegas is gorgeous hyperreality, but most of the stuff people like here is not my cup of tea. I don't gamble, and I don't like Penn & Teller. I'd rather be locked into a basement full of Philip Glass recordings."

"Liberals believe being friendly and fair will make the world better. But our world runs by horrific rules. Fair-play doesn't change the rules. You just accept them."

"A guy once screamed "Rammstein is fascist" in my face. I screamed "Laibach have seen better days!" back."

"Watching a Norwegian film: character screams "Satan" and the English subtitle reads "Christ". That's was I call subliminal messaging."

"Strange to see radical anti-Semites using Facebook. I'd like to call that Zuckerberg's Paradox."

"Mankind is a sexual and tool-using species. So it's never old news to deal with the intersection of human desire and ingenuity. As biohacking, sexually enhanced bodies, genetic utopias and the plethora of gender have long been the focus of literature, science fiction and, increasingly, pornography, we explore the possibilities that fictional and authentic bodies have to offer."

"Rammstein is an award-winning music-based German-teaching system for American goths."

"Dreamt I had a meeting with the Austrian Film Institute about a grant. They told me I would never get one, but I should try insurance fraud."

"I remember when I got a new device for my computer. I connected it to the landline phone plug(!), and the device called another device and sang a robot love song to it. That made the devices connect, and I could go online and exchange messages. That was one of the most important things that ever happened to me, breaking my isolation. It helped me to reach out to other folks all around the globe. Communication is key in nerd culture. But beware if that communication fails. You can create toxic troll wastelands! Not even robot love songs can help you with that!"

"There are still films about bank robberies, but let's be honest, the biggest financial crimes today aren't happening in banks, they're happening on Wall Street. This is happening in the completely abstract datasphere. Capitalism is dependent upon this commodity of speed. Making a film about a bank robbery is maybe funny, but it's completely anachronistic. We have to tell the stories of the 21st century, specifically in a way that people can relate to it."

"Leftist memes are 25 pages long and have footnotes. (Original German: Linke Memes sind 25 Seiten lang und haben Fußnoten.)"

"[Glossary of Broken Dreams] was born out of the frustration that debate culture (not only) on digital platforms has become radically fragmented and fractalized, making it hard to call it discourse. It's a Tower of Babel-like context confusion that pleases me as a nerd, but as a political being who wants society to progress, it doesn't please me at all. [...] I just thought it was time for something like a political spring cleaning of concepts. Because picking up the broom and taking a chance to get rid of stuff is the only way to prevent us all from becoming social liberal hoarders. One of my examples is the concept of privacy that, at the moment, everyone coddles like a puppy. Let me say this, as a good old Neo-leftist, I'm having problems with the conservative and deeply bourgeois can of worms that the privacy debate entails. I think it's time to change our thought patterns here. Instead of trying to find ways to defend our privacy come hell or high water, we should ask ourselves why privacy is such a major concern for us? Is what we're trying to achieve here just reformist symptom-control rather than a solution to the underlying problems?"

"It's not working from home, it's living at work."

"Conspiracy theories (actually: hypotheses) are comforting, anthropocentric, affirming constructs. They assume that someone runs the world, that someone is in control. The sad truth is that nobody is in control. That's way more terrifying."

"My nerdy teenage rebellion was to confront my parents with the scientific method, challenging their weird beliefs, asking for peer-reviewed data and scientific context. I remember that one day when I was 15, I asked my mother to use her divining rod and a piece of paper to determine the first 30 decimal values of pi. It took her three hours and not a single one was right. That felt like a huge success, but she just told me she had a bad day because of the full moon. Tomorrow she would try again and would succeed. And if not, who says that the 30 digits of pi in the math books are actually right? Maybe her version was correct in the first place and she had access to a higher knowledge? It simply wasn't possible to challenge her."

"Sometimes I surprise myself with my own face."

"Don't cry for me, cry for Argentina!"

"After the Soviet Union turned into many, many little non-Soviet countries... it was crazy. It was like a lot of pop-ups on Firefox, and you try to click them away, but it doesn't work!"

"Is Corona laboratory-made? Nah. I think it's way more reasonable to assume that a bat fucked a pangolin. And some guy then fucked that pangolin. Mystery solved. Occam's razor."

"Could you get O positive this time? That's my favorite."

"Joss shook his head and managed a smile. "Hey, have you ever seen what happens when you drop Mentos in diet soda?""

"While we wait, God builds our faith in His promises."

"While you can’t keep fear from visiting, you can slam the door in its face. With God’s promise in your hand, that’s exactly what you are able to do."

"Fear is the contradiction of faith. Faith says, Whatever it is, it’ll be okay because of God."

"The antidote for fear is the promise of God’s presence. God is with you. “For He has said, ‘I will never leave you nor forsake you.’”(Heb 13:5)"

"Sometimes it feels like God backs away from you when you hit hard times, but that’s not true. (see Psalm 34:18)"

"You’ll face overwhelming odds; you’ll be incredibly outnumbered. Fear would be your natural inclination. But keep in mind, God is with you."

"This fight is not going to be over in 10 minutes or 10 weeks; there’s no quick solution. If you think it’s taking too long, remember, God is with you."

"When God promises, He’s not saying, I’ll try. He means, I can and I will."

"It’s not unlikely that God would lie—that would be a matter of probability. It is impossible for God to lie."

"Even if God could lie, He would have no motivation. He can gain nothing by lying. Everything He wants to have happen happens."

"Take a deep breath and take this to heart; God has nothing to do with broken promises. When He says, I promise, mark it down—it’s going to happen."

"When you say, I don’t know exactly what God is doing, but I know he’s in control—that’s evidence you’re trusting Him."

"Doubt is a lack of confidence or assurance that God will keep his promises. Faith is an active confidence that God’s promises are always true."

"The Christian way is a life of faith. In order to hold on to the promises of God, you’ve got to believe them and live by them."

"Don’t lean on your own understanding. If your trust in God is limited by your understanding of His ways, you will always have a limited trust."

"Don’t miss God’s fingerprints all over the events, lining up people and circumstances in perfect timing to preserve His people and advance His agenda."

"When you come to the place where you can’t do anything else, you must stand still and believe… When you can’t do anything, let God do it all."

"You might not think it now, but if you’re one of God’s children, you’re going to figure it out by the end of your life—God is good."

"His disposition is kindness. His default action is for your benefit. He’s good! And someday you will taste it!"

"Our prayer must be, “Father, I’m waiting for You because I know You are good in what You do and in when you do it.”"

"Eventually you can see that your pain was part of a much larger picture that God was carefully painting."

"What kind of future is in God’s plan? A good one to which you can look forward. That’s why you can hope."

"We all know the disappointments that come when we base anticipation on what we and other humans can deliver. God will never have a problem delivering!"

"It doesn’t matter what has happened, better things are coming. God’s plan produces hope in me."

"If He wasn’t going to use that hard thing for your good, it wouldn’t have happened. He had to sign off on every single thing that touches your life."

"I want to be a part of the grand plan. Being on board with God’s objectives means I understand that this is not about me."

"By your grace, I will not despair. I believe that I will see the goodness of the Lord in the land of the living."

"Only when we have done all we knew to do can we wait by faith for God to do what only He can do."

"God looked through eternity past and He saw you and He chose to reach out and redeem you by His own grace. It’s hard to imagine that kind of love."

"Too many times we’re looking for ways to get around deep waters and dangerous fires, rather than through them. Has this ever been your experience?"

"At this moment, God is watching your life and at some point in this trial, He will say enough. You don’t need to falter."

"Difficult trials will naturally evoke powerful emotions in us. How would your circumstances look today if you chose to focus first on God’s promises?"

"I will not fail: God is always victorious."

"[God’s] purposes are always accomplished. His enemies are always defeated. His faithful followers are always rewarded. His Son’s throne will be established forever."

"The main thing missing from cartoons is today that old cartoons were cartoony. They did things you can't do in any other medium. Today's cartoons are very conservative and are more like live action. The characters look the same in every frame of the dang cartoon. The old cartoons squashed, stretched, and did crazy expressions. They were imaginative and crazy. A lot of cartoons aren't imaginative, they just say things. It might as well be radio. There is no point in having anything to look at in modern cartoons. But you can't say that about every cartoon. Genndy Tartakovsky's cartoons are beautiful. The closest thing now to what I'm saying is SpongeBob but even that doesn't go very far. It's like a conservative version of Ren & Stimpy."

"Illustration from the late 1900s up through the middle of the 20th century was absolutely amazing. In general, American culture was at its highest skill-wise in every aspect of human life in the 1940s. It's all been downhill since then. You just open an old magazine from the 1930s and '40s and look at the illustrations in it. There’s nobody alive that could touch the way they could draw back then."

"Forget the takes. Takes are cheap shots. Anyone can do a goddamn take. [...] You don't have to be a genius to draw a take. It's emotions—the full range of emotions—that works in Clampett's cartoons."

"Not all cartoon humor is just about having bugged-out eyes and tongues flying out of people's heads."

"Let me make this clear: Ren & Stimpy really is a children's show. It was made for kids. I'm not putting anything in there that I don't think a kid can watch, or should watch. It's completely a kid's show."

"Rather than corruption or extortion, we should talk about “environmental bribery”, i.e. an objective situation in which those who have to give money no longer even wait to be asked; they know that in that particular environment it is customary to give bribes or protection money, and so they comply."

"(About the death of Giovanni Falcone) It was a tragedy, and the brawls show that the institutions have lost a battle. Falcone was killed for what he did in his life as a magistrate."

"When the law, due to obvious disparities in treatment, conflicts with feelings of justice and fairness, it becomes very difficult to do one's duty without feeling like an instrument of injustice. We have therefore informed the public prosecutor of our determination to request, as soon as possible, assignment to another and different position, in the performance of which there will be no jarring conflict between what our conscience dictates and what the law imposes. Signed Antonio Di Pietro, Piercamillo Davigo, Francesco Greco, Gherardo Colombo."

"I am not a politician and I do not intend to enter politics. But can you rule out the possibility of dressing up as a woman tomorrow? Anything is possible! (17 December 1995)"

"The South [of ITaly] needs action, not clowning around."

"I have nothing in common with Silvio Berlusconi: I only had to see him a couple of times in my life to realise that he is someone to be avoided. Politically, I consider him to be like AIDS: if you know him, you avoid him."

"I was a judge and I applied the law. As a bricklayer, I tried to build my walls straight, as a policeman I tried to arrest criminals and as a judge I tried to bring people to trial when there was good reason to do so."

"Are thieves, corrupt individuals, tax evaders, mafia members or those who – like me – uncovered them with the Mani Pulite investigation a disgrace to the country?"

"(Addressing Giulio Tremonti If necessary, I would question you too, for that matter."

"There is still a creeping cross-party consensus on issues of justice. I experienced this first-hand when I was asked: “What would you like to do?” 'I would like to be Minister of Justice.“ 'No, no, it might actually work.” That's when I realised that Clemente was better."

"(Addressing Fabrizio Corona) Listen, Corona, if you're innocent, I'm a woman!"

"Today, like it or not, Hamas is a force whose goal is to destroy the State of Israel. Through terrorism. You can't talk to people who haven't renounced terrorism and still don't recognise Israel. I'll say more. ... In order to talk to us, they should disband. A terrorist is a terrorist."

"I'll cut off my hand if Prodi falls for me... right here in front of you."

"Today, like it or not, Hamas is a force that has as its goal the overthrow of the State of Israel. With terrorism. Do not you talk to who has not abandoned terrorism and still does not recognize Israel. I would say more … What to talk should melt. The terrorist is a terrorist."

"Berlusconi's politics as [...] Fede is information."

"So, when Craxi said, ‘We are all guilty,’ a deep silence fell. Everyone remained silent. Now, when Mastella accuses the judges, everyone applauds wildly."

"The wiretaps they want to limit show us a head of government who acts more like a pimp, busy placing showgirls who talked too much."

"When there is a democratic emergency, you stay on the front line. You don't run away!"

"Anti-Berlusconism is a false problem. We are anti-Berlusconism because he is the anomaly. They accuse us of only caring about justice, but it is he who cares too much about justice; it is he who created the Alfano ruling, the Consolo ruling, the Salvapremier ruling. [...] We are only trying to contain the damage."

"Berlusconi [...] is to politics what Fede is to information."

"Berlusconi cannot do much, apart from slandering and lying, against those who act according to the rules. He does not sue me because when I say something against him, I always have proof. I hope he sues me for defamation. But he won't."

"Since fifteen years a group of people has been using public functions to solve their own problems of justice; Go and reread the proposals of P2, go and reread all those proposals, they are exactly those of a justice system subservient to power, they are exactly those of an anti-democratic state where a caste rules over a people who are no longer citizens but subjects."

"I believe that Italian citizens have the right to demonstrate in a civilised public square. One may disagree with what we have done and are doing, but is it not our right, guaranteed by the Constitution, to say that we are not convinced by the actions of certain people? And can we afford, Mr President of the Republic, to welcome into this square some of us who disagree with some of your silences? Can we or can we not? Or are we subversives? We are ordinary citizens who allow ourselves to say to you, Mr President of the Republic, that you should be the referee, but that sometimes your judgement seems to us to be neither that of a referee nor that of a third party. Can we say that or not? We respect you, we have a sense of the institutions, we want to be at peace. [...] Respectfully, respectfully, but respect is one thing, silence is another: silence kills, silence is mafia-like, silence is mafia behaviour. That is why we do not want to remain silent."

"Da Berlusconi un tipico discorso da vero e proprio ducetto: vuole azzerare la Costituzione e diventare il padre padrone della sua nuova azienda 'Italia'. Propone la riforma dei regolamenti parlamentari al solo fine di eliminare definitivamente quel che lui considera un inutile ingombro, ossia l'opposizione; pretende che vengano dati maggiori poteri al premier, cioè a lui, così avrà mano libera su quello che lui percepisce come una zavorra: la democrazia. Dopo il controllo dell'informazione, l'attacco all'indipendenza della magistratura, l'indebolimento del sindacato, ecco il potere assoluto, ultimo tassello per il compimento del piano di rinascita democratica della P2, di cui Berlusconi è un noto affiliato."

"In reality, Berlusconi is not interested in the good of the community, but only in his own impunity."

"(About Bettino Craxi) We believe that what is happening is a violation of history: making people believe that a person must be rehabilitated, without informing citizens that this person has indebted the country politically, has been a fugitive from justice, and has used institutions to steal money and cheat citizens out of their money. Using this person as a reference point for the country's redemption is like using Lucifer to praise God."

"(About the 'President of the Italian Republics message about Bettino Craxi) I prefer not to comment. I do not want to argue with the Head of State. [...] while everyone is competing to remember a fugitive, we at Italia dei Valori prefer to remember the journalist Beppe Alfano, who was killed because he denounced those who committed crimes, rather than committing them himself."

"I consider Travaglio one of the few free voices in the world of information, a serious professional who fully performs the role of watchdog of democracy. Marco's observations and criticisms, of which I myself have often been the subject, should serve as a warning to politicians."

"Of course, you, Mr. Berlusconi, are not a prime minister, but a rapist of democracy, a rapist who, after the rape, made a law, or rather, twenty laws ‘'ad personam’' so as not to answer for his rape. You are not, as they have defined you, one of the many tentacles of the octopus... You are the head of the political octopus that in the last twenty years has appropriated the institutions in an anti-democratic and criminal way, to bend them to your personal interests and those of your accomplices, those of the deviant Masonic sect to which you belong. Today you spoke to us about the government's willingness to implement the fight against corruption, tax evasion, and the economic crimes of the cliques: and what are you going to do, arrest yourself? Or have you decided to slap yourself every morning when you get up and look in the mirror?"

"When they said, “Fascism is over, but what does it mean to be a fascist?” Well, it means being La Russa: tonight he is a fascist. From the television program ‘'Annozero’', December 16, 2010. Video available on ‘'Rai.tv’'."

"(Referring to the episode of Annozero aired on December 16, 2010) Last night, in front of several million television viewers, the Minister of Defense in the government of Berlusconi, Ignazio La Russa, responded to my specific accusation that he was behaving like a Fascist by saying, "Yes. I am a fascist. I am proud to be a fascist." Can a minister of the Republic, the Minister of Defense, defend fascism, having the armed forces at his disposal? I want to appeal to President Giorgio Napolitano. The Minister of Defense of the Italian Republic has defended fascism. What are we waiting for to react? The return of a new fascism?"

"Carelli: “Mr. Di Pietro, have you ever been to Oxford to give a lecture?” Di Pietro: “No, look, I am aware of my limitations.”"

"However, I come from there. From the Catholics, from the moderates. I studied in a seminary. I am not a man of the left."

"I was an emigrant, and I had no time for ideologies, neither communist nor fascist."

"Faced with human suffering and fragility, only a miserable person rejoices and wishes for the worst. A man, if he is a man, expresses solidarity."

"Berlusconi today is essentially a lonely person, trying to buy a happiness he does not have. My feelings for him are of humana pietas. And anger towards the courtiers who take advantage of him, who feed off him, who further humiliate the institutions, hiding behind his face."

"More than Videla, Berlusconi is Do Nascimiento."

"There is the Lega of the leadership, which seems to me to be closed off in the Roman Palace and torn apart internally. But there is the Lega of the mayors, the councilors, the territory, the militants. I know them well: they are people who love their land, and they have my respect. You can't throw the baby out with the bathwater."

"I can't stand some of Maroni's racist remarks about immigrants, as I was one of them myself. But I was also a policeman. I appreciate the way Maroni defends his ministry."

"(About Oscar Luigi Scalfaro) He was able to give us that sense of security that allowed us to work calmly even when they tried to stop us [...]. It was essential that he was the one to take on the role of President of the Republic during those years. He carried out his role independently, both as a politician and as a magistrate."

"(About the Monti government at the session to approve the law converting the simplification and development decree) It is good for Italians to know that you will be good fathers in your own homes, but you are bad fathers to Italians, because you do not think of all Italians, you only think of some of them, you only think of the lobbies, the caste, of doing favors for some and destroying the weakest part of the country. Let's be clear, Italia dei Valori knows very well why you were put there. You had to put the accounts in order, but you also had to make those who could pay the bill pay it, and not always the weakest and, above all, the most honest. We dispute the political choices you have made in your work."

"(About the Monti government) We contested another thing about Berlusconi: he made us ashamed on a human level, he thought about ‘'bunga bunga’'. We, on the other hand, contest the policies you are pursuing. Above all, we contest the decision to continue Berlusconi's approach, from the Istituto Luce, from propaganda, in making people believe that everything is fine."

"Even stones know it, so imagine if foreign and Italian investors do not know the reasons why Italy is in recession. The reasons are slow and exasperating bureaucracy, rampant corruption, and entrepreneurs who, instead of doing business, have been forced or reduced to acting as “bribe-takers” and fixers. This is why our country is not working. Our country does not work because there is an exasperating tax system. Our country does not work because the Italian state and public bodies, after requesting orders for work and products from companies, do not pay them. There are companies that are going bankrupt because the state does not pay for the products they have supplied or the work they have done. These are the reasons why our country does not work."

"(During the debate on the approval of the anti-corruption bill) You know that there are many cases in which loans or grants are awarded to people who apply to the public administration for a variety of reasons. Well, we ask you why, when it comes to a person convicted with a final criminal sentence for mafia activities, corruption, aiding and abetting embezzlement, or other very serious crimes, they should be allowed access to contributions from the state and the public administration, funding, charitable donations, and so on. Why can't we establish a principle whereby those who are honest, fair, and respect the law can access benefits, while criminals are denied them? It is a straightforward, formal, and precise request. Don't tell us, once again, that there is a delegation! Why don't we decide here? We are adopting a measure, so why do we have to postpone it to another date? Take on this responsibility too!"

"Craxi described Napolitano, a leading member of the PCI and president of the Chamber of Deputies, as a man who was very attentive to the system of the First Republic, especially in cultivating his relations with Moscow. I believe that in that formal interrogation, which I conducted before the judge, Craxi was revealing true facts because he accused himself and then others of illegal party financing. Now, one of two things: either those facts were not criminally relevant, or I don't see why double standards were used."

"Absolutely opposed [to amnesty], because – first of all – people should not commit crimes. Secondly, if they do commit crimes, they must be placed on a path of punishment and rehabilitation so that when they are released, they are able to find a job and change their lives. Amnesty releases both good and bad people indiscriminately, which is of no benefit to either prisoners or society."

"What is the point of a commission today? There is a final criminal judgment that also establishes the civil and moral responsibility of the State. There is a risk of calling into question the truth of the trial, especially by entrusting it to a biased body representing the current political majority. It seems masochistic to me: it would only serve to give those who have already been convicted by the judiciary the chance to rewrite a different page of that story."

"I have always maintained, and still maintain today, that we did well to let the judiciary do its job, because only justice could ascertain the truth [about the events of the G8 in Genoa]. Today, with the cards on the table and the final measures in place, we have proven evidence of how the events unfolded. If there had been a parliamentary commission, there would have been a majority report and a minority report, and in parliament there would have been those who sided with one side and those who sided with the other, based on partisanship and not on the ascertainment of the facts. Today, the cards are on the table, and everyone must bow their heads and apologize."

"Many people must apologize for the actions of the police. Just as many people must apologize for the actions of the demonstrators. Many things happened in Genoa, but one does not justify the other. It is too easy to say that now only the police must apologize. Each act must be judged on its own merits, but I will never allow anyone to say that because the police did what they did, what happened the day before is justified."

"There should not even be a need for a law to prohibit torture. Already today, there are specific types of crimes with which it is technically possible to punish a person who tortures. Nevertheless, if you want to introduce the crime, I agree...."

"The death of Gardini is the real, great regret I have about the Mani Pulite season. For two reasons. The first: on July 23, Gardini was supposed to tell me everything: who he had given the billion lire he had brought to Botteghe Oscure, the headquarters of the Italian Communist Party, to; who the corrupt economic journalists were, in addition to those already revealed by Sama; and who the beneficiaries of the bulk of the Enimont bribe, safely stored in the Ior, were. The second reason: I could save Gardini. On the evening of the 22nd, shortly before midnight, the Carabinieri called me at my home in Curno to inform me that Gardini had arrived at his home in Piazza Belgioioso in Milan and asked me, “Doctor, what shall we do, shall we arrest him?” But I had given my word to the lawyers that he would arrive at the prosecutor's office on his own two feet the next morning. So I told them to let it go. If I had had him arrested immediately, he would still be here with us. :*, July 21, 2013."

"Does Monti have a dog? Well, I have 13, and then cats, sheep, a goat, 120 pigeons and a pregnant cow. (February 22, 2013)"

"There is no doubt that knowing that a Minister of the Interior (Claudio Scajola) was aware and had knowledge of people who were risking their lives (Marco Biagi) in a concrete way and did not intervene, as he did to help fugitives involved in organized crime, makes me feel humiliated as a citizen and as a representative of the institutions. We have had people like this even in the Ministry of the Interior. I hope that, beyond earthly justice, divine justice will send him to Hell."

"I understand that it's hard to accept something so simple; that a magistrate, a public prosecutor, gets it right for once and uncovers a series of crimes by conducting a thorough investigation."

"They wanted to stop us. They sprang into action as soon as they realized we were about to reach the upper echelons of power. Clean Hands was stopped, partly because while we were investigating the bigwigs in the north, we ended up touching those who had contacts with the mafia in the south."

"(25 years since the beginning of Mani pulite) From then until now, the only thing that has changed is that now there is desolation on the part of public opinion."

"It's not a day of celebration 25 years later. Twenty-five years have passed, but it seems to me that when I open the newspaper every morning, everything is the same as before."

