#cs

Nobody can tell what I suffer! But it is always so. Those who do not complain are never pitied. ↗

— Jane Austen

#histrionics #hysterics #irony #mrs-bennett #suffering

No people will tamely surrender their Liberties, nor can any be easily subdued, when knowledge is diffused and virtue is preserved. On the Contrary, when People are universally ignorant, and debauched in their Manners, they will sink under their own weight without the Aid of foreign Invaders. ↗

— Samuel Adams

#liberty

Democracy is not just the right to vote, it is the right to live in dignity. ↗

— Naomi Klein

#politics #voting #dignity

Failure of government programs prompts more determined effort, while the loss of liberty is ignored or rationalized away...whether is it is the war on poverty, drugs, terrorism...or the current Hitler of the day, an appeal to patriotism is used to convince the people that a little sacrifice of liberty, here or there, is a small price to pay...The results, though, are frightening and will soon become even more so. ↗

— Ron Paul

#liberty

Inevitably it follows that anyone with an independent mind must become 'one who resists or opposes an authority or established convention': a rebel. ...And if enough people come to agree with—and follow—the REBEL, we now have a DEVIL. Until, of course, still more people agree. And then, finally, we have ... GREATNESS. ↗

— Nicholas Tharcher

#independent-thought #metaphysics #philosophy #independence

Nonetheless, many people, and especially intellectuals, passionately loathe capitalism. As they see it, this ghastly mode of society’s economic organization has brought about nothing but mischief and misery. Men were once happy and prosperous in the good old days preceding the Industrial Revolution. Now under capitalism the immense majority are starving paupers ruthlessly exploited by rugged individualists. For these scoundrels nothing counts but their moneyed interests. They do not produce good and really useful things, but only what will yield the highest profits. They poison bodies with alcoholic beverages and tobacco, and souls and minds with tabloids, lascivious books and silly moving pictures. The “ideological superstructure” of capitalism is a literature of decay and degradation, the burlesque show and the art of striptease, the Hollywood pictures and the detective stories. ↗

— Ludwig von Mises

#economics #greed #vice #art

Those who believe in telekinetics, raise my hand. ↗

— Kurt Vonnegut

#telekinetics #believe

I ascribe to Mark Twain's theory that the last person who should be President is the one who wants it the most. The one who should be picked is the one who should be dragged kicking and screaming into the White House. ↗

— Bill Hicks

#president

What really alarms me about President Bush's 'War on Terrorism' is the grammar. How do you wage war on an abstract noun? How is 'Terrorism' going to surrender? It's well known, in philological circles, that it's very hard for abstract nouns to surrender. ↗

— Terry Jones

#bushism #grammar #politics #terrorism #terrorism

Being President is like being the groundskeeper in a cemetery: there are a lot of people under you, but none of them are listening. ↗

— Bill Clinton

#politics #president