Private appropriation of community-created value is a betrayal of
the promise of information-sharing technology.
| George Hanson: |
You know, this used to be a helluva good country. I can't
understand what's gone wrong with it. |
| Billy: |
Man, everybody got chicken, that's what happened. Hey, we can't
even get into like, a second-rate hotel, I mean, a second-rate
motel, you dig? They think we're gonna cut their throat or
somethin'. They're scared, man. |
| George Hanson: |
They're not scared of you. They're scared of what you represent
to 'em. |
| Billy: |
Hey, man. All we represent to them, man, is somebody who needs
a haircut. |
| George Hanson: |
Oh, no. What you represent to them is freedom. |
| Billy: |
What the hell is wrong with freedom? That's what it's all
about. |
| George Hanson: |
Oh, yeah, that's right. That's what's it's all about, all
right. But talkin' about it and bein' it, that's two different
things. I mean, it's real hard to be free when you are bought and
sold in the marketplace. Of course, don't ever tell anybody that
they're not free, 'cause then they're gonna get real busy killin'
and maimin' to prove to you that they are. Oh, yeah, they're gonna
talk to you, and talk to you, and talk to you about individual
freedom. But they see a free individual, it's gonna scare 'em. |
| Billy: |
Well, it don't make 'em runnin' scared. |
| George Hanson: |
No, it makes 'em dangerous. |
Flip answers are more powerful than the best reasoned arguments.
Power relations being what they are, I feel at once moralistic and
silly proposing alternatives.
The first man who had fenced in a piece of land, said "This is
mine," and found people naïve enough to believe him, that man was
the true founder of civil society. From how many crimes, wars, and
murders, from how many horrors and misfortunes might not any one
have saved mankind, by pulling up the stakes, or filling up the
ditch, and crying to his fellows: Beware of listening to this
impostor; you are undone if you once forget that the fruits of the
earth belong to us all, and the earth itself to nobody.
And how we burned in the camps later, thinking: What would things
have been like if every Security operative, when he went out at
night to make an arrest, had been uncertain whether he would return
alive and had to say good-bye to his family? Or if, during periods
of mass arrests, as for example in Leningrad, when they arrested a
quarter of the entire city, people had not simply sat there in
their lairs, paling with terror at every bang of the downstairs
door and at every step on the staircase, but had understood they
had nothing left to lose and had boldly set up in the downstairs
hall an ambush of half a dozen people with axes, hammers, pokers,
or whatever else was at hand? …The Organs would very quickly have
suffered a shortage of officers and transport and, notwithstanding
all of Stalin’s thirst, the cursed machine would have ground to a
halt! If…if… We didn’t love freedom enough. And even more – we had
no awareness of the real situation…. We purely and simply deserved
everything that happened afterward.
—Solzhenitsyn, Gulag
Archipelago
The idea of making cars more efficient by making more efficient
cars is sheer folly. I can take any pick-up truck and increase its
fuel efficiency one or two thousand percent just by breaking a few
laws. First, you pack about a dozen people into the bed, standing
shoulder to shoulder like sardines. Second, you drive about 25 mph,
down the highway, because going any faster would waste fuel and
wouldn’t be safe with so many people in the back. And there you
are, per passenger fuel efficiency increased by a factor of 20 or
so. I believe the Mexicans have done extensive research in this
area, with excellent results.
I had a bright class, those who had placed well in their
achievement tests. There were about twenty-eight. I asked them, "If
there were war declared against, say, Nicaragua, how many of you
would just pack up your bags and leave tomorrow?" All but two said
they'd go. I followed up: "Who were we fighting for? What side
would we support? Did we support the government of Nicaragua?" The
two knew. The other twenty-six didn't know.
—Sean Kelly, teaching assistant at
Bowling Green University, Ohio; interviewed by Studs Terkel in
The Great Divide.
Why does this [the study of primitive societies] matter? Because it
shows that chronic stress, anxiety and frustration, depression, and
so forth, are not inevitable parts of the human condition, but are
disorders brought on by modern civilization. Nor is servitude an
inevitable part of the human condition: The example of at least
some nomadic hunter-gatherers shows that true freedom is possible.