"That those in politics betrayed me is understandable; politics is made up of traitors."

"Before I leave, I would like to put everything online so that one day someone can read it and see a different truth from what has been told."

"I also read in the newspapers that the Clean Hands investigation was an investigation into corruption; you know that's not true, right? It's an investigation into false accounting."

"(About Raul Gardini) Fifteen minutes earlier, I spoke with his lawyer and we agreed that he would come to me, of his own free will and with his hands free, and he would tell me how things stood. Then, evidently out of pride, he committed suicide."

"We did what any radiologist does when you go for an X-ray to see if you have a disease; we discovered that our country was sick with endemic corruption."

"I am at an age where I have to look ahead to the years that remain, and before I leave, before I close my eyes, I would very much like to shake hands with all those who have had dealings with me, even those who opposed me."

"I attribute a fundamental role to Grillo. In moments of total disappointment, protest explodes. I remember 1968 well, even though I was on the side of the police. Grillo deserves credit for channeling the protest."

"From the end of the First Republic onwards, new ideas and people to carry them forward should have emerged. Instead, that investigation created a huge void, and figures appeared on the political scene who were there more for themselves than for anything else, starting with me. I am thinking of Berlusconi, Bossi, Salvini, and Renzi."

"I have always found the conflict between those who defend civil liberties and those who defend justice misleading. I am and always have been in favor of respecting the law."

"I would do it all again. I have had many jobs, as a police officer, a magistrate, a politician, and I do not regret anything, least of all Mani Pulite. But as a magistrate, I convicted people, not a system. Those people represented political ideas. Some put them into practice by doing their duty, such as Aldo Moro or Giorgio La Pira, while others used their position for personal gain."

"(About the political consequences of Mani pulite) Mani Pulite created a vacuum: that's when personal parties began, starting with me. But these parties last only a morning, and I am living proof of that."

"The M5S has done one positive thing: it has contributed to the renewal of the ruling class. I don't agree with statements like those made by Di Maio, who says that the Five Star Movement is the best. That's a statement that scares me."

"I didn't discover Mani pulite: it came about as a result of the investigation into the maxi-trial in Palermo, when Giovanni Falcone received confidential information from Tommaso Buscetta that an agreement had been made between the Ferruzzi Group and the mafia. That's where it began. Falcone tasked the ROS (Special Operations Group) with compiling what would become a 980-page report, which was supposed to go to Falcone, but he was transferred."

"If Salvo Lima hadn't died, I would have asked Parliament to arrest Andreotti. [...] In reality, I never had a relationship with Craxi. I was targeting the criminal environment surrounding Andreotti. [...] Andreotti's case was time-barred in 1980; it's not that he was acquitted. And on the other side there was the mayor, Vito Ciancimino, and Salvo Lima. So, I mean: that was the real power. [...] Mani Pulite was not stopped by politics: it was stopped by the judges. It's a story that needs to be rewritten sooner or later."

"Two years to carry out Mani pulite and four to defend myself from the consequences."

"What is most striking about the events surrounding magistrates Luigi De Magistris and Clementina Forleo is that the investigations they were conducting have been completely obscured. No one talks about Why Not and Unipol anymore. We are going beyond the metaphor of the finger pointing at the moon. Here, they have made the moon disappear altogether and left us only with the finger to look at. :*I processi scomparsi (The disappeared trials), December 4, 2007."

"[...] deaths at work are no surprise; ThyssenKrupp, with its endless list of deaths, the latest just today, is just the latest episode. Penalties must be severely increased and the number of inspectors increased. Anyone who causes the death of a worker through negligence must end up in jail without any reduction in sentence and without any pardon. :*Buon 2008 (Happy 2008), December 31, 2007."

"(About Fabio Salamone) the magistrate of the Public Prosecutor's Office of Brescia who repeatedly investigated me, bringing a myriad of charges against me, all of which were later dismissed by the judges “because the facts did not exist.” Of course, in the end I got justice, but those accusations were taken up and relaunched by others who had an interest in building a mountain of wickedness against me that I had not committed, with the aim of discrediting the work I had done as a magistrate and thus—by some insane transitive property—rendering irrelevant the filth I had uncovered about them. :*Capitolo 1: La vicenda Salamone (Chapter 1: the Salamone affair), September 2008."

"Tangentopoli never ended; on the contrary, it became a way of life that Italians learned to live with thanks to distorted models imposed by the political class and celebrated by an increasingly less independent media. :*La mia storia attraverso Tangentopoli (My story through Tangentopoli), September 16, 2008."

"Mr. Prime Minister [Berlusconi], or rather Mr. President Videla, you are truly a model head of government Argentina. You have humiliated and continue to humiliate the Parliament every day with coups that violate every rule of parliamentary democracy. Just a few minutes ago, you promoted and carried out the latest provocative act promoting an anti-democratic drift, namely the appointment as president of the RAI Supervisory Commission of a person chosen by your majority. I say this to those listening live: this parliamentary majority has had the arrogance to choose even who should represent the opposition. This is typical behavior of Argentine dictatorships."

"After all, we saw it in the USA, where Obama and McCain thanked each other and began working together immediately. But here we are not in a civilized country; here we need to remove the tumor. Now the problem is no longer even Berlusconi, it is the “Berlusconis.” They have infiltrated all levels of society, like a virus. The model is catching on, it is being replicated everywhere."

"The Internet is a free space where anyone can express their thoughts without having financial means or a membership card in their pocket. It is a space that gives hives to those who believe that the only freedom is to serve him. The freedom of servants. [...] I deeply believe in the Internet as a tool for democracy and I will do everything I can to prevent it from being controlled. The Internet is also more important for the country's development than oil. It moves information, processes, data, intelligence. It should not be controlled, it should be developed."

"But those who are involved in politics know that, for better or worse, they are stripped of everything. And I am also opposed to the idea of gagging information: there is a risk that citizens will no longer be able to know who they can trust and who they cannot. :*Abruzzo: un modello virtuoso (Abruzzo: a virtuous model), December 10, 2008."

"The PDL and Letizia Moratti have said no to the Anti-Mafia Commission for the control of contracts and supplies worth millions and millions of euros that will be invested in the 2015 Expo to be held in Milan. [...] Taking such a step, after the disturbing words of the deputy prosecutor of the National Anti-Mafia Directorate, Vincenzo Macrì, who in June last year described Milan as the “true capital of the mafia,” is an inexplicable act that raises suspicions that they want a free hand to manage even contracts of dubious assignment."

"Some battles must be fought even though we know they may be lost, but in the overall picture they are essential to winning the war. :*from ‘’Tutti insieme appassionatamente, contro la mozione di Idv (All together passionately, against the Idv motion), May 28, 2009."

"There are two Pd, one in the territory where an alternative nucleus is being created with the Idv, and one in the political leadership made up of envy and dissatisfaction. We are involved in politics; it is not our fault if voters reward us. :*from ‘’I prefer to swim rather than drown‘’, May 29, 2009."

"The IDV is a popular party that arose spontaneously and does not want to be ideologically defined. It is opposing the Berlusconi government, with good reason, on economic, institutional, and judicial policy."

"A government that sees thousands of companies closing their doors every day, leaving just as many workers out on the street, and asks citizens, workers, and small business owners to take on the burden of solving a problem for which the state itself and its inefficiencies are primarily responsible, is not credible. :*‘’Le responsabilità di Draghi e Marcegaglia (The responsibilities of Draghi and Marcegaglia), May 30, 2009."

"They accuse me of persecuting a corruptor, of being a “sfascista” and anti-Berlusconi. I, on the other hand, feel like a partisan of the new resistance. I am in no hurry; time and the citizens will prove me right. :*‘’Le responsabilità di Draghi e Marcegaglia (The responsibilities of Draghi and Marcegaglia), May 30, 2009."

"As soon as he took office, Silvio Berlusconi restored unrestricted access to state flights with the knowledge and premeditation of wanting to make extensive use of them for friends, showgirls, attractive Big Brother contestants, singers, friends, and VIPs to be transported wherever needed for a personal favor or a party in Sardinia, which today appears to be more of a sex tourism destination than the summer residence of a Prime Minister."

"Italy is sinking with a GDP of -5% and a real unemployment rate of 10%, and they are toasting in the face of the citizens. :*“In the face of the citizens”, June 1, 2009."

"Craxi was not a statesman, he was merely the founder of the system of illegal party financing, a hardened corruptor and corrupt individual who destroyed the Italian economic system by basing it on patronage rather than meritocracy. A system whereby public contracts and works ended up in the hands of the highest bidder rather than the most capable. A man in whose shadow, as in the worst of nurseries, the first-rate politicians who now lead Italian parties grew up."

"The management of Rai, an offshoot of the government, on the one hand boycotts highly rated flagship programs such as Report by Gabanelli, Annozero by Santoro and Ballarò by Floris, while on the other hand devising failed strategies such as TivuSat and promoting biased reporting by individuals such as Minzolini and Vespa, who are to journalism what the electric chair is to human life."

"To complain that a European Union official is a federalist, is like complaining that a bicycle has handlebars. That's what they are, that's what they do."

"In 1965, the people of Britain may have been poorer, smaller, shabbier, dirtier, colder, narrower, more set in their ways, ignorant of olive oil, polenta and – even – lager. But they knew what united them, they shared a complicated web of beliefs, attitudes, prejudices, loyalties and dislikes."

"A nation is the sum of its memories, and when those memories are allowed to die, it is less of a nation."

"In an incredibly short time, we have been turned into a nation without heroes, without pride in our past or knowledge of either our past triumphs or our past follies and disasters. We are like an amnesia patient, waking up in the hospital ward, with both past and future great blank spaces stretching behind and before us, doomed to repeat mistakes we do not even know we have already made."

"Smoking and buggery can both kill you, by exposing you to diseases you would not otherwise get. If homosexual acts were as common as smoking we would have to bury the victims in mass graves because AIDS slays so much faster than cancer, heart disease or emphysema."

"To anyone brought up when English literature, scripture, liturgy, poetry and hymns were still taught and learned, it is astonishing to find out how little they have in common with those who were raised and educated in the post-revolutionary culture. The pre-revolutionary survivor can finish other people's sentences, detect the rhythm in other people's speeches, recognise a score of allusions in a page of print. There is hardly a word or phrase which does not awake a richer thought, or an echo of something hauntingly similar."

"A time traveller from Fifties Britain would probably die of shock within two hours of arriving in modernised Blairland — and be quite glad to do so. The fact that the restaurants are better just would not make up for the fact that almost everything else is worse."

"There is a strong moral case for strict border controls and severe limits on immigration. A country is the only unit in which it is possible for people to be effectively unselfish to their neighbours. Without its shared culture and loyalty, there can be no shared law, no shared willingness to pay taxes or accept authority, no free nation capable of protecting its own people from danger within and without, and of sheltering those fleeing from oppression elsewhere. This argument often goes unsaid because of the semi-official ideological censorship now operating in most Western countries, which is called political correctness and which smears all dissenting views, usually as 'racist'. It is important that those genuinely concerned with freedom and with the defence of civilisation armour themselves against this foolish attempt to suppress free debate, and perhaps reconsider positions taken more because they are modish than because they are defensible with truth and reason."

"It cannot be long before Britain has its first 24-year-old granny. When you abolish husbands and fathers, that is what you get. As the rules of civilised life are swept away and the only people interested in getting married are lesbian clergywomen, there will soon be thousands of them. And for every youthful grandmother, there will be at least one feral, abandoned male, stalking the streets. Britain's neglected poor, who once brought up their children in family homes with rules, are becoming a primitive tribe, stripped of the laws of civilisation and sinking into barbarism. The same barbarism, by the way, is mirrored among the loud and loutish rich."

"Frankly, I could carve a better opposition party out of a banana than the Tories."

"We're not close. We're different people, we have different lives, we have entirely different pleasures, we live in different continents. If we weren't brothers we wouldn't know each other."

"My gorge rises at the use of the word 'white.' The issue should never be the colour of somebody's skin. I thought we all very, very long ago accepted that what mattered about somebody was not the colour of his skin but the content of his character. And I'm not interested in what colour they are. The real question is, does a country which has a very large amount of immigration adapt to the immigrants, or do the immigrants who arrived in that country adapt to that country. And it's my very strong view that the only hope of a tranquil and peaceful and productive and successful society is that the migrants adapt to the place to which they come. And for very many years we have not been encouraging or indeed helping them to do that. We've been encouraging, through a policy of official state multiculturalism, that people should stay separate ,and should remain within their migrant communities and we have not created a single British nationality. There are various feeble efforts to make them take exams in how to claim social security benefits, or who was Winston Churchill. That is not the same. We have ceased to be proud of our own country, culture, history, religion, language, and we haven't asked our new citizens to be proud of them either. And we now see the result of that. It's not a question whether they're white. It's a question whether they're British. And my fear is they're not becoming British and the Britain is ceasing to be Britain, and that is a very great shame both for us who were already here, and for those who have come.""

"When I was a Revolutionary Marxist, we were all in favour of as much immigration as possible. It wasn't because we liked immigrants, but because we didn't like Britain. We saw immigrants – from anywhere – as allies against the staid, settled, conservative society that our country still was at the end of the Sixties. Also, we liked to feel oh, so superior to the bewildered people – usually in the poorest parts of Britain – who found their neighbourhoods suddenly transformed into supposedly 'vibrant communities'. If they dared to express the mildest objections, we called them bigots."

"The struggle for [gender] equality in education and professions was won decades ago. What is really fascinating is this extraordinary alliance between radical leftist feminism and corporate multinational business which is probably the most sinister and cynical alliance since the Nazi-Soviet pact."

"Let me repeat that the absurd thing about the anti-Islam neo-conservatives is that they are invariably supporters of unrestricted migration, the means by which Islam has quite peacefully established itself as a permanent, growing major social, religious and political force in our country. If Sharia law comes to Britain, as Mr Jacubs fears, it will not be because of violent actions such as the Woolwich outrage, which I think we can safely assume were condemned and disowned by most British Muslims. It will be as the result of the entirely peaceful establishment of a sizeable Muslim population in this country."

"Nobody under 55 knows anything much about life. Nobody under 30 knows anything."

"We cannot just give [our country] to complete strangers on an impulse because it makes us feel good about ourselves."

"Because it calls itself the Conservative party; if it called itself the Socialist Workers' Party, I wouldn't have anything against it. It's egalitarian, it's opposed to the maintenance to the married family, which is the absolute pillar of morale and social conservatism. It's opposed to national independence, completely wedded to our membership of the supranational European Union which robs us of sovereignty. It's got much more in common with the SWP than it has with Conservatism."

"If you want to wreck the country, get some grandiose people to sit on a panel. Make sure you don’t choose anyone who disagrees with your aim. Then write a pamphlet demanding the destruction of something good, and call it a ‘report’."

"Donald Trump is a symptom, not a disease. The disease is the death of real political conservatism: a cool, intelligent reluctance to believe that all change is good, a love for the established, the particular and the well-worn. During the 1980s, many people mistook Thatcherism and Reaganism, actually a wild form of liberalism, for conservatism. They lapped up the temporary riches it provided and now find themselves yearning for leaders to take them back to a world of secure jobs and secure borders."

"Don't you dare call me optimistic. (It's a) grave insult."

"People are terrified of changing their minds. Changing your mind is a door you don’t want to open because you don’t know what’s behind it. Changing your mind means losing all your friends. Changing your mind means a complete revolution in your life. Changing your mind means publicly admitting you’ve been wrong. […] People don’t want to change their minds."

"If they win on Thursday (EU referendum, 2016), the process of abolishing Britain will be complete. If they lose, as I hope they do and still think they will, there is a faint, slender chance that we may get our country back one day."

"Since the French Revolutionaries set up the guillotine, the same thing has been true. Revolutions are all based on the false idea that humans and their nature can be changed. And once changed, they will fit neatly into the Utopia that is planned for them. Utopia, as we find every so often in Russia, China and Cambodia, can only be approached across a sea of blood, and you never actually arrive."

"I am ceaselessly amazed, as I look at our media, political parties, schools and universities, how formerly conservative people and institutions have adapted themselves to ideas, expressions and formulations which they once rejected and confidently mocked. Almost everything that was once derided as the work of the ‘loony left’ or ‘political correctness gone mad’ is observed daily in grand, expensive private schools and is the official policy of the Conservative and Unionist party, or soon will be."

"[The Conservative party] is a machine for obtaining power. It would cheerfully guillotine the Queen in Trafalgar Square, if it thought that by doing so it could keep or gain office. That is why it has spent the past 20 years becoming more Blairite than New Labour."

"A liberal will defend to the death your right to agree with her. Disagree with her, and she will call the police."

"The main enemy of conservatism in Britain is the Conservative Party."

"If the Conservative Party were your refrigerator, all your food would go bad. If it were your car or bicycle, you would be stranded by the side of the road. If it were your accountant, you would be bankrupt. If it were your lawyer, you would be in prison. If any consumer good, service or profession so consistently and predictably disappointed or failed in its ostensible main purpose, people would turn their backs on it. It would be overtaken, replaced and driven out of business by a better competitor."

"The accelerating decline of civility in Britain, which struck me very hard when I returned there in 1995 after nearly five years in Russia and the USA, has several causes. The rapid vanishing of Christianity from public consciousness and life, as the last fully Christian generation ages and disappears, seems to me to be a major part of it. I do not think I would have been half so shocked by the squalor and rudeness of 1990 Moscow, if I had not come from a country where Christian forbearance was still well-established. If I had then been able to see the London of 2010, I would have been equally shocked."

"I scoffed. Another religious painting. Couldn't these people think of anything else to depict? Still scoffing, I peered at the naked figures fleeing toward the pit of hell, out of my usual faintly morbid interest in the alleged terrors of damnation. But this time I gaped, my mouth actually hanging open. These people did not appear remote or from the ancient past; they were my own generation. Because they were naked, they were not imprisoned in their own age by time-bound fashions. On the contrary, their hair and, in an odd way, the set of their faces were entirely in the style of my own time. They were me and the people I knew. One of them — and I have always wondered how the painter thought of it — is actually vomiting with shock and fear at the sound of the Last Trump."

"Fear is good for us and helps us to escape from great dangers. Those who do not feel it are in permanent peril because they cannot see the risks that lie at their feet."

"The current intellectual assault on God in Europe and North America is in fact a specific attack on Christianity – the faith that stubbornly persists in the morality, laws, and government of the major Western countries. Despite the self-conscious militancy of some of the anti-theists against Islam, they rarely encounter organized Islam in their own countries, and are sensibly wary of challenging Islam on its own ground, and seldom debate with Muslim spokesmen (who are not interested in discussing an issue they believe to be closed). Their hostility to Islam as a ‘threat to our way of life’ is a result of their late realization that it might, if it became powerful, menace the license in sexual and other matters that their cause has won, thanks to the weakness of Christianity in its former domains."

"The Bible angers and frustrates those who believe that the pursuit of a perfect society justifies the quest for absolute power."

"Let us examine the strange problem of the Atheist states, which a ruthlessly honest Godless person must surely admit as a difficulty. After all, intelligent Christians must – if they are candid – accept that faith has often led to cruel violence and intolerant persecution. They may say, as I would, that this was because humans often misunderstand or misuse the teachings of the religions they follow. This is not because they are religious, but because Man is not great. Atheists, in return, ought equally to concede that Godless regimes and movements have given birth to terrible persecutions and massacres. They do not do so, in my view, because in these cases the slaughter is not the result of a misunderstanding, or of excessive zeal."

"Atheists cannot bear to look their faith’s faults full in the face. They cannot even admit that their dogmatic insistence that there is no God is in fact a faith, though they cannot possibly know if they are right. Their belief, apparently, is not even a belief. And so the escape clauses come thick and fast. If atheism in practice appears at any point to have bad consequences, that is because it took on the character of religion. So this murder, that massacre, that purge just do not count. If religious people do good things with good consequences, that is because they are really atheists without knowing it."

"A new and intolerant utopianism seeks to drive the remaining traces of Christianity from Europe and North America. This time, it does so mainly in the cause of personal liberation, born in the 1960s cultural revolution, and now inflamed into special rage by any suggestion that the sexual urge should be restrained by moral limits or that it should have any necessary connection with procreation. This utopianism relies for human goodness on doctrines of human rights derived from human desires and – like all such codes – full of conflicts between the differing rights of different groups."

"The Spitfire, symbol of British military heroism in the 'Good War', was always, at heart, a defensive weapon."

"In 1934, Britain owed the US $4.4bn of World War I debt (about £866m at 1934 exchange rates). Adjusted by the Retail Price Index, a typical measure of inflation, £866m would equate to £40bn now, and if adjusted by the growth of GDP, to about £225bn."

"[The] Battle of Britain did not prevent Hitler from dominating the continent for the next four years."

"His [Churchill's] power over the fate of Prince of Wales was absolute and direct. He sent the ship ... into mortal peril. its combination military folly, and of boyish Churchillian posturing, is striking."

"Prince of Wales and Repulse both came to be sunk by Japanese aircraft on 10 December 1941 off the coast of Malaya."

"We made a hurried and shamefully disorganized exit from India, at a vast cost in Indian lives, leaving behind us two dangerous frontier conflicts that remain unresolved till today."

"So sorry, Your Majesty, but I have had my first Covid vaccination for wholly selfish reasons. I did not do it for the good of others but for my own convenience. And I will have my second for the same purpose."

"It was in the communist world that today’s socioeconomic hell — the hideous love-child of Deng Xiaoping and Margaret Thatcher — was pioneered. The Soviets had the compulsory two-earner household, with its children condemned to government nurture and raised to love the Party above their parents. They had its weak parents and state-dependent adults, and its incessant divorce, all leading to an eviscerated and futile caricature of marriage, to the point where marriage was drained of all meaning and power. They just did not have the post-1990 combination that almost nobody saw coming: the endless electronic consumerism, through which we may try to buy back our lost happiness and freedom in the form of pleasure and drugged stupor. If they had managed that, the U.S.S.R. would still be there, as Mao’s China is. Marxism really is not the enemy of consumerism. When it realized it needed to care more about the mind and morality than about money, it rejuvenated itself and made the future its own again. That was what the 1960s were really about. Capitalism, understanding this, has made its peace with the revolution. Having grasped that it can flourish in the absence of freedom and Christianity, it also now understands that it has no need or wish to keep its proletarians poor. On the contrary, they need to be affluent or indebted enough to purchase its products."

"We have treated Russia with amazing stupidity. Now we pay the price for that. We had the chance to make her an ally, friend and partner. Instead we turned her into an enemy by insulting a great and proud country with greed, unearned superiority, cynicism, contempt and mistrust."

"I have pursued a lone heresy of wondering why NATO even survived the end of its enemies, the USSR and the Warsaw Pact. Do we still maintain alliances against Austria-Hungary or the Ottomans? I can find no trace of them. Perhaps, overlooked in some elegant Paris street and living off ancient funds, elderly, learned men still occupy these joyous sinecures, hoping that they will not be found out."

"It is a fantasy to believe that you punish politicians by throwing them out of office. It is when they leave office that they start making the real money."

"The funeral of Winston Churchill in 1965 turned out to be the burial of the British Empire. The funeral of Queen Elizabeth next week will probably be the obsequies of the United Kingdom."

"I'll be accused...of defending "Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor", as we must now call him, in French-Revolutionary style, as I think Marie Antoinette ended up being called "The Widow Capet" in the same fashion."

