“… prepare eveything to burn Baku to the ground, if there is an attack…”

New York Times (June 23, 2005)

Source: Letter to his daughter (1978), p. 15
Context: You cannot be big unless you are prepared to kiss the ground. You cannot defend the soil unless you know the smell of that soil. I know the smell of our soil. I know the rhythm of our rivers. I know the beat of our drums. The theories, the dogmas and the scripts stand outside the gates of history. The dominant factor is the aspiration of the people and the ability to seek total identification with it. Once the significance of the symphony is grasped, the lines fall into place, the dogmas and theories get legs to move in time to the majesty of that music. This does not mean that I am preaching pragmatism. There is a lot of expediency in pragmatism. I am trying to trace the roots of the problems, the genesis of the challenges, the cause of the struggle.

Source: October Ferry To Gabriola

Source: A History of Economic Thought (1939), Chapter II, Commercial Capitalism and its Theory, p. 65

Frances Farmer Will Have Her Revenge on Seattle.
Song lyrics, In Utero (1993)

Letter http://eText.Lib.Virginia.edu/etcbin/toccer-new2?id=JefLett.sgm&amp;images=images/modeng&amp;data=/texts/english/modeng/parsed&amp;tag=public&amp;part=136&amp;division=div1 to Dr. Joseph Priestley (21 March 1801); published in The Life of Thomas Jefferson (1871) by Henry Stephens Randall, Vol. 2, p. 644; this seems to be the source of a misleading abbreviation: &quot;[Christianity is] the most … perverted system that ever shone on man&quot;. <br class="br">1800s, First Presidential Administration (1801&amp;ndash;1805) <br class="br">Context: Yours is one of the few lives precious to mankind, and for the continuance of which every thinking man is solicitous. Bigots may be an exception. What an effort, my dear sir, of bigotry in politics and religion have we gone through! The barbarians really flattered themselves they should be able to bring back the times of Vandalism, when ignorance put everything into the hands of power and priestcraft. All advances in science were proscribed as innovations. They pretended to praise and encourage education, but it was to be the education of our ancestors. We were to look backwards, not forwards, for improvement … This was the real ground of all the attacks on you. Those who live by mystery &amp; charlatanerie, fearing you would render them useless by simplifying the Christian philosophy — the most sublime and benevolent, but most perverted system that ever shone on man — endeavored to crush your well-earned &amp; well-deserved fame.

True/Slant, &quot;Farewell, and a confession&quot; http://trueslant.com/barrettbrown/2010/07/29/farewell-and-a-confession/, 29 July 2010.

The Rambler, No. 78 (Sat 15 Dec 1750). http://www.yalejohnson.com/frontend/sda_viewer?n=106855 See also The Yale Book of Quotations, Samuel Johnson 2 (2006)