Jews From The United States

"She had called in the debt that parents owe a child for bringing her, unasked, into a strange world. One should never make an offer without knowing full well what will happen if it is accepted."

"A sane being wished for peace and serenity, not to be the mortar in which the ingredients of destiny are finely ground."

"There were times when Robert actually envied his ancestors, who had lived in dark ignorance, before the twenty-first century, and seemed to have spent most of their time making up weird, ornate explanations of the world to fill the yawning gap of their ignorance. Back then, one could believe in anything at all. Simple, deliciously elegant explanations of human behavior—it apparently never mattered whether they were true or not, as long as they were incanted right. "Party lines" and wonderful conspiracy theories abounded. You could even believe in your own sainthood if you wanted. Nobody was there to show you, with clear experimental proof, that there was no easy answer, no magic bullet, no philosopher's stone. Only simple, boring sanity. How narrow the Golden Age looked in retrospect."

"A neurosis defends itself by coming up with rationalizations to explain away bizarre behavior."

"It was silly to suppose that trials only hardened men, automatically making them wise. He knew many who were stupid, arrogant, and mean, in spite of having suffered."

"The same was true of the most popular girls. They had no empathy, no compassion for more normal kids."

"All legends must be based on lies, Gordon realized. We exaggerate, and even come to believe the tales, after a while."

"“They accepted warriors...” he emphasized, “...That divinely mad type that’s so valuable when needed, and such a problem when it’s not.”"

"Freedom was wonderful beyond relief. But with it came that bitch, Duty."

"It’s said that “power corrupts,” but actually it’s more true that power attracts the corruptible. The sane are usually attracted by other things than power. When they do act, they think of it as service, which has limits. The tyrant, though, seeks mastery, for which he is insatiable, implacable."

"Of course we can establish constitutional checks and balances, but those won’t mean a thing unless citizens make sure the safeguards are taken seriously. The greedy and the power-hungry will always look for ways to break the rules, or twist them to their advantage."

"How can we set up a system which encourages individuals to strive and excel, and yet which shows some compassion to the weak, and weeds out madmen and tyrants?"

"“How did he get away with pushing a book like this? How is it anyone ever believed him?” Gordon shrugged. “It was called ‘the Big Lie’ technique, Johnny. Just sound like you know what you’re talking about—as if you’re reciting facts. Talk very fast. Weave your lies into the shape of a conspiracy theory and repeat your assertions over and over again. Those who want an excuse to hate or blame—those with big but weak egos—will leap at a simple, neat explanation for the way the world is. Those types will never call you on the facts.”"

"“Where is it written that one should only care about big things? I fought for big things, long ago...for issues, principles, a country. Where are all of them now?” The steely gray eyes were narrow and sad when next he looked up at Gordon. “I found out something, you know. I discovered that the big things don’t love you back. They take and take, and never give in return. They’ll drain your blood, your soul, if you let them, and never let go. “I lost my wife, my son, while away battling for big things. They needed me, but I had to go off trying to save the world.” Powhatan snorted at the last phrase. “Today I fight for my people, for my farm—for smaller things—things I can hold.”"

"It’s clear that male human beings should never have been left in control of the world all these centuries. Many of you are wonderful beyond belief, but too many others will always be bloody lunatics. Your sex is simply built that way. Its better side gave us power and light, science and reason, medicine and philosophy. Meanwhile the dark half spent its time dreaming up unimaginable hells and putting them into practice."

"He managed to lie by implication while speaking words that were the literal truth, a skill he had grown good at, if not proud of."

"He tried again, but their sullen, rural obstinacy was impervious to logic."

"Survivalists. Gordon felt a wave of revulsion."

"Apparently, the Fates were not so unsubtle as to deal him another blow just yet. He knew they didn’t operate that way. They always let you hope for a while longer, then strung it out before they really let you have it."

"We are having extreme difficulty with local gangs of “Survivalists.” Fortunately, these infestations of egotists are mostly too paranoid to band together. They’re as much trouble to each other as to us, I suppose. Still, they are becoming a real problem."

"Petals floating by, Drift through my woman’s hand, As she remembers me."

"He read about humanity’s age-old racial struggles. Had it really been less than half a millennium since humans contrived gigantic, fatuous lies about each other simply because of pigment shades, and killed millions because they believed their own lies?"

"It was better to imagine a sacrifice being for something."

"He wasn’t afraid of dying, only of having not done all he could, and not properly spitting in the eye of death when it came for him. That final gesture was important."

"Words penetrated the tank from the outer room. They were tantalizing, like those ghosts of meaning in a great symphony—hinting that the composer had caught a glimpse of something notes could only vaguely convey and words could never even approach."