"To him [Hitchens] "over-use of private cars" is "crazed", rehousing of slum dwellers "deportation", defence spending cuts "pitiless" employment of women "conscription", anti-gun laws "demented", the Plowden report on education simultaneously "tragic", "nauseating" and "drivel". This is Paul Johnson without the sense of humour. ... Again, I am ready to offer a small prize (say, a copy — indeed my copy — of this book) to anyone who can explain what Hitchens means in asserting that "Abolishing the Greater London Council created the precedent for abolishing the House of Lords"; or how "our monarchy" was "robbed of much of its role by the Tory decision to elect party leaders". ... When I finished reading this book, I thought I had better have a bracing cold shower. However, it then occurred to me that the whole thing might be a sustained spoof. If so, I have to admit that, although it goes on a bit, it is very effective."

"My Friend and colleague, Peter Hitchens, is incandescent with vexation. He has received a very disparaging (and to my mind wholly unfair) review of his new book The Abolition of Britain — From Lady Chatterley to Tony Blair from Gerald Kaufman MP, writing in The Daily Telegraph. Mr Kaufman's sneering view is not a surprise, given the man's liberal-left-secularist attitudes. But The Daily Telegraph is. Peter imagined that the one newspaper which would understand his evocation of the conservative and Christian values that England once espoused should be The Daily Telegraph. He knows he will get a hostile review from The Guardian and The Independent. The liberal-left establishment always give him a hard time, though they always look after their own. His book, published this week by Quartet, is a series of knowledgeable and perceptive linked essays in the tradition of George Orwell, analysing the way that this country has changed since the death of Sir Winston Churchill in 1965."

"When the political history of the Blair era is written, it may well be concluded that the most effective conservative opposition came not from politicians, but journalists. It often seems that the charge against New Labour is led by the Telegraph and Spectator, by Charles Moore and Boris Johnson, or from some Murdoch journalists, rather than by William Hague. So perhaps it should not comes [sic] as a complete surprise that the most sustained, internally logical and powerful attack on Tony Blair and all his works should be a polemic by a right-wing journalist, Peter Hitchens, rather than a Tory pamphlet or an MP's speech. ... On much of this agenda, Hitchens is simply out of time. ... [T]he idea of a widespread return to a belief in literal damnation, to public hostility towards homosexuals and the shaming of single mothers, seems utterly implausible."

"A very useful book is published today. Mad, obnoxious, elegantly written incoherent nonsense, it draws up the true battle lines of politics now far better than many of the attempts to summarise the slippery Third Way or the heart of Blairism. ... This absurdly over the top book ... is a joyful read for liberals. Most of it is given over to eulogies about the past that have precisely the opposite effect of the one intended. It will make any sane person whoop with glee to be alive now and not then. It will confirm every good liberal's trust in human progress. Things really are getting better and better."

"Peter Hitchens's book ... can also be read as an obituary for the old Daily Express. When Hitchens joined the paper, in 1977, it was still the voice of grumpy suburban reactionaries. Now it is edited by a founder of Spare Rib magazine and owned by a Blairite. Even the word Daily has been dropped from the title. Hitchens is the sole survivor of Fleet Street's Mary Celeste, raging against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past."

"It is most peculiar. The very Tories who most dislike what has happened to Britain in the last half-century or so — permissiveness, etc — are the very ones who most want to preserve the independence of the nation state responsible for doing all the damage. At any rate that is the impression one gets from a new book entitled The Abolition of Britain (Quartet Books) by that redoubtable Tory nationalist, Peter Hitchens. For, after eloquently telling the tale of how successive British parliamentary governments, Tory as much as Labour. have 'abolished' old Britain, he reaches the wholly illogical conclusion that that same British democracy alone is quite capable of putting the clock back. If only it were."

"I want my organic brain to contain vast stores of knowledge and my silicon overmind to contain a stupidly huge amount more."

"Regarding the homosexual at Tehtaanpuisto park I briefly considered getting my gun from the upstairs and shooting him in the head. Would the gratification from it exceed the annoyance of serving time in jail? Violence is these days a very undervalued method of solving problems."

"Retroactively opposing the Holocaust is nicer and easier than getting involved in solving present-day problems. It is nice to accuse the Germans because cosi fan tutti. Armenians are irrelevant, because Armenians don’t own Hollywood and the American media."

"The only measurable and therefore undebatably existing human value is the instrumental value of an individual. There can be a justified hierarchy of individuals based on how much the removal of their talents or skills would weaken the community."

"I am throughly confused as to why muslims have such a great desire to inflict pain on those who are in a weaker position, such as animals, children and women. I think this pattern is pretty clear. Why do muslims jump around ululating with their dicks hard whenever heads get chopped off or someone gets whipped?"

"It is hard for me to think about a lower reptile in the universe than a Scandinavian social democrat. The most slimy subscpecies of this reptile is the Swedish social democrat."

"From the Leftist point of view isolated ghettoes mainly populated by isolated immigrant groups are an ideal solution. Complete dependency on the political left makes the immigrant population loyal supporters of the left. Because the ghettoes are isolated, they only disturb the image of well-being in Sweden to an extent that can be covered up with effective media self-censorship and “education”. At the same time the dependence of the political Left on the ghettoes not only prevents it from taking any effective measures to stop the ghettoization (you cannot criticize your voters) but also makes stopping the ghettoization undesirable."

"The ruling Left milks the working Swedes to maintain a predominantly idle immigrant population, who thankfully vote for the Left. Swedish society has to support two parasites, each living in a symbiotic relationship with the other. That is, in this particular game of thought."

"Why do the voters let all this happen? It is because Westerners like to be ‘good’ people and believe that their fellow men are equally good people. It is because they have humane values.” “It is because the moral and ethical values of Western man have made him helpless in the face of wickedness and immorality."

"All muslims are not terrorist, but in an European perspective this is irrelevant. What is relevant is that all terrorists are muslim."

"Amount of rapes are increasing. Because therefore more and more women will be raped, my earnest wish is that right women will be raped by predators choosing their victims randomly. Green-left-winger reformers and their voters. Rather them than others. Nothing else will work for them, but multiculture that hits their own ankle."

"Regarding the controversial article “Society consists of people”, it is a fact that negroes or negroid, Sub-Saharan persons live in something resembling a western society only in places where order is kept by a white system of violent dominance (police, army and the justice system). It is likewise a fact that the so-called western structures start to crumble and sinking towards the typical African state of being starts immediately as blacks reach a majority or dominant position. Examples of this include post-independence Haiti and post-apartheid South Africa."

"An Afro who gets dragged into Helsinki from an African savannah pollutes no less with his conspicuous consumption than an ethnic Finn. He will probably pollute more because moving from the stone age directly into the modern world deprives him of ecological conscience typical of a western human being."

"The fact that we do not have a demonstrable gun problem disturbs our “progressives” in a terrible manner. For years they have been dying for something like Jokela to happen. So that they can yell triumphantly: “We told you, didn’t we!” This is their great moment. Like vultures they are feeding on the corpses of those who died at Jokela. As a gunowner I find that annoying. As a human being I find it repulsive."

"Prophet Mohammed was a pedophile and Islam is a religion sanctifying pedophilia, it is indeed a pedophile religion. Pedophilia is the will of Allah."

"Robbing bystanders and living parasitically on tax money is a national, perhaps even genetical special trait of the Somalis."

"However, I try not to think that way, because not all the women are like Virtanen, Biaudet and Filatov. Rapes will eventually get more frequent. Because, this being the case, more women will be raped anyway, I sincerely hope that the predators who randomly pick their victims would catch the right women meaning green-left liberals and their voters. It is rather them than someone else. For them nothing else works except if they get to taste their own multicultural medicine."

"It is justified to consider the Nürnberg trials a farce. Guilt was decided in advance, and the justifications for the sentences were absurd. For an example Alber Speer (an architect) got a long sentence since he knew about the holocaust but didn't try to prevent it. As if a person living in a dictatorship should fight against the dictatorship even if it costs his life."

"What is needed in Greece right now is a military junta, which would not need public approval and could use tanks against strikers and demonstrators."

"The migration of peoples destroys Europe, but it also ruins the Third World. The shovelling of money that has lasted for half a century into a bottomless well called Africa has led to nothing but increasing misery. Half a century of cultural enrichment in Europe has led to nothing but ghettos and the unprecedented popularity of extreme right-wing parties — perhaps surprisingly, exactly where the culture has been most enriched. I believe that removing this misery is really not the objective, which would for example force the Africans to survive on their own and to strike back at their dictators, who live on “development cooperation”. The Western intellectual zeitgeist is dependent on the misery in Africa. An intellectual needs someone to pamper, because that’s what makes the intellectual necessary. The thought of an independent but truly different African is, to him, intolerable, because only a miserable, helpless and dependent (but of course, similar enough to be understandable and lovable) African offers him a chance to be “good”. He can be “good” only if there is a rising mass of “evil” that is tired of the apathy and begging of the Third World."

"A culture where a) little girls are gang raped b) raped little girls are murdered in order to protect the community’s honour is dark barbarism of such an extent that is difficult for a Western person to understand. Further cognitive dissonance is caused for the tolerantly aware by maintaining their faith in the wonderfulness of the Islamic culture and, in general, the equality of all cultures. That’s why discussion of the actual subject is avoided like the plague, and attention is moved to something that has nothing at all to do with the subject, for example, to the under-representation of women in stock-listed companies, or domestic violence."

"[T]he whole time I was having this conversation, I was mildy enjoying it, but it bothered me how little substance there was. I always feel this during movie and music conversations, that it's entirely constrainted to just naming things...Perhaps the greatest pain of it is how shallow it is compared to the actual experience."

"Reality's kind of a medium, maybe greater than paper. We all want life to have the same texture that we read about in novels."

"And so, reaching futilely for answers, they blame the trees!"

"I felt aimless, but it felt fine. (This is not what I wanted to feel though. I wanted to feel a great absence, a longing, a distance that would finally inspire.)"

"Sometimes I do believe in predestination. I feel helpless to do anything but what I am compelled to do."

"This was incredibly foolish. To live just to die. And to die so easily."

"There is no use in trying to judge everything but the condition you are in right now. You are absolutely delusional if you think that you know anything right now."

"New York is a giant place and no matter how big you get, there's still going to be a ton of people who haven't heard of you."

"When you say journalist, it's like oh -- how many sources have you fact checked? When you say photographer -- it's, why are your photos a little bit out of focus? The answer is because I don't care. I like to call myself a storyteller so I don't have to worry about other people's definition of what correct work is."

"The fact that people are so willing to disclose (deeply personal issues in their lives) shows you how much we avoid talking about these very serious issues in our everyday lives,"

"I was frustrated waiting tables when I knew I could make video... I didn't have any professional experience or a portfolio of work, so I decided to make stuff on my own for free."

"My friends liked it. My family liked it. I thought, 'If they all like it why can't everyone like it?' I knew I could get an audience."

"There are two things in life that keep me motivated, a cup of coffee and a second cup of coffee."

"We are swimming in the lake in which future generations will drown"

"If an animal spread plastic garbage all over the planet, we would certainly exterminate it."

"The ones who do not wander are the ones who are truly lost"

"When the impossible happens, everybody has a very simple explanation for why it was inevitable"

"The most difficult part of finding a solution is to accept that there is a problem"

"Question answers instead of answering questions."

"The paradox of innovation is that it is accepted as an innovation when it has become imitation."

"What we understand is not enough to understand why we understand it. (Signature line on his emails)"

"Philosophy is the art of saying something incredibly stupid and making it sound incredibly intelligent."

"Philosophy is the art of turning solutions into problems"

"The fact that so many books still name the Beatles "the greatest or most significant or most influential" rock band ever only tells you how far rock music still is from becoming a serious art. Jazz critics have long recognized that the greatest jazz musicians of all times are Duke Ellington and John Coltrane, who were not the most famous or richest or best sellers of their times, let alone of all times. Classical critics rank the highly controversial Beethoven over classical musicians who were highly popular in courts around Europe. Rock critics are still blinded by commercial success: the Beatles sold more than anyone else (not true, by the way), therefore they must have been the greatest. Jazz critics grow up listening to a lot of jazz music of the past, classical critics grow up listening to a lot of classical music of the past. Rock critics are often totally ignorant of the rock music of the past, they barely know the best sellers. No wonder they will think that the Beatles did anything worth of being saved."

"Beatles' "aryan" music removed any trace of black music from rock and roll: it replaced syncopated african rhythm with linear western melody, and lusty negro attitudes with cute white-kid smiles."

"...but defining their sound was Little Girls, an exuberant ska wrapped in an electronic patina, with modernist vocals à la XTC and a touch of dementia."

"Zappa was not a protester or an activist. He was merely a man who used his brain."

"I really think we should modify the law so that one can be sued for defaming not only living people but also the memory and reputation of people who died centuries ago."

"If you tend to text and skim the surface of the Internet, you indirectly shape your mind to only deal with superficial matters."

"Mass culture is a way to escape from the psychological suffering that comes with that insight into the human condition, an escape alternative to the one preached by world religions. Mass culture is a modern invention to escape from existential anguish."

"Why are there age limits? why can't i marry a 12-year old? Helen of Troy was 12. Juliet and Cleopatra were still teenagers when they became famous. Most heroines of classic novels and poems were underage by today's laws. Thomas Edison married a 16-year-old. Medical studies show that the best age for a woman to have children is between 15 and 25 (lowest chances of miscarriage, of birth defects and, last but not least, of the woman dying while giving birth); while the worst age is after the mid 30s. And the younger you are, the more likely you are to cement a real friendship with your children; the older you are, the more likely that the "generational gap" will hurt your children's psychology. Therefore it is much more natural to have a child at 16 than at 40."

"Michael Brown was a thug."

"If the cop honestly felt that this was a young black man (as politically incorrect as it sounds, this is the most violent category of people in the USA in 2014) aiming a gun at him, the cop can hardly be blamed for shooting first."

"Mass shooters and serial killers are white Christian men, with rare exceptions, and frequently with Anglosaxon last names."

"Trump is not an idiot at all, but those who voted for him are."

"My young nerds, here's the deal:"

"Internet companies and nonprofits like Wikipedia have been forced to choose between cooperating with the Chinese government and losing access to the growing online audience there."

"Governments are trying to wrestle, how do you censor without being so heavy-handed that you make people really, you know, can't live their lives."

"Through Google, you can find the horrible things people say about you, and the nice things they say about you. And so I do that regularly to sort of check on it."

"As time has shifted, The Times and all the other media outlets recognize how important Wikipedia is. It's not the same hurdle anymore. I don't have to sort of say: 'Wow look at this strange thing going on, can I write some weird story about it?' Instead it's like: 'This is hugely important, and of course, write, we want to know every change.'"

"Before Wikileaks, or even the Internet, there were just plain leaks."

"If someone today had the Pentagon Papers, or the modern equivalent, would he still go to the press, as Daniel Ellsberg did nearly 40 years ago, and wait for the documents to be analyzed and published? Or would that person simply post them online immediately?"

"Playing the government off newspapers, and newspapers against each other, still does not compare with the power of the World Wide Web."

"America's got a much stronger tradition of free speech and freedom of the press. In Europe, it's much more nuanced and they put a lot of meaning on the rights of your reputation."

"Never before has the boundary between geek culture and mainstream culture been so porous."

"An engineering degree is also no longer a requisite to using technology, as seemingly anyone today can install a printer or upload a video. Similarly, another signifier of nerd status — knowing obscure facts about favorite subjects — has also lost its currency."

"From gadgets to social networks to video games, the decision not to embrace the newest technology is a choice to be out of the mainstream."

"Unlike in the United States, where freedom of expression is a fundamental right that supersedes other interests, Europe views an individual’s privacy and freedom of expression as almost equal rights."

"As a fresh wave of Ebola fear grips the American public, the Internet is rife with conspiracy theories, supposed miracle cures and Twitter posts of dread. But amid the fear mongering are several influential sites that are sticking to the facts about Ebola. Millions have come to rely on these sites, including those run by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the World Health Organization and Wikipedia."

"Once the butt of jokes for being the site where visitors could find anything, true or not, Wikipedia in recent years has become a more trusted source of information — certainly for settling bar bets, but even for weighty topics like Ebola."

"I don't want to live in a militarised country behind an iron curtain. It's boring. Been there and seen the movie. I've done that."

"Instead of the primitive raw material economy, we will create a smart economy generating unique knowledge, new useful things and technologies. Instead of the archaic society, in which the leaders think and make decisions for everyone, we will become a country of intelligent, free and responsible people."

"We are absolutely sure that, without urgent modernisation, the Russian economy has no future, even with the enormous natural resources Russia has."

"I tell you the first and last time. Together with a nuclear suitcase the president has a folder, which is top secret and devoted entirely to the report by the Russian secret service which handles the control of extraterrestrials in our country. After the term, the two folders and a small nuclear suitcase are transferred to the new president. How many of them are among us I cannot say because panic might begin."

"Winemaking is one of the branches that should be developed and contribute to the eradication of alcoholism."

"Freedom is a unique concept that everyone interprets differently."

"I believe in Father Frost. But not too deeply. But anyway, you know, I'm not one of those people who are able to tell the kids that Father Frost does not exist."

"Somebody should be extremely punctual, while somebody else is exhausting all the limits for being late."

"So, once again, these are not political deals but an informed choice. At the same time, we need to take note of everything that happens around Russia. If some of our projects with Europe, America or others are put on ice (I'm not talking about the reasons behind this), we logically move these projects to other destinations."

"We have nothing against the dollar, and I don't think China has anything against it either. But we believe that a modern currency system should be better balanced, so that when one of the currencies is sagging, this should be compensated by other global reserve currencies."

"Corruption is a global problem. But it is more widespread in rapidly developing countries. It is a growth problem. There are many corruption-related problems in Russia too. So, regarding stress tests, I think that such tests should be applied to all companies."

"Germany is our second biggest trade partner after China, but some time ago it was first. China is developing rapidly and has already become the world's largest economy in terms of purchasing power parity. At any rate, as you know, on 8 October China was recognised as such, but naturally the US economy is much bigger overall for the time being."

"It is impossible to restore what is gone, obviously. I was born in the Soviet Union at about the same time as you (although we lived under different systems, we still listened to the same music, as we found out) but the world has changed since then, and the Soviet Union no longer exists. We have the Russian Federation, which is based on a Constitution adopted by our people. This Constitution proclaims the same set of values that is accepted by the absolute majority of humankind, notably, the supremacy of human rights, democracy, the protection of private property, market-based development and so on and so forth. I won't list all of them because these are universal values. So nobody wants to go back. There is no returning to the past."

"Polish propaganda is the most vicious, vulgar and shrill critic of Russia. Community of political imbeciles."

"At the same time, there are no anti-Polish sentiments in Russia and never have been."

"Now the interests of the citizens of Poland have been sacrificed to the Russophobia of these mediocre politicians and their puppeteers from across the ocean with clear signs of senile insanity."

"But now it is much more important for the vassal Polish elites to swear allegiance to their overlord - America than to help their own citizens, so they will constantly keep the fire of hatred for the enemy represented by Russia."

"But sooner or later they will understand that hatred of Russia does not strengthen the society, it does not contribute to well-being and tranquility."

"The goal... is to finally build Eurasia from Lisbon to Vladivostok..."

"Ukraine that has mentally transformed into the Third Reich will have the same fate."

"The Kyiv fake machine is going to all lengths! The mad monsters consisting of all nationalist battalions and Territorial Defence Forces are ready to kill their own civilians casually to dehumanise Russia and tarnish it as much as possible."

"In the last 30 years, passionate Ukrainians have prayed to the Third Reich. Literally. The photos in which Nazi insignia — flags, literature, posters — that are found in every military unit of Ukraine taken under our control cause disgust. There are even cups with swastika! This isn’t a game of Fascist aesthetics the westerners are trying to prove for us. No wonder that Ukraine that has mentally transformed into the Third Reich and put the names of traitors and Nazi henchmen into history textbooks will have the same fate. There should such Ukraine go! As well as some freaks who consider they have the right to represent such Ukraine."

"Ukrainianism is a fake. It never existed and doesn’t exist."

"A new security architecture will be created which will recognize the new reality first de facto and then also de jure: a) the weakness of the Westernized concepts of international relations along the lines of the "rules-based order" and other meaningless Western junk; b) the collapse of the idea of a US-centric world; c) the presence of interests respected by the global community of those countries that are in a critical stage of disagreement with the Western world."

"On the one hand, insane sanctions are being imposed against us, on the other hand, they are demanding food supplies. Things don't work like that, we're not idiots."

"One can have different attitudes to it, one can believe that the horsemen of the Apocalypse are already on their way and all hope is in Almighty God. However, one can still try to tone down this international situation."

"Who said Ukraine is even going to exist on the world map in two years?"

"European fans of frogs, liverwurst and spaghetti love visiting Kiev. With zero use. Promised EU membership and old howitzers to Ukraine, lushed up on gorilka and went home by train, like 100 years ago. All is well. Yet, it won’t bring Ukraine closer to peace. The clock’s ticking."

"Until the Russians come to Kazakhstan, there will be no order in it."

"A certain Zelenskyy said that he will not hold a dialogue with those who issue ultimatums. This year's ultimatums are a mere warm-up before the demands [to be made] in the future. And he knows these: the total surrender of the Kyiv regime on Russia's terms."

"Stop the supreme ruler of Hell, whatever name he uses - Satan, Lucifer or Iblis"

"Send all our enemies to fiery Gehenna"

"Our weapon is the truth. That is why our cause is right. That is why victory will be ours! Happy Holidays!"

"Pseudo-Ukrainian rabid mutts with Russian surnames, choking on their toxic saliva, declare that their enemy is located within the borders of Russia, from the West to Vladivostok. There is no cure for rabies. It is much more difficult for us – our enemy is not only entrenched in the Kyiv province of our native Little Russia. He is in Europe, North America, Japan, Australia, New Zealand, and a number of other places sworn to modern Nazi. That is why we are increasing production of the most powerful means of defeat. Including those based on new principles."

"Has the threat of a nuclear conflict passed? No, it has not passed. It has increased. Each day when foreign weapons are delivered to Ukraine ultimately brings this same nuclear apocalypse closer."

"As far as some serious offensives involving an attempt to retake Crimea are concerned, it is absolutely clear that this will serve as a basis for the use of all means of protection, including those provided for by the basic doctrine of nuclear deterrence, when the use of any types of weapons against Russia poses a threat to the existence of the state as such."

"Europe doesn't need Ukraine. The forced support of the Nazi regime, by the American mentor's order, has put Europeans into a financial and political inferno. All for the sake of bandera's unterukraine, that even the snobby, insolent Polacks don't take for a valid country, and time and again toss in the issue of its western areas anschluss. There's a nice perspective ahead: to permanently put the noveau-Ukrainian blood-sucking parasites on the decrepit EU's arthritis-crippled neck. That'll be the final fall of Europe, once majestic, but rubbed off by degeneration."

"I see no point in maintaining diplomatic relations with Poland. The state must not exist for us while there is no one but Russophobes in power, and Ukraine is full of Polish mercenaries, who must be ruthlessly exterminated."

"Our main task [is] to inflict a devastating defeat on all enemies – the Ukronazis, the US, their minions in Nato, including vile Poland, and other western nits. We must finally return all our lands."

"This conflict is for a very long time. It’s all for decades, probably."

"As long as there is such power [in Kyiv], there will be, say, three years of cease-fire, two years of conflict, and then everything will happen again."

"[Concerning Senator Lindsey Graham] In his beloved America, not only ordinary people are regularly killed, but dirty money is also being spent on killing senators. He should recall the sad fate of Robert Kennedy, Huey Long, Clementa Carlos Pinckney, John Milton Elliott, Wayne Owens and other American politicians."

"The goofy officials of the UK, our eternal enemy, should remember that within the framework of the universally accepted international law which regulates modern warfare, including the Hague and Geneva Conventions with their additional protocols, their state can also be qualified as being at war."

