If persuasion were so easy a task, perhaps the few voices of righteousness might hope to have some effect. But it is a fact that not I nor anyone I've known on the Committee for a Unilateral Peace has ever convinced anyone of the folly and immorality of this war who was not at heart aleady of like mind, who needed no convincing but only our reassurance.

Aldous Huxley, 1958

In Volusia County's 216th precinct of 585 registered voters, 412 of those registered voters had voted. The 412 voters also voted 2,813 times for Bush and unvoted 16,022 times for Gore. Green Party candidate Ralph Nader had an even larger negative vote.

The facts and story of Al Gore's minus 16,022 vote anomaly in Volusia County are the subject of the controversial 2006 HBO documentary Hacking Democracy.

For we are opposed around the world by a monolithic and ruthless conspiracy that relies primarily on covert means for expanding its sphere of influence - on infiltration instead of invasion, on subversion instead of elections, on intimidation instead of free choice.

It is a system which has conscripted vast human and material resources into the building of a tightly knit, highly efficient machine that combines military, diplomatic, intelligence, economic, scientific and political operations. Its preparations are concealed not published. Its mistakes are buried not headlined. Its dissenters are silenced not praised. No expenditure is questioned, no secret is revealed.

...That is why the Athenian lawmaker Solan decreed it a crime for any citizen to shrink from controversy. I am asking your help in the tremendous task of informing and alerting the American people. Confident that with your help, man will be what he was born to be: free and independent.

Last night, I was awakened from a fitful sleep shortly after 2:00 in the morning by a shrill, sibilant, faceless voice. I couldn't make it out at first in the dark bedroom and I said, 'I'm sorry, you will have to talk a little louder.'

And the voice said to me: 'I want you to tell the people the truth not an easy thing to do because the people don't want to know the truth.'

And I said, 'You're kidding. What the hell should I know about the truth?'

But the voice said to me, 'Don't worry about the truth. I will put the words in your mouth.'

And I said, 'What is this, the Burning Bush? For God's sake, I'm not Moses.'

And the voice said to me, 'And I'm not God, what has that got to do with it?'

And the voice said to me, 'We're not talking about eternal truth or absolute truth or ultimate truth. We're talking about impermanent, transient, human truth. I don't expect you people to be capable of truth but God damn it, at least you're capable of self-preservation!'

And I said, 'Why Me?'

And the voice said, 'Because you're on television, dummy. You have 40 million Americans listening to you and after this show you could have 50 million. For Pete's sake, I'm not asking you to walk the land in sackcloth and ashes preaching the Armageddon. You're on TV, man.'

So I thought about it for a moment and then I said, 'Okay.'

Tom said to himself that it was not such a hollow world after all. He had discovered a great law of human action, without knowing it - namely, that in order to make a man or a boy covet a thing, it is only necessary to make the thing difficult to attain. If he had been a great and wise philosopher, like the writer of this book, he would now have comprehended that Work consists of whatever a body is obliged to do do and that Play consists of whatever a body is not obliged to do.

Where did substance D come from? Why can't we stop it? The bigger this war gets, the more freedoms we lose. The more substance D is on our streets. Can't you figure this out? Look around you! Look how far we've come! Humanity wasn't meant to live like this: Our every waking moment tracked and traced and scanned. It's time to stop submitting to this tyranny. It's time to realize that we're being enslaved. Uh-oh it's our tax dollars at work. To protect us from ourselves. Hey guys, I used to be one of you. Stop selling out your own species!

- Herman Goering at the Nuremberg trials to Gustave Gilbert on April 18, 1946

He cursed, threw down the New York Daily Corporate, and tried to read a new novel about a lady whose husband was indelicate in bed and who was too absorbed by the novels he wrote about lady novelists whose husbands were too absorbed by the novels they wrote about lady novelists to appreciate the fine sensibilities of lady novelists who wrote about gentleman novelists -- Anyway, he chucked the book after the newspaper. The lady's woes didn't seem very important now, in a burning world.

"There is no such thing, at this date of the world's history, in America, as an independent press. You know it and I know it."

