The Sin Of Greed

“We have to fight with ourselves …in our hearts.  And we have to do it harshly in order to come to the right conclusions – even if it means our battles today are meaningless.”
-Trowa

“Intelligence in chains loses in lucidity what it gains in intensity.”
-Albert Camus

“It is not our purpose to become each  other; it is to recognize each other, to learn to see the other and honor him for what he is.”
-Herman Hesse

“Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed people can change the world.  Indeed, it is the only thing that ever has.”
-Margaret Mead

“When someone said to Voltaire, “Life is hard,” Voltaire replied, “compared to what?””
-Voltaire, French revolutionary Philosopher

“God, I’m not asking for a lesser burden, but just bigger shoulders to carry it.”
-Jewish proverb

“Courage is fear that has said it’s prayers.”
-Karl Barth

“Someone truly evil doesn’t show you that he’s evil.”

“It is the power to kill that is evil, not the person who has it.”

“Faith guarantees nothing and demands everything.”

“Work without hope draws nectar in a sieve, and hope without an object cannot live.”
-Coleridge

“The flowing of a river never stops, and for this reason it never is the same as itself.”

“When the mouse laughs at the cat, there is a hole nearby.”
-Nigerian proverb

“If you don’t become more cruel than the evil ones, then you can’t possibly beat them.”
-Moon-su

“The good that is not the best.”
-Oswald Chambers

“Of all things the measure is man, of the things that are, that they are, and of the things that are not, that they are not.”
-Protagoras “Sophists”

“I.  Nothing exists
a. not being does not exist
b. being does not exist
i. as everlasting
ii. as created
iii. as both
iv. as one
v. as many
c. a mixture of being and not being does not exist
II.  If anything exists, it is incomprehensible
III.  If it is comprehensible, it is incommunicable”
-Gorgias

“I feel therefore I live.”

“Until I get enough sleep, I will ignore you.”
-Sarah Elgindy

“He sees no people, animals or plants — only life.”

“Letter by letter, character by character, key by key, expression through my keyboard has become a big part of my life.”
-Sarah Elgindy

“Do not go where the path may lead, go instead where there is no path and leave a trail.”
-Ralph Waldo Emerson

“When you reach the top, keep climbing.”
-Zen proverb

“Curing makes people care.”
-unknown “CARE”

“To set up what you like against what you dislike is the disease of the mind.”
-Hsin Hsin Ming
Buddhist proverb

“You cannot help the poor by destroying the rich.  You cannot strengthen the weak by weakening the strong.  You cannot bring about prosperity by discouraging thrift.  You cannot lift the wage earner up by pulling the wage payer down.  You cannot further the brotherhood of man by inciting class hatred.  You cannot build character and courage by taking away men’s initiative and independence.  You cannot help men permanently by doing for them what they could and should do for themselves.”
– Abraham Lincoln

“Religion should be an option, not an obligation.”

“Violence is the last refuge of the incompetent.”
-Isaac Asimov

“Those who dream by day are cognizant of many things that escape those who dream only at night.”
– Edgar Allen Poe

“Problems cannot be solved by the same level of thinking that created them.”
– Albert Einstein

“Don’t tell me the sky is the limit when there are footprints on the moon.”

“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.”
– K.L. Mencken, Smart Set Magazine, December 1919

“School is a twelve year jail sentence where bad habits are the only curriculum truly learned.”
– John Taylor Gatto

“The abuse of greatness is when it dis joins remorse from power.”

“Kill a man, one is a murderer; Kill a million, a conqueror;  Kill them all, a God.”
– Jean Rostand

“Video games don’t affect kids.  If Pacman had affected us as kids, we’d all be running around in darkened rooms, munching magic pills and listening to repetitive electronic music.”
– Marcus Brigstocke

“They say cocaine magnifies your personality. What if you’re an asshole?”
– George Carlin

“It is the mark of an educated mind to be able to entertain a thought without accepting it.”
– Aristotle

“Not eating meat is a decision, eating meat is an instinct.”
– Denis Leary

“The great nations have always acted like gangsters, and the small nations like prostitutes.”
– Stanley Kubrick

“The Christian resolution to make the world ugly and bad has made the world ugly and bad.”
– Friedrich Nietzsche

“He who fights with monsters should look to it that he himself does not become a monster. And when you gaze long into an abyss, the abyss gazes also into you.”
– Friedrich Nietzsche

“That every will must consider every other will its equal – would be a principle hostile to life, an agent of the dissolution and destruction of man, an attempt to assassinate the future of man, a sign of weariness, a secret path to nothingness.”
– Friedrich Nietzsche