"Today, the UK acts as Ukraine’s ally, providing it with military aid in the form of equipment and specialists, i.e., de facto, is leading an undeclared war against Russia. That being the case, any of its public officials (either military, or civil, who facilitate the war) can be considered as a legitimate military target."

"The Polish scumbag called “duda” suggested shooting Russia like a rabid beast. Does anyone still have hopes for talks with such bastards? Makes no sense. This s*** is well worth a bullet. In the 18th century, the brute would simply be brought to the Red Square, and pitilessly executed by quartering. But we are humanists. We’ll take our revenge in a different way."

"It would be better to temporarily suspend diplomatic relations with Finland and similar countries (such as Poland, the Baltic states and, of course, the UK), or at least downgrade their level for a while."

"The authorities in Russia have convincingly proved their strength and stability, and the people of the country have demonstrated their readiness to rally around Supreme Commander Vladimir Putin to defend the Motherland."

"Ah, don’t get carried away too much with toy plane games in your sandbox, kids. Lest the next ‘good day’ for Europe may become its last day."

"The existence of Ukraine is deadly for Ukrainians. And I do not mean only the current state, the Bandera political regime. I am talking about any, absolutely any Ukraine."

"And for them [Ukrainians] this choice looks so: either a common state with Russia <...> or eternal war."

"Kyiv is a Russian city, and from there comes a threat to the existence of the Russian Federation."

"Odessa, come home. We have been waiting for Odessa in the Russian Federation because of the history of this city, what kind of people live there, what language they speak. It is our Russian, Russian city."

"Congratulstions to all Russia's enemies on Vladimir Putin's brilliant victory in the election of the President of the Russian Federation! And a thank you to friends for the support"

"Even after signing the papers and accepting defeat, the remaining radicals, after regrouping their forces, will sooner or later return to power, inspired by Russia's Western enemies. And then the time will come to finally crush the reptile. To drive a long steel nail into the coffin lid of Bandera's quasi-state."

"Medvedev should drink less vodka before going on Telegram."

"In a very real sense, every subsidy and privilege ... is a form of slavery. Slavery, simply put, is the use of coercion to live off of someone else's labor. For example, consider the worker who pays $300 a month for a drug under patent, that would cost $30 in a free market. If he is paid $15 an hour, the eighteen hours he works every month to pay the difference are slavery. Every hour worked to pay usury on a credit card or mortgage is slavery. The hours worked to pay unnecessary distribution and marketing costs (comprising half of retail prices), because of subsidies to economic centralization, is slavery. Every additional hour someone works to meet his basic needs, because the state tilts the field in favor of the bosses and forces him to sell his labor for less than it is worth, is slavery. All these forms of slavery together probably amount to half our working hours. If we kept the full value of our labor, we could probably maintain current levels of consumption with a work week of twenty hours. As Bill Haywood said, for every man who gets a dollar he didn't sweat for, someone else sweated to produce a dollar he never received."

"The natural effect of unfettered market competition is socialism. For a short time the innovator receives a large profit, as a reward for being first to the market. Then, as competitors adopt the innovation, competition drives these profits down to zero and the price gravitates toward the new, lower cost of production made possible by this innovation (that price including, of course, the cost of the producer’s maintenance and the amortization of her capital outlays). So in a free market, the cost savings in labor required to produce any given commodity would quickly be socialized in the form of reduced labor cost to purchase it."

"When that happens, and the “World’s Sole Remaining Superpower” loses its early-adopter advantage, drone technology will work to the advantage of the side with the most decentralized, distributed organizational infrastructure, and the most widely dispersed and hardened end-points. And it will disproportionately hurt the side with the most centralized, hierarchical form of organization and the most concentrated target profile. Anyone want to venture a guess as to which respective sides fit those descriptions? Imagine, if you will, a world in which drones are cheap and widely available. Then stop and think about the target profile of the Empire and the corporate interests it serves. Imagine how easy it would be to get targeting information on the homes, churches and country clubs of the senior management and directors of the aerospace companies that make American drones. The Boardrooms and C-Suites themselves. The factories. The whole South Asian chain of command, from CINC CENTCOM down to battalion and flight headquarters. The logistical tail of the drones, including the control centers at every airbase from which drones are staged. Begin to get the picture?"

". The central theme of contemporary autonomist Marxism is a shift from giant organizations and insurrectional seizure to gradualism and Exodus. The rapid transformation of the working class, the blurring of the lines between work and the rest of life, and the shift in meeting a growing share of our needs into the informal and social economy, mean that the Old Left’s workerism (and like Harry Cleaver, I include syndicalism and council communism in the Old Left), its focus on the production process as the center of society, and its treatment of the industrial proletariat as the subject of history, have become obsolete. In this regard, read Toni Negri’s contrast of the Multitude to previous Old Left ideas of the proletariat. Mostly, I call it a heroic fantasy because any model that envisions a post-capitalist transition based on the universal adoption of any monolithic, schematized social model is as ridiculous as Socrates and Glaucon discussing what musical instruments and poetic metres will be permitted in the perfect state. The real world version of the post-capitalist transition — just as with the transition to capitalism five centuries earlier — isn’t a matter of any single cohesive social class, as the subject of history, systematically remaking the world guided by some single, comprehensive ideology, and organized around a uniform institutional model. It’s a matter of a wide variety of prefigurative institutions and technological building blocks that already exist in the present society, continuing to grow and coalesce together until they reach sufficient critical mass for a phase transition — a phase transition whose outlines can only be guessed at in the most general terms. This is the model advocated by Michel Bauwens, by Paul Mason, by John Holloway, by Peter Frase, and by a lot of other people who can hardly be fitted into any American individualist ghetto."

"The key to efficiency, for the New Class, was to remove as much of life as possible from the domain of "politics" (that is, interference by non-professionals) and to place it under the control of competent authorities. "Democracy" was recast as a periodic legitimation ritual, with the individual returning between elections to his proper role of sitting down and shutting up. In virtually every area of life, the average citizen was to be transformed from Jefferson's self-sufficient and resourceful yeoman into a client of some bureaucracy or other. The educational system was designed to render him a passive and easily managed recipient of the "services" of one institution after another."

"Vulgar libertarian apologists for capitalism use the term "free market" in an equivocal sense: they seem to have trouble remembering, from one moment to the next, whether they’re defending actually existing capitalism or free market principles. ... When prodded, they’ll grudgingly admit that the present system is not a free market, and that it includes a lot of state intervention on behalf of the rich. But as soon as they think they can get away with it, they go right back to defending the wealth of existing corporations."

"The great investors are almost entirely clueless as to what their supposed “employees,” the corporation managers are doing. The CEOs are almost entirely clueless as to what the branch and facility managers are doing. And the management of each facility are almost entirely clueless as to what is going on within the black box of the actual production process. In the light of this reality, Mises’ “entrepreneur”—so carefully and closely involved in the minutiae of choosing between technical possibilities of production, a brooding omnipresence guiding the efforts of every employee—is largely a construction of fantasy. It’s quite ironic, in fact, considering that Mises starts out the block quote above with the announcement that the entrepreneur is not omnipresent."

"We have probably already passed a “singularity,” a point of no return, in the use of networked information warfare. It took some time for employers to reach a consensus that the old corporate liberal labor regime no longer served their interests, and to take note of and fully exploit the union-busting potential of Taft-Hartley. But once they began to do so, the implosion of Wagner-style unionism was preordained. Likewise, it will take time for the realization to dawn on workers that things are only getting worse, that there’s no hope in traditional unionism, and that in a networked world they have the power to bring the employer to his knees by their own direct action. But when they do, the outcome is also probably preordained. The twentieth century was the era of the giant organization. By the end of the twenty-first, there probably won’t be enough of them left to bury."

"The shift to the pre‐job pattern of self‐employment in the informal sector promises to eliminate this pathological culture in which one secures his livelihood by winning the approval of an authority figure. In my opinion, therefore, we should take advantage of the opportunity to eliminate this pattern of livelihood, instead of—as Ford proposes—replacing the boss with a bureaucrat as the authority figure on whose whims our livelihood depends. The sooner we destroy the idea of the “job” as a primary source of livelihood, and replace the idea of work as something we’re given with the idea of work as something we do, the better. And then we should sow the ground with salt."

"But the point, as I argued with Caplan, is not that managers are inherently less intelligent or capable as individuals. Rather, it’s that hierarchical organizations are—to borrow that wonderful phrase from Feldman and March—systematically stupid. For all the same Hayekian reasons that make a planned economy unsustainable, no individual is “smart” enough to manage a large, hierarchical organization. Nobody–not Einstein, not John Galt–possesses the qualities to make a bureaucratic hierarchy function rationally. Nobody’s that smart, any more than anybody’s smart enough to run Gosplan efficiently–that’s the whole point. No matter how insightful and resourceful they are, no matter how prudent, as human beings in dealing with actual reality, nevertheless by their very nature hierarchies insulate those at the top from the reality of what’s going on below, and force them to operate in imaginary worlds where all their intelligence becomes useless. No matter how intelligent managers are as individuals, a bureaucratic hierarchy makes their intelligence less usable."

"Localized, small‐scale economies are the rats in the dinosaurs’ nests. The informal and household economy operates more efficiently than the capitalist economy, and can function on the waste byproducts of capitalism. It is resilient and replicates virally. In an environment in which resources for technological development have been almost entirely diverted toward corporate capitalism, it takes technologies that were developed to serve corporate capitalism, adapts them to small‐scale production, and uses them to destroy corporate capitalism. In fact, it’s almost as though the dinosaurs themselves had funded a genetic research lab to breed mammals: “Let’s reconfigure the teeth so they’re better for sucking eggs, and ramp up the metabolism to survive a major catastrophe—like, say, an asteroid collision. Nah, I don’t really know what it would be good for—but what the fuck, the Pangean Ministry of Defense is paying for it!”"

"Capitalism was founded on an act of robbery as massive as feudalism. It has been sustained to the present by continual state intervention to protect its system of privilege, without which its survival is unimaginable."

"From the outset of the industrial revolution, what is nostalgically called "laissez-faire" was in fact a system of continuing state intervention to subsidize accumulation, guarantee privilege, and maintain work discipline."

"The single biggest subsidy to modern corporate capitalism is the subsidy of history, by which capital was originally accumulated in a few hands, and labor was deprived of access to the means of production and forced to sell itself on the buyer's terms. The current system of concentrated capital ownership and large-scale corporate organization is the direct beneficiary of that original structure of power and property ownership, which has perpetuated itself over the centuries."

"Ideological hegemony is the process by which the exploited come to view the world through a conceptual framework provided to them by their exploiters. It acts first of all to conceal class conflict and exploitation behind a smokescreen of "national unity" or "general welfare." Those who point to the role of the state as guarantor of class privilege are denounced, in theatrical tones of moral outrage, for "class warfare.""

"The manufacture of foreign crisis and war hysteria has been used since the beginning of history to suppress threats to class rule."

"War crimes are only committed by defeated powers. (But as the Nazis learned in 1945, unemployed war criminals can usually find work with the new hegemonic power.)"

"Foreign war is a very useful tool for manipulating the popular mind and keeping the domestic population under control. War is the easiest way to shift vast, unaccountable new powers to the State. People are most uncritically obedient at the very time they need to be most vigilant."

"Capitalism could not have survived at any point in its history without state intervention. Coercive state measures at every step have denied workers access to capital, forced them to sell their labor in a buyer's market, and protected the centers of economic power from the dangers of the free market."

"Most of the constantly rising burden of paperwork exists to give an illusion of transparency and control to a bureaucracy that is out of touch with the actual production process. Every new layer of paperwork is added to address the perceived problem that stuff still isn’t getting done the way management wants, despite the proliferation of paperwork saying everything has being done exactly according to orders. In a hierarchy, managers are forced to regulate a process which is necessarily opaque to them because they are not directly engaged in it. They’re forced to carry out the impossible task of developing accurate metrics to evaluate the behavior of subordinates, based on the self-reporting of people with whom they have a fundamental conflict of interest. The paperwork burden that management imposes on workers reflects an attempt to render legible a set of social relationships that by its nature must be opaque and closed to them, because they are outside of it. Each new form is intended to remedy the heretofore imperfect self-reporting of subordinates. The need for new paperwork is predicated on the assumption that compliance must be verified because those being monitored have a fundamental conflict of interest with those making the policy, and hence cannot be trusted; but at the same time, the paperwork itself relies on their self-reporting as the main source of information. Every time new evidence is presented that this or that task isn’t being performed to management’s satisfaction, or this or that policy isn’t being followed, despite the existing reams of paperwork, management’s response is to design yet another—and equally useless—form."

"Women who choose the assholes will fuckin' end this race. They will fuckin' end this human race, if we don't start holding them a-fucking-ccountable. Women who choose assholes guarantee child abuse. Women who choose assholes guarantee criminality, sociopathy, politicians. All the cold-hearted jerks who run the world came out of the vaginas of women who married assholes. And I don't know how to make the world a better place without holding women accountable for choosing assholes!"

"Women worship at the feet of the devil and wonder why the world is evil."

"Five years—if we can just get people to be nice to their babies for five years straight, that would be it for war, drug abuse, addiction, promiscuity, sexually transmitted diseases; almost all would be completely eliminated because they all arise from dysfunctional early childhood experiences, which are all run by women."

"Sorry, just very very briefly, the Germans were in danger of being taken over by what they perceived as Jewish-led Communism. And Jewish-led Communism had wiped out tens of millions of white Christians in Russia and they were afraid of the same thing. And there was this wild overreaction and all this kind of stuff."

"And of course if you look in society, and particularly if you look at curriculum going on in the social justice warrior factory of modern universities in what used to be called the humanities, and now I think can reasonably be called the leftist bigotries, the fermenting of anti-white hatred is extremely strong. And very toxic and very dangerous. And that of course comes with the big question, is that I can't help but think, Jared, that if I lived in a society of white people then the giant flyswatter of "shut up whitey, you're racist" could never be used against me."

"From 800 BC to 1950 AD, 97% of the world's scientific advancements occurred in Europe and North America. 98% of the significant figures were male. No white males, no modern world. Fact. I'm grateful. Are you? End the hate. Aspire to admire, whatever the race."

"It did strike me that this relentless propaganda for "white women with black men" would serve to lower the average IQ of the offspring. You don’t see nearly as much "white women with East Asian men," whose offspring would tend to have higher IQs on average. Hmmm..."

"The housing crash resulted from refusing to talk about racial IQ differences. Disparities in racial rates of home ownership were ascribed to racism, and banks were forced to make loans to unqualified minorities."

"Took my daughter to see my old graduate school desk in the University of Toronto Library, couldn't help but notice the almost complete absence of white males in the entire building. Next time we build a civilization, we should really aim to hang onto it."

"If we had been allowed to talk about race and IQ, the invasion of Iraq would never have occurred, because no one would have been under the illusion that a Jeffersonian Republic was going to emerge from a population with an IQ in the 80s. Opposing science got >500k people killed."

"The devolution of the US from an Enlightenment Republic to a semi-banana republic is also silenced, since that has a lot to do with racial IQ demographics esp permanent low Hispanic IQ"

"ADHD" grew in proportion to mass immigration. Hyper-creative white boys got crazy bored with dumbed-down value-less "education."

"It's interesting that if you don't have a uterus, you can't have an opinion on women's issues, but you can compete in women's sports."

"Do you know that female lipstick simulates sexual arousal? Can you imagine a man showing up for a business meeting with a giant artificial boner straining at his pants? Yet lipstick is perfectly acceptable in the business world."

"Women have so much power at the moment, and a lot of that power is founded on makeup. It's founded on using makeup, fertility symbols to bypass the man's rational faculties and appeal directly to his bonobo brain, like, to his monkey brain, right? So, when I talk to men about the power of makeup, once you understand the power of makeup, it loses most of its power. Aha! Now you see we're getting to the heart of the matter."

"The Left is infested with pedophiles - they promote the welfare state and feminism in order to get protective fathers out of the home, so they have easier sexual access to the children of single mothers."

"The primary purpose of feminism is to lower white birthrates."

"I have been a vegetarian for a few years and just recently I have become a vegan … I took this step following my inner feeling. … If we think for a moment how man manages animals and what impact he has on animal world we could say he was not human at all. Just think of all slaughter houses and production of beef or poultry where conditions for animals are impossible. Animals are transported in lorries many times without any water, which is extremely cruel. It is not that people are bad, they just don't think about it. … it is unreasonable to expect from people with lower levels of consciousness, who are cruel to animals, to end wars, to stop manipulating others, to help eradicate world poverty. In short as long as consciousness level is low all the disagreements in the world today will remain and possibly increase to the point of annihilation of humans."

"I make videos."

"Maybe you wanna quit when things fail but you can't just fail when things quit."

"OOOH!! 18!... 18!... 18, n***a!!"

"It's because, apparently, Neo-Nazi groups have been referencing me, have been praising me, for making these kinds of jokes and I was unaware of this, so I made a statement, as soon as I found out about this, saying, 'I do not support these hateful groups in any way,' but that's never going to be the title. That doesn't fit their personal agenda. That's not the story they want. This is not an article. This was a personal attack against me, It is so clear."

"Again, it's fine to not agree with someone's sense of humour, but calling me a fascist, how is that helping anyone?"

"I want to give the... [laughs] the warmest thanks, to everybody who supported me. It's been incredible. [gives two thumbs up] Thank you everybody in the YouTube community. Hey it means a lot, thank you, thank you. [Sarcastically] Now, the most appropriate way to end this, I think, is the tenth thing, the tenth secret Nazi thing that went right past Wall Street Journal. I can't believe they didn't notice it. [kisses fist] Our secret Nazi salute, the bro-fist. [sends fist towards the camera]"

"What a f****** n****r, jeez, oh my god, what the fuck?, what a f****** a**hole... sorry, but what the f***?"

"Hello, I wanted to make a statement on what I said in my previous livestream. You probably won't believe me when I say this, but whenever I go online and I hear other players use the same kind of language that I did, I always find it extremely immature and stupid, and I hate how I now personally fed into that part of gaming as well. It was something that I said in the heat of the moment. I said the worst word I could possibly think of, and it just sort of slipped out, and I'm not going to make any excuses to why it did, because there are no excuses for it."

"I'm disappointed in myself because it seems like I've learned nothing from all these past controversies, and it's not that I think I can say or do whatever I want and get away with it; that's not it at all! I'm just an idiot, but that doesn't make what I said, or how I said it, okay. It was not okay. I'm really sorry if I offended, hurt, or disappointed anyone with all of this."

"Being in the position I am, I should know better. I know I can't keep messing up like this, and I owe it to my audience and to myself to do better than this, because I know I'm better than this. I really want to improve myself and better myself, not just for me, but for anyone that looks up to me or anyone that's influenced by me, and that's how I want to move forward away from this. That's all I had to say. Thank you for watching. Bye."

"If John Lennon's so smart then why is he dead?"

"MEME REVIEW"

"Stop atack, eh, atack... atackonizing me!"

"But when you gotta flex, you gotta keep flexing. You know what I'm saying? Please feel free to quote me on that at any given point."

"Once your fans start noticing that your channel isn't doing as well as it used to be, they are quick to point out why: It is you. "It is not because I got tired of your content - it is because of you - you've changed man!""

"Okay, Grandpa. I don't care about your Vietnam stories! Have you ever tried going into Molten Core with only four healers?"

"Together, us gamers are strong. For too long we have been oppressed by all these groups; everyone is against us, but we are the toughest, most hard-working, most vigilant, most powerful group on the Internet! If we all together will rise up, we can defeat anything! We can take over the world! We can create the gaming utopia that we all wanted to live in! Cars are not cars - they are carmers; houses are not houses - they are gaming studios; roads are not roads - they are Candy Crush displays. Imagine it, just think of how good things would really be! Think about how bad we are now because we haven't risen up yet! The more we wait, the harder it will get, but now it is time for gamers to rise together!"

"Just like Twitter said themselves, unless Alex preaches ideas that goes against Twitter's community guidelines or rules, then he shouldn't be banned from Twitter. I found it almost dumbfounding how people will disagree with this statement."

"I've seen the argument saying, 'Well, these are private companies, Apple, Spotify, YouTube, and whatever. They have the right to ban whoever they want. They can set their own rules. They should just make up rules to get rid of Alex Jones.' It seems pretty fair, right? Their playground, their rules. I also, kind of disagree. I think that social media has grown so big that it's become an extension of your voice, that if you are not on social media, and you are taken off of social media in a way that isn't really specified why, then it can be seen as a way of censorship."

"Negligib... neglibij... Negligibible"

"What!? You've never played TUBER SIMULATOR ?!!?! You know it's fun, right? Now I'm not supposed to give my opinion, but give it a try , and THEN you can tell me if it's good or not. Not convinced yet? Okay, I'll cut you a deal. The game is available for FREE, and that's a GREAT price!"

"Nobody tells me what to do in my book. I can do whatever I wish and to whomever I want. It is fun for me. It calms the chaos inside my mind. That is why I write."

"As they say in Hindi ‘Chalti ka naam zindagi.’ Anybody who is just sitting (even on the right track) will be run over (by the train) at some point in life."

"I tried my hand at a novel around college romance, but soon figured out I was no good at it."

"The ocean of love, though vast and magnanimous in its beauty, is a treacherous place. It is riddled with strong currents pulling you towards them as you helplessly give in to their force. Drowning under them was my destiny, but floating around to admire the mesmerizing beauty of the corals underwater was my choice, for those depths felt like home—the depths of unrequited love."

"I picked the stardust you left behind and made phantoms of you in my head. I ran after the echoes of your soul—too swift for my feeble legs to catch up to. Even my shadow yearns for your lips to say my name. You steady me like an anchor in the vastness of my dark waters, yet you crumble me like a delicate flower under a roaring cloudburst. I close my eyes and dance with the memory of you. And for that moment, I am home."

"Get along with me as I don't wait for anybody. I am time , and I welcome you to the world of Kali where nothing is as it seems."

"Vyas was no less than a Purushottam. A Purushottam of the dark epoch, an era where sinners judge and punish sinners for sinning differently."

"As I continued to walk step by step, the lie of life freed me from its clutches, and the universal truth of death swept over breath by breath."

"Books give us the ability to see things from different perspectives. They educate us, entertain us, force us to think upon certain issues. And reading a book or reading, in general, is an excuse for those who are less sociable like me for not socialising much. And guess what, it works most of the times."

"Dedicated to all non-award winning, non-bestselling and self-published authors."

"Sincere thanks to all the publishers who rejected my manuscripts. Rejection is the reason behind the creation of this book."

"I think reading is an effective way of introspecting how you perceive reality and imagination. As an author, you get to know what other authors have done better and it helps hone skills."

"Whoever said, he/she is a proud non-reader of books is living in oblivion."

"It (reading) not only opens up one’s mind to a wider array of things as well, but is also a welcome relief from the monotony of the mundane world."

"I dedicate this book to all my readers, irrespective of whether they purchased my book, illegally obtained a copy, downloaded it or borrowed it from someone else. Some went ahead and directly asked me to send them a soft-copy of my book. Special salute to them as well."

"Excuse me pal! This is IELTS; you understand? This is International English Language Testing System…not a Bihar Board exam where candidates are accompanied by their friends, neighbours and relatives until they finish writing the test."

"If Bihari version of ‘Harry Potter’ would have been shot in Sitamarhi, I am sure that school (St. Joseph) would have been pictured as Hogwarts."

"Stealing is really an art, a dangerous, risky art, though."

"The moment I stood there I saw people from houses to my right, left and front were already on their balcony’s and they stared at me all at once as if I was from Jupiter. Their interrogative expression was asking me ‘who the hell are you?’ repeatedly. I did not give a damn, though."