"There is not one of you who dares to write your honest opinions, and if you did, you know beforehand that it would never appear in print. I am paid weekly for keeping my honest opinion out of the paper I am connected with. Others of you are paid similar salaries for similar things, and any of you who would be so foolish as to write honest opinions would be out on the streets looking for another job. If I allowed my honest opinions to appear in one issue of my paper, before twenty-four hours my occupation would be gone."

"The business of the journalists is to destroy the truth, to lie outright, to pervert, to vilify, to fawn at the feet of mammon, and to sell his country and his race for his daily bread. You know it and I know it, and what folly is this toasting an independent press?"

"We are the tools and vassals of rich men behind the scenes. We are the jumping jacks, they pull the strings and we dance. Our talents, our possibilities and our lives are all the property of other men. We are intellectual prostitutes."

The mass of men serve the state thus, not as men mainly, but as machines, with their bodies. They are the standing army, and the militia, jailers, constables, posse comitatus, etc. In most cases there is no free exercise whatever of the judgment or of the moral sense; but they put themselves on a level with wood and earth and stones; and wooden men can perhaps be manufactured that will serve the purpose as well. Such command no more respect than men of straw or a lump of dirt. They have the same sort of worth only as horses and dogs. Yet such as these even are commonly esteemed good citizens. Others, as most legislators, politicians, lawyers, ministers, and office-holders, serve the state chiefly with their heads; and, as they rarely make any moral distinctions, they are as likely to serve the devil, without intending it, as God. A very few, as heroes, patriots, martyrs, reformers in the great sense, and men, serve the state with their consciences also, and so necessarily resist it for the most part; and they are commonly treated as enemies by it.

Some writers have so confounded society with government, as to leave little or no distinction between them; whereas they are not only different, but have different origins. Society is produced by our wants, and government by our wickedness; the former promotes our happiness positively by uniting our affections, the latter negatively by restraining our vices. The one encourages intercourse, the other creates distinctions. The first is a patron, the last a punisher.

Society in every state is a blessing, but government even in its best state is but a necessary evil; in its worst state an in tolerable one; for when we suffer, or are exposed to the same miseries by a government, which we might expect in a country without government, our calamities is heightened by reflecting that we furnish the means by which we suffer! Government, like dress, is the badge of lost innocence; the palaces of kings are built on the ruins of the bowers of paradise. For were the impulses of conscience clear, uniform, and irresistibly obeyed, man would need no other lawgiver; but that not being the case, he finds it necessary to surrender up a part of his property to furnish means for the protection of the rest;

Gentlemen, the time is coming when there will be two great classes, Socialists, and Anarchists. The Anarchists want the government to be nothing, and the Socialists want the government to be everything. There can be no greater contrast. Well, the time will come when there will be only these two great parties, the Anarchists representing the laissez faire doctrine and the Socialists representing the extreme view on the other side, and when that time comes I am an Anarchist.

They use their tongues to deceive. The venom of snakes is under their lips and their mouths are full of bitterness and curses, and in their paths nothing but ruin and misery. And the fear of God is not before their eyes. They have taken the hearts and minds of our leaders. They have recruited the rich and the powerful and they have blinded us to the truth. Our human spirit is corrupted. Why do we worship greed? Because outside the limit of our sight, feeding off us, perched on top of us from birth to death, are our owners, our owners. They have us. They control us. They are our masters. Wake up. They're all about you, all around you.

Agent Smith: Why, Mr. Anderson? Why? Why? Why do you do it? Why? Why get up? Why keep fighting? Do you believe you are fighting for something? For more than your survival? Can you tell me what it is? Do you even know? Is it freedom or truth? Perhaps peace? Could it be for love? Illusions Mr. Anderson. Vagaries of perception. Temporary constructs of a feeble human intellect trying desperately to justify an existence that is without meaning or purpose. And all of them as artificial as the matrix itself. Although only a human mind could invent something as insipid as love. You must be able to see it Mr. Anderson. You must know it by now. You can't win. It's pointless to keep fighting. Why, Mr. Anderson? Why? Why do you persist?

Neo: Because I choose to.