The political left is technological society’s first line of defense
against revolution. In fact, the left today serves as a kind of
fire extinguisher that douses and quenches any nascent
revolutionary movement. What do I mean by “the left”? If you think
that racism, sexism, gay rights, animal rights, indigenous people’s
rights, and “social justice” in general are among the most
important issues that the world currently faces, then you are a
leftist as I use that term. If you don’t like this application of
the world “leftist”, then you are free to designate the people I’m
referring to by some other term. But, whatever you call them, the
people who extinguish revolutionary movements are the people who
are drawn indiscriminately to causes: racism, sexism, gay rights,
animal rights, the environment, poverty, sweatshops,
neocolonialism—it’s all the same to them. These people constitute a
subculture that has been labeled “the adversary culture”[5].
Whenever a movement of resistance begins to emerge, these leftists
(or whatever you choose to call them) come swarming to it like
flies to honey until they outnumber the original members of the
movement, take it over, and turn it into just another leftist
faction, thereby emasculating it. The history of “Earth First!”
provides an elegant example of this process.[6]
Where, how, by whom are the key decisions concerning global social
issues made? Are they made in the public space, through the engaged
participation of the majority? If the answer is yes, it is of
secondary importance if the state has a one-party system, etc. If
the answer is no, it is of secondary importance if we have
parliamentary democracy and freedom of individual choices.
It is a commonplace that the history of civilisation is largely the
history of weapons. In particular, the connection between the
discovery of gunpowder and the overthrow of feudalism by the
bourgeoisie has been pointed out over and over again. And though I
have no doubt exceptions can be brought forward, I think the
following rule would be found generally true: that ages in which
the dominant weapon is expensive or difficult to make will tend to
be ages of despotism, whereas when the dominant weapon is cheap and
simple, the common people have a chance. Thus, for example, tanks,
battleships and bombing planes are inherently tyrannical weapons,
while rifles, muskets, long-bows and hand-grenades are inherently
democratic weapons. A complex weapon makes the strong stronger,
while a simple weapon—so long as there is no answer to it—gives
claws to the weak
Even the most sordid gangsters aim to achieve respectability.
Paul Mobbs points out in his new report on Britain's secretive
police forces, today the police appear to be motivated not by party
political bias, but by hostility towards all views which do not
reflect the official consensus. Mobbs proposes that mainstream
politics in Britain cannot respond to realities such as global and
national inequality, economic collapse, resource depletion and
climate change. Any politics that does not endorse the liberal
economic consensus, which challenges the concentration of wealth or
power, or which doesn't accept that growth and consumerism can be
sustained indefinitely, is off-limits. ... By treating protesters
as domestic extremists, the state marginalises their concerns: if
people are extremists, their views must be extreme. Repression, in
a nominal democracy, cannot operate accountably, so the state uses
police units which are exempt from public scrutiny.
There can be little doubt that, particularly perhaps in English
society, occupancy of a negatively valued class position entails
much more than mere economic deprivation: it establishes within the
individual a (realistic) sense of inferiority which is almost
organically rooted and which colours almost every aspect of his or
her social conduct and awareness.
In the event of a conflict, the typical neoliberal state will tend
to side with a good business climate as opposed to either the
collective rights (and quality of life) of labour or the capacity
of the environment to regenerate itself.
The US had funded training of Chilean economists at the University
of Chicago since the 1950s as part of a Cold War programme to
counteract left-wing tendencies in Latin America. Chicago-trained
economists came to dominate at the private Catholic University in
Santiago. During the early 1970s, business elites organized their
opposition to Allende through a group "the Monday Club" and
developed a working relationship with these economists, funding
their work through research institutes. They reversed the
nationalizations and privatized public assets, opened up natural
resources (fisheries, timber, etc.) to private and unregulated
exploitation, privatized social security, and facilitated foreign
direct investment and freer trade. The right of foreign companies
to repatriate profits from their Chilean operations was guaranteed.
Export-led growth was favoured over import substitution. The only
sector reserved for the state was the key resource of copper
(rather like oil in Iraq).
