People From New York State

"Most taboos have to do with eating, sex, elimination or gods; so remember, look before you sit down, lie down, squat down or kneel down!"

"Foster shook his head. “The inherent inertia of the human mind,” he said. “How it fights to resist new ideas.”"

"Are you sure you’re really the Devil and not someone else with the same name?"

"So—let’s remember the Uranium Rule. Don’t Do It! The Other Guy May Be Bigger!"

"I’m arguing with myself and I can’t tell who’s winning."

"The Third Era had recognized the impossibility of correcting the effects of human interference with more human interference."

"Man clings to his self-orientation at the psychological center of the Universe. You can face any challenge within that framework, suffer any loss, endure any hardship—so long as the structure remains intact."

"Lucifer hurried on. “But I assure you that most of what you’ve heard is grossly exaggerated. That is to say, I’m not really as bad as all that. I mean, there are different kinds of er, badness. There is the real evil, and then there’s sin. I’m, ah, associated with sin.” “The distinction seems a subtle one, Mr., ah, Lucifer—” “Not really, professor. We all sense instinctively what true evil is. Sin is merely statutory evil—things that are regarded as wrong simply because there’s a rule against them. Like, ah, smoking cigarettes and drinking liquor and going to movies on Sunday, or wearing lipstick and silk hose, or eating pork, or swatting flies—depending on which set of rules you’re going by. They’re corollary to ritual virtues such as lighting candles or spinning prayer wheels or wearing out-of-date styles.” Dimpleby leaned back and steepled his fingers. “Hmmm. Whereas genuine evil…?” “Murder, violence, lying, cheating, theft,” Lucifer enumerated. “Sin, on the other hand, essentially includes anything that looks like it might be fun.” “Come to think of it, I’ve never heard anything in praise of fun from the anti-sin people,” Curl said thoughtfully. “Nor from any ecclesiastic with a good head for fund-raising,” Dimpleby concluded. “It’s all due to human laziness, I’m afraid,” Lucifer said sadly. “It seems so much easier and more convenient to observe a few ritual prohibitions than to actually give up normal business practices.”"

"I know; you don’t consider it impossible. That’s the trouble with you; you don’t consider anything impossible. It would make life a lot easier for me if you’d let me rule out a few items—like leprechauns who hang out at Stonehenge."

"Out of the synthesis of opposites, a cancerous growth called Beauty came into being; obscene antisurvival concepts named Loyalty, Courage, Justice were born into the universe. Wherever the elemental Purities encountered this monstrous hybrid, a battle of extermination was joined. Good could compromise with Evil, but neither could meet with the half-breed, Art."

"One nice thing about working with a piece of machinery: you don’t waste time trying to justify your actions."

"Adventure has been defined as somebody else having a difficult time, a long way away. (p. 17)"

"I was still alive, but that was a mere detail, subject to change. (p. 13)"

"The last burst picked me up and threw me a thousand miles into an open grave and the mud showered down on me and a giant tombstone fell out of the sky to mark the place, but I didn’t care any more, because I was far away, in that place where the heroes and the cowards lie together with a fine impartiality, waiting for eternity to pass, slowly, like a procession of snails creeping across an endless desert toward a distant line of mountains. (p. 18)"

"“You’re talking to yourself.” “It’s all right. I’m not listening.” (p. 78)"

"“The San Andreas Fault,” Waverly groaned. “Good-by San Francisco!” “It’s the Sequoias I’m thinking of,” Fom Berj sighed. “Remarkable organisms, and not nearly so easy to replace as San Franciscans.”"

"Less than total control is no control at all. You will obey my instructions, Mr. Ravel. In every detail. Or I will scrap the project."

"“I can see there’s been a miscarriage of justice.” “An abortion, you mean!"

"Judge a chap on what he does, and not what he is, eh? None of us can help our natural tendencies—and perhaps overcoming one’s instincts is in the end a nobler achievement than not having the impulse in the first place."