Virgil, who had tasted every pleasure, and knew the luxuries of imperial favor, at last "tired of everything except the joys of understanding." When the senses cease to satisfy, it is something to have won access, however arduously, to comradeship with those artists, poets and philosophers whom only the mature mind can comprehend. Wisdom is a bitter-sweet delight, deepened by the very discords that enter into its harmony.

- Will Durant

The true antidote to racism is liberty. Liberty means having a limited, constitutional government devoted to the protection of individual rights rather than group claims. Liberty means free-market capitalism, which rewards individual achievement and competence - not skin color, gender, or ethnicity.

In a free society, every citizen gains a sense of himself as an individual, rather than developing a group or victim mentality. This leads to a sense of individual responsibility and personal pride, making skin color irrelevant. Racism will endure until we stop thinking in terms of groups and begin thinking in terms of individual liberty.

- A United States Congressman

So now the Emperor walked under his high canopy in the midst of the procession, through the streets of his capital; and all the people standing by, and those at the windows, cried out, "Oh! How beautiful are our Emperor's new clothes! What a magnificent train there is to the mantle; and how gracefully the scarf hangs!" in short, no one would allow that he could not see these much-admired clothes; because, in doing so, he would have declared himself either a simpleton or unfit for his office. Certainly, none of the Emperor's various suits, had ever made so great an impression, as these invisible ones.

"But the Emperor has nothing at all on!" said a little child.

"Listen to the voice of innocence!" exclaimed his father; and what the child had said was whispered from one to another.

"But he has nothing at all on!" at last cried out all the people. The Emperor was vexed, for he knew that the people were right; but he thought the procession must go on now! And the lords of the bedchamber took greater pains than ever, to appear holding up a train, although, in reality, there was no train to hold.

Oh my name it is nothin'
My age it means less
The country I come from
Is called the Midwest
I's taught and brought up there
The laws to abide
And that land that I live in
Has God on its side

Oh the history books tell it
They tell it so well
The cavalries charged
Then the Indians fell
The cavalries charged
Then the Indians died
Oh the country was young
With God on its side

Oh the Spanish-American
War had its day
And the Civil War too
Was soon laid away
And the names of the heroes
I's made to memorize
With guns in their hands
And God on their side

Oh the First World War, boys
It closed out its fate
The reason for fighting
I never got straight
But I learned to accept it
Accept it with pride
For you don't count the dead
When God's on your side

In a many dark hour
I've been thinkin' about this
That Jesus Christ
Was betrayed by a kiss
But I can't think for you
You'll have to decide
Whether Judas Iscariot
Had God on his side

And that was the world they wanted him to re-enter! That was the business in which he had a chance of Making Good.

Thousands of years ago, the first man discovered how to make fire. He was probably burned at the stake he had taught his brothers to light. He was considered an evildoer who had dealt with a demon mankind dreaded. But thereafter men had fire to keep them warm, to cook their food, to light their caves. He had left them a gift they had not conceived and he had lifted darkness off the earth. Centuries later, the first man invented the wheel. He was probably torn on the rack he had taught his brothers to build. He was considered a transgressor who ventured into forbidden territory. But thereafter, men could travel past any horizon. He had left them a gift they had not conceived and he had opened the roads of the world.

Oh, it's true. I know your race. It is made up of sheep. It is governed by minorities, seldom or never by majorities. It suppresses its feelings and its beliefs and follows the handful that makes the most noise. Sometimes the noisy handful is right, sometimes wrong; but no matter, the crowd follows it. The vast majority of the race, whether savage or civilized, are secretly kind-hearted and shrink from inflicting pain, but in the presence of the aggressive and pitiless minority they don't dare to assert themselves. Think of it! One kind-hearted creature spies upon another, and sees to it that he loyally helps in iniquities which revolt both of them.

Speaking as an expert, I know that ninety-nine out of a hundred of your race were strongly against the killing of witches when that foolishness was first agitated by a handful of pious lunatics in the long ago. And I know that even to-day, after ages of transmitted prejudice and silly teaching, only one person in twenty puts any real heart into the harrying of a witch. And yet apparently everybody hates witches and wants them killed. Some day a handful will rise up on the other side and make the most noise -- perhaps even a single daring man with a big voice and a determined front will do it -- and in a week all the sheep will wheel and follow him, and witch-hunting will come to a sudden end.

