Notable quotes, excerpts, and profound lines.

[WT Sharpe]

Originally Posted by Carriebear

My favorite quote ever is from "Sonny's Blues by James Baldwin:

For, while the tale of how we suffer, and how we are delighted, and how we may triumph is never new, it must always be heard. There isn't any other tale to tell, it's the only light we've got in all this darkness.

Fantastic quote!

[kennyc]

Originally Posted by Carriebear

My favorite quote ever is from "Sonny's Blues by James Baldwin:

For, while the tale of how we suffer, and how we are delighted, and how we may triumph is never new, it must always be heard. There isn't any other tale to tell, it's the only light we've got in all this darkness.

[WT Sharpe]

.....Wherever there is great property there is great inequality. For one very rich man there must be at least five hundred poor, and the affluence of the few supposes the indigence of the many.
..........— Adam Smith (1723 - 1790), Scottish economist. The Wealth of Nations (1776), Vol. II Book V, Chapter I, Part II, V.145.

[TenaciousBadger]

Originally Posted by WT Sharpe

.....Wherever there is great property there is great inequality. For one very rich man there must be at least five hundred poor, and the affluence of the few supposes the indigence of the many.
..........— Adam Smith (1723 - 1790), Scottish economist. The Wealth of Nations (1776), Vol. II Book V, Chapter I, Part II, V.145.

This reminded me of Baudrillard and Foucault (for some reason ) but as I was browsing through them I came across this quote (totally unrelated, of course):

If you say, I love you, then you have already fallen in love with language, which is already a form of break up and infidelity.

-- Jean Baudrillard

(I think it's from Seduction)

[FlorenceArt]

Originally Posted by TenaciousBadger

This reminded me of Baudrillard and Foucault (for some reason ) but as I was browsing through them I came across this quote (totally unrelated, of course):

(I think it's from Seduction)

Another author I need to start reading!

[BenG]

Nostalgia isn't what it used to be.
--U.S. novelist Peter De Vries, quoted in the L.A. Times, July 26, 1964.

[WT Sharpe]

.....Crime rates have dropped in the United States over the past 15 years, yet prison populations have soared. The U.S. incarceration rate now exceeds that of other industrialized nations by five times or more, with almost 2.3 million people behind bars and another 5 million on parole or probation.
..........— Bruce Bower, Washington D.C. based science writer, "'Incarceration hot spots' inculcate a vicious brand of hopelessness," Science News, September 11th, 2010; Vol.178 #6.

.....Certain disadvantaged sections of cities have acted as incarceration hot spots in the midst of a general downturn in crime, he reported August 16. Ballooning incarceration rates in these poor, predominantly black neighborhoods, especially among young men, create a sense of collective cynicism and fatalism that fuels further misconduct and imprisonment, [Harvard University sociologist Robert] Sampson said.
..........— Ibid.

.....Teenagers and children expressed some of the grimmest attitudes. "Many kids said they didn't expect to live past age 25 or to avoid ending up in prison," Sampson said. Researchers need to focus on how the concentration of incarceration within certain poor neighborhoods undermines the quality of life for everyone living there, he added.
..........— Ibid.
.

[WT Sharpe]

.....When I hear any man talk of an unalterable law, the only effect it produces on me is to convince me that he is an unalterable fool.
..........— Rev. Sydney Smith (1771-1845), English clergyman, writer, critic and wit. Peter Plymley's Letters (1807), Letter IV.

[BenG]

Love doesn’t just sit there, like a stone; it has to be made, like bread; re-made all the time, made new.

—Ursula K. Le Guin, The Lathe of Heaven (1971)

[WT Sharpe]

.....There are one hundred and ninety-three living species of monkeys and apes. One hundred and ninety-two of them are covered with hair. The exception is a naked ape self-named Homo sapiens.
..........— Desmond Morris (1928 - ), British zoologist, ethologist, anthropologist, author, surrealist painter, television personality. The Naked Ape (1967), Introduction.

[WT Sharpe]

No reflection on you, BenG!

[WT Sharpe]

.....l n’y a point de droit naturel: ce mot n'est qu’une antique niaiserie... Avant la loi il n’y a de naturel que la force du lion, ou le besoin de l’être qui a faim, qui a froid, le besoin en un mot.
.....There is no such thing as "natural law": this expression is nothing but old nonsense... Prior to laws, what is natural is only the strength of the lion, or the need of the creature suffering from hunger and cold, in short, need.
..........— Stendhal (the most famous of the pen-names of Marie Henri Beyle) (1783-1842), French writer. Le Rouge et le Noir [The Red and the Black] (1830).

[kennyc]

Darwinism, the only law.

[Angst]

One day Alice came to a fork in the road and saw a Cheshire cat in a tree. "Which road do I take?" she asked. "Where do you want to go?" was his response. "I don't know," Alice answered. "Then," said the cat, "it doesn't matter."

--Lewis Carroll

[BenG]

"EVERYTHING NOT FORBIDDEN IS COMPULSORY"
— T.H. White (The Once and Future King)