"I know it’s hard to grasp at first. I seem to recall I was a bit difficult to convince once. We are accustomed to thinking we know everything. There’s a powerful tendency to just disbelieve anything that doesn’t fit the preconception."

"It was a nasty little village, poverty-stricken, ugly, hostile, much like little towns in all times and climes."

"The feminist compilers were no less present-minded. The most ambitious work from their ranks was published in 1893 by Frances L Willard, president of the Women's Christian Temperance Union, and Mary A. Livermore, a reformer and woman's rights leader…The editors considered the 19th century to be the century of opportunities for women and set out to compile "this rosary of nineteenth century achievement... the self-conscious celebratory tone of the essays and the selection of persons to be included reveal the authors' didactic intent. This volume celebrates women active in religious, welfare and educational work, the kind of women honored in the cultural programs of the women's clubs then springing up in every community in the United States. The omissions are equally telling: there is not one African-American woman listed, and all the famous women to whom any touch of "scandal," such as a divorce, adhered were excluded. Frances Wright, Ernestine Rose, Frances Kemble, Margaret Fuller did not pass the "respectability" test and were omitted."

"An early example of the now familiar pattern of the white liberal, accused of racism by black friends, grew out of this anti-lynching campaign and involved Frances Willard, the president of the Women's Christian Temperance Union, whose earlier abolitionist convictions and interracial work were a matter of record. Mrs. Willard was hesitant and equivocal on the issue of lynching and defended the Southern record against accusations made by Ida B. Wells on her English speaking-tour. Severe attacks on her in the women's press and a protracted public controversy helped to move Mrs. Willard to a cautious stand in opposition to lynching. Black women continued to agitate this issue and to confront white women with a moral challenge to their professed Christianity."

"It's (socialism) is God’s way out of the wilderness and into the promised land. It is the very marrow of Christ’s gospel. It is Christianity applied."

"I believe that competition is doomed. The trust, whose single object is to abolish competition, has proved that we are better without tan with it and the moment corporations control the supply of any product, they combine. What the Socialist desires is that the corporation of humanity should control all production. Beloved comrades, this is the frictionless way; it is the higher way; it eliminates the motives for a selfish life; it enacts into our everyday living thee this of Christ’s gospel. Nothing else will do it; nothing else can bring the glad day of universal brotherhood."

"Look about you: the products of labor are on every hand; you could not maintain for a moment a well-ordered life without them; every object in your room has in it, for discerning eyes, the marks of ingenious tools and the pressure of labor’s hands. But is it not the cruelest injustice for the wealthy, whose lies are surrounded and embellished by labor’s work to have a superabundance of the money which represents, the aggregate of labor in ay country, while the laborer is kept so steadily at work that he has no time to acquire the education, and refinements of life that would make him and his family agreeable companions to the rich and cultured. The reason why I am a Socialist comes in just here."

"Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, Amelia Bloomer, Carrie Nation, Frances Willard, Lucy Stone, Lucretia Mott, and the later suffragists of whom she [her mother] was one. These courageous women set a pattern not understood yet, standing in their prim strength, in their sweetness and sobriety against cruel ridicule, moral censure, charges of insanity; for there is no cruelty like that of the oppressor who feels his loss of the bit on those it has been his gain to oppress. "Pine knots as we are," Susan Anthony said. They used the only means open to them - they became orators when it was considered immoral for a woman to speak in public; if she went to meetings she was only to listen and learn. But they could use their constitutional right of petition, and they could tramp up and down, getting signatures for the right to work, to get a divorce, to speak in public, to vote."

"I would take, not by force, by by the slow process of lawful acquisition, through a better legislation, as the outcome of a wiser ballot in the hands of men and women, the entire plant that we call civilization, all the has been achieved on this continent in the four hundred years since Columbus wended his way hither, and make it the common property of all the people, requiring all to work with their hands to give them the finest physical development, but not to become burdensome in any case, and permitting all to share alike in the advantages of education and refinement. I believe this to be perfectly practical, and, indeed, that any other method is simply a relic of barbarism."