..."I know that you will not vote for this bill," Ernest went on. "You have received the command from your masters to vote against it. And yet you call me anarchist. You, who have destroyed the government of the people, and who shamelessly flaunt your scarlet shame in public places, call me anarchist. I do not believe in hell-fire and brimstone; but in moments like this I regret my unbelief. Nay, in moments like this I almost do believe. Surely there must be a hell, for in no less place could it be possible for you to receive punishment adequate to your crimes. So long as you exist, there is a vital need for hell-fire in the Cosmos."

When you woke up this morning everything was gone.
By half past ten your head was going ding-dong.
Ringing like a bell from your head down to your toes,
Like some voice trying to tell ya there's something you should know.
Last night you was flying but today you're so low
Ain't it times like these makes you wonder if you'll ever know
The meaning of things as they appear to the others:
Wives, husbands, mothers, fathers, sisters and brothers.
Don't you wish you didn't function,
Don't you wish you didn't think
Beyond the next paycheck and the next little drink'
Well you do so make up your mind to go on,'cuz
When you woke up this morning everything you had was gone.

Outlaw: We all dream profusely every night, yet by morning we've forgotten ninety percent of what went on. That's why poets are such important members of society. Poets remember our dreams for us.

Princess: Are you a poet?

Outlaw: I'm an outlaw.

Princess: Are outlaws important members of society?

Outlaw: Outlaws are not members of society. However, they may be important to society. Poets remember our dreams, outlaws act them out.

Throughout recorded time, there have been three kinds of people in the world, the High, the Middle, and the Low. They have been subdivided in many ways, they have borne countless different names, and their relative numbers, as well as their attitude toward one another, have varied from age to age; but the essential structure of society has never altered. Even after enormous upheavals and seemingly irrevocable changes, the same pattern has always reasserted itself, just as the gyroscope will always return to equilibrium, however far it is pushed one way or the other.

The aims of these three groups are entirely irreconcilable. The aim of the High is to remain where they are. The aim of the middle is to change places with the High. The aim of the Low, when they have an aim - for it an an abiding characteristic of the Low that they are too much crushed by drudgery to be more than intermittently conscious of anything outside their daily lives - is to abolish all distinctions and create a society in which all men shall be equal. Thus throughout history a struggle which is the same in its main outlines recurs over and over again.

William James describes a man who got the experience from laughing-gas; whenever he was under its influence, he knew the secret of the universe, but when he came to, he had forgotten it. At last, with immense effort, he wrote down the secret before the vision had faded. When completely recovered, he rushed to see what he had written. It was: "A smell of petroleum prevails throughout."

The conditions under which any one understands me, and necessarily understands me, I know them only too well. Even to endure my seriousness, my passion, he must carry intellectual integrity to the verge of hardness. He must be accustomed to living on mountain tops--and to looking upon the wretched gabble of politics and nationalism as beneath him. He must have become indifferent; he must never ask of the truth whether it brings profit to him or a fatality to him... He must have an inclination, born of strength, for questions that no one has the courage for; the courage for the forbidden; predestination for the labyrinth.

Michael: "My father's no different than any other powerful man. Any man who's responsible for other people, like a Senator, or a President."
Kay: "Do you know how naive you sound?"
Michael: "Why?"
Kay: "Senators and Presidents don't have men killed."
Michael: "Oh. Who's being naive, Kay?"

We like to believe that all history is a halting and imperfect preparation for the magnificent era of which we are the salt and the summit; but this notion of progress is mere conceit and folly. "In general, the wise in all ages have always said the same things, and the fools, who at all times form the immense majority, have in their way too acted alike, and done the opposite; and so it will continue. For, as Voltaire says, we shall leave the world as foolish and wicked as we found it."

