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Post by Tamrin on Mar 14, 2014 7:18:47 GMT 10
We are the music makers, and we are the dreamers of dreams
Yet we are the movers and shakers, of the world forever, it seems
What man is able to master and stem the great Fountain of Tears?
One man with a dream, at pleasure, shall go forth and conquer a crown; and three with a new song's measure can trample an empire down
For each age is a dream that is dying, or one that is coming to birth
And therefore to-day is thrilling with a past day's late fulfilling; And the multitudes are enlisted in the faith that their fathers resisted, And, scorning the dream of to-morrow, are bringing to pass, as they may, In the world, for its joy or its sorrow, the dream that was scorned yesterday
The soldier, the king, and the peasant are working together in one, till our dream shall become their present, and their work in the world be doneArthur O'ShaughnessyBritish poet and singer ( Epic of Women) (Born this day 1844) Great hail! we cry to the comers from the dazzling unknown shore; Bring us hither your sun and your summers; And renew our world as of yore; You shall teach us your song's new numbers, and things that we dreamed not before: Yea, in spite of a dreamer who slumbers, and a singer who sings no more
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Post by Tamrin on Mar 14, 2014 7:19:43 GMT 10
Not easily may an individual escape the deep slavery of the herd
You know... every man who thinks for himself and feels vividly finds he lives in a world of his own, apart, and believes that one day he'll come across, either in a book or in a person, the Priest who shall make it clear to him
Certain houses, like certain persons, manage somehow to proclaim at once their character for evil. In the case of the latter, no particular feature need betray them; they may boast an open countenance and an ingenuous smile; and yet a little of their company leaves the unalterable conviction that there is something radically amiss with their being: that they are evil. Willy nilly, they seem to communicate an atmosphere of secret and wicked thoughts which makes those in their immediate neighbourhood shrink from them as from a thing diseased
It is, alas, chiefly the evil emotions that are able to leave their photographs on surrounding scenes and objects and whoever heard of a place haunted by a noble deed, or of beautiful and lovely ghosts revisiting the glimpses of the moon?
But the wicked passions of men's hearts alone seem strong enough to leave pictures that persist; the good are ever too luke-warm
And if thought and emotion can persist in this way so long after the brain that sent them forth has crumpled into dust, how vitally important it must be to control their very birth in the heart, and guard them with the keenest possible restraint
Yet, ever at the back of his thoughts, lay that other aspect of the wilderness: the indifference to human life, the merciless spirit of desolation which took no note of manAlgernon Blackwood, CBEEnglish short story writer and novelist ( The Willows) (Born this day 1869) The wise are silent, the foolish speak, and children are thus led astray
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Post by Tamrin on Mar 14, 2014 7:20:40 GMT 10
1 of 2:Make everything as simple as possible but not simpler
One thing I have learned in a long life: that all our science, measured against reality, is primitive and childlike — and yet it is the most precious thing we have
The human mind is not capable of grasping the Universe. We are like a little child entering a huge library. The walls are covered to the ceilings with books in many different tongues. The child knows that someone must have written these books. It does not know who or how. It does not understand the languages in which they are written. But the child notes a definite plan in the arrangement of the books, a mysterious order which it does not comprehend, but only dimly suspects
I cannot imagine a God who rewards and punishes the objects of his creation, whose purposes are modeled after our own — a God, in short, who is but a reflection of human frailty. Neither can I believe that the individual survives the death of his body, although feeble souls harbor such thoughts through fear or ridiculous egotism
I do not believe in the immortality of the individual, and I consider ethics to be an exclusively human concern with no superhuman authority behind it
It was, of course, a lie what you read about my religious convictions, a lie which is being systematically repeated. I do not believe in a personal God and I have never denied this but have expressed it clearly. If something is in me which can be called religious then it is the unbounded admiration for the structure of the world so far as our science can reveal it