"Either I had to get my admission in grade ninth again or else I had to do some work-around to seek for a ‘jugaad’ (hack). I chose the latter."

"The only thing appeared to be fine in most of the rooms was blackboard. It seemed black; and fine too."

"He (night-guard) was wearing an underwear and a torn vest which said ‘yeh aram ka maamla hai.’ He implemented that statement literally in his life, I could see that."

"‘Be in line and then see what’s going on!’ a fat lady shouted at me. ‘Hell yeah! you greasy piece of flesh.’ I cursed her in my mind. But ‘Yes I am going back in line!’ I shouted at her."

"I mean did we take the law, the ‘LAW’ in our hands by playing in college? What were they going to do, put a charge on us under Indian Penal Code?!"

"I too had some of the ‘Indian’ things in my bags. A pressure cooker, Parle-G, Maggi, desi ghee, underwear (a lot of them), some more Maggi, shirts, pants, socks, thermal wear, jackets, chappals, soap, some more Parle-G and the list goes on and on."

"We middle class people are all same from inside. First things first, I logged into my Facebook account and checked-in there as well. You know what, it is more important to check-in on Facebook than it is to check-in for real at the airport. Let the world which gives zero fucks to what you are doing with your life, know you can afford a plane ticket for economy class. Right?"

"Grandma asked me to confirm if I had landed in Canada and not any other country. I just pointed my camera towards the different direction where grandma could see some Sardar roaming here and there. ‘Aa ta Kanedda hi lagda hai.’ (it is Canada, indeed) grandma said in joy. We all laughed like anything."

"Gaurav is a man, man is a social being and Gaurav is not social at all. From statements one two and three we get ‘Gaurav is just a being.’ Hence proved, he mere exists."

"I don’t know where I am, what am I doing, where will life take me, how will things go, whom to talk to, what to share, what to cook, how to eat, when to sleep, what to wear, what to do and how to live. All of my known are busy making their CVs look professional and substantial. And I am figuring out the way to make my life normal and less bumpy. Forget about building strong resume. Rest assured, I am okay…I will be alright. Cheers to my life!"

"Some Muslims now use the term Islamophobia instead of simply talking about racism against the Arabs. It is a very convenient, but quite wrong, way to believe that there is a specific stigma of Islam ... To fight the fight against fanaticism and to free Muslims, it would be necessary to first, that the media cease to serve as a support and platform for radicals and stop relaying these false accusations of Islamophobia."

"The building of a Palestinian state will only be possible if the mentality of the people evolves and accepts the idea of complementarity between the two states ... A brewing between the two societies is essential in order to help the Palestinians to catch up in the matter modernity compared to their Israeli neighbors."

"Those who are called revolutionaries and rebels, that is to say those who have escaped this conditioning, driven by the will to live, to reflect, to understand each other and to explore life and its."

"It is a cry of alarm that I run to save the innocence of children, threatened by madness and anger. And it is at school and at the mosque that they are formatted to become criminals! Because in my country and beyond, the main suppliers of terrorists are mosques."

"In the West, the Muslims exploit Islam for political reasons. Current issues, relating inter alia to scarf, veil and burqa attest. Nothing in the Qur'an requires the wearing of these scarves, but Muslims use it to prove their existence and to impose a common identity and recognizable to the entire community. This demand for clothing also allows extremist organizations to fight the liberalism of atheists and progressive movements. By imposing the veil, they want to distinguish Muslim women from European women, impious by definition, and prove that all the identity of these women resides in Islam, that their identity is Islam. It is obviously nonsense: the being is not defined by his religion. The scarf thus becomes a symbol through which they aspire to impose Islam in the countries that host them by demanding from them rights, on their terms. But Western laxity is problematic. The West, which has millions of Muslims from elsewhere and grants them citizenship, tolerates that some of them live in ghettos and demand respect for their own rules, even before integrating and respecting the laws. from their host country. The example of the Muslims in Britain is flagrant. They want to fight the ungodly, enforce the rules of Ramadan, prohibit the sale and consumption of alcohol, forbid indigenous Christians to eat in public during the month of fasting, establish sharia law and declare jihad in Hyde Park!"

"Then one day, I took my courage in both hands. I first expanded my reading and immersed myself in philosophical and scientific works that called for reflection on the existence of God, such as To End God with the British Richard Dawkins. This book brought me the answers that religion was unable to provide me. Through the work of Darwin, Hawking, and other scientists who have marked humanity, I have discovered that most scholars are atheists. I had come to understand why the work of these scholars was not taught in our schools and universities: simply because those of Dawkins or for example, the theory of evolution of Darwin, go against the primacy of religion on science. ... / ... The Internet has allowed me to discover that the famous miracles of Islam, claimed by the religious and willingly relayed by the press and Islamic satellite television, were just lies. ... / ... Darwin's theory of evolution seemed to me much more convincing than the legend of Adam and Eve."

"To dominate the faithful, the religious found an effective treatment: the administration of five daily bites, at fixed times announced by the Muezzin. As soon as his calls sound, people rush to the mosque and prostrate themselves by banging their heads on the ground, thus kissing their submission. Before the effects of the sting disappear, they undergo an injection of words that paralyze their brain fog of religion ... / ... Anesthetized, the faithful lives in the illusion and leaves the responsibility of its existence to the masters who say to speak in the name of God and to represent it on Earth ... / ... The religious have made generations of helpless to sacralized ignorance, deprived of future, progress, humanism, dignity and freedom."

"Too many Muslims still refuse to integrate in the West today. They claim all the rights granted to Western citizens in the name of human rights and equality, but they refuse the duties incumbent upon these citizens. They want to impose their religion to states that no longer have a religion and to the societies that practice it discreetly. In France, many of them do not respect the state and do not give it any importance ... / ... France and the West must protect their precious secularism, especially since it seems impossible in the Arab countries."

"This desire to impose coexistence and cohabitation in the name of "living together", while these guests of the nation do not intend to respect this concept, is to let termites destroy a house by saying that it is necessary that these poor beasts feed. (p. 41)"

"There is no difference between the radicals who kill in the name of Allah and the pretended moderates who applaud and find them extenuating circumstances. The mistake in France is that the media use the term "extremist" to refer to jihadists who massacre and terrorize civilians and call "moderate" all others. Yet those who believe in sharia and dream of applying it, who reject gender equality, who impose Islam and its symbols in everyday life, who demand the separation of men and women in the public space who introduce religion to school through halal meat, who demand the veil, who want to adapt society to their ideology, who applaud the execution of renegades and want to Islamize through preaching are all extremists, even they have not - or not yet - carried the weapons. In fact, all Muslims who meet these criteria must be considered radicals. (p. 151)"

"Like all exclusive ideologies, such as Marxism or eugenics, Islam wants to be the sole holder of the truth and the embodiment of its salvation. His hegemony, dogmatism and tyranny make Islam an eradicating movement. Those among non-Muslims who strive to seek a moderate Islam demonstrate their ignorance of the very nature of this religion. Muslims who defend an allegedly temperate Islam also ignore the foundations of their faith or are duplicitous and hypocritical. They hide their bloodthirsty history to present it in a better light. As a result, we can not speak of moderate Muslims. (pp. 154-155)"

"Jihad and terrorism carry the same meaning despite the efforts of Muslims to dissociate and differentiate them. Terrorism is not a new phenomenon in Islam, since it has been the main tool for the expansion of Islamic State since Muhammad. Islamic conquests were indeed a form of terrorism, although consistent with the practices of the time. [...] terrorism, the hereditary fruit of Koranic education, has its roots in the East. He is the son of the cohesion policy created by the Prophet Muhammad and his followers, bringing together all pre-Islamic groups under the same ideology: Islam. (pp. 209-210)"

"If Western countries really fear Islam, why do they welcome so many Muslims, granting them asylum and many helpers? Why do they tolerate the construction of so many mosques on their soil while Muslim countries forbid the building of churches on their own? If there is a real hostility towards Islam, why are hundreds of thousands of Muslims trying to clandestinely reach the lands of the infidels and apostates, often risking their lives? [...] the West is innocent of accusations of Islamophobia against it, [...] political Islam has invented this term to accelerate the ghettoisation of Muslims, oppose them to the host countries and radicalize them. (pp. 126-127)"

"Hatred against Islam becomes the second terminology used after Islamophobia to escape the debate. It is particularly aimed at lay people of Muslim or Arab origin. Practitioners are abusing it against ex-Muslims who dare to denounce virulent preaching and calls for violence in mosques and relayed to their neighborhoods. But where is the hatred to denounce hatred? (p. 135)"

"Accepting the hijab in advertisements, in children's toys or even considering the fact that children wear the veil at school or on television as something "normal" is not evidence of cultural diversity and openness of European societies but this is a proof of the gentle Islamization of these societies."

"I want to make things clear about the hijab. Anyone who is for equality between the sexes is against this garment which designates the woman as a temptress who must cover herself to keep her modesty! The hijab has an inherent sexual dimension. Before Islam, this practice of disguising women of the public dimension already existed, to show their inferiority. Now, the hijab is instrumentalized by Islamists who have understood its political dimension, in opposition to the values of emancipation and the Republic."

"A question for those who mix racism and freedom with the veil debate: who is the racist? he who defends the values of equality, of modernity, as well as the values of the French revolution or the one that advocates a return to medieval values and a dark period in which no equality existed?"

"When we begin to close our eyes on veiled girls in the name of "modesty" ... we finally close our eyes to girls raped under the guise of "marriage"."

"The veil is nothing but a sign of political Islam, as the armbands were for the Nazis!"

"I am against the veil not only because it is a religious sign, but because it is a symbol of the enslavement of women and sexism! Do not let yourself be convinced that the wearing of the veil is an act of freedom because it is the imprisonment of women in communitarianism and it is also their residence and cultural identity. In Europe today the veil is the symbol of conquering political Islam and a sign of visible and communicative Islamization."

"I am with the uprising of women in the Arab world because I can think and fully practice my religion (like men). Also, I’m in debt to my daughter to offer her an honorable life."

"I will win. Not immediately, but definitely."

"Lately, I appeared in some foreign media channels, which resulted in more attacks against me, and the number of threats of murder or physical harm against me have increased due to the creation of ugly hashtags by instigators, for the purpose of inciting and mobilizing followers against me; this does not represent a tolerant society at all. In these interviews, I spoke about my experience and what I went through personally, and I always ended what I said with my optimism towards the future of the Kingdom and its youth, but - unfortunately - this part was usually omitted during the editing stages of said interviews. What the majority does not know is that, for the past 4 years, I have refused to appear in interviews with foreign media channels, because I knew of the threat that they pose to individuals and for fear of being used as a media tool wrongfully, as well as the tendency of some reporters to paint an ugly picture of Saudi Arabia by exploiting and cutting out parts of what is being said by its citizens - especially those who were part of the Kingdom's scholarship program - without any attempt to show the full picture in a fair and professional manner."

"Respective authorities would not allow in those whom they know will slander the Kingdom and directly insult its citizens."

"I remain very optimistic about a bright future for my country and its citizens."

"We have to all realise that criticising some phenomena in our home country does not equate to hating it, wishing evil upon it nor is it an attempt to shake its balance, it's the total opposite. Any Saudi citizen might be upset by some incidents that occur in the Kingdom, but that is only a direct sign of one's interest in the betterment of one's own country and one's hope to see Saudi Arabia as a global leader."

"Throughout the past few years, every time I committed an action or was subjected to a series of attacks, I had never felt the need to justify myself, this all changed today; today I felt the importance of clarifying many things due to the harsh and unfair criticism I am facing this time; criticism that has reached the point of questioning my loyalty to my country, which is completely unacceptable. Our home country is big enough not to impose one nature on all spectrums of its society."

"I sincerely pray for my country and for all of its citizens, even those who have made much effort to harass my family and I."

"I put lipstick on a pig. I feel a deep sense of remorse that I contributed to presenting Trump in a way that brought him wider attention and made him more appealing than he is. I genuinely believe that if Trump wins and gets the nuclear codes, there is an excellent possibility it will lead to the end of civilization."

"There are two Trumps. The one he presents to the world is all bluster, and certainty. The other, which I have long felt haunts his inner world, is the frightened child of a relentlessly critical and bullying father and a distant and disengaged mother who couldn’t or wouldn’t protect him."

"Trump’s temperament and his habits have hardened with age. He was always cartoonish, but compared with the man for whom I wrote The Art of the Deal 30 years ago, he is significantly angrier today: more reactive, deceitful, distracted, vindictive, impulsive and, above all, self-absorbed – assuming the last is possible."

"Even those closest to Trump recognise his utter lack of fitness to be president, even if they are too cowed and cowardly to do anything about it."

"Fear is the hidden through-line in Trump’s life – fear of weakness, of inadequacy, of failure, of criticism and of insignificance. He has spent his life trying to outrun these fears by “winning” – as he puts it – and by redefining reality whenever the facts don’t serve the narrative he seeks to create. It hasn’t worked, but not for lack of effort."

"Because the office Trump now occupies makes him the most powerful man on Earth, his fears, and the way he manages them, have necessarily become ours. We fear Trump because he is impulsive, irrational and self-serving, but above all because he seems unconstrained by even the faintest hint of conscience. Trump feels no more shame over his most destructive behaviours than a male lion does killing the cubs of his predecessor when he takes over a pride. Trump has made fear the dominant emotion of our times."

"About the only thing Trump truly has in common with his base is that he feels every bit as aggrieved as they do, despite his endless privilege. No amount of money, fame or power has been enough to win him the respect he so insatiably craves. His anger over this perceived injustice is visceral and authentic."

"The fearful divide Trump has exacerbated is not simply between his supporters and his detractors, the rich and the poor, or Democrats and Republicans, but between the best and the worst in each of us."

"In the face of fear, it is a fact that our most primitive and selfish instincts emerge. Control of our behaviour shifts from the prefrontal cortex to the emotionally driven amygdala – sometimes referred to as “fear central”. As we move into fight-or-flight mode, we become more self-centred, and our vision narrows to the perceived threat, which in the modern world is less to our survival than to our sense of value and worthiness. We lose the capacity for empathy, rationality, proportionality and attention to the longer-term consequences of our actions. ... It is when we feel safest and most secure that we think most clearly and expansively. It’s also when we are most inclined to look beyond our self-interest, and to act with compassion, generosity, consideration and forgiveness."

"My own path over the past two decades – prompted in reaction to my experience with him – has been to help business leaders become more wholly human, and to humanise workplaces."

"Whatever happens, may the worst of Trump inspire the best in us."

"I've always loved life. Those who love life can never adapt, undergo, be commanded. Who loves life is always with the rifle at the window to defend life ... A human being who adapts, who suffers, who makes himself commanded, is not a human being."

"Being one of the few women in the leadership team, I am often surrounded by men, but I have never found that to be uncomfortable."

"“In spite of the ruins and death, where every illusion has ended, the strength of my dreams is so strong, that exaltation is reborn from everything, and my hands are never empty.""

"“Spelling is relevant knowledge.""

"“Spelling is not an artificial skin of verbal expression, it is a deep structure that is revealed in the spelled image.""

"If you want to rely on non-empirical assessment, you have to make really sure that scientists’ judgment is as objective as humanly possible. And the environment in academia presently is absolutely unsuitable for this. You just can’t be sure how much sociology affects judgment. And no physicist I know makes any effort to consciously address cognitive biases, such as wishful thinking, loss aversion, or the use of aesthetic criteria. It’s just not something that they pay attention to because it’s never been necessary before. As long as you have data for guidance, you’ll be swiftly corrected."

"To make predictions with inflation one cannot just say “there once was exponential expansion and it ended somehow.” No, to be able to calculate something, one needs a mathematical model. The current models for inflation work by introducing a new field – the “inflaton” – and give this field a potential energy. The potential energy depends on various parameters. And these parameters can then be related to observations. The scientific approach to the situation would be to choose a model, determine the parameters that best fit observations, and then revise the model as necessary – ie, as new data comes in. But that’s not what cosmologists presently do. Instead, they have produced so many variants of models that they can now “predict” pretty much anything that might be measured in the foreseeable future."

"In our search for new ideas, beauty plays many roles. It's a guide, a reward, a motivation. It's also a systematic bias."

"The Standard Model is based on a principle called "gauge symmetry". According to this principle, every particle has a direction in an internal space, much like the needle in a compass, except that the needle doesn't point anywhere you can look."

"The logic of arguments from naturalness resembles the attempt to predict the plot of a long-running TV series. If the hero -- here, naturalness --is in a pickle, certainly he will survive, so something must happen to turn around a situation that looks bleak."

"if you pile up enough of it, even shit can look beautiful."

"[P]olitics is always just a few steps away from The Lord of the Flies..."

"Americans still believe we live in a free society and revere its core values. These principles are pretty well known: freedom of speech, religion, and the press; the right to a fair trial; representative democracy; equality before the law; and so on. These aren't principles we hold sacred because they're enshrined in the Constitution, or because they were cherished by the Founders. These principles were enshrined in the Constitution and cherished by the Framers precisely because they're indispensable to a free society."

"[T]he typical person arrested for gun crimes is more likely to have the complexion of Shaneen Allen than, say, Sarah Palin."

"[G]un control laws passed in the late 1960s were in response to racial riots taking place across the country."

"[T]he crime control policy most well-known, widely loathed and roundly condemned by racial justice activists — the New York Police Department’s stop-and-frisk policy — is at heart a gun control initiative. Its most high-profile champion is former mayor Michael Bloomberg, also a high-profile proponent of gun control laws like those in New Jersey."

"[M]ore gun laws and more enforcement of victimless gun crimes will mean more people in prison. Those new prisoners will be disproportionately black and Hispanic. These realities need to be part of the discussion."

"Madison's argument is commonly cited in favor of civilian control of the military. But it applies as much to the police and their "war on crime," in which the "enemy" is not some foreign power but the public, or some portion of the public. "There's now a dominant military culture within modern"

"The true test of a democracy is the justice that the minority gets in the system. The majority will always get its share whatever the system."

"It is extremely symbolic that Advani is the heir of Nathuram Godse who, in pursuit of what he was convinced was his duty to India, shot dead the man who had chanted the name of Ram all his life till his last breath."

"Just as Hitler had given a frustrated Germany a target and that target was the Jew, so through the Ram Janmabhoomi movement, a frustrated country was given a target and that target was the Muslim."

"Jihad is the signature tune of Islamic history. If today’s Muslim rulers are reluctant to sound that note, it is often because they are concerned about the consequences of failure."

"There is no pain in life, they say in Granada, so cruel as to be blind in Alhambra. When the Arabs of the desert conquered Spain, they said that they had reached heaven. From the ramparts of the Alhambra, sitting on a spur of the Sierra Nevada, look out and you see a paradise created by nature; look in and you see a paradise created by man."

"Narrated Abdullah bin Abi Aufa: Allah’s Messenger (May Peace Be Upon Him) said, ‘Know that Paradise is under the shade of swords’."

"While the landlords and capitalists allowed the clergy to make Pakistan a religious state, the clergy allowed the landlords guaranteed property rights and the capitalists unbridled control over the economy. Theocracy and landlordism/capitalism are the two pillars of Pakistan and Bangladesh."

"Sometimes, you have to almost lose something before you really appreciate what you have."

"The reason that communism is the greatest evil is simple: Communism is the greatest enemy of personal responsibility ever invented. Communism waters down and diminishes personal accomplishments. Once one sees this clearly, seemingly inexplicable communist-driven policies make sense. Every communist policy—from the minimum wage to single-payer health care to rent control—is designed to minimize and thwart personal responsibility. Conversely, individuals who take personal responsibility become leaders, inspiring others to take control of their own lives. Individuals who take personal responsibility for their actions are accountable for their behavior, which results in better relationships with others."

"Communism is a form of organized crime justified by the [worldview] of Marxism–Leninism. It is basically a combination of criminal inclination coupled with uncontrolled political power. Like all crime, communism is parasitic. It produces nothing of value itself; it must rely on force, propaganda, torture, intimidation, threats, and espionage to survive. Like cancer, communism consumes its host. Except that in communism’s case, it will only die when the whole planet is consumed. Must we let things get to that point?"

"In communist terminology “world peace” simply means an absence of resistance to world Marxist-Leninist domination. What would the CPUSA do if the United States got into a full-scale military confrontation with China?"

"One of the most striking things about radical left movements is their ability to cause such great damage with comparatively minuscule numbers of agitators. Many of these individuals and organizations work relentlessly to bring about revolution with little to no scrutiny. ... The communist organizers might pass for a group of friends at a neighborhood barbeque, but their innocent appearance shouldn’t lull citizens into complacency."

"What could be crueler than denying someone just starting out in life the chance to work, to learn skills, and to open new horizons? The disastrous results of minimum wage laws are used by enemies of the free market to discredit the free market. Minimum wage laws help no one. They harm the economy, they spread poverty, and they kill dreams. Minimum wage laws are cruel, and they are a fraud on the poor and the disadvantaged. They must be abolished."

"Importantly, socialized medicine is not about health care, it is about control. Are you going to oppose the government or defy bureaucrats when they have the power of veto over your spouse’s or children’s health care?"

"Our environment can best be preserved and enhanced by better protection of property rights in a free-market economy. Private individuals—not socialist governments—are the best stewards of the environment. China and the old Soviet bloc proved that point once and for all."

"There are many roads to tyranny. “Democratic socialism” is but the subtlest and most benign sounding road to communism."

"Government welfare is communism. Free money from the state, whether in terms of benefits, handouts, or non-universal tax-breaks, is a trap that will draw people into socialism and beyond. It’s a lot like cancer."

"Socialism, is in short a manifestation of mental illness or major character deficiency."

"No political party should ever be given permanent, unchallenged power."

"There's an emergency cord on this [Brexit] train and we have to pull it,"

"The best option available to us in terms of our economy is remaining in the European Union"

"We need to take this decision back to the people"

"[My party is] committed to work co-operatively with every other opposition party and do everything in our power to avoid a catastrophic crash-out Brexit"

"Freedom of speech is very important because it is a fundamental part of our rights. Everyone must be allowed to say what they mean."

"Everyone can draw, and a drawing doesn't have any mistakes."

"Religious people are looking everywhere for blasphemy, but we cartoonists are just trying to make people laugh."

"Never give up hope, try with confidence; you will be successful."

"No one should be beaten. [Instead,] everything that bothers us should be carefully, but unyieldingly eliminated by means of deportation... A tooth without a root is considered dead. A nationalist is he who does not want the root ‘Russian’ to be deleted from the word ‘Russia.’ We have the right to be Russian in Russia and we will protect this right."

"I think very poorly of United Russia. United Russia is the party of corruption, the party of crooks and thieves. And it is the duty of every patriot and citizen of our country to make sure that this party is destroyed."

"I had this cliché moment of a Russian émigré abroad: I really missed black bread. I know it’s stupid, but I really missed it."

"[F]orgive me if this sounds pompous, but it’s better to die standing up than live on your knees."

"[I]f tomorrow ten businessmen spoke up directly and openly we'd live in a different country. Starting tomorrow."

"We have problems with illegal migration, we have the problem of the Caucasus, we have a problem of ethnic crimes... the fact that our authorities hypocritically pretend that such problems do not exist leads to people discussing them only in the street, at the Russian March."

"The inner compass of Alexei Navalny tells Alexei Navalny where to go. Everything else is uninteresting to me."

"Listen, I’ve got something very obvious to tell you. You’re not allowed to give up. If they decide to kill me, it means that we are incredibly strong. We need to utilize this power, to not give up, to remember that we are a huge power, that is being repressed by these bad dudes. We don’t realize how strong we actually are. The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good people to do nothing. So don’t be inactive."