These people who need their television or stereo or radio playing
all the time. These people so scared of silence. These are my
neighbors. These sound-oholics. These quiet-ophobics. The music and
laughter eat away at your thoughts. The noise blots them out. All
the sound distracts. Your head aches from the glue. Anymore, no
one's mind is their own. You can't concentrate. You can't think.
There's always some noise worming in. Singers shouting. Dead people
laughing. Actors crying. All these little doses of emotion.
Someone's always spraying the air with their mood.
If Obama as president of the United States does not obey the orders
of the empire, they will kill him, like they killed Kennedy
—Hugo Chavez, Jan 17, 2009
There is a logic about writing, about thought, about
philosophizing, yes, a stoic logic in that sense. One cannot add
pathos, a subjective dimension, nor a collective sense of things to
the vision one may have of the world, as well as of nature.
Although, of course, when I say this I am quite aware that such a
position is provocative, paradoxical and ultimately unacceptable. I
do understand people's anger against such a position.
What parades as progress in the culture industry, as the
incessantly new which it offers up, remains the disguise for an
eternal sameness; everywhere the changes mask a skeleton which has
changed just as little as the profit motive itself since the time
it first gained its predominance over culture.
Quite contrary to those who expect liberation to come from the
White House, Obama has turned out to be the Yankee ruling class'
best chance to restore their lost hegemony.
Poverty is not a certain small amount of goods, nor is it just a
relation between means and ends; above all it is a relation between
people. Poverty is a social status. As such it is the invention of
civilisation. It has grown with civilisation, at once as an
invidious distinction between classes and more importantly as a
tributary relation that can render agrarian peasants more
susceptible to natural catastrophes than any winter camp of Alaskan
Eskimo.
The safest group of people to be with in a crisis is one that does
not share strong ideological convictions, is not easily swayed by
argument, and does not possess an overdeveloped, exclusive sense of
identity.
Clueless busybodies who feel that "we must do something" and can
be spun around by any half-wit demagogue are bad enough, but the
most dangerous group, and one to watch out for and run from, is a
group of political activists resolved to organize and promote some
program or other.
The settler and pioneer have at bottom had justice on their side:
this great continent could not have been kept as nothing but a game
preserve for squalid savages.
Everywhere we meet people who, because they are filled with the
consciousness of Higher Interests they must serve unto death, are
no longer capable of making the simplest moral or intellectual
distinctions or of engaging in the most elementary reasoning. Yet
all this is acquired without effort, experience, reflection, or
criticism—by the destructive shock effect of well-made propaganda.
There are always those who will use the strongest and highest
emotions men to serve their private, sordid ends.
In fact, when men are fabricating thought,
It goes as when a weaver's masterpiece is wrought.
One treadle sets a thousand threads a-going,
And to and fro the shuttle flies;
Quite unperceived the threads are flowing,
One stroke effects a thousand ties.
Imagine birds living in a forest. Humans come and cut the forest
down and build barns and plant crops. If some birds are able to
live in the barns, or eat the crops, they don't say, "I'm not going
to live in the barn -- that's cheating," or "I'm not going to eat
the crops, because then I'm just part of the system." Of all the
species on Earth, only humans are that stupid.
... the upper classes allowed no values to the workpeople but those
which the slave-owner appreciates in the slave. The working man was
to be industrious and attentive, not to think for himself, to owe
loyalty and attachment to his master alone, to recognise that his
proper place in the economy of the state was the place of the slave
in the economy of the sugar plantation. Take many virtues we admire
in a man, and they become vices in a slave.
Many, many people, regardless of education, are easy prey for the
ideas of the corporate decision-makers. Present them with a
decision, they will accept it!
What do you think these responses indicate about the mindset of
the corporate man?
Ready to goosestep. Fully in sync with the bottom line of the
commanding operation. And not just the corporate man: the corporate
woman, the academic man, the political woman, the alcoholic child.
Many, many people, regardless of education, are easy prey for the
ideas of the corporate decision-makers. Present them with a
decision, they will accept it! This is why it is important for
citizens to decide what sorts of corporate decisions are and are
not acceptable. It is never possible to count on the highly
educated to filter the okay from the rotten. It is not possible to
expect that Ph.D.s will always be on the lookout for the fascist
and murderous.
