#it

In my profession it isn’t a question of telling good literature from bad. Really good literature is seldom appreciated in its own day. The best authors die poor, the bad ones make money — it’s always been like that. What do I, an agent, get out of a literary genius who won’t be discovered for another hundred years? I’ll be dead myself then. Successful incompetents are what I need. ↗

— Walter Moers

#writers #writing #dreams

Our findings with reference to organized crime was that organized crime as an entity didn't participate in the assassination of the president. However, we were unable to preclude the possibility of individual members of organized crime having participated. ↗

— Louis Stokes

#crime #entity #findings #having #however

All government, in its essence, is a conspiracy against the superior man: its one permanent object is to oppress him and cripple him. If it be aristocratic in organization, then it seeks to protect the man who is superior only in law against the man who is superior in fact; if it be democratic, then it seeks to protect the man who is inferior in every way against both. One of its primary functions is to regiment men by force, to make them as much alike as possible and as dependent upon one another as possible, to search out and combat originality among them. All it can see in an original idea is potential change, and hence an invasion of its prerogatives. The most dangerous man to any government is the man who is able to think things out for himself, without regard to the prevailing superstitions and taboos. Almost inevitably he comes to the conclusion that the government he lives under is dishonest, insane and intolerable, and so, if he is romantic, he tries to change it. And even if he is not romantic personally he is very apt to spread discontent among those who are. ↗

— H.L. Mencken

#change

A city's only ever three hot meals away from anarchy. ↗

— Alastair Reynolds

#sf #social-commentary #anarchy

As much as I live I shall not imitate them or hate myself for being different to them ↗

— Orhan Pamuk

#difference #imitation #individuality #conformity

If you stand up and be counted, from time to time you may get yourself knocked down. But remember this: A man flattened by an opponent can get up again. A man flattened by conformity stays down for good. ↗

— Thomas J. Watson

#conformity #counted #down #flattened #from time to time

Know the rules well, so you can break them effectively. ↗

— Dalai Lama XIV

#rules #rules

Be neither a conformist or a rebel, for they are really the same thing. Find your own path, and stay on it ↗

— Paul Vixie

#conformity

Rebel children, I urge you, fight the turgid slick of conformity with which they seek to smother your glory. ↗

— Russell Brand

#conformity #glory #rebellion #rebellion

A stereotype becomes a stereotype when a significant percentage of the population appears to conform to it. ↗