#ty

Don’t be deceived when they tell you things are better now. Even if there’s no poverty to be seen because the poverty’s been hidden. Even if you ever got more wages and could afford to buy more of these new and useless goods which industries foist on you and even if it seems to you that you never had so much, that is only the slogan of those who still have much more than you. Don’t be taken in when they paternally pat you on the shoulder and say that there’s no inequality worth speaking of and no more reason to fight because if you believe them they will be completely in charge in their marble homes and granite banks from which they rob the people of the world under the pretence of bringing them culture. Watch out, for as soon as it pleases them they’ll send you out to protect their gold in wars whose weapons, rapidly developed by servile scientists, will become more and more deadly until they can with a flick of the finger tear a million of you to pieces. ↗

— Jean-Paul Marat

#politics #pragmatism #sad-but-true #poverty

It is good," he thought "to taste for yourself everything you need to know. That worldly pleasures and wealth are not good things, I learned even as a child. I knew it for a long time, but only now have I experienced it. And now I know it, I know it not only because I remember hearing it, but with my eyes, with my heart, with my stomach. And it is good for me to know it! ↗

— Hermann Hesse

#wealth #poverty

The fact that war is the word we use for almost everything—on terrorism, drugs, even poverty—has certainly helped to desensitize us to its invocation; if we wage wars on everything, how bad can they be? ↗

— Glenn Greenwald

#iraq-war #poverty #terrorism #united-states #war

To be against rationalization is not the same as to be opposed to reasoning. ↗

— Christopher Hitchens

#logic #rationalisation #reason #september- #iraq

The belief that the world was created yesterday seems to hold great appeal to those born at that time. ↗

— Gary Malone

#creationism #religion #religious-fundamentalism #science #stupidity

A revolution is not a bed of roses. A revolution is a struggle between the future and the past. ↗

— Fidel Castro

#revolution #society #time #conflict

No one blames her." "That never matters," said Alec. "Not when you blame yourself. ↗

— Cassandra Clare

#blame #cassandra-clare #city-of-lost-souls #guilt #the-mortal-instruments

Nothing in all creation is so like God as stillness. ↗

— Meister Eckhart

#creation

I? I walk alone; The midnight street Spins itself from under my feet; My eyes shut These dreaming houses all snuff out; Through a whim of mine Over gables the moon's celestial onion Hangs high. I Make houses shrink And trees diminish By going far; my look's leash Dangles the puppet-people Who, unaware how they dwindle, Laugh, kiss, get drunk, Nor guess that if I choose to blink They die. I When in good humour, Give grass its green Blazon sky blue, and endow the sun With gold; Yet, in my wintriest moods, I hold Absolute power To boycott color and forbid any flower To be. I Know you appear Vivid at my side, Denying you sprang out of my head, Claiming you feel Love fiery enough to prove flesh real, Though it's quite clear All your beauty, all your wit, is a gift, my dear, From me. From "Soliloquy of the Solipsist ↗

— Sylvia Plath

#beauty

It is a strange thing, but when you are dreading something, and would give anything to slow down time, it has a disobliging habit of speeding up. ↗

— J.K. Rowling

#hungarian-horntail #panic #relativity #strange