“Some credible scholars say that making mass murderers famous motivates other mass murderers. (One might even argue that this article is part of the problem). Elliot Rodger sent his lengthy diatribe to the media before he went on his killing spree -- correctly predicting that his actions would propel his ideas (such as they were) into the marketplace of ideas on a digital billboard larger than he could ever have enjoyed had he not amplified them with his psychotic rampage. Accordingly, should we not silence him? Wipe his words from the Internet forever? Let him be forgotten?”

— Marc Randazza

Adopted from Wikiquote. Last update June 3, 2021. History

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Marc Randazza 25

American writer 1969

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“Mass democracy, mass morality and the mass media thrive independently of the individual, who joins them only at the cost of at least a partial perversion of his instincts and insights. He pays for his social ease with what used to be called his soul – his discriminations, his uniqueness, his psychic energy, his self.”

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“Maybe all people with minds like Isaac's were the same. She knew he would make a much larger contribution than she ever would - he cared only about things much bigger than his own life. Ideas, truths, the reasons things were. As if he himself, his own existence, was somehow incidental.”

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“"Why do you fight?"… He kept his wife, his kid, from dying. That was nothing. Less than nothing. If he had had money, if he could have left it to them, he would have been free to go and get killed. As if the universe had not treated him all his life with kicks in the belly, it now despoiled him of the only dignity he could ever possess — his death.”

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“Upon finding his quarry, he would learn what he could, make an evaluation, and act accordingly. Then he would tell his superiors whatever they wanted to hear, just as he always had.”

Bradley Denton (1958) American science fiction author

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“He had read much, if one considers his long life; but his contemplation was much more then his reading. He was wont to say that if he had read as much as other men, he should have knowne no more than other men.”

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“Once man loses his faculty of indifference he becomes a potential murderer; once he transforms his idea into a god the consequences are incalculable. We kill only in the name of a god or of his counterfeits: the excesses provoked by the goddess Reason, by the concept of nation, class, or race are akin to those of the Inquisition or of the Reformation.”

Emil M. Cioran book A Short History of Decay

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“The second thing you need to know is the importance of Mohammed the prophet. His behaviour is an example to all Muslims and cannot be criticized. Now, if Mohammed had been a man of peace, let us say like Ghandi and Mother Theresa wrapped in one, there would be no problem. But Mohammed was a warlord, a mass murderer, a pedophile, and had several marriages – at the same time. Islamic tradition tells us how he fought in battles, how he had his enemies murdered and even had prisoners of war executed. Mohammed himself slaughtered the Jewish tribe of Banu Qurayza.”

Geert Wilders (1963) Dutch politician

2000s, Speech at the Four Seasons, New York (25 September 2008)

“The worldly-minded … were unable to see why God should not give men their due if men, on their part, fulfilled their obligations. … A new man had emerged. He was demanding his rights; he was conscious of his importance. As he was before men, so would he be before God. What he had acquired materially or morally was his own, his very own, and neither king nor God might dispute his possession with him. He loved his God as he loved his king, but on condition that both respected his rights.”

Bernard Groethuysen (1880–1946) French literary historian, translator and writer

Source: The Bourgeois: Catholicism vs. Capitalism in Eighteenth-Century France (1927), p. 89

“It is said by parrot-minded critics that Owen was "a man of one idea," whereas he was a man of more ideas than any public man England knew in his day. He shared and befriended every new conception of moment and promise, in science, in education, and government. His mind was hospitable to all projects of progress; and he himself contributed more original ideas for the conduct of public affairs than any other thinker of his generation…. Because some of his projects were so far reaching that they required a century to mature them, onlookers who expected them to be perfected at once, say he "failed in whatever he proposed." While the truth is he succeeded in more things than any public man ever undertook. If he made more promises than he fulfilled, he fulfilled more than any other public man ever made. Thus, he was not a man of "one idea" but of many. Nor did his projects fail. The only social Community for which he was responsible was that of New Harmony, in Indiana; which broke up through his too great trust in uneducated humanity — a fault which only the generous commit. The communities of Motherwell and Orbiston, of Manea, Fen, and Queenwood in Hampshire were all undertaken without his authority, and despite his warning of the adequacy of the means for success. They failed, as he predicted they would. Critics, skilled in coming to conclusions without knowing the facts, impute these failures to him.”

George Holyoake (1817–1906) British secularist, co-operator, and newspaper editor

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“Some say ‘Man is what he eats’ and some say ‘A man’s thinking determines his character’. It might be even more true to say ‘A man’s life and character are governed by his breathing’! This is because a person can neither digest what he eats nor act up to his ideas unless his breathing qualifies him to do so.”

Vera Stanley Alder (1898–1984) British artist

Source: Humanity Comes of Age, A study of Individual and World Fulfillment (1950), Chapter XV The Essential Science of Breathing, p. 101

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Marc Randazza 25

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