The word god is for me nothing more than the expression and product of human weak- nesses, the Bible a collection of honourable, but still primitive legends which are never- theless pretty childish. No interpretation no matter how subtle can (for me) change thisAlbert EinsteinGerman physicist (E=mc²/Theory of Relativity, Nobel 1921) (Born this day 1879) One may say the eternal mystery of the world is its comprehensibility
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Post by Tamrin on Mar 14, 2014 7:21:54 GMT 10
2 of 2:I am convinced there is only one way to eliminate these grave evils [of capitalism] , namely through the establishment of a socialist economy, accompanied by an educat- ional system which would be oriented toward social goals. In such an economy, the means of production are owned by society itself and are utilized in a planned fashion
Nationalism is an infantile disease. It is the measles of mankind
The world is a dangerous place to live; not because of the people who are evil, but because of the people who don't do anything about it
A hundred times every day I remind myself that my inner and outer life depend on the labors of other men, living and dead, and that I must exert myself in order to give in the same measure as I have received and am still receiving
Anyone who doesn't take truth seriously in small matters cannot be trusted in large ones either
If people are good only because they fear punishment, and hope for reward, then we are a sorry lot indeed
Few people are capable of expressing with equanimity opinions which differ from the prejudices of their social environment. Most people are even incapable of forming such opinionsAlbert Einstein(Born this day 1879) I am a deeply religious nonbeliever — this is a somewhat new kind of religion
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Post by Tamrin on Mar 14, 2014 7:27:12 GMT 10
Religion is the impotence of the human mind to deal with occurrences it cannot understand
Religion is the sigh of the oppressed creature, the heart of a heartless world, and the soul of soulless conditions. It is the opium of the people
Social progress can be measured by the social position of the female sex
The history of all previous societies has been the history of class struggles
The ruling ideas of each age have ever been the ideas of its ruling class
Capital is reckless of the health or length of life of the laborer, unless under compulsion from society
The rich will do anything for the poor but get off their backsKarl MarxGerman philosopher and author ( Das Kapital, Communist Manifesto) (Died this day 1883) I am not a Marxist
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Post by Tamrin on Mar 14, 2014 7:28:06 GMT 10
Reality is always more conservative than ideology
Despotism has so often been established in the name of liberty that experience should warn us to judge parties by their practices rather than their preachings
Communism is a degraded version of the Western message. It retains its ambition to conquer nature, to improve the lot of the humble, but it sacrifices what was and must remain the heart and soul of the unending human adventure: freedom of enquiry, freedom of controversy, freedom of criticism, and the vote
The man who no longer expects miraculous changes either from a revolution or from an economic plan is not obliged to resign himself to the unjustifiable. It is because he likes individual human beings, participates in communities, and respects the truth, that he refuses to surrender his soul to an abstract ideal of humanity, a tyrannical party, and an absurd scholasticism
If tolerance is born of doubt, let us teach everyone to doubt all the models and utopias, to challenge all the prophets of redemption and the heralds of catastrophe
Skepticism cannot be revolutionary, even though it speaks the language of revolution
If they can abolish fanaticism, let us pray for the advent of the scepticsRaymond AronFrench philosopher, sociologist, journalist and political scientist ( The Opium of the Intellectuals) (Born this day 1905) What passes for optimism is most often the effect of an intellectual error
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Post by Tamrin on Mar 14, 2014 7:29:09 GMT 10
The world is ... the natural setting of, and field for, all my thoughts and all my explicit perceptions. Truth does not inhabit only the inner man, or more accurately, there is no inner man, man is in the world, and only in the world does he know himself
We must therefore rediscover, after the natural world, the social world, not as an object or sum of objects, but as a permanent field or dimension of existence
Humanity is not an aggregate of individuals, a community of thinkers, each of whom is guar- anteed from the outset to be able to reach agreement with the others because all participate in the same thinking essence. Nor, of course, is it a single Being in which the multiplicity of individuals are dissolved and into which these individuals are destined to be reabsorbed.
