The Question Concerning Technology (1954)
Context: Everywhere we remain unfree and chained to technology, whether we passionately affirm or deny it. But we are delivered over to it in the worst possible way when we regard it as something neutral; for this conception of it, to which today we particularly like to do homage, makes us utterly blind to the essence of technology.
Benito Mussolini (1883–1945) Duce and President of the Council of Ministers of Italy. Leader of the National Fascist Party and subsequen…
Speech (21 June 1921), Ion Smeaton Munro, Through Fascism to World Power: A History of the Revolution in Italy, 27 January 2008 http://books.google.com/books?id=DML39RmvsmYC&pg=PA120&dq=%E2%80%9CWe+deny+your+internationalism%22+mussolini&lr=&sig=gTHVLgfaIKPCn_jW8f0phjDKrAI, <br class="br">1920s
“Whether we like it or not, we remain a dominant military superpower…”
Barack Obama (1961) 44th President of the United States of America
Obama: America a Superpower 'Whether We Like It or Not' http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2010/04/15/obama-america-superpower-like.html, FoxNews.com (15 April 2010) <br class="br">2010
Tsangyang Gyatso, 6th Dalai Lama (1683–1706) sixth Dalai Lama of Tibet
Source: https://twitter.com/dalailama/status/1587016915838332928
P. L. Travers (1899–1996) Australian-British novelist, actress and journalist
What the Bee Knows : Reflections on Myth, Symbol, and Story (1989)
Context: The Sphinx, the Pyramids, the stone temples are, all of them, ultimately, as flimsy as London Bridge; our cities but tents set up in the cosmos. We pass. But what the bee knows, the wisdom that sustains our passing life — however much we deny or ignore it — that for ever remains.
“Man is born free, and everywhere he is in chains.”
Jean Jacques Rousseau (1712–1778) Genevan philosopher
J. G. Ballard book Crash
"Introduction" to the French edition (1974) of Crash (1973); reprinted in Re/Search no. 8/9 (1984)
Crash (1973)
Miguel de Unamuno (1864–1936) 19th-20th century Spanish writer and philosopher
The Tragic Sense of Life (1913), Conclusion : Don Quixote in the Contemporary European Tragi-Comedy
Leo Tolstoy A Letter to a Hindu
Source: A Letter to a Hindu (1908), III
Context: The recognition that love represents the highest morality was nowhere denied or contradicted, but this truth was so interwoven everywhere with all kinds of falsehoods which distorted it, that finally nothing of it remained but words. It was taught that this highest morality was only applicable to private life — for home use, as it were — but that in public life all forms of violence — such as imprisonment, executions, and wars — might be used for the protection of the majority against a minority of evildoers, though such means were diametrically opposed to any vestige of love.
Arthur MacManus (1889–1927) British trade unionist
Fourteen Points https://www.marxists.org/archive/mcmanus/articles/points.htm, Halifax Division of the Socialist Labour Party, (1918)
Maya Angelou book I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings
We Had Him (2009)
Source: I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings
Context: Though we are many, each of us is achingly alone, piercingly alone.
Only when we confess our confusion can we remember that he was a gift to us and we did have him.
He came to us from the creator, trailing creativity in abundance.
Despite the anguish, his life was sheathed in mother love, family love, and survived and did more than that.
He thrived with passion and compassion, humor and style. We had him whether we know who he was or did not know, he was ours and we were his.