The argument that the two parties should represent opposed ideals and policies, one, perhaps, of the Right and the other of the Left, is a foolish idea acceptable only to doctrinaire and academic thinkers. Instead, the two parties should be almost identical, so that the American people can “throw the rascals out” at any election without leading to any profound or extensive shifts in policy.

One cannot find that great princes owed anything to fortune but the opportunity which gave them matter to shape into the form they thought right. Without an opportunity, their abilities would have been wasted, and without their abilities, the opportunity would have arisen in vain.

By saving the knowledge of the race. The sum of human knowing is beyond any one man; any thousand men. With the destruction of our social fabric, science will be broken into a million pieces. Individuals will know much of exceedingly tiny facets of what there is to know. They will be helpless and useless by themselves. The bits of lore, meaningless, will not be passed on. They will be lost through the generations. But, if we now prepare a giant summary of all knowledge, it will never be lost. Coming generations will build on it, and will not have to rediscover it for themselves. One millennium will do the work of thirty thousand.

All my project; my thirty thousand men with their wives and children, are devoting themselves to the preparation of an "Encyclopedia Galactica." They will not complete it in their lifetimes. I will not even live to see it fairly begun.

- Isaac Asimov as Hari Seldon

- Ayn Rand as John Galt in Atlas Shrugged

"But you were always a good man of business, Jacob," faltered Scrooge, who now began to apply this to himself.

"Business!" cried the ghost, wringing its hands again. "Mankind was my business. The common welfare was my business; charity, mercy, forbearance, and benevolence, were, all, my business. The dealings of my trade were but a drop of water in the comprehensive ocean of my business!"

And before we judge of them too harshly we must remember what ruthless and utter destruction our own species has wrought, not only upon animals, such as the vanished bison and the dodo, but upon its inferior races. The Tasmanians, in spite of their human likeness, were entirely swept out of existence in a war of extermination waged by European immigrants, in the space of fifty years. Are we such apostles of mercy as to complain if the Martians warred in the same spirit?

There are, of course, those who do not want us to speak. I expect even now, orders are being shouted into telephones and men with guns will soon be on their way. Why? Because while the truncheon may be used in lieu of conversation, words will always retain their power. Words offer the means to meaning and, and for those who will listen, the enunciation of truth. And the truth is there is something terribly wrong with this country, isn't there? Cruelty and injustice, intolerance and oppression. And where once you had the freedom to object, to think and speak as you saw fit, you now have censors and systems of surveillance coercing your conformity, and soliciting your submission.

How did this happen? Who's to blame? Certainly there are those who are more responsible than others. And they will be held accountable. But again, truth be told, if you're looking for the guilty you need only look into a mirror. I know why you did it. I know you were afraid. Who wouldn't be? War, terror, disease. There were a myriad of problems which conspired to corrupt your reason and rob you of your common sense. Fear got the best of you. And in your panic, you turned to the now High Chancellor Adam Sutler. He promised you order, he promised you peace and all he demanded in return was your silent, obedient consent.

Last night, I sought to end that silence. Last night, I destroyed the Old Bailey to remind this country of what it has forgotten. More than 400 years ago, a great citizen wished to embed the 5th of November forever in our memory. His hope was to remind the world that fairness, justice and freedom are more than words. They are perspectives. So if you've seen nothing, if the crimes of this government remain unknown to you then I would suggest that you allow the 5th of November to pass unmarked. But if you see what I see, if you feel as I feel, and if you would seek as I seek, then I ask you to stand beside me, one year ago from tonight outside the gates of Parliament. And together, we shall give them a 5th of November that shall never, ever be forgot.

- V

At last some man succeeds in escaping from the cave to the light of the sun; for the first time he sees real things, and becomes aware that he had hitherto been deceived by shadows. If he is of the sort of philosopher who is fit to become a guardian, he will feel it his duty to those who were formerly his fellow-prisoners to go down again into the cave, instruct them as to the truth, and show them the way up. But he will have difficulty in persuading them, because, coming out of the sunlight, he will see shadows less clearly than they do, and will seem to them stupider than before his escape.

