Quotes and Wisdoms

[Ocean Breeze]

“I sat there in agony thinking about all that had led me to this private hell. My idealism, my patriotism, my ambition, my plans to be a good intelligence officer to help my country fight the communist scourge — what in the hell had happened? Why did we have to bomb the people we were trying to save? Why were we napalming young children? Why did the CIA, my employer for 16 years, report lies instead of the truth?

“I hated my part in the charade of murder and horror. My efforts were contributing to the deaths, to the burning alive of children — especially the children. The photographs of young Vietnamese children burned by napalm destroyed me.” : Ralph McGehee former CIA intelligence analyst

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“I suspected I was just part of a racket at the time. Now I am sure of it. Like all members of the military profession I never had an original thought until I left the service. My mental faculties remained in suspended animation while I obeyed the orders of the higher- ups. This is typical with everyone in the military service.” : General Smedley Butler. USMC (Ret.)

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“Until we go through it ourselves, until our people cower in the shelters of New York, Washington, Chicago, Los Angeles and elsewhere while the buildings collapse overhead and burst into flames, and dead bodies hurtle about and, when it is over for the day or the night, emerge in the rubble to find some of their dear ones mangled, their homes gone, their hospitals, churches, schools demolished — only after that gruesome experience will we realize what we are inflicting on the people of Indochina...” : William Shirer author 1973

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"The civility of no race can be perfect whilst another race is degraded. It is a doctrine alike of the oldest and of the newest philosophy, that man is one, and that you cannot injure any member, without a sympathetic injury to all the members": Ralph Waldo Emerson. 1844

 

[Ocean Breeze]

Wisdom:

questioner asked the Buddha: "I would like to know about the state of peace, the state of solitude and of quiet detachment. How does a person become calm, independent, and not wanting to grasp at anything?"

"A person does this," , "by eradicating the delusion of 'I am.' By being alert and attentive, he begins to let go of cravings as they arise. But whatever he begins to accomplish, he should beware of inner pride. He must avoid thinking of himself as better than another, or worse or equal, for that is all comparison and emphasizes the self.

"The person should look for peace within and not depend on it in any other place. For when a person is quiet within, the self cannot be found. There are no waves in the depths of the ocean, it is still and unbroken. It is the same with the peaceful person. He is still, without any longing to grasp. He has let go the foundations of self and no longer builds up pride and desire."

 

[Ocean Breeze]

"Wars throughout history have been waged for conquest and plunder... And that is war in a nutshell. The master class has always declared the wars; the subject class has always fought the battles.” : Eugene Victor Debs

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The most shocking fact about war is that its victims and its instruments are individual human beings, and that these individual beings are condemned by the monstrous conventions of politics to murder or be murdered in quarrels not their own: Aldous Huxley - English novelist and critic, 1894-1963

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The worst sin toward our fellow creatures is not to hate them, but to be indifferent to them: that's the essence of inhumanity: George Bernard Shaw

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[I think not]

The worst sin toward our fellow creatures is not to hate them, but to be indifferent to them: that's the essence of inhumanity: George Bernard Shaw

So profound.

 

[I think not]

If these men do not die well, it will be a black matter for the king that led them to it . . . William Shakespeare

 

[peapod]

“ When we travel in motor vehicles we alienate and isolate ourselves from the natural world. Technology is an impediment to intimacy. We arrive as intruders, foreign objects, and the natural world recoils. Sensible creatures run, hide, abandon their ordinary business to focus anxious eyes and ears on the sudden apparition. Motor vehicles are extensions of the artificial environ- ments human beings have constructed for themselves, little pods of mobile habitat. When we travel in a machine we never really leave town.”
David Pitt-Brooke

 

[Curiosity]

Inscriptions
I was sustained by one piece of inestimable good fortune. I had for a friend a man of immense and patient wisdom and a gentle but unyielding fortitude. I think that if I was not destroyed at this time by the sense of hopelessness which these gigantic labors has awakened in me, it was largely because of the courage and patience of this man. I did not give in because he would not let me give in.

-Thomas Wolfe

 

[Ocean Breeze]

Every single empire in its official discourse has said that it is not like all the others, that its circumstances are special, that it has a mission to enlighten, civilize, bring order and democracy, and that it uses force only as a last resort. And, sadder still, there always is a chorus of willing intellectuals to say calming words about benign or altruistic empires: Edward W. Said - "Orientalism 25 Years Later," Counterpunch.org website, 4 August 2003.

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To plunder, to slaughter, to steal, these things they misname empire; and where they make a wilderness, they call it peace: Publius Cornelius Tacitus - 55-117. Roman historian.

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Sovereignty over any foreign land is insecure.: Lucius Annaeus Seneca : 4 BC-65. Roman philosopher and playwright.

 

[Ocean Breeze]

“The enormous gap between what US leaders do in the world and what Americans think their leaders are doing is one of the great propaganda accomplishments of the dominant political mythology.” : Michael Parenti political scientist, author

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"The modern susceptibility to conformity and obedience to authority indicates that the truth endorsed by authority is likely to be accepted as such by a majority of the people." David Edwards - British columnist - Source: Burning All Illusions, 1996

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"A slave is he who cannot speak his thoughts.": Euripides

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"Search for the truth is the noblest occupation of man; its publication is a duty." : Anne Louise Germaine de Stael - (1766-1817) French author

 

[Sy]

Most electronic devices come packages with the proper amount of smoke. If you let it out it won't work anymore.
-Dilbert

 

[Ocean Breeze]

“We never see the smoke and the fire, we never smell the blood, we never see the terror in the eyes of the children, whose nightmares will now feature screaming missiles from unseen terrorists, will be known only as Americans.” : Martin Kelly

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“Behind the ostensible government sits enthroned an invisible government owing no allegiance and acknowledging no responsibility to the people. To destroy this invisible government, to befoul the unholy alliance between corrupt business and corrupt politics is the first task of the statesmanship of today.” : President Theodore Roosevelt - 1906

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“A great industrial Nation is controlled by its system of credit. Our system of credit is concentrated. The growth of the Nation and all our activities are in the hands of a few men.