“At times one remains faithful to a cause only because its opponents do not cease to be insipid.”
– Friedrich Nietzsche

“It is impossible to teach a man what he thinks he already knows.”
– Epictetus

“Part of inhumanity of the computer is that, once it is completely programmed and working smoothly it is completely honest.”
– Isaac Asimov

“Assumptions lead to mistakes.”
– Heero Yui

“If you want music that speaks to you, that listens to you, you have to go out of your way, which I enjoy actually. I’m constantly on a private-eye kick to find the totally obscure.”
– Trevor Dunn

“We will have to continue to redefine what constitutes life in order to conceive of ways to find it.”
– Don Hoyt Gorman

“Justice without power is empty. But power without justice is simply known as violence.”
-Miyamoto Musashi

“Never be bullied into silence. Never allow yourself to be made a victim. Accept no one’s definition of your life; define yourself.”
-Harvey Fierstein (read in his voice)

“A very good friend, many years ago, also told me that I should never feel the need to justify myself to anyone. If they don’t like it, it doesn’t mean you have to explain anything.”
-Jenny Black

“The truth is that our finest moments are most likely to occur when we are feeling deeply uncomfortable, unhappy or unfulfilled. For it is only in such moments, propelled by our discomfort, that we are likely to step out of our ruts and start …searching for different ways or truer answers….”
-M. Scott Peck

“There is a curse that affects both man and gargoyle. It is loneliness. And it can eat away at the strongest souls. We all need the invigorating presence of others. A sustenance as essential as air, food or water. For alone, life is empty and no more bond is yearned for than that of a parent and child.”
-Goliath

“Being an artist, I feel that art comes from the inexplicable urge to manifest a feeling, intent, or question as a specific, tangible experience. Artists do research with an open-mindedness and rigorous inquiry unseen in most other disciplines, except true science. They systematically and visually survey the world of ideas, objects, and experiences for inspiration by rummaging through it with their bare hands. I know most of us today are more likely to get the job done with cleaner hands through a search on Google Images. But at RISD the story of someone’s work more often comes from a first-hand journey through many emotional worlds, rather than an analysis of an online slideshow of poorly photographed experiences.”
-John Maeda, president of the Rhode Island School of Design

“Writing is a form of therapy; sometimes I wonder how all those, who do not write, compose, or paint can manage to escape the madness, the melancholia, the panic fear, which is inherent in a human condition”
-Graham Greene

“Are we so narrow minded that we show war, murder, rape, etc. on TV, but we do not allow to show one of the most wonderful creations (the human body) in its natural form.”
-Mario Roman

”There Is No Beast Without Cruelty”
-Friedrich Nietzsche

“O body swayed to music, O brightening glance,
How can we know the dancer from the dance?”
—W.B. Yeats, “Among School Children”

“Life is a gift. As sweet as a ripped peach, as precious as a gilded jewel. I have never been able to understand the logic of willfully surrendering such a treasure. And what is there to gain? How dark can your existence be when compared to an eternal void? Unless of course, you have faith that there is something beyond. What do you see from where you stand? A bright light at the end of the tunnel? Is it a ray of hope? A glimmer of something better? Or will it burn you like the rising sun? Is that sound you’re hearing the trumpeting of St. Peter’s angels, or the screams of Memnoch’s tortured souls? You can’t answer that, can you, because you will never know the answer, until after the deed is done. And is your faith, really that strong? I understand the need to move on; it is something that happens to us all, and your time has truly come. I also understand that with the beauty of this life there comes pain and despair. No one is immune. But consider what you have in your hands before you give it up. Don’t trade a treasure for an empty box.”
-Lucien LaCroix

“We ask ourselves if there is a God how can He let this happen? Better to ask if there is a God must he be sane?”
-Lucien LaCroix

“I have no taste for holiness in any of its forms. It plays havoc with my digestion.”
-Lucien LaCroix

“Love? A blip on the monitor of involuntary human response. A hiccup of emotion when compared with envy, hatred, lust. And just who was this Saint Valentine? A bishop, Roman, Third Century, got his head sliced off… ouch. For marrying lovers against his emperor’s decree. You see, Claudius The Second believed that men made better warriors unmarried. Power comes with the absence of love. Love…drains us of our strength. We never learn, do we? And you say that love conquers all! Well, not for you St. Valentine, not for me. Not for any are that… heart… broken.”
-Lucien LaCroix

“Does love really exist in this hedonistic world of ours? Or is it only our selfish needs? Our own desires that fuel the potion. Does she love me, love me not… What does it really matter? One hellish alchemy if it does.”
-Lucien LaCroix