I can't even watch [the presidential debates] because of all the
bullshit they take for granted: that it's good for America to be
much stronger than other nations, that there is a moral difference
between our military
bombing other countries and their militaries bombing us, that the
real job of our
troops is to spread democracy and not to enforce a global
domination system, that swarthy foreigners are determined to strike
us for vague hateful reasons, that we must sacrifice autonomy and
privacy for security, that we even need this much security, that
surveillance technologies should be used from the top down before
they're used from the bottom up, that private sector fees are good
and normal but public sector fees are a terrible burden, that
medical care should be paid for through insurance, that the real
job of the schooling system is to make kids smart and not to make
them submissive, that the economy should grow, that it's normal and
good to have an economy based on lending, that material wealth is a
good measure of success, that every technology we have ever adopted
is now a "need".
I commissioned research from specialists at Cardiff University, who
surveyed more than 2,000 UK news stories from the four quality
dailies (Times, Telegraph, Guardian, Independent) and the Daily
Mail. They found two striking things. First, when they tried to
trace the origins of their "facts", they discovered that only 12%
of the stories were wholly composed of material researched by
reporters. With 8% of the stories, they just couldn't be sure. The
remaining 80%, they found, were wholly, mainly or partially
constructed from second-hand material, provided by news agencies
and by the public relations industry. Second, when they looked for
evidence that these "facts" had been thoroughly checked, they found
this was happening in only 12% of the stories.
Egads! Holy Shit! You suddenly feel a little bit lonely at age
sixteen as you come to realize that you may be surrounded by fully
grown adults who are delusional incompetents that cannot
distinguish fiction from fact and are enthralled by some kind of
massive group hysteria.
[Links forthcoming]
The notion of 'responsibility' lies at the heart
of what one might well call our suppression of the
social. Whatever it is we seek to understand - ranging from the
reasons for personal distress to the 'evil' of
spectacular crime or the failure of public servants to avert some
social disaster - it is always to an unanalysed and unanalysable
individual, internal world (where 'blame' is harboured) that we
turn our gaze. This evasion of the obvious - that it is the way our society is organized and structured that
constitutes the main source of our difficulties - is
understandable only in terms of the extent of the powers
which are deployed to maintain it. This can be seen
very clearly in current political discourse.
As essential cogs in the vast economic machine designed to
extract profit for the minority at the top of the social pyramid,
politicians have an important role in representing disadvantage as
personal moral failure. How wittingly they perform this role is
open to question but, as a matter of 'commentary',
is a question of little interest. The distal pressures on the
advocates of the 'third way' to reinforce an
interiorized view of responsibility are enormous.
Cynicism such as one finds very frequently among the most highly
educated young men and women of the West results from the
combination of comfort with powerlessness. Powerlessness makes
people feel that nothing is worth doing, and comfort makes the
painfulness of this feeling just endurable. Throughout the East the
university student can hope for more influence upon public opinion
than he can have in the modern West, but he has much less
opportunity than in the West of securing a substantial income. But,
neither powerless nor comfortable, he becomes a reformer or
revolutionary, not a cynic. The happiness of the reformer or
revolutionary depends upon the course of public affairs, but
even while he is being executed he enjoys more real
happiness than is possible for the comfortable cynic.
—Bertrand Russell, The Conquest
of Happiness
The happiness of the reformer or revolutionary depends upon the
course of public affairs, but even while he is being executed he
enjoys more real happiness than is possible for the comfortable
cynic.
—Bertrand Russell, The Conquest
of Happiness
[A] worker in a modern industrial community is not a detached unit,
whose contract to work only concerns himself and his employer. The
fellow-workers in the same trade and society at large have a
distinct and recognizable interest in the conditions of the work of
one another. A, by keeping his shop open on Sundays, or for long
hours on week-days, is able to compel B, C, D, and all the rest of
his trade competitors to do the same. A minority of workmen by
accepting low wages, or working over-time, are often able to compel
the majority to do the same. There is no labour-contract or other
commercial act which merely regards the interest of the parties
directly concerned.