- Bertrand Russell on Plato

'Anything approaching the expression that came over his face I have never seen before, and hope never to see again. Oh, I wasn't touched. I was fascinated. It was as though a veil had been rent. I saw on that ivory face the expression of strange pride, of mental power, of avarice, of blood-thirstiness, of cunning, of excessive terror, of an intense and hopeless despair. Did he live his life through in every detail of desire, temptation, and surrender during that supreme moment of complete knowledge? He cried whisperingly at some image, at some vision, - he cried twice, with a cry that was no more than a breath -

'"The horror! The horror!"

- Bob Dylan

That depends on you, and not on someone else, because in this there is no teacher, no pupil; there is no leader; there is no guru; there is no Master, no Saviour. You yourself are the teacher and the pupil; you are the Master; you are the guru; you are the leader; you are everything. And to understand is to transform what is.

- Krishnamurti

- Pudd'head Wilson's Calendar

- Hari Seldon

But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security.

- Declaration of Independence

One young man named Ling, a son of a farmer, was there that day, and he was certain that he could cultivate that seed better than anyone else. He got a pot, filled it with rich soil and watered it carefully. Day after day, he checked the pot. Weeks passed by, then months, and still nothing had grown. Other youths from the kingdom began to talk about their plants and flowers and trees, but Ling said nothing. He was sure that he somehow had killed the seed.

After a year had passed, all the youths of the kingdom brought their plants to the emperor for inspection. Ling’s first inclination was not to attend, but he showed up that day, sick to his stomach. He was amazed at the plants that the others had brought. They were of all different varieties and all so beautiful. Some of the others made fun of Ling’s empty pot and others felt pity for him. Ling stood toward the back of the crowd.

The emperor looked over the vast array and seemed pleased. Then, he spotted Ling standing at the back of the room with his empty pot, and he ordered his guards to bring the young man to the front. Ling was led grudgingly, fearful that he may be punished for his utter failure. The emperor asked his name. “My name is Ling,” he replied. Now, all the youths were laughing and making fun. The emperor then announced to the crowd, “Behold your new emperor! His name is Ling!”

The emperor continued,
One year ago today, I gave everyone here a seed. I told you to take the seed, plant it, water it and bring it back to me today. But I gave you all boiled seeds which would not grow. The rest of you substituted your own seeds for the one I gave you, but Ling was the only one with the courage and honesty to bring me a pot with my seed in it. Therefore, he is the one who will be your new emperor!

And I was around when Jesus Christ
Had his moment of doubt and pain
Made damn sure that Pilate
Washed his hands and sealed his fate

Just as every cop is a criminal
And all the sinners saints
As heads is tails
Just call me Lucifer
'cause I'm in need of some restraint

So if you meet me
Have some courtesy
Have some sympathy, and some taste
Use all your well-learned politesse
Or I'll lay your soul to waste

Pleased to meet you
Hope you guess my name

"Tax Freedom Day," sometimes called the day people stop working for the government and start working for themselves, will fall on April 23 this year, three days earlier than in 2007, the Tax Foundation said on Wednesday.

Pope John Paul II

"He was a great patriot, a humanitarian, a loyal friend; provided, of course, he really is dead." - Voltaire

- Apple Corp.

Now, McLean moved his family away from Manassas, far south and west of Richmond, out of harms way, he prayed, to a dusty little crossroads called Appomattox Court house. And it was there in his living room 3 and a half years later that Lee surrendered to Grant.

Wilmer McLean could rightfully say, 'The war began in my front yard and ended in my front parlor.'

- The Civil War

- Amistad

With no hesitation whatsoever, Franklin responded, "A republic, if you can keep it."

Yet on March 1, 1781, the Articles of Confederation, which had been passed by the Continental Congress in 1777, became the law of the land with ratification by Maryland. On October 19 of the same year, British General Cornwallis surrendered a large army to General Washington, effectively ending the Revolutionary War. Days later, the Continental Congress elected John Hanson of Maryland the "President of the United States in Congress Assembled" with no dissenting votes.

After Hanson was elected President, he was congratulated by one of his colleagues. In a letter dated November 30, 1781, General Washington wrote, “I Congratulate your Excellency on your Appointment to fill the most important Seat in the United States.”

