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BARBARA G. WALKER
Dympna, Saint: A canonization of what seems to have been a bit
of graffiti on a brick... Though having no more basis than these
words... the cult of St. Dympna was carefully developed. A large
asylum near Gheel was named after her, so she became the patron
saint of the insane - perhaps appropriately.
- The Woman's Encyclopedia of Myths and Secrets
GEORGE WASHINGTON
A free people ought not only to be armed and disciplined, but they should have sufficient arms and ammunition to maintain a status of independence from any who might attempt to abuse them, which would include their own government.
BILL WATTERSON
Calvin & Hobbes
"There's no problem so awful that you can't add some guilt to
it and make it worse."
~~~
"People who get nostalgic about childhood were obviously never
children."
NORBERT WEINER
The human brain evidently operates on some variation of the famous
principle enunciated in 'The Hunting of the Snark: "What I tell
you three times is true."
- Cybernetics
MAE WEST
Between two evils, I always choose the one I never tried before.
I generally avoid temptation unless I can't resist it.
Marriage is a great institution, but I'm not ready for an institution
yet.
Too much of a good thing is wonderful.
Women with pasts interest men... they hope history will repeat
itself.
Loves conquers all things except poverty and toothache.
To err is human, but is feels divine.
I wrote the story myself. It's about a girl who lost her reputation
and never missed it.
When I'm good, I'm very, very good. When I'm bad, I'm better.
You only live once, but if you do it right, once is enough.
OSCAR WILDE
Cecil Graham: "What is a cynic?"
Lord Darlington: "A man who knows the price of everything and
the value of nothing."
Cecil Graham: "And a sentimentalist, my dear Darlington, is a
man who sees an absurd value in everything, and doesn't know the
market price of any single thing."
- Lady Windermere's Fan
To love oneself is the beginning of a life-long romance, Phipps.
- Lord Goring, in The Ideal Husband
And all men kill the thing they love,
By all let this be heard,
Some do it with a bitter look,
Some with a flattering word,
The coward does it with a kiss,
The brave man with a sword!
- last verse of The Ballad of Reading Gaol
Anything becomes a pleasure if one does it too often.
The only way to get rid of a temptation is to yield to it.
Children begin by loving their parents; after a time they judge
them. Rarely, if ever, do they forgive them.
Man is least himself when he speaks in his own person. Give him
a mask and he will tell you the truth.
Morality is simply the attitude we adopt towards the people
whom we personally dislike.
Loveless marriages are horrible. But there is one thing worse
than an absolutely loveless marriage. A marriage in which there
is love, but on one side only; faith, but on one side only; devotion,
but on one side only and in which of the two hearts one is sure
to be broken.
The English country gentleman galloping after a fox - the unspeakable
in full pursuit of the uneatable.
The youth of today are quite monstrous. They have no respect
for dyed hair.
I have found that alcohol, taken in sufficient quantities, can
produce all the effects of drunkenness.
If a woman wants to hold a man, she has merely to appeal to the
worst in him.
All women become like their mothers. That is their tragedy. No
man does. That is his.
Treat every woman as if you loved her, and every man as if he
bored you, and at the end of your first season you will have the
reputation of possessing the most perfect social tact.
I always pass on good advice. It is the only thing to do with
it. It is never of any use to oneself.
Fashion is a form of ugliness so intolerable that we have to
change it every six months.
CHRIS WILLMORE
The recent Daredevil movie was supposedly about a Man Without
Fear. What it was REALLY about was a suicidal lunatic who happened
to be extraordinarily unlucky in his repeated attempts to do away
with himself by jumping off skyscrapers in a red leather gimp
suit.
I was talking about that with one of my hosts. He was bemoaning
the loss of culture in modern generations, and asked, "Is there
any life skill you gain from playing a video game? Anything necessary,
anything essential?"
"I don't think so," I answered. "Is there any such thing that
you gain from reading Homer?"
ROBERT ANTON WILSON
Shrödinger's Cat
Experts on the Problem of Evil were known as theologians. These
were very erudite primates, skilled in primate logic, who wrote
long books trying to answer the question "Why did God create an
imperfect universe?"
"God" was their name for the hypothetical
biggest-alpha-male-of-all. Being primates, they could not comprehend
how anything could run if there weren't an alpha male in charge
of it.
They assumed the universe was imperfect because
it was obviously not set up for the convenience of the domesticated
primates.
~~~
Getting even was the basis of many primate semantic confusions,
such as "expropriating the expropriators," "an
absolute crime demands an absolute penalty," "they did
it to me so I can do it to them," and, in general, the emotional
mathematics of "one plus one equals zero" (1 + 1 = 0).
The primates were so dumb they didn't realize
that one plus one equals two (1 + 1 = 2) and one murder plus one
murder equals two murders, one crime plus one crime equals two
crimes, etc.
They did not understand causality at
all.
~~~
John Brown, motivated by Idealism, had set out to abolish slavery
in Unistat in the nineteenth century. On one of his first raids
he murdered a whole family of slave-owners . An associate, who
was less Idealistic, had suggested sparing the children, but John
Brown refused.
"Nits grow up to be lice,"
he said.