"If I were black and young, no steamer could revolve its wheels fast enough to convey me to the dark continent. I should go where my color was the correct thing, and leave these pale faces to work out their own destiny."

"A girl of seven or ten years old is held to be the equal partner in a crime where another and a stronger is the principal; because she is in so many ways hampered and harmed by laws and customs pertaining to the past, we reach out hands of help especially to her that she may overtake the swift-marching procession of progress, for its sake that it may not slacken its speed on her account as much as for hers that she be not left behind. I brought to the last Council our petition to Congress for the protection of women, which was responded to by raising the age of consent from .......... to sixteen years."

"I started looking into nutrition and alternative medicine because I obviously didn’t want to take any drugs or anything like that. I actually found out that what I was eating could actually affect the way I felt. … You can train as hard as you want but if you’re not training the right thing, it won’t help you out. Half of that is doing your homework at home. If you work your bones off in the gym and then you go home and don’t get a good amount of sleep and don’t eat good, you won’t get good results. … One of the reasons why I love the martial arts so much is because of the discipline. It makes me do things I should be doing anyway, like eating right and not partying."

"At a time when our nation is suffering from an epidemic of diet-related health problems, we cannot allow whitewashing by the industry to continue. The assumption that eating dairy is essential to the diet has obstructed our ability to criticize federal government support for unhealthy forms of dairy. The large and powerful players in the dairy industry are the masters of spin. For decades, lobbyists and marketers have promoted milk as “nature’s perfect food.” But consumption patterns have shifted away from plain fluid milk to highly processed forms of dairy that are little more than vessels for salt, sugar, and fat."

"The promotion of dairy products in schools is especially troubling, where children are a captive audience and greatly influenced by the foods served there. That’s why the dairy industry wants to maintain its strong presence in schools, despite local and federal efforts to improve the nutritional quality of school food."

"Targeting young people, like the tobacco industry had to keep replacing their customers who were dying with new customers. knows they have to target young people. That’s why we have these foods in schools and marketing messages at a younger and younger age for kids to get hooked on all the wrong kinds of foods."

"Federal government administers, oversees, and approves almost every aspect of the dairy checkoff program. These funds are used to promote junk foods, which contribute to the very diseases our federal government is allegedly trying to prevent."

"What's really sad is that we cannot trust information from these leading health organizations like the and the because they are taking money from the very industries who are causing the problems that they are supposed to be helping to prevent."

"Driven by this basic profit-above-all-else directive, corporations are mandated, in effect, to “grow or die,” a rule also called “the growth imperative.” Of course, a food maker is no different from any other corporation operating in a free economy. However, food companies face special challenges when it comes to obeying the market's growth imperative: because there's a limit—in theory, anyway—to the number of calories humans can consume, competition is especially fierce among food makers for the finite pool of money that consumers can spend."

"Industry's high powered lobbying effort is actually about much more than just passing bills. A convenient side effect of this lobbying crusade is to apply corporate spin to maximize effect. The rhetoric surrounding the lobbying shapes the broader debate related to who is to blame for obesity and diet-related health problems. Because lawsuits are such a hot-button issue, industry can take full advantage of the popular scapegoating of trial lawyers, while at the same time invoke all-American values and shove the personal responsibility theory down the nation's collective throat."

"The meat producers don’t have to pay for the heart disease or the environmental destruction or any of the other externalities, as economists call them, that their products cause."

"They taught me the importance of eating right and how it can benefit my boxing career. I went vegan ‘cold Tofurkey’. … Since being plant based, I am 23-0, winning 3 International Golds and 2 National tournaments and can thank my new lifestyle."