“We have come to be one of the worst ruled, one of the most completely controlled and dominated Governments in the world — no longer a Government of free opinion, no longer a Government by conviction and vote of the majority, but a Government by the opinion and duress of small groups of dominant men.” : Woodrow Wilson - From his Campaign Speeches, 1912

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“If a baseball player slides into home plate and, right before the umpire rules if he is safe or out, the player says to the umpire — ‘Here is $1,000.’ What would we call that? We would call that a bribe. If a lawyer was arguing a case before a judge and said, ‘Your honor before you decide on the guilt or innocence of my client, here is $1,000.’ What would we call that? We would call that a bribe.

“But if an industry lobbyist walks into the office of a key legislator and hands her or him a check for $1,000, we call that a campaign contribution. We should call it a bribe.” : Janice Fine - Dollars and Sense magazine

 

[Ocean Breeze]

A time comes when silence is betrayal."

"History will have to record that the greatest tragedy of this period of social transition was not the strident clamor of the bad people, but the appalling silence of the good people." - Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

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They asked if our own nation wasn't using massive doses of violence to solve its problems, to bring about the changes it wanted. Their questions hit home, and I knew that I could never again raise my voice against the violence of the oppressed in the ghettos without having first spoken clearly to the greatest purveyor of violence in the world today -- my own government. For the sake of those boys, for the sake of this government, for the sake of hundreds of thousands trembling under our violence, I cannot be silent.

 

[Ocean Breeze]

"If the citizens neglect their Duty and place unprincipled men in office, the government will soon be corrupted; laws will be made, not for the public good so much as for selfish or local purposes; corrupt or incompetent men will be appointed to execute the Laws; the public revenues will be squandered on unworthy men; and the rights of the citizen will be violated or disregarded.": Noah Webster - (1758-1843) American patriot and scholar, author of the 1806 edition of the dictionary that bears his name, the first dictionary of American English usage.

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"He therefore is the truest friend to the liberty of his country who tries most to promote its virtue, and who, so far as his power and influence extend, will not suffer a man to be chosen into any office of power and trust who is not a wise and virtuous man...: Samuel Adams (1722-1803), was known as the "Father of the American Revolution."

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"We cannot afford to differ on the question of honesty if we expect our republic permanently to endure. Honesty is not so much a credit as an absolute prerequisite to efficient service to the public. Unless a man is honest, we have no right to keep him in public life; it matters not how brilliant his capacity.": Theodore Roosevelt - (1858-1919) 26th US President

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[Ocean Breeze]

How many does it take to metamorphose wickedness into righteousness? One man must not kill. If he does, it is murder.... But a state or nation may kill as many as they please, and it is not murder. It is just, necessary, commendable, and right: Adin Ballou, The Non-Resistant, 5 February 1845

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Mark! where his carnage and his conquests cease, He makes a solitude and calls it--peace! : Lord Byron (George Gordon Noel Byron) -Source: The Bride of Abydos (canto II, st. 20)

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Give me the money that has been spent in war and I will clothe every man, woman, and child in an attire of which kings and queens will be proud. I will build a schoolhouse in every valley over the whole earth. I will crown every hillside with a place of worship consecrated to peace: Charles Sumner

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O for a lodge in some vast wilderness, Some boundless contiguity of shade; Where rumor of oppression and deceit, Of unsuccessful or successful war, Might never reach me more. William Cowper - Source: Task (bk. II, l. 1)

 

[I think not]

The only serious difference between a left winger and a right winger is which one of their hands is in which one of your pockets.

 

[Ocean Breeze]

Peace is more important than all justice; and was not made for the sake of justice, but justice for the sake of peace: Martin Luther

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People have not been horrified by war to a sufficient extent ... War will exist until that distant day when the conscientious objector enjoys the same reputation and prestige as the warrior does today: John Fitzgerald Kennedy

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I was a bombadier in WW 2. When you are up 30,000 feet you do not hear the screams or smell the blood or see those without limbs or eyes. It was not til I read Hersey's Hiroshima that I realized what bomber pilots do: Howard Zinn

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[peapod]

The tiger can't change his spots. No, wait, he did! Good for him!"

Jack handey

 

[Reverend Blair]

"Our purpose is to entertain and subvert."
--Matt Groening

 

[Ocean Breeze]

To one that advised him to set up a democracy in Sparta, "Pray," said Lycurgus, "do you first set a democracy in your own house." : Lycurgus - Source: in Plutarch's "Apophthegms of Kings and Great Commanders"

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Our real enemies are the people who make us feel so good that we are slowly, but inexorably, pulled down into the quicksand of smugness and self-satisfaction: Sydney Harris

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Mourn not the dead that in the cool earth lie, but rather mourn the apathetic, throng the coward and the meek who see the world's great anguish and its wrong, and dare not speak: Ralph Chaplin

 

[Ocean Breeze]

on a different track...

“I do not accept any absolute formulas for living. No preconceived code can see ahead to everything that can happen in a man’s life. As we live, we grow and our beliefs change. They must change. So I think we should live with this constant discovery. We should be open to this adventure in heightened awareness of living. We should stake our whole existence on our willingness to explore and experience.”

-- Martin Buber