Ye know that the princes of the Gentiles exercise dominion over
them, and they that are great exercise authority upon them. But it
shall not be so among you: but whosoever will be great among you,
let him be your minister; and whosoever will be chief among you,
let him be your servant.
—Jesus
I do not agree that the dog in a manger has the final right to the
manger even though he may have lain there for a very long time. I
do not admit that right. I do not admit for instance, that a great
wrong has been done to the Red Indians of America or the black
people of Australia. I do not admit that a wrong has been done to
these people by the fact that a stronger race, a higher-grade race,
a more worldly-wise race to put it that way, has come in and taken
their place.
—Winston Churchill
What school amounts to, then, for white and black alike, is a
12-year course in how to be slaves. What else could explain what I
see in a freshman class? They've got that slave mentality: obliging
and ingratiating on the surface but hostile and resistant
underneath.
The State, completely in its genesis, essentially and almost
completely during the first stages of its existence, is a social
institution, forced by a victorious group of men on a defeated
group, with the sole purpose of regulating the dominion of the
victorious group over the vanquished, and securing itself against
revolt from within and attacks from abroad. [...] Its basic
justification, its raison d'être, was and is the economic
exploitation of those subjugated.
The Unabomber's use of violence should not disqualify him from
consideration. His willingness and ability to effectively use
violence to achieve strategic political goals merely demonstrate
the essential qualifications to be president.
The “scientific” position frequently consists of denying the
existence of whatever does not belong to current scientific method.
The progress of science, while increasing the stock of knowledge,
increases also the area of conscious ignorance
—Alfred Marshall
But after a certain point, after living in the woods for a while, I
developed an aversion to reading any scientific accounts. In some
sense reading what the professional biologists said about wildlife
ruined or contaminated it for me. What began to matter to me was
the knowledge I acquired about wildlife through personal
experience.
—Ted Kaczynski, interview in
Green Anarchist
The most that can honestly be said of those involved on September
11 is that they finally responded in kind to some of what this
country has dispensed to their people as a matter of course.
[T]he French writers of the last century made a good point in
inventing the term nations polliceés (policemanised
nations) as a substitute for civilised nations; for perhaps there
is no better or more universal mark of the period we are
considering, and of its social degradation, than the appearance of
the crawling phenomenon in question. Imagine the rage of any decent
North American Indians if they had been told they required
policemen to keep them in order!
Nowadays ambition and the love of a job well done are the indelible
mark of defeat and of the most mindless submission.
In our own day an individual of exceptional powers can hardly hope
to have so great a career or so great a social influence as in
former times, if he devotes himself to art or to religious and
moral reform. There are, however, still four careers which are open
to him; he may become a great political leader, like Lenin; he may
acquire vast industrial power, like Rockefeller; he may transform
the world by scientific discoveries, as is being done by the atomic
physicists; or, finally, if he has not the necessary capacities for
any of these careers, or if opportunity is lacking, his energy in
default of other outlet may drive him into a life of crime.
In a totalitarian State an innovator whose ideas are disliked by
the government is not merely put to death, which is a matter to
which a brave man may remain indifferent, but is totally prevented
from causing his doctrine to be known.
The scholar, who really does nothing but 'trundle' books — the
philologist at a modest assessment about 200 a day — finally loses
altogether the ability to think for himself. If he does not trundle
he does not think. He replies to a stimulus (— a thought
he has read) when he thinks — finally he does nothing but react.
The scholar expends his entire strength in affirmation and denial,
in criticizing what has already been thought — he himself no longer
thinks . . . The instinct for self-defence has in his case become
soft; otherwise he would defend himself against books. The scholar
— a dêcadent. — This I have seen with my own eyes: natures
gifted, rich and free already in their thirties 'read to ruins',
mere matches that have to be struck if they are to ignite
— emit 'thoughts'. — Early in the morning at the break of day, in
all the freshness and dawn of one's strength, to read a
book — I call that vicious!
—Nietzsche, Ecce Homo
[Says the conquerer,] "A man is more a man through the things he
keeps to himself than through those he says."
