Themes

"I made the earth and created man on it. I stretched out the heavens with my own hands, and I give orders to all their army. For this is what Jehovah says, the Creator of the heavens, the true God, the One who formed the earth, its Maker who firmly established it, who did not create it simply for nothing, but formed it to be inhabited: “I am Jehovah, and there is no one else.""

"The Biblical words about the genesis of heaven and earth are not words of information but words of appreciation. The story of creation is not a description of how the world came into being but a song about the glory of the world's having come into being."

"The artistic contribution of any nation and any age must be in terms of creation. Performers, symphony organizations, opera houses, museums, libraries - important as they are - are not enough. The arts, if they are to live, must be living arts."

"The major element of creation is love, and the major action of love is Art."

"Creation means discovery of a new reality that exists but that has not yet been noticed. The word is alive again. The speaking word. The verbs are in revolt—a revolt of the masses against the representation that has always been the main weapon of the state. The power is not in the state but in the culture of the people, by the people, and for the people."

"It is true that the theory of our Constitution is, that all taxes are paid voluntarily; that our government is a mutual insurance company, voluntarily entered into by the people with each other; that each man makes a free and purely voluntary contract with all others who are parties to the Constitution, to pay so much money for so much protection, the same as he does with any other insurance company; and that he is just as free not to be protected, and not to pay any tax, as he is to pay a tax, and be protected.But this theory of our government is wholly different from the practical fact. The fact is that the government, like a highwayman, says to a man: Your money, or your life. And many, if not most, taxes are paid under the compulsion of that threat.The government does not, indeed, waylay a man in a lonely place, spring upon him from the road side, and, holding a pistol to his head, proceed to rifle his pockets. But the robbery is none the less a robbery on that account; and it is far more dastardly and shameful.The highwayman takes solely upon himself the responsibility, danger, and crime of his own act. He does not pretend that he has any rightful claim to your money, or that he intends to use it for your own benefit. He does not pretend to be anything but a robber. He has not acquired impudence enough to profess to be merely a "protector," and that he takes men's money against their will, merely to enable him to "protect" those infatuated travellers, who feel perfectly able to protect themselves, or do not appreciate his peculiar system of protection. He is too sensible a man to make such professions as these. Furthermore, having taken your money, he leaves you, as you wish him to do. He does not persist in following you on the road, against your will; assuming to be your rightful "sovereign," on account of the "protection" he affords you. He does not keep "protecting" you, by commanding you to bow down and serve him; by requiring you to do this, and forbidding you to do that; by robbing you of more money as often as he finds it for his interest or pleasure to do so; and by branding you as a rebel, a traitor, and an enemy to your country, and shooting you down without mercy, if you dispute his authority, or resist his demands. He is too much of a gentleman to be guilty of such impostures, and insults, and villainies as these. In short, he does not, in addition to robbing you, attempt to make you either his dupe or his slave.The proceedings of those robbers and murderers, who call themselves "the government," are directly the opposite of these of the single highwayman.In the first place, they do not, like him, make themselves individually known; or, consequently, take upon themselves personally the responsibility of their acts. On the contrary, they secretly (by secret ballot) designate some one of their number to commit the robbery in their behalf, while they keep themselves practically concealed."

"A man wants no protection when his conduct is strictly right."

"To protect those who are not able to protect themselves is a duty which every one owes to society."

"Protection is not a principle, but an expedient."

"If you are not ready, and did not know what to do, it could hurt you in different ways. It could knock you down, hard, or throw you against a tree or a wall. It is such a big explosion, it can smash in buildings and knock signboards over, and break windows all over town, but if you duck and cover, like Burt [the Turtle], you will be much safer."

"Neither the Army nor the Navy is of any protection, or very little protection, against aerial raids."

"Hiko Seijuro: Murder is the only art a swordsman may practice. No ornamental words can change that. You want to protect people with murder? You’ll slaughter legions so that a few may live. Many years, long before you were born, my sword was tearing asunder the lives of men. Yes, all of those men were evil, but they were human beings first and foremost, Kenshin. The world you ardently desire to enter will not know what to do with you. It will deceive you into believing that you are saving lives even as you destroy them. You will accept these lies all the while, your hands will be stained with the worst of offenses."

"...and so in the evening released from facts I can think about distant ancient matters for example our friends beyond the sea I know they sincerely sympathize they send us flour lard sacks of comfort and good advice they don't even know their fathers betrayed us our former allies at the time of the second Apocalypse their sons are blameless they deserve our gratitude therefore we are grateful they have not experienced a siege as long as eternity those struck by misfortune are always alone the defenders of the Dalai Lama the Kurds the Afghan mountaineers..."

"It is said that by doing that [i.e abandoning Eastern Europe] they secured the imminent participation of Stalin in war against Japan. Already armed with the Atomic bomb, they did pay for Stalin so that he wouldn’t refuse to occupy Mandzhuria, to help Mao Zedong to gain power in China and Kim Ir Sen in half of Korea!… Oh, misery of political calculation! When later Mikolajczyk was expelled, when the end of Benesh and Masaryk came, Berlin was blocked, Budapest was in flames and turned silent, when ruins fumed in Korea and when the conservatives fleed from Suez – didn’t really some of those who had better memory recall for instance the case of giving away the cossacks?"

"What perception is, every one will know better by reflecting on what he does himself, what he sees, hears, feels, &c. or thinks, than by, any discourse of mine. Whoever reflects on what passes in his own mind, can-not miss it: and if he does not reflect, all the words in the world cannot make him have any notion of it."

