“Just as the unleashing of ideas and myths in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries cleared the way for endless changes in state and social structures, so the subsequent pinning down and splitting up of language into feudal states has now made it impossible for the citizen to participate seriously in society. The inviting humanist irony of the early days has given way to the off-putting rational cynicism and sloganeering of our time.”

— John Ralston Saul

Voltaire's Bastards (1992)

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John Ralston Saul 85

Canadian author and essayist 1947

Walter Rodney book How Europe Underdeveloped Africa

Source: How Europe Underdeveloped Africa (1972), p. 18.
Context: However, the peasants and workers of Europe (and eventually the inhabitants of the whole world) paid a huge price so that the capitalists could make their profits from the human labor that always lies behind the machines. That contradicts other facets of development, especially viewed from the standpoint of those who suffered and still suffer to make capitalist achievements possible. This latter group are the majority of mankind. To advance, they must overthrow capitalism; and that is why at the moment capitalism stands in the path of further human social development. To put it another way, the social (class) relations of capitalism are now outmoded, just as slave and feudal relations became outmoded in their time.

“Our poetry in the eighteenth century was prose; our prose in the seventeenth, poetry.”

David Hare (1947) British writer

Augustus William Hare and Julius Charles Hare Guesses at Truth (London: Macmillan, ([1827-48] 1867) p. 143.
Misattributed

“Our society has so cluttered our lives with artifacts [man-made things]… and organizational structures that [our] moment to moment relationships with nature are almost impossible.”

Carroll Quigley (1910–1977) American historian

Oscar Iden Lecture Series, Lecture 3: "The State of Individuals" (1976)

“History has proved us, and all who thought like us, wrong. It has made it clear that the state of economic development on the Continent at that time [1848] was not, by a long way, ripe for the removal of capitalist production.”

Friedrich Engels (1820–1895) German social scientist, author, political theorist, and philosopher

Introduction (1895) https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1850/class-struggles-france/intro.htm to Marx's The Class Struggles in France (1848-50)

“In the humanist ideal, the mainstream is where interesting debate, the generating of new ideas and creativity take place. In rational society this mainstream is considered uncontrollable and is therefore made marginal. The centre ground is occupied instead by structures and courtiers.”

John Ralston Saul The Doubter's Companion

"Mainstream"
The Doubter's Companion (1994)

“What our family has done is participate in the farm programs. And so the farm programs I think essentially almost every farmer in South Dakota has participated in those, and they haven't been bailouts, they have been programs that the United States has put forward for farmers to participate in.”

Kristi Noem (1971) South Dakota politician

Appel, Tim. Noem on Bailouts http://www.rapidcityjournal.com/vmix_64cb45d2-d71d-11df-8a99-001cc4c002e0.html, Rapid City Journal, October 13, 2010.

“It is an intolerable irony that societies that are anything but socialist should thus define what socialism is in the eyes of so many. It is an irony that has to be undone.”

Michael Harrington (1928–1989) American political writer

Source: Socialism: Past and Future (1989), p.67

“An omnipresent surveillance state … makes democratic dissent impossible. Any state that has the ability to inflict full spectrum dominance on its citizens is not a free state.”

Chris Hedges (1956) American journalist

29:29
“ Our Only Hope Will Come Through Rebellion http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TOlg_2qAbUA” (2014)

“And make no mistake: irony tyrannizes us. The reason why our pervasive cultural irony is at once so powerful and so unsatisfying is that an ironist is impossible to pin down. All U. S. irony is based on an implicit "I don’t really mean what I’m saying." So what does irony as a cultural norm mean to say? That it’s impossible to mean what you say? That maybe it’s too bad it’s impossible, but wake up and smell the coffee already? Most likely, I think, today’s irony ends up saying: "How totally banal of you to ask what I really mean."”

David Foster Wallace (1962–2008) American fiction writer and essayist

E Unibus Pluram: Television and U.S. Fiction
Essays

“Typically, "progressives" and change agents have demanded more money for social programs. But today it's clear that the way we do things needs to change – and that if things were done more appropriately, more humanely, more intelligently, we might end up spending less on social programs than we do now. Take education …. Over the last 10 years or so, a handful of education reformers have … come up with exciting new ideas for changing the ways our schools are administered, the ways our children are taught, and the kinds of things they're taught. And nearly all their ideas would cost no more than our current practices cost.”

Mark Satin (1946) American political theorist, author, and newsletter publisher

Some would actually save us money!
Source: New Options for America (1991), Chapter 11, "Our Schools Need Imagination More Than They Need Money," pp. 84–85.

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