Quotations

Friends,

Sometimes the most apt way to express an idea is to use the words of someone who phrased it perfectly before you. After all, if it ain’t broke, why fix it? I am devoting this page to some of those great quotations which have really resonated with me. Consider it a constantly-evolving work in progress. Enjoy the mish-mash of teh wisdoms.

On Adventure

“True knights-errant keep no certain road.”
-Miguel Cervantes, Don Quixote

-Friedrich Nietzsche…go figure.

“Never have I seen a man with more fear before the bullfight and never have I seen a man with less fear in the ring.”
-Ernest Hemingway, For Whom the Bell Tolls

“Where must we go, we who wander this wasteland in search of our better selves?”
-The First History of Man, Mad Max: Fury Road

On Morality and The Rule of Law

“Never forget that everything Hitler did in Germany was legal.”
-Martin Luther King Jr.

“Imposed philosophical morality (laws/rules) will not save the world. Only a calculated tangible plan to alter our circumstances so such actions pose no merit will stop immoral behaviour.”
-Peter Joseph, Defining Peace

 “Any fool can make a rule and any fool will mind it.”
-Henry David Thoreau

“If the soul is left in darkness, sins will be committed. The guilty one is not he who commits the sin, but the one who causes the darkness.”
-Victor Hugo, Les Miserables

“If you think you do have rights, one last assignment for you: Next time you’re at the computer get on the internet. Go to Wikipedia. When you get to Wikipedia, in the search field […] type in “Japanese-Americans 1942,” and you’ll find out all about your precious fuckin’ rights.”
-George Carlin, Rights & Privileges

On Knowledge

“I’m less interested in what people think think and more interested in how they came to think it and how they maintain it as valid.”
-Peter Joseph, When Normality Becomes Distortion

“Science is a way of thinking much more than it is a body of knowledge.”
-Carl Sagan

On Causality

“Once you know the way broadly, you see it in all things.”
-Musashi

“Philanthropy is commendable, but it must not cause the philanthropist to overlook the circumstances of economic injustice which make philanthropy necessary.”
Martin Luther King Jr.

“There are a thousand hacking at the branches of evil to one who is striking at the root.”
-Henry David Thoreau

“If it’s never our fault, we can’t take responsibility for it. If we can’t take responsibility for it, we’ll always be it’s victim.”
-Richard Bach

“When you say, “there’s no reason [to hit a woman]” that kills any examination as to how two people ended up at that place. When you say, “there’s no reason,” you cut out the build-up and you’re just left with the act. How you gonna solve it if you don’t figure it out?”
-Bill Burr, You People Are All the Same

“Make no mistake, the greatest destroyer of ecology, the greatest source of waste and depletion and pollution, the greatest purveyor of violence, war, crime, poverty, animal abuse and inhumanity, the greatest generator of social and personal neuroses, mental disorders, depression, anxiety, not to mention the greatest source of social paralysis stopping us from moving into new methodologies for personal health, global sustainability and progress on this planet, is not some corrupt government or legislation, not some rogue corporation or banking cartel, not some flaw of human nature, and not some secret hidden cabal that controls the world. It is in fact the socio-economic system at it’s very foundation.”
-Peter Joseph, Zeitgeist: Moving Forward

On “Speaking Your Mind”

“I’m just sayin’!”
-Bill Burr

“Bite your tongue for noone, and whatever is said/
Take it how they want -a closed mouth don’t get fed.”
-Jay-Z, Anything

On Courtship

“They’re playing groupie so I gotta play rockstar.”
-Erik “Mystery” Von Markovik

“The act of courtship is like the tango: absurd and pure embellishment. But you’re the man and you must take the lead.”
-Fermin Romero de Torres

“If I don’t f–k her then I’m not like guys she met before/
So while I’m turnin’ her down she’s just likin’ me more.”
-Joe Budden, U Ain’t Gotta Go Home

On Love

“Love is the only force capable of transforming an enemy into a friend.”
-Martin Luther King Jr.

“Love is [extension], and seeing everything as you and you as everything can have no [conditions]. For, in fact, we are all everything, at once.
-Peter Joseph, Zeitgeist: Addendum

“Non-violence means avoiding not only external physical violence but also internal violence of spirit. You not only refuse to shoot a man, but you refuse to hate him.”
-Martin Luther King Jr.

“The old appeals to racial, sexual, and religious chauvinism and to rabid nationalist fervor are beginning not to work. A new consciousness is developing which sees the Earth as a single organism and recognizes that an organism at war with itself is doomed.”
-Carl Sagan

On Outlook and Adversity

“Man is free at the moment he wishes to be.”
-Voltaire

“Negativity is the cult of the weak”
-Wayne “Juggler” Elise. How to be a Pick-Up Artist

“I ain’t lookin’ at you dudes -I’m lookin’ past you.”
-Jay-Z

“Laughing on the way to your execution is generally not understood by less advanced lifeforms, and they’ll call you crazy.”
-Richard Bach

“The world is like a ride in an amusement park, and when you choose to go on it you think it’s real because that’s how powerful our minds are. The ride goes up and down, around and around, it has thrills and chills, and it’s very brightly colored, and it’s very loud, and it’s fun for a while. Many people have been on the ride a long time, and they begin to wonder, “Hey, is this real, or is this just a ride?” And other people have remembered, and they come back to us and say, “Hey, don’t worry; don’t be afraid, ever, because this is just a ride.” And we … kill those people. “Shut him up! I’ve got a lot invested in this ride, shut him up! Look at my furrows of worry, look at my big bank account, and my family. This has to be real.” It’s just a ride. But we always kill the good guys who try and tell us that, you ever notice that? And let the demons run amok … But it doesn’t matter, because it’s just a ride. And we can change it any time we want. It’s only a choice. No effort, no work, no job, no savings of money. Just a simple choice, right now, between fear and love. The eyes of fear want you to put bigger locks on your doors, buy guns, close yourself off. The eyes of love instead see all of us as one. Here’s what we can do to change the world, right now, to a better ride. Take all that money we spend on weapons and defenses each year and instead spend it feeding and clothing and educating the poor of the world, which it would pay for many times over, not one human being excluded, and we could explore space, together, both inner and outer, forever, in peace.”
–Bill Hicks