"It is one of the commonest of mistakes to consider that the limit of our power of perception is also the limit of all there is to perceive."

"They consider me to have sharp and penetrating vision because I see them through the mesh of a sieve."

"The eye of a human being is a microscope, which makes the world seem bigger than it really is."

"It was the best of times, it was the worst of times."

"In the kingdom of the blind, the one-eyed man is king."

"As men of inward light are wont To turn their optics in upon't."

"If the doors of perception were cleansed everything would appear to man as it is, infinite."

"That neither our Thoughts, nor Passions, nor Ideas formed by the Imagination, exist without the Mind, is what every Body will allow. And it seems no less evident that the various Sensations or Ideas imprinted on the Sense... cannot exist otherwise than in a Mind perceiving them... For as to what is said of the absolute Existence of unthinking Things without any relation to their being perceived, that seems perfectly unintelligible. Their Esse is Percipi, nor is it possible they should have any Existence, out of the Minds or thinking Things which perceive them."

"Everything you see or hear or experience in any way at all is specific to you. You create a universe by perceiving it, so everything in the universe you perceive is specific to you."

"The cultural bias of the translator inevitably shapes his or her perception of the materials being translated, often in ways that he or she is unaware of. Culture is fundamentally a shaper of perception, after all, and perception is shaped by culture in many subtle ways. In short, it’s hard to see the forest when you’re a tree."

"Truth is universal. Perception of truth is not."

"Being lifted out of your normal routine completely changes your perception of everything. I often think that this time twist is like taking a drug, it alters your consciousness."

"You must choose: Do you wish to see (perceive) nothing, or do you want to see things as they really are? It is not hard to see things as they really are, it is simply a matter of tearing down walls, ridding oneself of defenses and presumption, rendering oneself vulnerable, an idiot, a fool. But it is not easy to see things as they really are, because it is painful, it is real, it requires response, it's an incredible commitment. To go nine-tenths of the way is to suffer at every moment utter madness. To go all the way is to become sane. Most people prefer blindness. But most people are a dying race."

"I see the same sadness in the eyes of conformists as I do in the eyes of those convulsing radically in opposition. I talk to people that aren't like me, individually, thoughtfully. And I listen. If I walk away from a conversation thinking differently than before I entered into it, I have succeeded in doing something that doesn't compute. If I haven't interacted and challenged what I know, resulting in a change of perception, I am still running my own set of stupid old programs."

"That books do not take the place of experience, and that learning is no substitute for genius, are two kindred phenomena; their common ground is that the abstract can never take the place of the perceptive."

"It seems that our age has exercised its power precisely on the level of feeling. Therefore, perhaps it could be defined as aesthetic: not because it has a privileged and direct relationship with the arts, but more essentially because its strategic field is neither cognitive nor practical, but that of feeling, of ‘aisthesis’. (p. 3)"

"Whatever may have been written or thought about perception in literate cultures, it remains a special competency of consciousness, its essential faculty. Day by day, minute by minute, consciousness is preoccupied with perception. Through perception it is captivated by an external world. Without perception it would have to terminate its autopoiesis, and even dreams can occur only by suggesting perceptions."

"He gives us the very quintessence of perception."

"The lamp of the body is the eye. If therefore your eye is good, your whole body will be full of light. 22 But if your eye is bad, your whole body will be full of darkness. If therefore the light that is in you is darkness, how great is that darkness! 23"

"Sporks, for those of you who have been spared, are the dreaded half-spoon, half-fork utensils handed out by some fast-food places that have tines too short to spear anything but are strategically placed to make sure anything liquid winds up on your necktie, blouse, shirt or navel - depending on your choice of attire."

"With diligent effort he has established that there is no statistical basis for Murphy’s Law. He has also established that he believes in it anyway."

"Murphy's Quantum Law: Anything that can, could have, or will go wrong, is going wrong, all at once."

"Colonel Stapp's favorite takeoff on sober scientific laws — Murphy's Law, Stapp calls it — 'Everything that can possibly go wrong will go wrong'"

"Anything That Can Possibly Go Wrong, Does"

"If there's more than one way to do a job, and one of those ways will result in disaster, then somebody will do it that way."

"If there's more than one way to do a job and one of those ways will end in disaster, then somebody will do it that way."

"If there is a wrong way to do something, then someone will do it."

"The iPad falls between two stools – not quite a laptop, not quite a smartphone. In other words, it's the spork of the electronic consumer goods world."

"Get away from me fat man, or I'll spork your ass."

"I came here to offer a way to make peace with our Republican friends on this heated school lunch issue. Al Gore and I have discovered a reinventing government way, Mr. Armey, to get around this terrible rhetoric we've been flinging at you on school lunches. We have a way to save money through streamlining that does not require us to deprive our children of food. Instead of cutting food, we're going to cut the cutlery. And here's how—with a spork. Now, you know, I don't know how many of you know this, I've been eating off these things for years. I never knew they were called sporks. But that's what they are. This is the symbol of my administration. This is a cross between a spoon and a fork. No more false choice between the left utensil and the right utensil. This is not an ideological choice. This is a choice in the middle and a choice for the future. This is a big, new idea—the spork."

"I am tipsy after my own feelings themselves have become wine. I forget myself, world and all."

"Self-image is the beginning and ending of living, I think."

"To love oneself is the beginning of a life-long romance."

"Self is the only prison that can ever bind the soul."

"What we do belongs to what we are; and what we are is what becomes of us."