Idealists were like that. You were much safer
falling into the hands of the Cynics. The Cynics regarded everybody
as equally corrupt...
...The Idealists regarded everybody as equally
corrupt, except themselves.
~~~
Galactic Archive: At the time of this story the Unistat
government had 1,700 atomic bombs for every man, woman and child
on the planet. Since a person can die only once, historians have
been at a loss to explain what the Unistaters expected to do with
the surplus 1,699 bombs for each human being. Galactical primatologists
inform us that similar irrational behaviour has been observed
among domesticated apes on several thousand planets.
~~~
"Thank God I'm an atheist," Joe Malik said fervently.
"If I considered for even a moment for even a microsecond
that the pretense of a demon might be functionally equivalent
to the the presence of a demon..."
~~~
"A chicken is the egg's way of making more eggs. Government
is anarchy's way of making more anarchy."
~~~
In the dark cellar on 110th Street, the Grand Zombi demanded,
"Reveal the Secret Word or I will kill you. Reveal the Secret
Word and give up your quest for Truth and Power."
Hugh, repeating the formula taught him, replied,
"Kill me if you must, but I will search again for Truth and
Power as soon as I am reborn."
The Grand Zombi, black face above black
robe, raised his sword. "Do you fear me now, mortal?"
he screamed.
"I have eternity to work in," Hugh
replied, according to rote. "Why should I fear?"
"Then die!" screamed the Zombi
- the part of the Rite which had not been explained to the candidate
in advance - and Hugh felt the sword cross his neck and saw the
blood spurting.
He also saw the bulb which the Zombi
squeezed to make the blood spurt out of the end of the sword.
And he understood the manufacture of reality
and power completely.
The Illuminatus!
National security is the cause of national insecurity.
~~~
Saul sat upright, tears gleaming in his eyes. "I've killed
men. I've sent them to the electric chair. Seventeen times. Seventeen
suicides. The savages who cut off fingers or toes or ears for
their gods are more sensible. We cut off whole egos, thinking
they are not ourselves but separate. God God God," and he
burst into sobs.
~~~
"Gruad the Greyface!" Saul screamed, weeping, beating
his fist against the pillow as Mavis held his head, stroked his
hair. "Gruad the damned! And I have been his servant, his
puppet, sacrificing myselves on his electric altars as burnt offerings."
"Yes, yes," Mavis cooed in his ear. "We must learn
to give up our sacrifices, not our joys. They have taught us to
give up everything except our sacrifices, and those are what we
must give up. We must sacrifice our sacrifices."
We have been told over and over that "you can't change
human nature," but the study of emic realities (observed
and discussed, "social" reality vs. the non-verbal etic
reality) shows, quite the contraty, that almost anything can
become "human nature" if society defines it as such.
- Quantum Psychology (italic note added by me)
Eye for an eye - it's our whole law and religion. An eye for
an eye: Deutoronomy, that is. The Lord is a man of war. Exodus.
Smash the brains of the infants: Hosea. And that may we go, an
eye for an eye and an eye for an eye and we all become fooken
blind.
- 'No Waters in Cherry Valley by the Testicles'
(As the I Ching and binary language are both arranged of two
elements in strikingly similar ways:) "It is amusing that those
who think computers think... generally consider themselves materialists,
while those who claim I Ching thinks call themselves mystics,
but if thought is defined in these terms, then both computers
and I Ching must be considered to be thinking. (The fact that
the human nervous system operates on a similar binary code may
account for our occasional impression that humans also think...)"
- 'Semper as Oxhouse Humper'
It is well to remember that we are living on the Planet of the
Apes; do not expect intelligence, decency, or simple courtesy,
except on special blessed occasions and with very rare and beautiful
people. The average domesticated ape is only interested in protecting
his own turf and his perch in the tree. You don't exist for him
except insofar as you aid or hinder his territorial and status
ambitions.
VIRGINIA WOOLF
Great bodies of people are never responsible for what they do.
It is fatal to be a man or woman pure and simple: one must be
a woman manly, or a man womanly.
One cannot think well, love well, sleep well, if one has not
dined well.
Really I don't like human nature unless all candied over with
art.
The history of men's opposition to women's emancipation is more
interesting perhaps than the story of that emancipation itself.
If you insist upon fighting to protect me, or 'our' country,
let it be understood soberly and rationally between us that you
are fighting to gratify a sex instinct which I cannot share; to
procure benefits where I have not shared and probably will not
share.
Methinks the human method of expression by sound of tongue is
very elementary, and ought to be substituted for some ingenious
invention which should be able to give vent to at least six coherent
sentences at once.
These are the soul's changes. I don't believe in ageing. I believe
in forever altering one's aspect to the sun. Hence my optimism.
Life for both sexes is arduous, difficult, a perpetual struggle.
More than anything... it calls for confidence in oneself... And
how can we generate this imponderable quality most quickly? By
thinking that other people are inferior to oneself.
Once conform, once do what other people do because they do it,
and a lethargy steals over all the finer nerves and faculties
of the soul. She becomes all outer show and inward emptiness;
dull, callous, and indifferent.
Women have served all these centuries as looking glasses possessing
the power of reflecting the figure of man at twice its natural
size.
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