#tar

Libertarianism is good because it helps conservatives pass off a patently probusiness political agenda as a noble bid for human freedom. Whatever we may think of libertarianism as a set of ideas, practically speaking, it is a doctrine that owes its visibility to the obvious charms it holds for the wealthy and the powerful. The reason we have so many well-funded libertarians in American these days is not because libertarianism suddenly acquired an enormous grassroots following, but because it appeals to those who are able to fund ideas. Like social Darwinism and Christian Science before it, libertarianism flatters the successful and rationalizes their core beliefs about the world. They warm to the libertarian idea that taxation is theft because they themselves don’t like to pay taxes. They fancy the libertarian notion that regulation is communist because they themselves find regulation intrusive and annoying. Libertarianism is a politics born to be subsidized. In the “free market of ideas,” it is a sure winner. ↗

— Thomas Frank

#freedom

In my opinion, if, as the result of certain combinations, Kepler's or Newton's discoveries could become known to people in no other way than by sacrificing the lives of one, or ten, or a hundred or more people who were hindering the discovery, or standing as an obstacle in its path, then Newton would have the right, and it would even be his duty... to remove those ten or a hundred people, in order to make his discoveries known to mankind. It by no means follows from this, incidentally, that Newton should have the right to kill anyone he pleases, whomever happens along, or to steal from the market every day. Further, I recall developing in my article the idea that all... well, let's say, the lawgivers and founders of mankind, starting from the most ancient and going on to the Lycurguses, the Solons, the Muhammads, the Napoleons, and so forth, that all of them to a man were criminals, from the fact alone that in giving a new law, they thereby violated the old one, held sacred by society and passed down from their fathers, and they certainly did not stop at shedding blood either, if it happened that blood (sometimes quite innocent and shed valiantly for the ancient law) could help them. ↗

— Fyodor Dostoyevsky

#genius #greatness #the-ends-justify-the-means #utilitarianism #marketing

An army of the people is invincible! ↗

— Mao Tse-tung

#commie #communism #mao #people #prolitariat

Every time we killed a thousand Bugs at a cost of one M.I. it was a net victory for the Bugs. We were learning, expensively, just how efficient a total communism can be when used by a people actually adapted to it by evolution; the Bug commisars didn't care any more about expending soldiers than we cared about expending ammo. Perhaps we could have figured this out about the Bugs by noting the grief the Chinese Hegemony gave the Russo-Anglo-American Alliance; however the trouble with 'lessons from history' is that we usually read them best after falling flat on our chins. ↗

— Robert A. Heinlein

#heinlein #history #starship-troopers #war #communism

Being vegetarian here also means that we do not consume dairy and egg products, because they are products of the meat industry. If we stop consuming, they will stop producing. Only collective awakening can create enough determination for action. ↗

— Thích Nhất Hạnh

#veganism #vegetarianism #buddhism

It seemed like forever ago, like we'd had this brief but still infinite forever. Some infinities are bigger than other infinities. ↗

— John Green

#the-fault-in-our-stars #ya #ya

I did some research on this a couple years ago," Augustus continued. "I was wondering if everybody could be remembered. Like, if we got organized, and assigned a certain number of corpses to each living person, would there be enough living people to remember all the dead people?" "And are there?" "Sure, anyone can name fourteen dead people. But we're disorganized mourners, so a lot of people end up remembering Shakespeare and no one ends up remembering the person he wrote Sonnet Fifty-five about ↗

— John Green

#the-fault-in-our-stars #ya #ya

I don't believe vegans (or vegetarians) who still get their (packaged, preservative/chemical-ridden) food from industrial food system have any righteous ground to stand on, nor do I think a deep look at the sentient life of plants or the true environmental impact of agriculture permits them any comfortable distance from cruelty. Everything in this world eats something else to survive, and that something else, whether running on blood or chlorophyll, would always rather continue to live rather than become sustenance for another. No animal wants to be penned up and milked, or caged and harvested, and you've never seen plants growing in regimented lines of their own accord. ↗

— Brian Awehali

#cruelty #ethics #food #plant-intelligence #veganism

I love you. I want to shout it sometimes. I know you worry about our letters and texts getting read--shades of WWII, haunting us still, I guess, and I'm well aware that nothing's safe on the internet. I worry too. You need to know that when I say it, when I ask you to say it, it's because my lungs feel full of dark water, and seeing it or writing it lets me breathe. ↗

— Amy Lane

#love

But on the upside, I guess we're getting ready to find out if you really only love me for my jet." "I might love you for your jet," Gabrielle said, straight-faced. He smiled a Kat. "What about you?" "Yeah," Kat said, nodding. "I guess that is the question. ↗

— Ally Carter

#heist-society #katarina-bishop #perfect-scoundrels #w-w-hale #love