"Lately I have been frustrated with societal views towards vegans. There needs to be an awareness movement to show that all vegans aren’t “one of those vegans”. If you’re vegan for animal rights, you NEED to care about how people view vegans. … Passion is hard to control and that’s why many vegans seem aggressive or judgmental. … We need to take accountability for rebranding ourselves and being a welcoming organization. There are so many people converting to the lifestyle and even more are filling their toes in the water out of curiosity. The more people that fall into the vegan diet, the more aware they will be. This would lead to them being apt to adopt an animal free wardrobes, boycott animal entertainment, etc. But its starts with being welcoming."

"Many of the animal rights vegans not only demand others adopted a vegan diet, they also want you to be vegan for their own personal reasons. These are “One of those” vegans. … There is a large vegan movement (that I hope isn’t a fad), and many have adopted the term “plant-based” for rebranding purposes. Maybe veganism will never be universally cool, but I don’t intend on stopping. I see nothing wrong with being compassionate towards animals. But not one of those. I’m not the stereotypical vegan. I’m not what people think about when they hear “Vegan”. I’m not white, I don’t do yoga, I’m not frail, and unlike the peaceful people you think of when you think vegan, I get road rage from time to time. … My reason for rebranding? I love being vegan so I hate that something I love is so culturally disliked."

"We got married: society’s solution to loneliness, lust and laundry."

"I have been a storyteller from a very young age. Both my grandfathers took me on their laps when I was little and either recited epic poetry or told me firsthand adventure stories from their youths. It instilled in me a sense of wonder, and I’ve been wanting to pass along that same sense of wonder ever since."

"I doubt myself every day. I think most writers do. It’s part of the process. It’s in part what keeps you trying to write better each day, each book. If you were ever completely satisfied, I think you might just move on to something else. So you persevere. My bandmate, Stephen King, says successful writing is 5% talent, 5% luck, and 90% perseverance. You hit walls, reviews, dead-ends, editors, trends, and you wake up in the morning and keep going. You write for the joy of writing. It’s the best job in the world. I never—never—take this opportunity for granted. I try to earn it every day I’m in the chair."

"a Masonic plot backed by the Jews"

"If they had set out to kill six million Jews they would have done it. But all we hear about is Holocaust survivors. "Oh, we know it happened, cause over there is a survivor. Oh, my mother and father were survivors," they say. This is absolutely ridiculous. And (the Holocaust) it's all - maybe not all fiction - but most of it is. For instance the gas chambers and crematoria at Auschwitz would not do the job. Do you know what it takes to get rid of a dead body? To cremate it? It takes a liter of petrol and 20 minutes - now six million of them? They (the Germans) did not have the gas to do it. That's why they lost the war."

"I’ve really noticed over the last few years how many people are turning towards eating vegetarian or vegan. […] Everyone’s realizing that these things are delicious and good for you. And I think it’s an indication of how we’re becoming more conscious of what we do to our bodies by what we put into them and what we do to the planet."

"“You need a haircut, boy!” My father had only glanced at me across the kitchen table as he spoke but I had already seen in his eyes the coming storm. […] I hoped that my going to the barber's during school lunch break the next day would appease him. […] I had to get some water or I was going to choke, or worse, cry. I got up from the table and moved towards the sink. […] He threw me up on top of a workbench. He was baying now, not just shouting. You couldn't understand what he was saying but I know it had to do with my hair and my water drinking and how fucking useless and insolent and pathetic I was, but it wasn't coherent. […] Soon my head was propelled forward by his hand, the other one wielding a rusty pair of clippers that he used on the sheep we had in the field in front of our house. They were blunt and dirty and they cut my skin, but my father shaved my head with them, holding me down like an animal."

"I just don't like meat. Rotten carcasses don't feel good inside in my body. I've also seen some horrible documentaries about the hormones and things that go into meat. On a health level, meat is so scary. […] It's not just about staying away from meat, it's about keeping things in your diet that make you feel good. That's why you eat vegetarian in the first place. […] I think killing to make or eat things is horrific. It seems like there was a movement against wearing fur in fashion, but overnight it's fine again. I hate the way we pay lip service to issues like that."