#sm

To get rich, one must have but a single idea, one fixed, hard, immutable thought: the desire to make a heap of gold. And in order to increase this heap of gold, one must be inflexible, a usurer, thief, extortionist, and murderer! And one must especially mistreat the small and the weak! And when this mountain of gold has been amassed, one can climb up on it, and from up on the summit, a smile on one’s lips, one can contemplate the valley of poor wretches that one has created. ↗

— Petrus Borel

#poverty #rich #wealth #capitalism

If you'd been taken by the Capital and hijacked and then tried to kill Peeta, is this the way he would be treating you? ↗

— Suzanne Collins

#capitalism

...a capital patient, as she never died and never got well. ↗

— Louisa May Alcott

#capitalism

Dogs do speak, but only to those who know how to listen. ↗

— Orhan Pamuk

#dogs #pets #pets

My dear, I used to think I was serving humanity . . . and I pleasured in the thought. Then I discovered that humanity does not want to be served; on the contrary it resents any attempt to serve it. So now I do what pleases myself. ↗

— Robert A. Heinlein

#sociology #sociology

Through countless births in the cycle of existence I have run, not finding although seeking the builder of this house; and again and again I faced the suffering of new birth. Oh housebuilder! Now you are seen. You shall not build a house again for me. All your beams are broken, the ridgepole is shattered. The mind has become freed from conditioning: the end of craving has been reached. ↗

— Gautama Buddha

#deus #house #buddhism

To sum it all up, the [Ayn] Rand belief system looks like this: 1. Facts are facts: things can be absolutely right or absolutely wrong, as determined by reason. 2. According to my reasoning, I am absolutely right. 3. Charity is immoral. 4. Pay for your own fucking schools. ↗

— Matt Taibbi

#cynicism #objectivism #philosophy #charity

There might simply be nothing going on that might activate it. Perhaps there isn't anything here that Alec is afraid of." Magnus glanced at Alec and raised his eyebrows. "Boo." Luke and Magnus, pg. 285 ↗

— Cassandra Clare

#magnus-bane #activism

Objectivity, in this sense, means that a person's statements about the world can be trusted if they are submitted to established rules deemed legitimate by a professional community. Facts here are not aspects of the world, but consensually validated statements about it. ↗

— Michael Schudson

#media #objectivity #sociology #sociology

Inevitably, people tell me that poor folks are lazy or unintelligent, that they are somehow deserving of their poverty. However, if you begin to look at the sociological literature on poverty, a more complex picture emerges. Poverty and unemployment are part and parcel of our economic order. Without them, capitalism would cease to function effectively, and in order to continue to function, the system itself must produce poverty and an army of underemployed or unemployed people. ↗

— Bob Torres

#economics #marxism #poverty #sociology #sociology