—Camus, The Absurd
Man
Ask yourself what you did to me to have made me clean the slate.
—Cho Seung-Hui
Just so hollow and ineffectual, for the most part, is our ordinary
conversation. Surface meets surface. When our life ceases to be
inward and private, conversation degenerates into mere gossip. We
rarely meet a man who can tell us any news which he has not read in
a newspaper, or been told by his neighbor; and, for the most part,
the only difference between us and our fellow is that he has seen
the newspaper, or been out to tea, and we have not. In proportion
as our inward life fails, we go more constantly and desperately to
the post-office.
I do not know but it is too much to read one newspaper a week. I
have tried it recently, and for so long it seems to me that I have
not dwelt in my native region. The sun, the clouds, the snow, the
trees say not so much to me. You cannot serve two masters. It
requires more than a day's devotion to know and to possess the
wealth of a day.
The concept of "mental health" in our society is defined largely by
the extent to which an individual behaves in accord with the needs
of the system and does so without showing signs of stress.
The system does not and cannot exist to satisfy human needs.
Instead, it is human behavior that has to be modified to fit the
needs of the system. This has nothing to do with the political or
social ideology that may pretend to guide the technological system.
It is the fault of technology, because the system is guided not by
ideology but by technical necessity.
Assuming that any change, because it would contribute to justice,
equity and peace, need only to be explained to be adopted is the
saddest and most irritating kind of naïveté. Many good, otherwise
intelligent people seem to believe that once powerful individuals
and institutions have actually understood the gravity of the crisis
(any crisis) and the urgent need for its remedy, they will smack
their brows, admit they have been wrong all along and, in a flash
of revelation, instantly redirect their behaviour by 180 degrees.
While ignorance and stupidity must be given their due, most
things come out the way they do because the powerful want them to
come out that way.
—Susan George, The Lugano
Report
It is simply not true that India's Independence was the fruit of
Gandhian non-violent agitation. [...] [T]he trigger events in
1945-47 that demonstrated how the Indian people would not tolerate
British rule for much longer, had to do with armed struggle rather
than with non-violence: the naval mutiny of Indian troops and the
ostentatious nationwide support for the officers of Subhas Bose's
Axis-collaborationist Indian National Army when they stood trial
for treason in the Red Fort.
The nucleus of party councils which became, after the reduction of
the Electoral College, the real choosers of the Presidents, were
unofficial, quasi-anonymous, utterly unchecked by the populace
whose rulers they chose. [...] As soon as [the party] system was
organized into a hierarchy extending from national down to state
and county politics, it became perfectly safe to broaden the
electorate.
One who attributes the best intentions to the U.S. government,
while perhaps deploring failure and ineptitude, requires no
evidence for this stance. [...] Standards are radically different
when we observe that "good intentions" are not properties of
states, and that the United States, like every other state past and
present, pursues policies that reflect the interests of those who
control the state by virtue of their domestic power—truisms that
are hardly expressible in the mainstream, surprising as this fact
may be.
—Noam Chomsky, Necessary
Illusions
In a three-minute stretch between commercials, or in seven hundred
words, it is impossible to present unfamiliar thoughts or
surprising conclusions with the argument and evidence required to
afford them some credibility. Regurgitation of welcome pieties
faces no such problem.
—Noam Chomsky, Necessary
Illusions
Political philosophy can delight us with fantasy and convince us
who need illusion to live that the actual is a fair and approximate
copy—full of failings, of course, but approximately sound and
sincere—of that ideal society which we can imagine ourselves as
creating. From this it is a step to the tacit assumption that we
have somehow had a hand in its creation and are responsible for its
maintenance and sanctity.
Nothing is more obvious, however, than that every one of us
comes into society as into something whose creation we have not had
the slightest hand. [...] Society and its institutions are, to the
individual who enters it, as much naturalistic phenomena as the
weather itself. There is therefore no natural sanctity in the State
any more than there is in the weather. We may bow down before it,
just as our ancestors bowed down before the sun and moon, but it is
only because something in us unregenerate finds satisfaction in
such an attitude, not because there is anything inherently
reverential in the institution worshipped.