"You don’t have conversations with microprocessors. You tell them what to do, then helplessly watch the disaster when they take you literally!"

"What point was there in pursuing an ever-elusive popularity?"

"“Where there is mind, there is always solution,” Keneenk taught. All problems contained the elements of their answer."

"Blatant idiocies had been tried by early men and women—foolishness that would never have been considered by species aware of the laws of nature. Desperate superstitions had bred during the savage centuries. Styles of government, intrigues, philosophies were tested with abandon. It was almost as if Orphan Earth had been a planetary laboratory, upon which a series of senseless and bizarre experiments were tried."

"Learn to control ego. Humans hold their dogmas and biases too tightly, and we only think that our opponents are dogmatic! But we all need criticism. Criticism is the only known antidote to error."

"One more piece for the Great Jigsaw puzzle. I find it truly stunning how many people can shrug off stuff like this, preferring instead a tiny, cramped cosmos just 6,000 years old, scheduled to end any-time-now in a scripted stage show of unfathomable violence and cruelty. An ancient and immense and ongoing cosmos is so vastly more dramatic and worthy of a majestic Creator. Our brains, capable of exploring His universe, picking up His tools and doing His work, seem destined for much greater tasks than cowering in a small groups of the elect, praying that some of our neighbors will go to perdition..."

"The worst mistake of first contact, made throughout history by individuals on both sides of every new encounter, has been the unfortunate habit of making assumptions. It often proved fatal."

"I hate the whole übermensch, superman temptation that pervades science fiction. I believe no protagonist should be so competent, so awe-inspiring, that a committee of 20 really hard-working, intelligent people couldn't do the same thing."

"RYAN LIZZA: There’s a famous story. Whenever Alinsky would have a new student coming to organize, he would ask them, why do you want to be an organizer, and they would always say, well, I want to help others, you know, I want to devote my life to doing good. And he would scream back at them, no, you want to organize for power. Obama’s organizing buddy shared with me a manual that was very similar to the one that Obama used to train as an organizer, and in it, it said, we are not virtuous by not wanting power. We are really cowards for not wanting power because power is good and powerlessness is evil."

"With respect for Saul Alinsky, who wrote Rules for Radicals, though as Alinsky himself said over and over, there are no rules; radicalism demands extraordinary flexibility and agility. Radicals have to improvise, not kneejerk."

"Power goes to two poles: to those who've got money and those who've got people."

"I have on occasion remarked that I felt confident that I could persuade a millionaire on a Friday to subsidize a revolution for Saturday out of which he would make a huge profit on Sunday even though he was certain to be executed on Monday."

"The twelfth rule: The price of a successful attack is a constructive alternative."

"[T]he fifth rule: Ridicule is man's most potent weapon."

"The fourth rule is: Make the enemy live up to their own book of rules. You can kill them with this, for they can no more obey their own rules than the Christian church can live up to Christianity."

"Always remember the first rule of power tactics: Power is not only what you have but what the enemy thinks you have. The second rule is: Never go outside the experience of your people. When an action or tactic is outside the experience of the people, it results in confusion, fear, and retreat. [...] The third rule is: Whenever possible go outside of the experience of the enemy. Here you want to cause confusion, fear, and retreat."

"For an elementary illustration of tactics, take parts of your face as the point of reference; your eyes, your ears, and your nose. First the eyes; if you have organized a vast, mass-based people’s organization, you can parade it visibly before the enemy and openly show your power. Second the ears; if your organization is small in numbers, then do what Gideon did: conceal the members in the dark but raise a din and clamor that will make the listener believe that your organization numbers many more than it does. Third, the nose; if your organization is too tiny even for noise, stink up the place."

"Change comes from power, and power comes from organization. In order to act, people must get together."

"It does not matter what you know about anything if you cannot communicate to your people. In that event you are not even a failure. You're just not there."

"The ninth rule of the ethics of means and ends is that any effective means is automatically judged by the opposition as being unethical."

"The seventh rule of the ethics of means and ends is that generally success or failure is a mighty determinant of ethics. The judgment of history leans heavily on the outcome of success or failure; it spells the difference between the traitor and the patriotic hero. There can be no such thing as a successful traitor, for if one succeeds he becomes a founding father."

"The most unethical of all means is the non-use of any means."

"To say that corrupt means corrupt the ends is to believe in the immaculate conception of ends and principles. The real arena is corrupt and bloody. Life is a corrupting process from the time a child learns to play his mother off against his father in the politics of when to go to bed; he who fears corruption fears life."

"The end is what you want and the means is how you get it."

"Change means movement. Movement means friction. Only in the frictionless vacuum of a nonexistent abstract world can movement or change occur without that abrasive friction of conflict."