“Love exists, it rages within, a silent scream of endless pain, and I shall commune to you, without equal, not death, not hell itself, but a precious, precious love, long withered, and gone…”
-Lucien LaCroix

“If you love something, let it go. If it doesn’t return; hunt it down, and kill it.”
-Lucien LaCroix

“So it’s question time on Nightwatch dear listeners. I see by the old clock on the wall that its very nearly Fathers Day. So tonight’s question is what is a father? Ring. We have a caller and the caller says a father is altruistic. Bzzt. Too bad. Every parent wants something in return. Love. Loyalty. Nothing is free.”
-Lucien LaCroix

“Prize what you will, prize what you can, but always remember even he who dies with the most prizes still dies…”
-Lucien LaCroix

“But what kind of god is it that can create such perversity, that can make such torture?”
-Lucien LaCroix

“Love. How it toys with us. Makes utter fools of us. Clubs, whips… and spanks us. Listen to the voices of the unloved as they surge and retreat in the night… Whisper to empty rooms… And lonely beds. The hunger of love. Unattained. Rushing through our fingers. Unstoppable. Fleeting. Gone. And yet, when we touch this love, it burns us with its bright flame. It punishes and consumes. And yet we must have it. It rules us. Uses. Abuses. Misuses. And yet why do we always crawl back for more?”
-Lucien LaCroix

“Surely there is grandeur in knowing that in the realm of thought, at least, you are without a chain; that you have the right to explore all heights and depth; that there are no walls nor fences, nor prohibited places, nor sacred corners in all the vast expanse of thought.”
-Robert Green Ingersoll

“I have this great idea of being an all creative and vibrant and evolved and illuminating being, but I’m really just a fuck.”
-John Stepp

“Anytime you thinkin’ about evil, you thinkin’ about the blues.”
– Howlin’ Wolf

”Let your vinyl albums become protective amulets, talismans against the evil of music as product. May their very existence strike fear into the heartless holes of the soulless. So mote it be. Amen.”
– H. A. Largelamb

“At birth man is offered only one choice- the choice of his death. But if this choice is governed by distaste for his own existence, his life will never have been more than meaningless. ”
-Jean-Pierre Melville

“We do not ask what purpose the birds do sing, for song is their pleasure since they were created for singing. Similarly, we ought not to ask why the human mind troubles to fathom the secrets of the heavens. The diversity of the phenomena of nature is so great and the treasures hidden in the heavens so rich precisely in order that the human mind shall never be lacking in fresh nourishment.”
-Johannes Kepler

“Dissent is Patriotic.”
-Mark Twain

“It doesn’t matter which party is in control, or whether they are “authorities”; if they are wrong, it would be treason not to openly oppose them. The citizen who thinks he sees that the commonwealth’s political clothes are worn out, and yet holds his peace and does not agitate for a new suit, is disloyal, he is a traitor. That he may be the only one who thinks he sees this decay, does not excuse him: it is his duty to agitate anyway, and it is the duty of others to vote him down if they do not see the matter as he does.”
-Mark Twain, A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court (1889)

“The saddest aspect of life right now is that science gathers knowledge faster than society gathers wisdom.”
-Isaac Asimov

“That only a few, under any circumstances, protest against the injustice of long- established laws and customs, does not disprove the fact of the oppressions, while the satisfaction of the many, if real only proves their apathy and deeper degradation.”
-Elizabeth Cady Stanton, (1815-1902), social activist, abolitionist, freethinker

“A society made up of individuals who were all capable of original thought would probably be unendurable.”
-HL Mencken

“I am influenced by others, but I do not adhere to anything. I pave my own path. Call it what you may.”
-Ryan Scott Fairfield

“The  charm of history and its enigmatic lesson consist in the fact that,  from age to age, nothing changes and yet everything is completely  different.”
-Aldous Huxley

“…And it came to pass that the path that humanity had initially started out on was no longer a viable way to gain satisfaction; so those who could steer the outcomes of other people’s actions were no longer an acceptable outlet for humankind’s thoughts and praise.  On the other hand, those in power refused to let go of the feelings of safety and comfort they had been accustomed to in their lifetimes.  This lead to a sundering between those in suffering and those in power.  The two sides become at odds when once they were in symbiosis and the only way to cross the line that had been drawn was to humbly praise the evil deed each side had committed in the past.”
-Conor

“This is the only song we have that isn’t about weed; it’s called ‘Eat Pussy.’”
– Dave Sherman