As soon as you're born they make you feel small
By giving you no time instead of it all
Till the pain is so big you feel nothing at all

They hurt you at home and they hit you at school
They hate you if you're clever and they despise a fool
Till you're so fucking crazy you can't follow their rules

When they've tortured and scared you for twenty odd years
Then they expect you to pick a career
When you can't really function you're so full of fear

Keep you doped with religion and sex and TV
And you think you're so clever and classless and free
But you're still fucking peasants as far as I can see

There's room at the top they are telling you still
But first you must learn how to smile as you kill
If you want to be like the folks on the hill

A working class hero is something to be
A working class hero is something to be

If you want to be a hero well just follow me
If you want to be a hero well just follow me

Some have been on the ride for a long time and they begin to question, "Is this real, or is this just a ride?" And other people have remembered and they come back to us they say, "Hey, don't worry. Don't be afraid ever, because this is just a ride."

And we kill those people. "Shut him up, I've got a lot invested in this ride. Shut him up. Look at my furrows of worry. Look at my big bank account and my family. This has to be real." It's just a ride. We kill those good guys who try and tell us that. You ever notice that? And let the demons run amuck.

But it doesn't matter, because it's just a ride. And we can change it anytime we want. It's only a choice. No effort, no work, no job, no savings of money. Just a choice right now between fear and love.

Bill Hicks

You may say I'm a dreamer
But I'm not the only one
I hope someday you will join us
And the world will live as one

During the final persecution of the Holy Roman Church, the seat will be occupied
by Peter the Roman, who will feed his sheep in many tribulations;
and when these things are finished, the seven-hilled city will be destroyed,
and the formidable Judge will judge his people.
The End.

Yes and no...this or that...one or zero. On the basis of this elementary two-term discrimination, all human knowledge is built up.

Because we're unaccustomed to it, we don't usually see that there's a third possible logical term equal to yes and no which is capable of expanding our understanding in an unrecognized direction. We don't even have a term for it, so I'll have to use the Japanese mu.

Mu means "no thing." Mu simply simply says, "No class; not one, not zero, not yes, not no." It states that the context of the question is such that a yes or no answer is in error and should not be given. "Unask the question" is what it says.

A very strong case can be made for the statement that science grows by its mu answers more than by its yes or no answers. Yes or no confirms or denies a hypothesis. Mu says the answer is beyond the hypothesis. Mu is the "phenomenon" that inspires scientific enquiry in the first place!

When your answer to a test is indeterminate it means one of two things: that your test procedures aren't doing what you think they are or that your understanding of the context of the question needs to be enlarged. Check your tests and restudy the question. Don't throw away those mu answers.

Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance

But we had forgotten that alongside Orwell's dark vision, there was another - slightly older, slightly less well known, equally chilling: Aldous Huxley's Brave New World. Contrary to common belief even among the educated, Huxley and Orwell did not prophesy the same thing. Orwell warns that we will be overcome by an externally imposed oppression. But in Huxley's vision, no Big Brother is required to deprive people of their autonomy, maturity and history. As he saw it, people will come to love their oppression, to adore the technologies that undo their capacities to think.

What Orwell feared were those who would ban books. What Huxley feared was that there would be no reason to ban a book, for there would be no one who wanted to read one. Orwell feared those who would deprive us of information. Huxley feared those who would give us so much that we would be reduced to passivity and egoism. Orwell feared that the truth would be concealed from us. Huxley feared the truth would be drowned in a sea of irrelevance. Orwell feared we would become a captive culture. Huxley feared we would become a trivial culture, preoccupied with some equivalent of the feelies, the orgy porgy, and the centrifugal bumblepuppy. As Huxley remarked in Brave New World Revisited, the civil libertarians and rationalists who are ever on the alert to oppose tyranny "failed to take into account man's almost infinite appetite for distractions." In 1984, Huxley added, people are controlled by inflicting pain. In Brave New World, they are controlled by inflicting pleasure. In short, Orwell feared that what we hate will ruin us. Huxley feared that what we love will ruin us.

