Sunday, January 9, 2011

Quotes of the Week

From the Light:
“The more we allow institutional purposes to preempt our own, the more detrimental our organized behavior becomes to the processes that sustain us. There is nothing quite so characteristic of life, itself, as resiliency, the capacity to adapt to changing circumstances. The maxim expressed by geneticists – 'cherish your mutations' – applies to social systems as well. It is the changefulness of life – not the permanency demanded by institutions – that is central to our survival, both as individuals and a species.”
Butler Shaffer

“When men face challenges they are at their best. When everything is given to them, all sorts of pathologies appear.”
Paul Bonneau

“The separation of church and state benefits the church more than it benefits the state. States with close ties to religion do not suffer; the religious organizations which ally themselves with the state do. They begin to take on the characteristics of the state: the lack of accountability, the lack of personal involvement in the lives of people they supposedly serve.”
Robert Wicks

“Always remember with cops and soldiers: their first loyalty is to each other. Their next loyalty is to their employer. They aren't there to 'protect and serve' the people in the street. People are all potential criminals and rioters. The people are the last priority, contrary to the fairy tales.”
Doug Casey

“The state is neither a factory nor a business. The logic of history is not quantitative. Economic rationality depends on the relationship between expenditure and production, investment and earnings, work and savings. The rationale of the state is not utility nor profit but power — gaining it, conserving it and extending it. The archetype of power does not lie in economics but in war, not in the polemic relationship of capital to work but in the hierarchical relationship of commander to soldier.”
Ottavio Paz

“Marxism endorses violence against property owners based on purely theoretical grievances. It comes up with theoretical reasons as to why current property owners are not legitimate owners, and thus gives moral sanction to the theoretical victims to violently reclaim what has been 'stolen.' Usually this is done by taking over the state in the name of the theoretical victim class, and from there just taking over everything. Marxist political economy always ends in bloodshed and tears."
Mike P.

“To ask for the economic strengthening of a fictitious middle class means to clamp down on innovation, opening the door to arbitrariness. It is precisely the kind of made-up objectives that justify needless state intervention and limited personal freedom. The people who have a vested interest in propagating the 'class' myth are those who will profit by it in terms of money or power. Making people believe they are in a static class, a caste, from which there is no escape, allows politicians to more easily sell the idea of redistribution in its many forms (health care, progressive taxes, regulation, etc.). There is no such thing as the middle class because social classes don’t exist.”
Cristian Gherasim

“The aim of totalitarian education has never been to instill convictions but to destroy the capacity to form any.”
Hannah Arendt

“No longer can you enter the world as a man (or for that matter, a woman). As captains of our destinies, masters of our fates – beholden to none, free to go in peace. And even more important, able to talk back, to refuse, to question – and to demand to be left in peace if we're not doing anything to cause harm to anyone else.
We are all children now – fearful, obedient – and to be punished, if we're not.”
Eric Peters
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From the Darkness:
“The idea of putting permanent military bases [in Afghanistan] on the table in 2011, I think, would secure our national interests and tell the bad guys and the good guy(s) we’re not leaving, we are staying.”
Sen. Lindsey Graham

"I suggest a new concept: housing footprints. Your housing footprint is the number of bedrooms divided by the number of people in the household. Like ecological footprints, it reminds us that the resource is finite, and that if some people take more than they need, others are left with less than they need."
George Monbiot, environmental activist (who happens to live in a four bedroom home)

"An allegiance to the country has to go hand in hand with being born on our soil to actually be granted citizenship.”
Daryl Metcalfe, Pennsylvania lawmaker

"The rationale is to take advantage of the gains we have made over the last several months and apply more pressure on the enemy at a time when he is already under the gun."
Pentagon Press Secretary Geoff Morrell, defending the decision to send 1400 more US troops to the Afghanistan quagmire

"Every family choosing to have more than a defined number of children should be charged a carbon tax that would fund the planting of enough trees to offset the carbon cost generated by a new human being. They should pay 5,000 dollars (4,400 US) a head for each extra child and up to 800 dollars every year thereafter.”
United Nations Eco-Nazi Professor David Shearman

"We are not talking about a national ID card,. We are not talking about a government-controlled system. What we are talking about is enhancing online security and privacy and reducing and perhaps even eliminating the need to memorize a dozen passwords, through creation and use of more trusted digital identities."
U.S. Commerce Secretary Gary Locke, on a forthcoming cybersecurity effort to create an Internet ID for Americans [Yea, right. I believe you.]

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