"I have grown a beard for the 20 days of my transportation. Unfortunately, there are no reindeer, but there are huge fluffy, and very beautiful shepherd dogs. And the most important thing: I now live above the Arctic Circle. In the village of Kharp on Yamal. The nearest town has the beautiful name of Labytnangi. I don't say "Ho-ho-ho", but I do say "Oh-oh-oh" when I look out of the window, where I can see a night, then the evening, and then the night again. The 20 days of my transportation were pretty exhausting, but I'm still in a good mood, as befits a Santa Claus. They brought me here on Saturday night. And I was transported with such precaution and on such a strange route (Vladimir - Moscow - Chelyabinsk - Ekaterinburg - Kirov - Vorkuta - Kharp) that I didn't expect anyone to find me here before mid-January. That's why I was very surprised when the cell door was opened yesterday with the words: "A lawyer is here to see you". He told me that you had lost me, and some of you were even worried. Thanks very much for your support! … Anyway, don't worry about me. I'm fine. I'm totally relieved that I've finally made it. Thanks again to everyone for your support. And happy holidays!"

"We — Russia — want to be a nation of peace. Alas, few people would call us that now. But let's at least not become a nation of frightened silent people. Of cowards who pretend not to notice the aggressive war against Ukraine unleashed by our obviously insane czar. I cannot, do not want and will not remain silent watching how pseudo-historical nonsense about the events of 100 years ago has become an excuse for Russians to kill Ukrainians, and for Ukrainians to kill Russians while defending themselves. It's the third decade of the 21st century, and we are watching news about people burning down in tanks and bombed houses. We are watching real threats to start a nuclear war on our TVs. I am from the USSR myself. I was born there. And the main phrase from there — from my childhood — was "fight for peace." I call on everyone to take to the streets and fight for peace."

"Putin is not Russia. And if there is anything in Russia right now that you can be most proud of, it is those 6,824 people who were detained because - without any call - they took to the streets with placards saying "No War". They say that someone who cannot attend a rally and does not risk being arrested for it cannot call for it. I'm already in prison, so I think I can. We cannot wait any longer. Wherever you are, in Russia, Belarus or on the other side of the planet, go to the main square of your city every weekday and at 2 pm on weekends and holidays. If you are abroad, come to the Russian embassy. If you can organise a demonstration, do so on the weekend. Yes, maybe only a few people will take to the streets on the first day. And in the second - even less. But we must, gritting our teeth and overcoming fear, come out and demand an end to the war. Each arrested person must be replaced by two newcomers. If in order to stop the war we have to fill prisons and paddy wagons with ourselves, we will fill prisons and paddy wagons with ourselves. Everything has a price, and now, in the spring of 2022, we must pay this price. There's no one to do it for us. Let's not "be against the war." Let's fight against the war."

"For three years, I've been answering the same question. Inmates ask it plainly and directly. Prison administration staff cautiously, with the recorders off. "Why did you come back?""

"Russian politics over the last decade [has] so inculcated society with cynicism and conspiracy theory that people fundamentally do not believe in simple motives."

"I have my country and my convictions. And I don't want to renounce either my country or my convictions. And I cannot betray either the first or the second. If your convictions are worth anything, you should be ready to stand up for them. And, if necessary, make some sacrifices. And if you're not ready, then you have no convictions at all. You just think you do. But those are not convictions and principles – just thoughts in your head."

"I traveled across the country and declared from the stage everywhere, "I promise, I will not let you down, I will not deceive you, and I will not abandon you." By returning, I fulfilled my promise to my voters. After all, there must eventually be those in Russia who do not lie to them."

"[N]ow, secretarians and marginals are in power. Generally, they have no ideas. Their only goal is to cling to their seats. Perfected hypocrisy allows them to adapt and adopt any disguise, thus polygamists have become conservatives, members of the Communist Party have become Orthodox Christians, owners of golden passports and offshore accounts have become aggressive patriots. Lies, lies, and nothing but lies. It will collapse and fall apart. Putin's state is unviable. One day, we'll look at its place and it will be gone. Victory is inevitable. But for now, we must not give up, and hold on to our convictions."

"The important thing is not to torment yourself with anger, hatred, fantasies of revenge, but to move instantly to acceptance. That can be hard. Russian: Главное – не терзать себя гневом, ненавистью, и фантазиями о мести. А мгновенно прийти к принятию. Это может быть очень непросто."

"What are the chances that I'll survive this morning? I don't know; six out of ten? Eight out of ten? Maybe even ten out of ten? It's not that I'm trying not to think about it, closing my eyes and pretending the danger doesn't exist. But one day I simply made the decision not to be afraid. I weighed everything up, understood where I stand – and let it go. Russian: Какие шансы у меня выжить сегодня утром? Не знаю: шесть из десяти или восемь из десяти. А может, и все десять. Дело не в том, что я стараюсь об этом не думать, зажмуриваюсь и делаю вид, что опасности не существует, – просто однажды я принял решение не бояться. Я всё взвесил, понял и отпустил."

"Today, on this stage, receiving this high amazing award for my father, Aleksei Navalny, I thank you and through all of you I welcome the Europe of ideas and principles. The European Union is an incredible miracle created by nations whose whole history is an endless war with each other. Despite all the difficulties and problems, however, the EU has encountered and will encounter, I believe that in its future one day my country will become a part of it."

"I think many Russians, but also a lot of Westerners, make a very serious mistake in trying to look for… a better person to become president. They are searching for such a person in [Alexei] Navalny, in myself, but that’s a mistake. Anyone who replaces Putin is going to take Russia along the same imperialist route."

"Even behind bars Navalny was a real threat to Putin, because he was living proof that courage is possible, that truth exists, that Russia could be a different kind of country. For a dictator who survives thanks to lies and violence, that kind of challenge was intolerable. Now Putin will be forced to fight against Navalny’s memory, and that is a battle he will never win."

"There is no doubt in my mind this man was a brave fighter against corruption, for justice, for democracy. Look what Putin's Russia did to him – they trumped up charges, they imprisoned him, they poisoned him, they sent him to an Arctic penal colony and he's died – that is because of the action that Putin's Russia took."

"A courageous dissident beyond xenophobic and fascist ideas, which in Italy would have landed him in jail for incitement to racism under the Mancino law."

"The danger is that sometimes skinheads want to join the movement, [our] movement has nothing to do with that… They [homosexual people] should sit and be happy that they are not getting killed. (…) From their side should be respect; on my part there is nothing to respect them for, [they are] sick people."

"Not so long ago, I got into an argument with one of the readers, who is also my friend. She ardently defends the rights of gays and lesbians, whom I, in her words, “unjustly insulted” in many articles."What do you care about them ?!" - once again, like hundreds of commentators on articles before her, the girl asked. And for the umpteenth time, like hundreds of commentators, I answered - I don't care about them. I do not distinguish them from the dog shit on the side of the road, I do not care about them, but I do care about my children and the future of the territory with which my life is connected..."

"I hate Adolf Schicklgruber. This is a vile rascal and all that. But was he really wrong, sending this abomination [homosexuals] together with gypsies [...] into gas chambers and for sterilization???!!! What do you think - return the article for sodomy now - will then the number of sick youngsters and "stars" with broken asses decrease?"

"Gypsies are the filth of the world. Europe is gradually waking up, and under the outraged cries of tolerasts, it begins to clean the dirt. When will we wake up?"

"In Iran, after the 1979 Islamic revolution, over 4,000 lesbians and homosexuals were sentenced to death. The clerical regime also executed many women for extramarital sex. [...] I believe that in Iran with prostitution, pedophilia and rape the situation is hundreds of times better than in our extremely cultured and civilized country."

"Unpleasant information came to me that in Kyiv, the inhabitants of Western Ukraine suddenly began to tell the people of Kyiv how they should behave, how they have to love Ukraine, how they need to sing the anthem, walk with the flag. I have several friends from Western Ukraine, I respect these people, I am proud of friendship with them, these are quite sane people. I ask my appeal to the irresponsible women not to consider him chauvinism and racism and something else. In fact, until the 39th year you were nobody. You were instead of oxen, you were like marmots on their holes dug in the mountains. Or buried, you were dug in the 39th. Do you understand? The regions of Kyiv, Zaporizhzhya, Poltava have something to hate Stalin. You do not, you have to put Stalin a golden monument in one of your villages. And you have to pray at this monument in fact, because you saw civilization in the 39th year. You started to wipe your ass in the 39th. When they tell me they served soups to the Poles, I say this is impossible. They served soups to farm laborers of the Poles. Because no one would have allowed them to the Poles. You did not have land. You... I am Ukrainian, and you are not Ukrainians. You second... there, second... well, I don’t say second grade, no, you are just half-breeds. Three-timers, foursquads. You are half fucking Poles, half you are Hungarians, half you the devil knows what you are really. Do not tell the people of Kyiv how they should behave, how they need to love the country, love their flag. Because it is not your flag. You have no flag. You are not Ukrainians."

"On March 24, Anatoly Shariy published a post with a spontaneous confession about his old statements:"

"Just because you’re doing something for someone else doesn’t mean it’s impersonal. We do things for others every day that have completely personal reasons. I mean, this isn’t some selfless, saintly movie! Obviously there is ego and hubris involved, things you’re doing because you think they’ll look cool. Often, those are the things that don’t really turn out right"

"As the great-grandson of a Party commissar, I resent Stalin avatar tankies for appropriating my culture without even doing the research (becoming an alcoholic, dying before the age of 50)"

"A good rule of thumb is that if a society requires a vast secret police network, multi-million death tolls, and expendable prison labor to operate, it definitely doesn't work."

"The difference between Wikipedia and other editorially created products is that Wikipedians are not professionals, they are only asked to bring what they know. Everyone brings their crumb of information to the table. If they are not at the table, we don't benefit from their crumb."

"This basket exists for one reason: the free and open sharing of personal-grooming items. For many of us, most of us, this basket has become an indispensable part of our daily lives. Help protect it now. Please make a donation"

"It [Wikipedia] was built 10 years ago and hasn’t changed that much, [but] we are looking for ways to increase serendipity. We are happily dependent on the inventiveness of the people who join us of their own volition."

"The heart and soul of everything the Wikimedia project does is volunteer driven, it's volunteer energy, volunteer time, altruism, people's commitment to create this massive educational endeavour that's really available to everybody"

"Assume good faith. This is so easier said than done ;/ But for real, assume good faith. When someone asks a question and you think they are trolling, it’s entirely possible they are not. (Maybe they are 15 years old, or their English is imperfect, or they have an impairment of some kind.) Even if they are trolling: there will always be onlookers who don’t know it, and who, whatever the provocation, will recoil if you are curt or unkind. Trolling also gives you an opportunity to equip onlookers with reasonable arguments that they can go on to use themselves."

"Since 1995 what the data says is each new generation of young people has become successively less supportive of democracy than the generation that preceded it."

"Sue came in when we were very tiny. We were based in Florida, still a handful of employees. She deserves credit for building the Wikimedia Foundation from, I’m going to venture to say, probably five or six employees, into quite a large organization after several years of time."

"Sue Gardner, who is apparently still a special advisor to the wmf, is giving a keynote speech."

"If authors have any responsibilities in the face of disaster, the greatest of them is to bear witness...I’ve always cared about how the weak survive great upheavals. The individuals who are left out — they’ve always been my chief concern."

"Why has our space of debate become so narrow?...The new coronavirus infection is totally under control in China. What is it (China) scared of, despite that?"

"Five years on, it is difficult to avoid the conclusion that we still don’t know what really happened on 9/11. And this dismal, pathetic state of affairs should not continue."

"It is agreed by all that the fires never burned hot enough to melt the steel columns. Whether or not the steel was hot enough to buckle, the official account fails to explain the deposits of molten metal found after the collapses. If not the fires, what could have caused the steel to melt?"

"Professor Jones didn’t write his paper to support a prior ideological-conspiratorial agenda -- he wrote it to point out that to date, conventional scientific explanations of the WTC collapses remain flawed and inadequate. The molten deposits found at Ground Zero, and the failure of the official narrative to account for them, represent an anomaly that should be investigated impartially, not dismissed for reasons of political convenience -- or arbitrary standards of the boundaries of sanity."

"[N]obody has yet been fool enough to accept his argument that the attacks on New York and Washington were part of a pre-arrangement involving the United States government."

"On reflection and on a rereading of his "book," I would change my original article and remove the word "risible." A more apposite term for both the author and his illiterate pages would be "contemptible.""

"I know a ‘swimming pool’ where these ‘young people who disturb’ can go and swim separately following their ‘own schedule’: the Mediterranean Sea."

"Geert Wilders was my first teacher. I had the opportunity to work for him for half a year. An incredibly educational experience. Then I became spokesperson for Filip Dewinter, one of the most influential politicians of the past decades. It is a great honor that I can succeed him as party leader in Antwerp."

"I'm not Extreme Right Because Extreme Right stands for fascism. which is revolutionary, violent and anti-democratic. I am none of the three. I am an anti-fascist. I get really mad when people call me fascist or racist. Others in my party would shrug, not me. I think that's defamation."

"The majority of Muslim Afghans have similar radical Islamic ideas as the Taliban."

"If a large majority of Afghan Muslims hold shariah views on women, non-Muslims, apostates, free speech, democracy and homosexuals, then it is obvious that such Muslim fundamentalists will also find themselves in the asylum stream."

"I call on the Flemish Government to screen specifically for Muslim fundamentalists and Taliban supporters and to tighten the integration conditions."

"Muslims, among other things, unequivocally distance themselves from Sharia. In addition, they must promote principles such as the separation of church and state, freedom of expression, equality between men and women and the right to follow a different religion or no religion at all.."

"Characteristics of Islamization that you sometimes see even more than in certain cities in the Islamic countries of origin, which indicates a rejection of our culture. For example, countless Muslims, according to research even a majority, put the Koran or the Sharia above our culture, free society and democratic constitutional state."

"In addition to rejecting Islamic rules and laws and endorsing our norms and values, it is of course also necessary that people speak Dutch in order to be eligible for naturalization or residence on our territory. And the latter of course applies to all newcomers, not just Muslim immigrants. Otherwise it will be impossible to become part of our society and community. In any case, signing such a declaration has mainly symbolic value, and is therefore no guarantee of successful assimilation."

"I won’t say that I was immediately attracted towards these handles and initiatives, but they gradually exposed me to a counter-set of views, many of which sounded logical and convincing to me. Instead of countering them on facts, many of the celebrity journalists decided to discredit and label these voices by using terms such as ‘Internet Hindus’ and ‘trolls’— which was not a very smart strategy, as it made the Sanghis appear to be victims of vilification."

"Even though I had followed many ‘Internet Hindus’ on Twitter, it didn’t really turn me into one. The ‘credit’ for triggering the Hindu in me actually goes to the mainstream media and its approach towards two incidents in 2012, both of which were related."

"This was because his haters, like always, were hyperactive in shielding Muslim aggression, and ended up exposing the double standards of Indian secularism. Not only that, they elicited reactions that made an average secular Hindu feel like an ‘Internet Hindu’. The Hindu identity in me too was triggered due to these incidents."

"The first one was the Assam riots that took place in July 2012 between ethnic Bodos and Bengali-speaking Muslims, who are seen as illegal settlers from Bangladesh. The mainstream media was not reporting about it in detail while multiple claims were being made on social media about the violence. Many pictures and short videos were uploaded on Twitter and other social media platforms, where it was alleged that the Muslims were the main aggressors in the riots. Many claimed that the rioters had modern assault rifles, hinting at the involvement of terrorist groups."

"But apart from the violence, what triggered the Sanghi in me during those days was an article by Teesta Setalvad and her husband Javed Anand in The Indian Express, barely a week after the rioting at Azad Maidan ... The hypocrisy was staggering. Setalvad and her husband were virtually arguing that the police did the right thing by letting the Muslims vent out their anger against perceived injustices. Well, that’s exactly what they accused Modi of saying and doing — that he asked the police in Gujarat to let the Hindus vent out their anger over the Godhra train carnage."

"In such a scenario, responsible journalism meant airing reports about how the lives of common people were being negatively impacted by the VHP drama. It also meant airing reports that argued that people didn’t care about mandir politics. It would have been the best to air reports about Hindu–Muslim unity to show how the VHP didn’t have any popular support and how they were dividing people... The local reporter had sent a report about some Muslim garland sellers who used to supply garlands to a few temples in Ayodhya. The report claimed that these garland sellers had been doing this job over many generations and they didn’t want their work to suffer. In fact, the handwritten report claimed that the garland sellers didn’t want to stop serving the Hindu temples, as they apparently derived some divine pleasure from it. Do note that what was aired was fabrication and manipulation, but it was a fair thing to do because in our minds we were acting responsibly. I had essentially helped create a fake Hindu–Muslim harmony story, similar to the various stories I had grown up hearing. This is how a particular narrative is kept alive. You don’t even realize that you become an active player in keeping this narrative alive. The story was aired multiple times on the TV channel. It was a script I had written and it had my voice-over too. Again, I received rewards that come naturally when you toe a particular line. That’s how the system itself is designed to perpetuate a particular narrative."

"Yes, there were writers like Sita Ram Goel who had written cogently about Islamic imperialism and Muslim separatism back in the 1980s and 90s itself, but I didn’t even know they existed. IIMC had a library, like any other educational institute, but I can hardly recall books by such authors being kept there. There were a couple of books by Arun Shourie though, possibly because Shourie was a known and influential journalist and a cabinet minister at that time. Once, when I picked up a book by Shourie in the IIMC library, a classmate of mine sarcastically congratulated me for picking up a book of an ‘intellectual’."

"I feel the reason is the same—normalizing an Islamist mindset. Kashmiri terrorists are inspired by nothing but the two-nation theory. They are fighting for Nizam-e-Mustafa, that is, the Shariat rule. And they have been fighting for this for decades. And to hide this fact, smokescreen of ‘Kashmir is a political problem’ is created. Human rights, army deployment, rigged elections—everything is talked about and analysed threadbare, except the Islamist mindset that drives and keeps terrorism alive."

"To give you a small but recent example, in December 2019, a statement in support of the Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA)—an act that enabled non-Muslim refugees living in India but originally hailing from the three neighbouring Islamic nations to seek Indian citizenship—was released and signed by hundreds of academicians and researchers across various universities and institutes. The statement, along with the names of signatories, was published on OpIndia, a website run by the company I currently head. Within 24 hours of that statement being published, I was approached and requested by those who coordinated the campaign to collect these signatures—something that could happen only because Modi had returned to power and some people could feel a little secure in opining ideas that did not conform to the leftist worldview—to remove the link to a public document that contained the full names of all the signatories, because one of the signatories was hounded by his leftist colleagues and students to the extent of being threatened of physical assaults and fake sexual harassment charges. He finally gave up and asked his name to be removed from any publicly accessible document. We obliged."

"And this happens on most campuses. Anyone who does not toe the leftist line has to face unbearable hostility. It is almost like being punished for blasphemy, and well, the Left indeed mirrors the Abrahamic faith system in many ways. That is how much strong tribalism is in the leftist circles, who ironically talk about individual freedom and diversity. Soldiers must not go astray. And if they do, not only will they have to be disowned, but also taught a lesson. An exemplary punishment has to be given, so that no one dares to tread that path again. Thus, there are no rewards for anyone who is not a loyal soldier."

"I remember that during one of the tiffin breaks, while we kids were playing some silly games, a Muslim boy caught hold of a big empty earthen pot, which was used to store drinking water for the students during summers, and raised it with both hands shouting ‘Jai Shri Ram’. He was imitating the Ramayana TV serial scene where Lord Hanuman raises big boulders and throws them at Raavan’s army. Today, forget Muslims, our intellectuals are busy teaching even Bengali Hindus that ‘Jai Shri Ram’ is not part of their culture and they shouldn’t chant this phrase."

"Hence in today’s world, a journalist’s ideas of what will be ‘responsible’ have become even more complex and sometimes borders on the absurd. For example, in January 2018, a lady reporter with The Wire, a far-Left news and opinion website founded by a former editor of The Hindu , was manhandled and heckled in Ahmedabad by a mob of 15–20 men who were supposedly ‘Dalit activists’. Distressed and disturbed by what had happened, the reporter wanted to write about her ordeal, but she was told to ‘let it go’ by the leftist activist and editors. Forget writing about it in any mainstream publication, she was advised not to even file a police complaint against the goons. By advising a woman to forget that she was manhandled and attacked, the leftist editors were acting ‘responsibly’ in their minds, because the evil of Brahminism had to be defeated. Apparently, Brahminism can’t be defeated if Dalit men are identified as aggressors, even in isolated incidents."

"Similarly, in June 2019, in the Hauz Qazi area of Delhi, a Muslim mob had attacked Hindu shops and homes as well as vandalized an old Durga Mandir, after a fight over parking space turned ugly and communal. The mainstream media not only decided to downplay the incident, especially the desecration of the temple part, they entirely ignored the wails of a poor Hindu couple whose son had gone missing for over a day. The parents had filed a police complaint for their missing son and insisted that their son was kidnapped by Muslims. The mother was crying inconsolably while the father threatened to commit suicide if his son was not traced. Despite a police complaint and parents sobbing right in front of them, no mainstream media journalist reported about their claims. The incident came to light via social media, and subsequently some ‘pro Hindu’ publications, including OpIndia, picked it up after talking to the parents and having a look at the FIR. Later, when the son was traced and found to be safe, the mainstream media journalists behaved as if their decision to ignore the incident was justified and ‘responsible’. They claimed that they were waiting for verification and confirmation from the police and did not want to worsen an already volatile environment. So responsible!"

"Somehow all this responsibility goes for a toss if a Muslim couple were to claim something similar. Recall how allegations of many Muslim men who claimed that they were beaten up and forced to chant ‘Jai Shri Ram’ were reported without the mainstream media waiting for verification or confirmation from the police. The bulk of such cases, incidentally reported after Modi won the 2019 Lok Sabha elections, was found to be baseless or downright fake after the police carried out interrogations and investigations; yet reporting on such lines continued unabated."

"There are countless such examples—a Muslim model claiming to have been denied a flat in Mumbai due to her religion while in reality many Muslims were already living in that building, a Muslim boy in Delhi claiming some men beat him up and asked him to chant ‘Jai Mata Di’, but later his friends, who were Muslims too, revealed that nothing of that sort ever took place, a man in Mumbai claiming that an auto-rickshaw driver beat him up because he was carrying a leather bag, which the driver suspected to be made of cow skin, but subsequent reports revealed that the story was entirely made up by the man who reportedly admitted that he hated Hindus —and all of these were reported by the media without waiting for any verification or confirmation by the police. But somehow the same journalists decide to wait and become ‘responsible’ if a Hindu man or woman claims to be a victim of communal hatred."

"But things were happening on the other side too. OpIndia, a website aimed at providing a counter-narrative to the usual liberal narrative, was launched and started gaining traction in 2015. A Twitter handle named ‘True Indology’ became quite popular around 2016, as it exposed way too many wrong historical information that Hindus were fed by the secular-liberal ecosystem as indisputable facts. This handle got under the liberal skin, so much so that a national newspaper devoted an entire article trying to discredit it. They kept targeting it relentlessly and got the Twitter handle suspended. However, a different account could keep the mantle on the account is active on Facebook too."

"Why should anyone be interested in Pagal Patrakar’s story? Because this is not faking news, but real, and the story of an entire generation that questions shibboleths such as socialism, secularism and liberalism (defined in a certain way), which were unquestioningly accepted as axiomatic. It is this questioning that junked the former ecosystem and brought Narendra Modi and the BJP to power in 2014, and again in 2019. Though junked, the former empire still tries to strike back, and instead of disowning the winds of change, it would benefit from learning how and why Rahul Roushan became a Sanghi who has never been to a shakha."