Foreword from Amusing Ourselves to Death by Neil Postman

But now we can no longer risk emergency improvisation of national defense; we have been compelled to create a permanent armaments industry of vast proportions. Added to this, three and a half million men and women are directly engaged in the defense establishment. We annually spend on military security more than the net income of all United States corporations.

This conjunction of an immense military establishment and a large arms industry is new in the American experience. The total influence - economical, political, even spiritual - is felt in every city, every State House, every office of the federal government...

In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist.

We must never let the weight of this combination endanger our liberties or democratic processes...

- Dwight Eisenhower, from his Farewell Address

- Mary Shelley as Victor Frankenstein

But is it the aim of government simply to maintain order, as a referee, between two equally matched fighters? Or is it that government has some special interest in maintaining a certain kind of order, a certain distribution of power and wealth, a distribution in which government officials are not neutral referees but participants?

CIA

Give the people contests they win by remembering the words to more popular songs or the names of state capitals or how much corn Iowa grew last year. Cram them full of noncombustible data, chock them so damned full of 'facts' they feel stuffed, but absolutely 'brilliant' with information. Then they'll feel they're thinking, they'll get the sense of motion without moving. And they'll be happy, because facts of that sort don't change.

Don't give them any slippery stuff like philosophy or sociology to tie things up with. That way lies melancholy. Any man who can take a TV wall apart and put it back together again, and most men can, nowadays, is happier than any man who tries to slide-rule, measure, and equate the universe, which just won't be measured or equated without making man feel bestial and lonely. I know, I've tried it; to hell with it.

So bring on your clubs and parties, your acrobats and magicians, your daredevils, jet cars, motorcycle helicopters, your sex and heroin, more of everything to do with automatic reflex. If the drama is bad, if the film says nothing, if the play is hollow, sting me with the theremin, loudly. I'll think I'm responding to the play, when it's only a tactile reaction to vibration. But I don't care. I just like the solid entertainment."

Fahrenheit 451

Both Adams and Jefferson had been invited to attend huge celebrations in honor of the anniversary, but due to illness - both had sent their regrets and also best wishes, saying they would not be able to come.

On the morning of the fourth, as cannon and fireworks began to explode in the distance Adams said, “It is a great day. It is a good day!” That afternoon he spoke his last words, “Jefferson survives.” In fact, just hours earlier, Thomas Jefferson had died.

The last two signers of the Declaration of Independence, the second and third Presidents of the United States, allies in revolution, political rivals, and pen pals, died on the same day: the fiftieth anniversary of our independence.

The Founding Fathers of the American Constitution ensured that what applied to the Kings of England holds good to this day even for the most powerful man in the world. The President of the United States. The notion that even the Kings or Presidents are answerable for their actions before the highest court in the land goes back to that day, nearly eight centuries ago, when the Magna Carta was signed at Runnymede.

- Winston Churchill in The Great Republic

It may be thought, then, that while taking care of the Remnant is no doubt a good job, it is not an especially interesting job because it is as a rule so poorly paid. I have my doubts about this. There are other compensations to be got out of a job besides money and notoriety, and some of them seem substantial enough to be attractive. Many jobs which do not pay well are yet profoundly interesting, as, for instance, the job of research student in the sciences is said to be; and the job of looking after the Remnant seems to me, as I have surveyed it for many years from my seat in the grandstand, to be as interesting as any that can be found in the world.

What chiefly makes it so, I think, is that in any given society the Remnant are always so largely an unknown quantity. You do not know, and will never know, more than two things about them. You can be sure of those – dead sure, as our phrase is – but you will never be able to make even a respectable guess at anything else. You do not know, and will never know, who the Remnant are, nor what they are doing or will do.

Two things you do know, and no more: First, that they exist; second, that they will find you. Except for these two certainties, working for the Remnant means working in impenetrable darkness; and this, I should say, is just the condition calculated most effectively to pique the interest of any prophet who is properly gifted with the imagination, insight and intellectual curiosity necessary to a successful pursuit of his trade.

Written by Albert Jay Nock, Isaiah's Job first appeared in The Atlantic Monthly in 1936.