[I]n a warm climate, no man will labour for himself who can make
another labour for him.
Abhor that which is evil.
As he blew the smoke weakly at the open door Uncle told himself the
story he had heard as a little boy, how Kuloskap had abandoned the
world because of the evil in it. He made a great feast to say
good-by, then he paddled off in his great canoe. Now he lives in a
splendid long house, making arrows. When the cabin is filled with
them he will make war on all mankind.
—Leonard Cohen, Beautiful
Losers
Voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding
of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is tell them they
are being attacked and denounce the pacifists for lack of
patriotism and exposing the country to danger. It works the same in
any country.
—Hermann Göring
By happy coincidence, they insisted, the media course that would
make them richest was the same one that held the most fulfilling
promise for everyone on the planet.
—Norman Solomon on the
AOL-Time-Warner merger
Once you have them by the balls, their hearts and minds will
follow.
—Richard Nixon, quoted by Hunter S.
Thompson (talk, 11-01-1977)
Having a favorite baseball team is like having a favorite oil
company.
—Hunter S. Thompson (talk,
11-01-1977)
One hot tip: if you spot a bug which is being ignored, send a
completely botched fix to the mailing list. This causes thousands
of kernel developers to rally to the cause. Nobody knows why this
happens.
—Andrew Morton, offering advice for
new Linux kernel developers
Injustice is preferable to total ruin.
—Garret Hardin
Forests precede civilizations and deserts follow them.
—François-René de
Chateaubriand
What many now call 'growth' will soon be seen as accelerated decay.
—Dan Fiscus
The most savage controversies are those about matters as to which
there is no good evidence either way. Persecution is used in
theology, not in arithmetic, because in arithmetic there is
knowledge, but in theology there is only opinion.
—Bertrand Russell, An Outline of
Intellectual Rubbish
In a man whose reasoning powers are good, fallacious arguments are
evidence of bias.
—Bertrand Russell, Unpopular
Essays
All such good things as excite envy are, as a class, the outcome of
good luck.
—Aristotle, Rhetoric
We act as though comfort and luxury were the chief requirements of
life, when all that we need to make us happy is something to be
enthusiastic about.
—Einstein
He's like Rembrandt or Mozart, one of these very big people, so his
personality is beside the point.
—Grandmaster Einar S. Einarsson on
Bobby Fischer
The character of a democracy is largely determined by the forces
which it regards as its enemies.
—Bertrand Russell, Fact and
Fiction
[M]oral considerations are the worst enemies of the scientific
spirit and we must dismiss them from our minds if we wish to arrive
at truth.
—Bertrand Russell, Analysis of
Mind
Both of these views, in most of those who have held them, are the
product of theory rather than observation, for observation requires
effort, whereas repeating phrases does not.
—Bertrand Russell, Analysis of
Mind
I was disturbed both in my private life and in my public life as a
composer. I could not accept the academic idea that the purpose of
music was communication, because I noticed that when I
conscientiously wrote something sad, people and critics were often
apt to laugh. I determined to give up composition unless I could
find a better reason for doing it than communication. I found this
answer from Gira Sarabhai, an Indian singer and tabla player: The
purpose of music is to sober and quiet the mind, thus making it
susceptible to divine influences. I also found in the writings of
Ananda K. Coomaraswammy that the responsibility of the artist is to
imitate nature in her manner of operation. I became less disturbed
and went back to work.
—John Cage, An Autobiographical
Statement
Today, most basic and applied researchers are effectively standing
on top of a huge pyramid, not just on one set of shoulders. Of
course, a pyramid can rise to far greater heights than could any
one person, especially if the foundation is strong and broad. But
what happens if, in order to scale the pyramid and place a new
block on the top, a researcher must gain the permission of each
person who previously placed a block in the pyramid, perhaps paying
a royalty or tax to gain such permission? Would this system of
intellectual property rights slow down the construction of the
pyramid or limit its height?