"The first social media handle that had attracted my attention was that of Pagal Patrakar, that is, Faking News —for his understanding of politics. I can guarantee that most people missed the nuances of his narrative, but got a macro idea of where he was trying to lead them—a shakha. But this shakha wasn’t what one would want to believe. This was the shakha of modern info-war. The swayamsevaks were ‘mad’ social media activists. This was a modern war of identity, narrative and Bharat. And Rahul displayed enough pagalpan to be a successful patrakar in this info-war and battle of narrative building. In fact, I have learnt a lot from his political acumen during the many conversations and collaborations I had with him."

"From ‘making news’ as the creator of Faking News to becoming news by establishing OpIndia as one of the most celebrated online news portals, Rahul’s journey as a man of independent thought has come a full circle... Rahul’s life journey, to me this is a story of the coming of age of an average Indian who dared to break the shackles of a Nehruvian past and contribute to creating a New India."

"I didn’t just want to document: I wanted to fully understand what I was documenting. I wanted to be very aware of how you take photographs in certain situations; not to expose people, and to try to present the narrative you want without making it into a spectacle of a human being in suffering. That is why I see myself as a visual scholar. I need to understand the aspects of what I am working with."

"The first thing I would say is to understand there is a history of activism, of the arts, and literature and to keep that in mind and not discard the past and what people did. It is important to learn about the past and build on it. That is quite important to understand. Ageism is still very prominent in how people speak, write, and create their ideas, particularly on social media. I would say the first thing is to look at the past and build on it and respect it, just as I respect what is happening now and what young people are doing."

"You can’t change anything if you don’t have imagination... Don’t let the oppressor dictate the narrative. I think we have the tendency to react to the oppressors’ narrative and really we should be dictating our own narrative. That is something I learned: sometimes we focus on them rather than what we ought to change in ourselves. They are there to distract us from what we need to do."

"People need to understand we are invested in the future and how that future will be."

"Caught between Western imperialism, African patriarchy and religious fascism, the continent’s gay community needs a strong, articulate set of voices. This is a work of African resistance that boldly states: We are here, and we are many!"

"I want to resist the “African homosexual” as an empirical figure waiting to be discovered or, through NGO and international interventions, to be created and saved"

"Women are full of themselves, they always say men are frightened or intimidated by their financial success but the issue is COMPATIBILITY."

"I believe that if people had more information, access and easy to understand information, especially as Nigerians, we will make better conscious choices with our health."

"If it can be said, it can be built [using digital technology]."

"In the fascist Hindutva imagination, the Indian Muslims are continuously reviled as Pakistani "fifth columnists," as "enemies of the nation" and so on, and their patriotism is said to be suspect. The Muslim as the menacing "other" occupies a central place in Hindutva discourse, and this has been used to legitimize large-scale anti-Muslim violence."

"All that energy and enthusiasm that went into my contribution as a 'social activist' and in the cause of the 'Revolution' paid me well in material terms, however, though I have to say that this wasn't the only or even major reason why I was in the business of championing the 'Revolution' in the first place. I won generous scholarships to go abroad to do a Ph.D. and then two post-doctoral projects to study various aspects of 'marginalised groups' in India. I was invited to attend conferences in over two dozen countries to pontificate on the same subjects. I was appointed as a full professor in an Indian university and was paid handsomely for the articles and books that I continued to churn out, machine-like, all about the 'oppressed'. In addition, I was assigned projects by several NGOs to study the 'oppressed', for which I was well rewarded financially. Although I have to say that I did not quite intend this to begin with, writing and conferencing about the 'oppressed' soon turned into a lucrative source of livelihood for me. I was actually, and quite literally, living off the misery of the 'oppressed', although I did not fully realise it then."

"But all that came with a heavy personal price. The more I identified with the 'Revolution' of the 'oppressed', the more unbearably negative I became as a person."

"There was nothing at all good in Hindu traditions or in America or in Capitalist Modernity, for instance, I convinced myself, for I was hooked onto the 'progressive' and 'radical' rhetoric that 'upper' caste Hindus in general (including most of my own family!) and almost every single American was complicit in perpetuating 'oppression'."

"Negativism, then, was a defining feature of being 'progressive', and that's what I began to revel in. But such negativism was almost entirely one-sided in 'activist' circles, for to be counted as a 'real' 'social activist' it was simply unthinkable that the 'oppressed' could be faulted for almost anything at all. For a 'social activist' to even mention, leave alone condemn, the foibles of the 'oppressed communities'--gender injustice or caste rivalries among Dalits or the obscurantism and misogyny preached in many Muslim madrasas or the terror attacks and killings of innocents by Naxalites and radical Islamists--was tantamount to nothing less than treason. Reports about such matters were generally dismissed as 'malicious ruling-class propaganda' or 'malicious Brahminical brainwashing' or even as an 'understandable reaction of vulnerable minority communities to ruling caste/class/imperialist oppression'. Sometimes, if these were grudgingly admitted to be true, they were sought to be passed over in silence in order to 'respect the sensibilities of the oppressed' or as 'minor contradictions' that ought not to be addressed on the grounds that it would allegedly 'divide' the oppressed, 'sabotage' the struggle against 'oppression' and thereby 'play into the hands of the real opressors'. If you only just pointed out that there were serious faults in the madrasas that needed to be urgently addressed (even for the sake of the Muslim children who studied therein) or that Muslim Personal Law was seriously biased against Muslim women or that many Dalits who had taken advantage of the system of protective discrimination behaved with fellow Dalits almost as shabbily as did their 'upper' caste Hindu 'oppressors', you were sure to be shouted down as a 'government agent' or a 'paid stooge of Hindutva forces', not only by fellow 'progressives' but also by a whole host of voices among the communities whom you had spent years trying to defend and promote. If you even so much as mildly hinted that the conditions of Muslims in India weren't half as bad as sections of the Urdu media wanted people to believe or that the Muslims in this country had much more freedom than in any Muslim-majority state or that untouchability was no longer as rampant as it once was in some parts, you were bound to be accused of betrayal and your motives were rumoured to be entirely suspect. If you acknowledged that probably less Muslims were killed by Hindus in riots in India every year than the number of fellow Muslims slaughtered by their co-religionists in the 'Islamic' Republic of Pakistan or in God-forsaken Afghanistan or that the plight of religious minorities in many Muslim countries, particularly those ruled by theocratic regimes, was much worse than in India or that some Dalit officials were neck-deep in corruption, you were bound to be hollered at for allegedly being a 'traitor' to 'The Cause' of the 'oppressed'. The very same folks who egged you on to write about their problems and to take the Hindutva beast by its horns (for they were either too scared to do it themselves or didn't have the same writing skills or the same access to the English media) would shrilly denounce you as an 'agent' of this or the other 'power' if, in your quest to be honest and balanced, you pointed out even some of the mildest of their faults. It was as if by definition the 'oppressed' were spotless angels who could do no wrong and their 'oppressors' wholly and incorrigibly demonic."

"The very same folks who egged you on to write about their problems and to take the Hindutva beast by its horns (for they were either too scared to do it themselves or didn't have the same writing skills or the same access to the English media) would shrilly denounce you as an 'agent' of this or the other 'power' if, in your quest to be honest and balanced, you pointed out even some of the mildest of their faults. It was as if by definition the 'oppressed' were spotless angels who could do no wrong and their 'oppressors' wholly and incorrigibly demonic."

"Generally speaking, what is the modern Ukrainian state? To put it crudely, it is a prostitute who has got infected with AIDS and wants to infect everyone else – to spread the infection so that more people die."

"The war is being waged with America, which has captured the historical territory of Russia - Ukraine. Roughly speaking, if compared with 1941, Hitler is modern America, the United States did not reach Moscow, but Donetsk, and used the population of Ukraine. The resources of all of Europe, as under Hitler, work, so to speak, for the Reich. All this is completely united - they all help informationally, economically thanks to sanctions, and now by military means. Their military theme is the weakest. They are not ready to suffer losses - they are ready to throw only the same Slavs, that is, Ukrainians, whom they zombified, into the slaughter. This is all they could do from a military point of view."

"There are countries that receive 20% of GDP only from tourism. Clearly, not only Russian. But I don’t think that everyone will rush to Europe now and there will be an invasion of tourists. Given the global crisis, people have little money, so no one will rush anywhere. Everyone will suffer and die from tourism."

"They closed the sky... Let's conditionally take England. 200 planes flew east from London, two planes flew from Russia. We'll be patient if two planes don't fly. And 200 planes to fly around this huge Russia - a sixth of the Earth, over Afghanistan, Iran ... How much will a ticket cost? Plus, for sure, intermediate landings will need to be done somewhere in Dubai and so on, paying for refueling. Tickets will almost certainly be $10,000. They punished themselves again."

"They say return the planes to us. You broke the contract, - our pilots say, - you take these planes. How to pick them up? Where to get these 500 pilot brigades? And at the same time, that they themselves closed the sky. They broke the contract, the planes automatically become foreign, and our skies are also closed to foreign ones. That is, it is generally not clear how to pick them up. And the funny thing is that these aircraft are not needed by leasing companies. They say: why do we need 500 aircraft? Where are we going to put them? And then the question arises about the bankruptcy of all these companies. And given that leasing companies, and all sorts of aviation, and others, are insured in the English "Lloyd" - in general, everything converges there with all insurers, - then the bankruptcy of Lloyd, as the largest, threatens. And banks and many investors had his shares - this is a huge chain ..."

"Europe will suffer very much – it will shrink economically. They already have debts over 100% of GDP. They will borrow more - I don’t know, though, who will give them. They will lose markets forever. It is impossible to say in two years - okay, we are coming back to you. This war, of course, is between the United States and Russia, but it is also a war between the United States and Europe, because there will be a flight of capital to America from Europe, a flight of brains and so on. America will prolong its existence by threatening Europe. Naturally, the niche of Europe will be taken by China, the same Russia and other so-called developing countries. That is, there will be a gigantic redistribution of the world."

"I think huge riots in Europe will start by next winter, when they start cutting all these social programs. In general, in the next few years there will be a reformatting - the overthrow of governments, revolutions, chaos and anarchy. Local Muslims will take advantage of all this, they will probably declare Sharia laws in some cities - there will be territories of disobedience to European authorities, guerrilla warfare, and so on. Chaos will grow. These are the global implications,"

"America will also weaken. Everyone will see that this is a “paper tiger”, that you can do this with him. China is likely to take Taiwan. I think even this year. They will now prepare, see how everything is done. Accordingly, Russia and China will put forward all kinds of ultimatums to America - that, guys, you are no longer the same, so let's redo everything. Subsequently, when we completely pacify Ukraine, and it will be, all the "Nazis" will change their shoes. Do you remember, 20 years ago they said that Chechnya will never forget you, will never forgive you... Guys, look, now the Chechens are the best friends, loyal and so on. Because the Chechens understood, they were explained that they were used as "sixes" by the Anglo-Saxons in the fight against Russia. This is a small nation, each person is worth its weight in gold, and they killed their own children for American and British interests. They realized they didn't need it. Russia has never threatened them with anything. And from American and British politics, they only died in wars all the time. Ukrainians will understand the same thing when they are shown what atrocities the Nazis did... We will show all of this to Europe - how the Anglo-Saxons deceived Europe."

"No New York, no Washington will die for the Baltics in the same way, or be ready to undergo nuclear attacks. In the same way, the Americans will surrender it, they will forget the fifth article, the so-called that they should start a war together there all at once ... Yeah, they fled - all Americans will run straight to the war, they will say - yes, bomb us, Russians, with atomic weapons for the Baltics. Where is she, by the way? Therefore, when they surrender it, and we go back to our borders, all the other European countries will say: wait, why did we pay some money here, arm ourselves, why did we need all this at all? NATO will fall apart, the management of the Americans in Europe will fall apart. Europe will be liberated, as they say."

"Europe will be free, albeit in a very shabby state, and will hate America and adore Russia. Russia will extend a helping hand to her and will help her, including in the fight against all kinds of Muslim terrorists who breed there. We will help them establish constitutional order, we will bring governments loyal to ourselves to power, and we will dominate this entire Europe. Not just like over Eastern Europe, as it was during the Soviet Union, but already over the whole."

"Our task, taking advantage of the situation, is to finish off England - finally and irrevocably, so that such a state will never again exist on Earth. Because 500 years, while it exists, spoils Russia. Even America - it is not important for her to always fight with Russia. It is they who are simply babbled on by English political science, British secret services, English traditions, they conduct English, in fact, politics, copy it. If England is destroyed, peace will come in Eurasia, because the policy of England throughout its history is to quarrel everyone with everyone, otherwise they would not have survived. A small island that no one wants, on which nothing grows, there are no minerals, and so on, ruled half the world and now continues to rule, even America."

"Without Europe as its major base, America will be weakened. There are many political contradictions even now – in the last elections, even the Congress was taken by force. The next elections, I think, will be no less dangerous and bloody. In America, every generation since the 1970s has been living worse than the previous one - a lot of beggars, a lot of weapons, a lot of Mexicans and blacks, and crime. All this is very explosive. Americans spend money not on their social programs, but in order to feed all sorts of Navalny around the world. All this is not “good”."

"Everything will be rosy, wonderful ... We will defeat everyone. But not at once. Now we have, roughly speaking, 1943. The 45th will be in ten years - it's just that the war is stretched out in time, not like with Nazi Germany, but stretched out over a long term. May 9 will be in ten years - victory over the whole world and over the last evil."

"I was always very inquisitive and I wanted to ask questions about everything and how nature works and all that. But [my mother] came from this background where women were mostly supposed to get married and have a family and not really have a career, and she told me it would be difficult to get married if I pursued a career in math or science. My teachers were unfortunately not much better. They told me that physics was for geniuses, and...that it was not a very feminine career."

"[A fellow female student and I] basically confronted the administration and said that we were wondering why there was so few women that graduated from the program and so people started giving us the statistics and we became sort of known for sort of digging in and researching a little more to help women advance. We created the Association for the Advancement of Women in Physics. That's when (one of the professors I interviewed) told me, "Looking at all these stats I realized that we've never had another student from Mexico. If you finish the program you'd become the first one.""

"Physicists tend to train very well to solve problems and to think on your feet. To not be intimidated by the problem."

"My advice would be to not let anyone tell you or anyone stereotype, tell you that you can't pursue your career and dream in STEM. Really just practice, practice, practice, because that's what will eventually lead to success."

"Best thing about my work is my ideas can be my reality no matter how weird it is. I'll always be grateful to you guys for this I don't care how weird the idea is, I just want to have fun."

"The more insecure you are the more you want to make people laugh."

"My alter ego was a major confidence booster in my life and helped shape my digital career in ways more than one. "It felt amazing to be recognised due to the fan appreciation, something like what we see in the superhero films."

"Money is a separate part it is essential part it is important for sure when i first started earning from YouTube for me it was like ok i will not pay any attention to this because I'll get spoiled i will corrupt my mind I'll buy things that i shouldn't i would never focus on money i would just keep on creating, like i don't want to stop that was my mindset."

"I would like to consider myself an artist and I have always courted the idea of being abstract and misinterpreted. Anything that can evoke a sense of emotion and passion is art for me."

"No matter how much I try, I’m still unpredictable even for myself. You can even say that I may be slightly impulsive."

"My expectations were nothing. I only wanted 50K subscribers, a room to play my games in and make enough money to be able to buy new games and create content."

"Just because you are not where the society said you should be at this point in your life, doesn’t make you late. It makes you ‘YOU’."

"Giving up is what most people do when it gets tough, if you don’t go through hardship, what story will you tell when you succeed."

"I really wanted to inspire people to continue to pursue their dreams as I was mine, despite how difficult it was."

"Be kind. Be honest. Dream big. Be patient. Love yourself. Believe in yourself. Judge less. Speak well of others."

"Don’t pay attention to hate."

"It really doesn’t make any difference to me really except he has a white skin and I have a dark skin. It would have been same if I married anyone outside my tribe in Nigeria as we all have different cultures. Adaptation happens naturally"

"I’ve never been afraid of a challenge"

"I believe that as humans, we should never cease to make an impact in the lives of others wherever we find ourselves or whatever we are doing. This appointment restates the fact that there is still a lot of ground to be covered,”"

"I have a father who is very liberal. I had an upbringing of becoming an independent person who makes decisions on his or her own, knowing full well everything that one does has consequences One should be responsible enough to stand by it."

"I sincerely don’t think there is any industry in the world where sex for a job doesn’t come up. So, Nollywood isn’t an exception"

"I guess sometimes when you have this burning desire that makes you lack concentration in every other thing and guarantees you fulfilment and happiness, you get to take it and not look back, that is what acting is for me."

"I never really wanted to be a celebrity. I am here because this is where my heart is. So, when it got really bad, I was like maybe I should just go and do something else, maybe I should just quit. But then, my husband always encouraged me and I picked the pieces together again and continued."

"“Be very patient and consistent. Be hard working, humble and never for any reason stop believing in yourself."

"I don’t understand why we have to get to the point of violence of any kind, be it battering, emotional, financial, psychological, before making a move. I have never understood why loved ones get to that point and why the parties involved remain in abusive relationship when it is obvious it can have a fatal end, even if it doesn’t lead to death, depression and isolation, it leads to mental breakdown. I strongly believe any form of domestic violence against both women and men is unacceptable, should be frowned at and the signs should be addressed on time. Victims should understand their priority is their happiness and safety and they owe it to themselves to walk out alive while they still have their heads on their shoulders instead of bothering themselves on what the society will say; walk out and quit when you still can. The good thing is that these days, even the society frowns at it and the law now has agencies to handle cases so they should reach out on time and save themselves from a fatal end."

"My advice for them is always to be sure what they want and then go for it. They should realise they can be anything they want and have no limitations, except that which they create themselves. Life isn’t as easy as a lot of people make it look like. It takes a lot of hard work, sleepless nights, dedication, determination, discipline, consistency, persistency, and focus to get there, so they should be ready to work extremely hard and know that it will never come easy. But the trick is to never give up, to trust the process, believe in themselves and their dreams, no matter how impossible it looks, keep pushing and to not put their trust in people and putting all their hopes in believing someone will help them fasttrack their dreams. No one owes you anything, so don’t hand your life to anyone. Take control, trust and believe in yourself, thank God for the internet and even if you don’t have money to go train yourself, you can read and watch videos on line. read, read and never stop reading and remain focused."

"What are my dreams? To find fulfilment in all I do and be extremely happy in life."

"I want to be a force to reckon with not just as an actor but also as a producer. I want to do quality stuff and be an employer of labour so that I can change perceptions people have about the industry."

"Beautifully Coloured’ is a children’s picture book on kindness, diversity, inclusion, and positive affirmations which can help create more awareness about diversity and inclusion for younger children in elementary schools."

"Young people need to take a moment and reflect on the cost of their lives and the value they bring into the world, their communities, and humanity."

"To some women, marriage is an achievement, to me Laura, it isn’t. Life isn’t that serious. I wanna achieve so much in my life, to be a Nigerian Zara, with stores all over the country and across Africa. Be a household name in fashion, have my own reality shows, so much to achieve."

"From knowing that you are alive and that you can see tomorrow as you are seeing today. Knowing that you are alive is a privilege. To be alive is a huge privilege."

"I plan to own the biggest fashion store in Africa, to empower the youth by creating different life changing opportunities for them. I also plan to create a shelter to care for the old in the future. I am planning on introducing my Jeans line, Laura Ikeji Jeans and 2018 is not over yet."

"It has been great so far, God has been great. I have been able to overcome my fears and I have discovered my abilities."

"My husband is my biggest obsession. I’m just so obsessed with him and I can’t help it. He inspires me a lot and I love him more than any other thing in the world."

"Incomplete as the name implies is a Cologne which makes your fashion statement complete. You can’t be complete without my Incomplete. It was born out of the need to always smell good."

"Being a mom, I can say is my greatest achievement. I love being a mommy. Never take any moment for granted."

"It’s been a tremendous honour to work with such strong young women because they continue to teach and push me in various ways."

"Poetry is some people’s source of income."

"People do not understand how fast a culture can disappear without art especially a country whose culture is art in itself."

"I hope my writing can help people to see life in a different light and encourage mental emancipation."

"Poetry has the ability to open up the space for many Rwandans to participate in conversations about social issues, mainly those that are taboo."

"Poetry can push our boundaries of “speech freedom”, which will allow us to encourage a generation of critical thinkers."

"That I am that color USUALLY ARTISTICALLY COMPATIBLE with that of ancient the walls."

"To embrace “WHAT” I AM TO MANY NOT “WHO” I AM."

"I am a product of the hurt, chained, restless and once hopeless, but your grammar is wrong, there’s no full stop so don’t force it."

"Yes, we are proud, to be Rwandese So proud that we would burn our breasts like Ndabaga."

"Feminism is about granting women the grace to be angry about their trauma and pains the way they choose to, and being sympathetic enough to ask why they are angry and genuinely listen and understand their point of view."

"I meet so many people who read twitter every day, but almost never tweet. If I may beg your indulgence, please add your voice to the public dialogue!"

"Homophobia is like a binding glue when it comes to Cameroonians. When it comes to hating LGBTQ people, they all come together."

"I totally ignored the hate tirades and focused more on the LGBTQ community in Africa which reached out to me massively. Surprisingly, I also had hundreds of support messages from people my age and my parents’ age. This response has been emotional as well as humbling."

"no one can legally arrest a homosexual because there are laws in place to defend the human rights of a homosexual, those laws are freedom and equality of treatment for all human beings."

"As an African woman, who grew up in Africa, the stereotype defines me as someone who should be submissive and usually introversive in most cases."

"Today, I have become the go to person for very sensitive information. I have become a conveyor of information from those who many not want to be seen or heard sharing any form of sensitive information."

"It started as a passion for knowledge and then of becoming an information dessiminator."

"Today, I have earned the respect of many and have been very conspicous in the general public for the various things I do represent."

"Well yes. I am Sapiosexual. I have a thing for intelligent and physically/mentally strong women."

"I have the freedom to express my sexuality without fear of arrest or vigilante execution. I am indeed privileged…"

"I believe I was born this way. If there could be any influence from the environment or society, they it will do well to surpress me instead."

"I am not too surprised about myself – some will say I have an audacity of courage."

"I come from a country where we are so limited simply by the things we don’t know. And there is so much out there that we are not aware off and which exist for free."

"I belief, we as Africans, can begin to live change once we have access to information that is vital for our well being."

"I told myself to be true to me, even if I have just one day left to live. Life is so precious to live in deceit. Coming out was a way to exonerate myself and be and live free."

"It still officially describes both gay people and homosexual acts as “intrinsically disordered”."

"it is sad to see opposition to homosexuality continuing despite the headlines carrying the rheorical question, “who am I to judge?”"

"It's never too late to be a good person!"

"“Value your energy. Value your time. Time is a finite resource you can never get back or buy. What are you doing with the 24 hours you get each day? Stop waiting for the right moment. The time is now. I’m really out here trying to live my life to the fullest these days. Who’s joining me? ”"

"At the end of the day, you may as well try and fail than not try at all."

"It’s more like a feeling; a sense of peace I don’t seem to feel with anyone else. It’s feeling like you have found your best friend, your own person and also your soulmate. I really don’t know how to describe it. It feels just like home.”"

"The structure of the international system, at the end of this century, is experiencing radical changes, particularly the end of the post-war bipolarity, the fall of the Iron Curtain and the end of the cold war. Many new peoples have gained their right to self-determination and democratic development, long repressed by totalitarian regimes."