As a matter of principle, humanity is precarious: each person can only believe what he recog- nizes to be true internally and, at the same time, nobody thinks or makes up his mind without already being caught up in certain relationships with others, which leads him to opt for a par- ticular set of opinions. Everyone is alone and yet nobody can do without other people, not just because they are useful (which is not in dispute here) but also when it comes to happiness
Being established in my life, buttressed by my thinking nature, fastened down in this transcendental field which was opened for me by my first perception, and in which all absence is merely the obverse of a presence, all silence a modality of the being of sound, I enjoy a sort of ubiquity and theoretical eternity, I feel destined to move in a flow of end- less life, neither the beginning nor the end of which I can experience in thought, since it is my living self who think of them, and since thus my life always precedes and survives itself
It is no more natural and no less conventional to shout in anger or to kiss in love than to call a table 'a table'. Feelings and passional conduct are invented like words. Even those which like paternity seem to be part and parcel of the human make-up are in reality institutions. It is impossible to superimpose on man a lower layer of behaviour which one chooses to call 'natural' followed by a manufactured cultural or spiritual world
Everything is both manufactured and natural in man as it were in the sense that there is not a word, not a form of behavior which does not owe something to purely bio- logical being and which at the same time does not elude the simplicity of animal life and cause forms of vital behavior to deviate from their pre-ordained direction through a sort of leakage and through a genius for ambiguity which might serve to define manMaurice Merleau-PontyFrench phenomenological philosopher (Born this day 1908) It is the essence of certainty to be established only with reservations
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Post by Tamrin on Mar 14, 2014 7:31:27 GMT 10
Belief in the supernatural reflects a failure of the imagination
Society is like a stew. If you don't stir it up every once in a while then a layer of scum floats to the top
Abolition of a woman's right to abortion, when and if she wants it, amounts to compulsory maternity: a form of rape by the State
Anarchism is founded on the observation that since few men are wise enough to rule themselves, even fewer are wise enough to rule others
Anarchism is not a romantic fable but the hardheaded realization, based on five thousand years of experience, that we cannot entrust the management of our lives to kings, priests, politicians, generals, and county commissioners
Our 'neoconservatives' are neither new nor conservative, but old as Babylon and evil as Hell
There is science, logic, reason; there is thought verified by experience. And then there is CaliforniaEdward AbbeyAmerican naturalist novelist ( The Monkey Wrench Gang) (Died this day 1989) I work best under duress. In fact I only work under duress
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Post by Tamrin on Mar 14, 2014 20:41:14 GMT 10
Britain is the only colony in the British Empire and it is up to us now to liberate ourselves
Anyone from abroad will tell you that it is the class system that really lies at the root of our problems, economic and industrial. The House of Lords symbolises that
I think democracy is the most revolutionary thing in the world, because if you have power you use it to meet the needs of you and your community
Change from below, the formulation of demands from the populace to end unacceptable injustice, supported by direct action, has played a far larger part in shaping British democracy than most constitutional lawyers, political commentators, historians or statesmen have ever cared to admit. Direct action in a democratic society is fundamentally an educational exercise
The way change occurs to begin with, if you come up with a good idea, like heathcare, you're ignored. If you go on you must be mad, absolutely stark-staring bonkers. If you go on after that you're dangerous. Then, if the pressure keeps up there's a pause. And then you can't find anyone at the top who doesn't claim to have thought of it in the first place. That's how progress is made
The key to any progress is to ask the question why? All the time. Why is that child poor? Why was there a war? Why was he killed? Why is he in power? And of course questions can get you into a lot of trouble, because society is trained by those who run it, to accept what goes on. Without questions we won't make any progress at all
Choice depends on the freedom to choose and if you are shackled with debt you don’t have the freedom to choose
Tony Benn (formerly 2nd Viscount Stansgate) British politician on the left of the Labour Party (Died today)
It is wholly wrong to blame Marx for what was done in his name, as it is to blame Jesus for what was done in his
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Post by Tamrin on Mar 15, 2014 6:47:54 GMT 10
Saturday’s Quotes:What we wish, we readily believe, and what we ourselves think, we imagine others think also
All bad precedents begin as justifiable measures
If you must break the law, do it to seize power: in all other cases observe it
Cowards die many times before their actual deaths
I had rather be first in a village than second at Rome
It is not these well-fed long-haired men that I fear, but the pale and the hungry-looking
I love the name of honor, more than I fear deathJulius Cæsar(Murdered this day, the Ides of March, 44 BCE) Which death is preferably to every other? "The unexpected"
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