—Slashdot poster on software
copyrights
The keynote of [Disraeli's] life is contained in his exclamation
when the House of Commons laughed down his maiden speech: "The time
will come when you shall hear me!" How different is the
attitude of the born aristocrat in the face of laughter is
illustrated by the story of the elder Pitt, who once began a speech
in the House with the words: "Sugar, Sir—," which caused a titter.
Looking round, he repeated in louder tones: "Sugar, Sir—," and
again there was a titter. A third time, with looks of wrath, and in
a voice of thunder, he repeated: "Sugar, Sir—." And this time not
the faintest titter was to be heard.
—Bertrand Russell on attitudes
toward the herd
If you wish a man to commit some abominable crime, from which he
would naturally recoil in horror, you first teach him loyalty to a
gang of arch-criminals, and then make his crime appear to him as
exemplifying the virtue of loyalty. Of this process, patriotism is
the most perfect instance.
—Bertrand Russell, Education and
the Social Order
It is good to know by heart things from which one derives
spontaneous pleasure, and it is totally useless, from the
standpoint of education in literature, to read anything, however
classical, which does not give actual delight to the reader. The
literature that is read with avidity and known intimately moulds
diction and style, whereas the literature that is read once coldly
merely promotes pseudo-intelligent conversation. Pupils should, of
course, write as well as read, but what they write should not be
criticised, nor should they be shown how, in the teacher's opinion,
they might have written it better. So far as writing is concerned,
there should be no teaching.
—Bertrand Russell, Education and
the Social Order
It will be found that more is learnt in the shorter hours of
voluntary lessons than in the longer times of enforced and
inattentive boredom. But the teacher must adapt the instruction to
the pupils' sense of what is worth knowing, and not attempt to
bully them into an insincere pretence that ancient rubbish has some
occult and mysterious value.
—Bertrand Russell, Education and
the Social Order
There are, in the teaching profession, two very different types.
There are those who have an enthusiasm for some subject, and who
love to teach it and implant their own enthusiasm in their pupils.
On the other hand, there are those who enjoy the position of power
and easy superiority, who like governing but have not enough skill
to govern grown men. Some systems favour the former type, some the
latter; modern efficiency tends more and more to favour the man who
governs rather than teaches.
—Bertrand Russell, Education and
the Social Order
[A]s a boy so passionately fond of books, and dedicated to
intellectual pursuits, I could not fail to have enjoyed many happy
hours in the midst of general dejection.
—Thomas de Quincey, Confessions
of an English Opium-Eater
Our beds are empty 2/3rds of the time. Our living rooms are empty
7/8ths of the time. Our office buildings are empty 1/2 of the time.
It's time we gave this some thought.
—R. Buckminster Fuller
He who wishes to rule must have recourse both to cunning and to
make-believe.
—The Protocols of the Learned
Elders of Zion
Staying union free is a full time commitment. Unless union
prevention is a goal equal to other goals and objectives in the
organization, management will not devote the necessary day in, day
out attention and effort. If there is any evidence of moves towards
unionisation, managers are ordered to phone the Wal-Mart Union
Hotline immediately.
—"Manager's Toolbox to Remaining
Union Free," an internal Wal-Mart document.
Whoever will observe how many of our poets have been men of private
means will realize how much poetic capacity must have remained
undeveloped through poverty
—Bertrand Russell, Proposed
Roads to Freedom
It is just as foolish to complain that people are selfish and
treacherous as it is to complain that the magnetic field does not
increase unless the electric field has a curl.
—John Von Neumann
When I give food to the poor, they call me a saint. When I ask why
the poor have no food, they call me a communist.
—Dom Hélder Câmara
"What did you do today?" I ask routinely (before she can ask me).
"Nothing," she replies with a shrug, a confession of failure, a
penitent admission that another day has been wasted.
—Joseph Heller, Something
Happened
He had that rare weird electricity about him—that extremely wild
and heavy presence that you only see in a person who has abandoned
all hope of ever behaving "normally."
—Hunter S. Thompson, Fear and
Loathing '72
Physicists have recently advanced opinions which should have led
them to agree with the foregoing remarks; but they have been so
pained by the conclusions to which logic would have led them that
they have been abandoning logic for theology in shoals.
—Bertrand Russell, The
Scientific Outlook