"The dynamics of the world have changed. This creates many questions for the international community, governments, politicians and political forces. So far the answers have been few and inadequate. But life does not wait. States and people have concrete needs as well as hopes and ideals. Their natural tendency is to act in order to fulfil them, whether or not there exists an organized international framework for harmonizing divergent interests."

"But freeing international relations from ideology does not and must not necessarily lead to confrontation between civilizations. By definition, confrontation is alien to civilization."

"Civilization is characterized, rather, by tolerance and open-mindedness. Of course, this does not exclude competition between civilizations, between the values they promote, between their capacities to guarantee the free enjoyment of basic human rights and the development of initiative and the human personality."

"The extremely complex situations in various parts of the world and the contradictory currents that exist, with all their attendant risks and uncertainties for overall peace and security, demand a democratic vision of the new international order, which must be built, and abandonment of prejudices in relations between States inherited from the cold-war period. But that is not all. I believe that today we need a vision of the management of international relations in which realism and pragmatism predominate."

"The prosperity of peoples achieved through cooperation was not merely the formula of someday dreamers, but the rationale behind an international body meant to constitute an orderly space for moral and legal values to govern the manifestation of the freedom of creation of human civilization in all its diversity."

"International order based on legal norms, even if administered under the authority of the privileged club of the permanent members of the Security Council, represented the embodiment of reason and of the hope that the world would never again fall prey to the demons of hatred and destruction."

"The knowledge gap is compounded by the ubiquitous phenomenon of brain drain from the developing to the developed world. The problem is almost as old as the United Nations itself."

"Experience shows that enhanced regional cooperation can be both the engine and the result of globalization."

"Regional cooperation makes it possible to capitalize on the advantages of globalization while reducing its risks."

"A set of policies can be successful only if it relies consistently on the fundamental aspiration of ordinary people to a peaceful and decent life. The current unprecedented level of knowledge will, I am confident, enable us to find the requisite resources, both in ourselves and in society, for greater tolerance, mutual respect and constructive dialogue, as opposed to the primitive inclination to hatred and intolerance."

"The consolidation of democratic values, building an efficient and competitive market economy, strengthening the country's capacity to play its role as a security and stability provider in the region, are all aims closely interrelated with our national interest."

"Fraud involving the public purse is all the more reprehensible, and must be severely punished, in that it cannot take place other than with the involvement of politicians and public officials, i.e. those who are entrusted essentially with defending and promoting the public interest. Their dishonesty undermines trust in the State, in the country's institutions and in democracy."

"It is our duty, the duty of all of us, to help the people understand that, alongside rights and freedoms, they have legal and constitutional obligations, that it is in their interests and in the interests of society that fraudulent acts should be severely punished, and that they should not become accomplices, including as a result of passivity or non-involvement, in such anti-social behaviour."

"Transparency is nowadays an efficient weapon in stamping out corruption and fraud of any kind involving public funds."

"The global vocation and aspirations of my country are closely related to its European destiny. The focus of Romanian diplomacy is therefore oriented towards the democratic stabilization of our neighbouring region and its effective connection to a united Europe."

"Granting the Western Balkan states a clear perspective of integration into the Euro-Atlantic and European community is the most effective way to consolidate stability and security in the region and in Europe."

"Having emerged from the darkness of totalitarianism, Romania has embarked on a long and not so easy road to the recovery of memory and assumption of responsibility, in keeping with the moral and political values grounding its new status as a democratic country, a dignified member of the Euro-Atlantic community."

"A critical evaluation of the past is always necessary, so as not to forget it, but also to set with clarity the landmarks of our effort to build ourselves, as part of constructing the future of our nation."

"The recent past obligates us to create mechanisms and institutions designed to serve as the society’s antibodies against these illnesses of the spirit that are racism, antisemitism, xenophobia."

"Traditional media in Ghana has a reputation for being politicized, particularly during elections. That’s why social media initiatives like Ghana Decides are important. They offer a good balance for Ghanaians at home and abroad: non-partisan, factual, and issue based information, with none of the ‘politricks’."

"Wikipedia relies on the wisdom of crowds. Knowledge is fluid. A definition contained in a reference work can never be regarded as complete and definitive. More reliable information emerges through continual revision. Consequently, anyone can edit an entry in Wikipedia. Many articles are plainly useless, but owing to the democratic nature of the medium the way is always open to incremental improvement. Some may find this a seductive vision of the spread of knowledge. I find it alarming. It combines the free-market dogmatism of the libertarian Right with the anti-intellectualism of the populist Left. There is no necessary reason that Wikipedia’s continual revisions enhance knowledge. It is quite as conceivable that an early version of an entry in Wikipedia will be written by someone who knows the subject, and later editors will dissipate whatever value is there. Wikipedia seeks not truth but consensus, and like an interminable political meeting the end result will be dominated by the loudest and most persistent voices."

"The book lacks a bibliography, but this hardly matters given Hannan's taste for talking off the top of his head."

"The principal Shakespeare claimant these days is not [[Francis Bacon|[Francis] Bacon]] but Edward de Vere, 17th Earl of Oxford. The case was launched on an indifferent public in a book called Shakespeare Identified in 1920 by a Gateshead schoolmaster with the unimprovable name of J Thomas Looney. Looney surmises from the plays certain attributes that the author of Shakespeare had and then alights on Oxford as possessing them. A small cult following was convinced, including Sigmund Freud. Yet the search for documentary evidence yielded nothing."

"[On the Shakespeare authorship question] This isn't mere whimsy: it's calumnious bilge. It derives not from documentary evidence (there is none) but from dismay that the greatest figure of English letters was a commoner. In his history of this perverse idea, Contested Will, [[w:James S. Shapiro|[James] Shapiro]] documents how it's rooted in an anti-democratic ethos. It’s also irrationalist. If you reject Shakespeare's authorship, you dispense with the methods of historical inquiry altogether. Not coincidentally, the prominent Oxfordian author Joseph Sobran was a Holocaust denier."

"There is no diplomatic way of saying it but, in his journalism, [[John Pilger|[John] Pilger]] was a charlatan and a fraudster. And I use those terms in the strict sense that he said things he knew to be untrue, and withheld things he knew to be true and material, and did it for decades, for ideological reasons. If you know where to look, you’ll uncover his inspiration."

"1984的作者预见到了专制的进步，却没有预见到技术的进步。"

"一句话，技术是中性的，但技术的进步会让自在的世界更自在，集权的世界更加集权。"

"I spent a lot of my early blogging career sort of highlighting all the ills of the government in Kenya and all the corruption and problems."

"I always ask the question: As more Africans are going online, are they finding content that is meaningful and relevant to them, or are they just consuming from everywhere else. As Africans, we have the capacity to generate our own content."

"I believe in the power of ideas. I believe in the power of sharing knowledge."

"Blogging requires consistency, and you need to have some time on your hands, which I don't really have."

"We can't entrepreneur our way around bad leadership. We can't entrepreneur our way around bad policies. Those of us who have managed to entrepreneur ourselves out of it are living in a very false security in Africa."

"Life is too short to play-act if you don't have to."

"Anyone who has been successful and has knowledge to share is a potential mentor."

"I remember the day I found out I was pregnant with Nema. I was so excited and scared at the same time. Being a mother has changed my life completely, and I'm loving every moment of it."

"One thing I've also learned about this journey is that when you're pregnant, you want to have a friend who is also pregnant, someone you can relate to, someone you talk to."

"Google is your friend, that sister who has a child is your friend because you want to talk about what's coming. That's why I started a movement called Mommy Diaries, where mothers come together and talk about all things motherhood."

"Dintle, for me, has grown tremendously as a person and I believe that she has learnt from her past mistakes. For me as an actress, I have grown with her, although she is younger than me but believe it or not we are similar in the things we have gone through."

"I love how they have written the storylines for her; the story has helped me as an actress to grow and it was so amazing to go through certain things at the same time as she was going through them.” One similarity she points to between her and her character is the drive to achieve their goals and get what they want"

"Being raised by a single mother had its challenges. I had a good upbringing but because we did not have a television at home I had to watch from our neighbours. Growing up in Bloemfontein was OK but there were no opportunities for what I wanted, but the fire in me kept me going."

"With some productions, should you get pregnant the possibility of you not working is high because they would have to change the storyline, so you have to plan your life around your career."

"The moment a child is born, the mother is also born. She never existed before. The woman existed but the mother, never. A mother is something new.""

"Meanwhile, Italy cannot afford the truth about Regeni. And after two months of lies it is more correct and less hypocritical to take note of it.""

"I will go to vote and I will vote for Italia dei Valori. At a time when Silvio Berlusconi and Marcello Dell'Utri come out into the open and, in order to have a majority in the Senate, do not hesitate to praise the silence of the boss Vittorio Mangano, I think it is necessary to give strength to those who clearly say no to the mafia. [...] I therefore invite everyone to think about what happened between 2001 and 2006 when our country took great steps towards the regime with the secret services spying on journalists and magistrates, with the purges and censorships in Rai , with the major international press ridiculing Italy and its executive every day. There is not a single reason to think that next time it will be different. Berlusconi, moreover, has been clear in recent weeks: he wants to reintroduce parliamentary immunity, ban telephone wiretapping, and put his hands on public television again and more thoroughly. I think avoiding all this is a precise duty of those who care about freedom."

"In the UK, it is not parliament that supervises the BBC, but it is the BBC that supervises the activities of parliamentarians and their collaborators."

"Licio Gelli: In this country there is only one charismatic figure who can truly lead it: Silvio Berlusconi."

"Gomez: But in the meantime we know how these things go: he will end up being acquitted."

"It’s the easiest and quickest way for me to express myself and I try to do that as much as possible."

"I have felt absolutely devastated but the beauty of it is being able to pick one’s self up and get right back into the ring."

"Be very bold, confident, and go for whatever it is you want, because when you start out it may seem very daunting and it may feel small in this big world but that is not the case."

"be true to yourself and stay true to who you were when you started."

"My #GhanaianDream is a Ghana where Ghanaians don't need to travel anywhere else to fulfill their greatest potential."

"It is [[George Galloway|[George] Galloway]] that is bankrupt of meaning: rape is when a woman does not consent. Because she is, for example, asleep and unconscious. Sexual consent is not football; you can’t buy a season ticket."

"Why do male politicians get this so wrong? Unfortunately, the answer is simple: because they believe what they are saying. Galloway, [[Todd Akin|[Todd] Akin]] and [[Craig Murray|[Craig] Murray]] represent the tip of an iceberg of resentment and base sexism."

"All too often, the media pretends that feminism’s work is done. This week shows us what so many male politicians really think about consent, and sex, and the rights of a woman to withhold it, or attach conditions to it. There is a long way to go."

"We achieve freedom when we let go of the weight of societal expectations, and when we find our people – those who love us, care for us, and hold us up when we start slipping."

"Many women lose all the privileges of a free woman when they get married and what they gain is nothing compared to what they lose."

"I feel most free when I am myself, stripped of all pretences, lounging naked on my bed, my boobies freely rolling to wherever they choose to land, my belly relaxed and soft, my thighs apart, my hands wherever they may choose to lie. With no one around me, I am my most free self."

"I spent years avoiding sex with guys because I didn’t want anyone to gossip about me. I wish I had realized sooner that no matter what I did guys would claim to have fucked me every which way under the sun."

"Today I feel like my best sex life is being lived in my imagination. I’m a lot more free in my mind than I am in my body. I dream and fantasise a lot but I don’t necessarily create the kind of experiences that would allow me to enjoy the feelings that I think about."

"I have learned over time that relationships require work. When you’re younger, you have a sense of love as being magical and so relationships happen in that particular space of magic, and it’s easy to feel that’s all one needs, but now I know that relationships require work, and constant work. The desire that is in the relationship also needs to be nurtured, and thought about, and reentered and reimagined."

"I’ve learnt to ask myself every day, Are you happy today? And if the answer is no I make a change."

"There is, in fact, no place in the world that has managed to make prostitution safe for women, despite efforts to regulate the industry and even to form unions of sorts. Under legalised regimes, trafficking and an illegal industry thrive."

"The Canadian Human Rights Act protects women because as a society, we understand that women face discrimination based on their biological sex. But our ability to organize on behalf of women's liberation and to maintain women-only space is threatened by legislation that protects people based on "gender identity" and "gender expression." How can we argue for women's rights, based on the understanding that women are oppressed specifically due to their biological sex, if we simultaneously say that sex doesn't matter, but that "gender identity" and "gender expression" do?"

"What women experience as intimidating, many men read as harmless, not least in part because women are socialised to avoid conflict and respond politely, even when offended or uncomfortable."

"The truth is that, in all likelihood, most men – if not all men – have engaged in behaviour that was inappropriate, made a woman feel uncomfortable, or was even abusive. This is the lesson we should have learned from #MeToo: that the problem of male entitlement and misogynist attitudes towards women is a social one, not a personal one, and certainly not one that will be resolved by more men insisting they are feminists."

"Some of these [beauticians] were women working out of their homes and their names were published in the papers, but [Yaniv's] anonymity was protected."

"I have received countless violent threats on Twitter and I don’t think they’ve banned any of them. My tweets were not violent. I think someone at Twitter wanted to get rid of me — I was one of the most well-known women talking about this, and I wasn’t apologetic. It is scary a corporation [can] start determining what we’re allowed to talk about."

"Women's rights exist because women are born female, not because they identify with femininity, because they wear dresses, because they wear make-up. There is an understanding in law that women face oppression and discrimination because they are born female. I think we do need to protect everyone from being discriminated against, but we don't need to say that trans-identifying males are literally female to protect them from discrimination."

"Over a year after a man then-named Jonathan Yaniv filed multiple complaints against British Columbia estheticians who declined to wax his balls, the B.C. Human Rights Tribunal has ruled against the now-named 'Jessica.'"

"What has been revealed since, many times over, is that no one but Yaniv is, in these particular circumstances, guilty of harassment. Indeed, it is the women he attempted to extort money from, by abusing the tribunal system and human rights law, who have felt afraid, bullied, and preyed upon by a man claiming to be a woman."

"A woman is a female. That's it. And if you are born male there is no way to become female. It's simply not biologically possible. [...] And beyond that, why would a male ever NEED to 'become female'? I mean, by all means, be yourself, dress how you like, express yourself as you wish, in ways that make you feel good and authentic. Push back against gender stereotypes. But why that would demand one is literally the opposite sex, I do not know. 'Woman' is not simply a set of stereotypes, an outfit, a feeling. There is nothing wrong with being male or being a male who rejects masculinity. But it is ridiculous to say that if you reject gender stereotypes you are literally no longer male."

"Under current trans activist doctrine we're not allowed to exclude a man from a woman's space if he says that he's female and I find that quite dangerous and troubling."

"[M]ales who wish to identify as women will be offered additional protections under the law; but those born female will not benefit in the same way. Of course, trans-identified people should be protected from abuse and discrimination. But why not women too? Does the SNP think the minority of individuals who choose to identify as transgender are much more at risk than women and girls? Women suffer disproportionally as victims of rape, domestic abuse, FGM, child marriage, and femicide around the world, yet in Scotland this seems to count for little."

"Canada has managed to cultivate a culture that is simultaneously self-hating and self-righteous. We have no pride in being Canadian. Yet we are confident we are better than everyone else."

"I publish Brittle Paper so I can tell anyone who cares to listen what I find remarkable about African writing."

"The excitement you read in my style is a genuine expression of a reader’s love. African literature is beautiful stuff. As a blogger, I enjoy thinking up innovative ways of getting my readers to put aside all the assumptions and expectations they might have of African writing and simply encounter it from a place of love."

"A whole new world of philosophical and literary texts were opened up to me. The more I immersed myself and delved deeper into these texts, I realized that I could not keep this utterly captivating universe of ideas to myself. It wasn’t enough to talk about these things in class with colleagues and Profs. I wanted more."

"...when Brittle Paper first started, it was a general interest literary and philosophical blog. It was not centered on African literature."

"I did not imagine it would become what it is today. I simply needed an outlet for my postgrad work. My first year as a doctoral student was one of the most intense, frustrating, but also the most beautiful moments in my life."

"Readers want to be excited about African literature, especially after decades of being told that African literature is little more than a political and cultural manual for African life."

"Contemporary readers want to fall in love with African writing. They want to enjoy it the way they enjoy African pop music and Nollywood. They want to be inspired by their favorite authors and gain access to their lives so that they can become fans. That’s precisely what we offer at Brittle Paper—the chance to consume African literature differently."

"Social media and on-site interaction with readers can never be too much. It’s something that one has to keep building."

"It’s an honor really for someone to write something and decide to share it with our readers."

"I keep my rejection letters gracious and appreciative. When I accept a submission, I try to say a word or two about what I find compelling about the work. So I take submissions seriously. But they can be overwhelming, and I do fall behind."

"Activism is probably too strong a word to use for it. But, I do have a politics regarding African writing in the sense that while I love British and Indian literature deeply, I also understand that African literature is the only literature I can really lay claims to or call my own."

"At the end of the day, Africans are the only ones who can really champion African literature. It is not enough to complain that the world misunderstands us and our work. We have to take the lead in showing the world what is awesome about African literature and how it should be read."

"...I don’t let the fear of getting into trouble decide what I write or don’t write."

"As a blogger, you learn to deal with criticisms and insults."

"A blog is not a newspaper. If you want bare, unsullied facts, go read a newspaper."

"Blogging is all about the slant. How can you take a set of facts, rearrange them, and serve them up to readers in a way that’d make them think or react? Besides, I learned pretty quickly that you can’t please everyone"

"I’ve run Brittle Paper out of pocket. But Brittle Paper is growing so fast, and it’s become more than clear to me that I need money, not only to run it in its present form, but also to take it to the next level."

"Brittle Paper is hard work. It takes its toll—given that I am also in the thick of writing a dissertation. But I love blogging. It’s as simple as that."

"As every blogger knows, the bread and butter of good sites is great content. If you write things that people love, they will come to the blog."

"Blogging is a totally different beast. When I realized that my training on writing research and conference papers did not really translate into blogging, I had to learn writing all over again. That was challenging!"

"African literature has not always been reader-driven. For Achebe to write with a straight face that a novelist is a teacher, you know we are dealing with a literary culture where the reader doesn’t really count for much."

"The reader is there to be schooled and herded about and put in their place. It’s taken me years to realize how absurd and borderline disturbing Achebe’s statement is. It points to the power differential that has always defined the writer-reader relationship in African literary culture. Really, it’s all about power."

"The reason African literature is sometimes preachy and heavy-handed is precisely because it has never really been inspired by the taste and desires of the African reader—by what the reader really wants. It’s been driven, instead, by the African writer and critic’s lust for literary significance."

"Give us the “digestible and quickly forgotten” stuff. I want more African writing with mass appeal. I want a Nollywood invasion of African literature. I want African writers to not take themselves too seriously for once and just write novels that Africans would find endlessly delightful and delicious."

"I want African writers to sell millions of copies, make good money, and live off their work. This is how publishing industries are nurtured—when they are able to tap into the pulse of mass culture."

"I want African writers to find inspiration in what Africans want to read not what they should read or what will save them or educate them or edify them."

"The Teju Coles and Adichies and Vladislavicses will continue to write the so-called serious novels for critics and scholars like us. But aside from these “serious” writings, we need a new kind of literary production propelled entirely by the African reader and not the critic"

"...writing, like any creative ability, can be a gift. But it can also be cultivated. It might require more work, more backbreaking labor, but it certainly can be learned."

"A bestselling novel is like any good product. If it’s good quality, and it’s backed by good marketing, it’s a sure-banker success."

"Literary critics might claim that they know why Shakespeare became Shakespeare, but the truth is they don’t. If you asked me how a book becomes a classic, I’d say it’s a matter for the gods."

"Brittle Paper is the place where you can enjoy African literary stuff without anyone breathing down your neck, preaching to you, policing how and what and why you read. When you visit your favorite fashion or music blog, you expect to be entertained. It’s the same at Brittle Paper. We just want you to have a good time with African writing."

"There is an unprecedented global interest in African writing. As a result, my readership is growing in leaps and bounds."

"The life of a professor is exciting. There is never a dull moment. When I’m not teaching, I’m doing research, writing an article, or managing the administrative responsibilities that come with running a class. I find teaching literature intellectually fulfilling."

"There is nothing as rewarding as being inspired by my students and their work, which happens on a daily basis."

"Creativity is seeing opportunity where no one else did. It is finding magic in the humdrum of the everyday and the familiar."

"Social media is essentially having access to people’s curated collection of what they think is the best of the best from the web. It’s a wealth of blogging content and ideas."

"I see African literature taking the lead in reinventing conventional forms of storytelling. Europeans may have invented the novel, for example, but they are currently as confused as everybody else about what digital and social media technology means for literature."

"I am exactly the type of person Putin had in mind when he launched his speech last night. He wants to frame people like me as traitors, the fifth column,”"

"I live a good life, post pretty pictures online about food. They now want to portray me as the face of the ‘decadent west’.”"

"To find out I was the first one to be charged was both amusing and shocking. I joked that I was officially declared a decent person"

"“The Russian people will always be able to distinguish true patriots from scum and traitors and simply spit them out like a fly that accidentally flew into their mouth"

"Just be exactly the way you are, may mararating kaartehan mo. I'm telling you, put those clips, overdo it if you want. Just be the girl that you are. You will make mistakes, you will rise above it, and they will make you a better person. I'm already proud of who you are and what you will be."

"And just work hard, be kind even if it’s so hard to be kind at times. It will pay off. One day you’re going to get to where you want to be. So don’t pressure yourself and live life a day at a time."

"I want them to see me as a free lady, just spread her wings and fly."

"I feel like there’s no game. I don’t dress for any reason at all other than because I truly love it for myself and how it makes me feel. I feel like I can express myself and be myself."

"Perfection is not of this world.' So try not to give into the demands of this world on how a woman should be"

"Don't 'fake it till you make it.' That's garbage advice. Face it till you make it. Get up. Work hard. Fail. Stand back up. Face it again. Do a little better. Fail again. Get back up."

"The real beauty is just being yourself—the good and the bad."

"Happy Skin is all about natural beauty."

"You can't have a perfect life. And nobody's perfect. So everything's made for a reason to make us better people and stronger."

"There's nothing more sexier than seeing a woman full of wisdom, not too sweet, not too strong, but just the right amount of spice."

"If you feel like you should promote adoption, adopt yourself. (And) if you feel like no one's listening, it doesn't matter as long as you're living in it and eventually they will come. They will see and they will listen."

"Not everything in life is dandy and beautiful."

"It's about the simplest things in life that's very important and really makes a person happy."

"It’s so important to always be authentic and really stay true to yourself whether people agree with you or not."

"Authenticity can be your soft power."

"I can’t keep pleasing you, I can’t keep making everyone happy. I can’t keep buying everybody something just to keep a friendship."

"I have to love myself first in order for me to give more love to others."

"Be grateful, never forget your family no matter where life takes you."

"What's important to me right now is my life and how I live it. My freedom, my choices."

"I kinda really enjoy playing myself now, with all the flaws, with all my insecurities, with all my fears, because I feel like this is liberation for me."

"Paris is special and there’s the saying, ‘They feel like all lost artists find their way to Paris,’ and I found my way to Paris and I love Paris."

"You can have all the richness in the world, but if you have no love in your life, it's not a life worth living.""

"Minsan (Sometimes), masakit (tt hurts) to do the right thing, but at the end, God will reward you."

"Sometimes with the others, I really have to argue my way to get things."

"Even if you are married or even if you’re committed to someone or a friend or whatever, you really have to go through certain things and deal with them alone and really ponder about what you want in life."

"The nice thing about being in a marriage with Chiz is that he has always respected the many seasons of my life that I'm going through."

"My life and how I live it. My freedom, my choices. I don’t wanna live in a box."