“Life. It’s the shit that happens while you’re waiting for moments that never come.”
-Lester Freamon, The Wire

On Truth

“The bigger the lie, the more they believe.”
-Bunk Moreland, The Wire

“The truth is extreme. To make it moderate is to lie.”
–Storm Clouds Gathering

“The further a society drifts from truth, the more it will hate those that speak it.”
-George Orwell

“We should distrust any enterprise that requires new clothes.”
-Henry David Thoreau

“It is simply a matter of historical fact that the dominant intellectual culture of any particular society reflects the interests of the dominant group in that society. In a slave-owning society, the beliefs about human beings, human rights and so on will reflect the needs of the slave-owners. In a society which is based on the power of certain people to control and profit from the lives and work of millions of others, the dominant intellectual culture will reflect the needs of the dominant group. So if you look across the board, the ideas that pervade psychology, sociology, history, political economy, and political science fundamentally reflect certain elite interests, and the academics who question that too much tend to get shunted to the side or to be seen as sort of radicals.”
-Gabor Mate

On Motivation

“If one advances confidently in the direction of his dreams and endeavours to live the life which he has imagined, he will meet with a success unexpected in common hours.”
-Henry David Thoreau

“Almost always, the creative dedicated minority has made the world better.”
-Martin Luther King Jr.

“Everybody could tell you how to do it; they never did it.”
-Jay-Z, Already Home

“You can fail at what you don’t want, so you might as well take a chance on doing what you love.”
-Jim Carrey, 2014 MUM Commencement Address

“Chase the dream, not the competition.”
-Jim Jefferies (quoted)

“If you’re only doing it for the money, it’s probably not worth doing to begin with.”
-Ben McLeish, The Innovation War

“First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win.”
-Mahatma Gandhi

On Wealth

“A man is rich in proportion to the number of things he can afford to let alone.”
-Henry David Thoreau

“A tooth is much more to be prized than a diamond”
-Miguel Cervantes, Don Quixote

“Man, money ain’t got no owners; only spenders.”
-Omar Little, The Wire

On War & Peace

“Peace is not merely a distant goal that we seek, but a means by which we arrive at that goal.”
-Martin Luther King Jr.

“Wars are poor chisels for carving out peaceful tomorrows”
-Martin Luther King Jr.

Never think that war, no matter how necessary, nor how justified, is not a crime.”
-Ernest Hemingway

“Non-violence is a powerful and just weapon, which cuts without wounding and ennobles the man who wields it. It is a sword that heals.”
-Martin Luther King Jr.

“War is the continuation of politics by other means.”
-Carl von Clausewitz

“All the war propaganda, all the screaming and lies and hatred come invariably from people who are not fighting.”
-George Orwell

“What kind of people are these with such low self-esteem that they need a war to feel better about themselves?”
-Bill Hicks

“War can’t give life, it can only take it away”
-Edwin Starr

On Government, Democracy and “The State”

“Nationalism is an infantile disease. It is the measles of mankind.”
-Albert Einstein

“The people are the government, administering it by their agents; they are the government, the sovereign power.”
-Andrew Jackson
*This particular quotation resonated with me because it reveals two points: 1) We cannot give or bestow something we don’t already have. So it follows that if government is vested with some imaginary power and legitimacy, then so must the individuals who it presides over as they gave it said power in the first place, and 2) Democracy then serves as a brake on personal power because it subjugates the individual to the whims of the group.

“Politics is the continuation of economics by other means.”
-Michael C. Ruppert 

“Those who do not move, do not feel their chains.”
-Rosa Luxembourg

“We can have democracy in this country, or we can have great wealth concentrated in the hands of a few, but we can’t have both.”
-Louis D. Brandeis

“If voting changed anything, they’d make it illegal.”
-Emma Goldman

On Personal Development

“Be strong to be useful.”
-Georges Hebert

“To be great is to assume great concerns.”
-Stephen Vizinczey, The Rules of Chaos

“There comes a point in your life when you become stark raving insane, commit suicide or become a mystic.”
-Anthony Di Mello

“It is no measure of health to be well-adjusted to a profoundly sick society.”
-Jiddu Krishnamurti

“Men are anxious to improve their circumstances, but are unwilling to improve themselves; they therefore remain bound.”
-James Allen

“If I were to refuse to shift my position when I feel in my heart that I have been going about things the wrong way, could I really be trusted? Even if I were to say exactly what you wanted to hear, if I walk away from my integrity, I would be nothing better than an ideological tool.”
–Storm Clouds Gathering

“When I turn 30, Imma be even more beast-mode. Imma look like I’m in one of those 300 movies. Imma be like, “Hell yeah!” Imma be fuckin’ sicker than I was at 28!”
-Hopsin

On Fame

On Economics

“Nothing produced can be allowed to maintain a lifespan longer than what can be endured in order to continue cyclical consumption.”
-Peter Joseph, Zeitgeist: Moving Forward

“It’s all about money, not freedom, y’all, okay? Nothing to do with fuckin’ freedom. If you think you’re free, try going somewhere without fucking money, okay?”
-Bill Hicks

“Economics is the continuation of energy/resources by other means.”
-Michael C. Ruppert

Best,
-Andre Guantanamo
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