“Only in America, Rabbi Golden, do these peasants, our mothers, get their hair dyed platinum at the age of sixty, and walk up and down Collins Avenue in Florida in pedalpushers and mink stoles — and with opinions on every subject under the sun. It isn’t their fault they were given a gift like speech — look, if cows could talk, they would say things just as idiotic.”

— Philip Roth , book Portnoy's Complaint

Part 5: "Cunt Crazy"
Portnoy's Complaint (1969)

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Philip Roth 95

American novelist 1933–2018

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“The whole "weak in the knees" thing, which she always thought was just some idiotic expression back from the golden age of idiotic expressions, was real.
-Suite Scarlett”

Maureen Johnson (1973) writer from the USA

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“You’re saying God is all made up, but okay, who cares? People say, “I can’t pray because I feel like I’m talking to myself.” The rabbi would say, “Pray! That’s so good. Go talk to yourself.””

Abby Stein (1991) Trans activist, speaker, and educator

Huffington Post, June 9, 2016 http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/abby-stein-judaism_us_57574cbfe4b08f74f6c08963
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“Human beings are blind to their own faults. In the movies, villains never proclaim that they are villains. Nor do idiots say that they are idiots. Our faults lie within us, active and fierce, but unconfessed. I've never seen a man walk downstage and announce, his head held high, "Ladies and gentleman, I'm a scumbag!"”

Nélson Rodrigues (1912–1980) Brazilian writer and playwright

"Flor de Obsessão: as 1000 melhores frases de Nelson Rodrigues," page 34.

“The basic problem is to understand that there are no such things as things; that is to say separate things, separate events. That is only a way of talking. What do you mean by a thing? A thing is a noun. A noun isn’t a part of nature it’s a part of speech. There are no nouns in the physical world. There are no separate things in the physical world either.”

Alan Watts (1915–1973) British philosopher, writer and speaker

Watts on Wiggles Waves http://wigglesandwaves.blogspot.nl/2004/12/watts-on-wiggles-waves.html, used in the Cosmosis track No Such Thing (2007).

“No cow gives milk unless she gets pregnant and gives birth to a calf. (I remember one dairy farmer I visited insisting that the cow would be in pain unless she was milked; true, but only because she had just given birth to a calf who was no longer present.) The milk is meant for the calf. … But our greed is greater than any reasonable person could expect: we do not allow the calf even the small amount he or she would normally take in a day. We want it all. So the calf is separated from the cow immediately upon birth. The industry says this must happen instantaneously, for otherwise there is a risk—no, it is a certainty—that the two will bond. In fact, they have already bonded, just as much as would a human mother with her baby. The strong bond is inborn in all mammals. The terrible sound one hears on any dairy farm after a cow has given birth is the call of a lost calf, calling her mother, and the mother answering in desperation. If that is not suffering, I don't know the meaning of the word.”

Jeffrey Moussaieff Masson (1941) American writer and activist

Source: The Face on Your Plate (2009), Ch. 2, pp. 79-80

“I love America. I love our freedom. And nowhere could a guy like me, a schlub like me have success with -- where would I get this freedom of speech? They don't allow this anywhere.”

Howard Stern (1954) American radio personality

[Piers, Morgan, Howard Stern almost retired last year, 2011-01-18, CNN, http://www.cnn.com/2011/SHOWBIZ/01/18/howard.stern.piers.morgan/, Piers Morgan Tonight, 2011-01-19]
Howard Stern on Piers Morgan Tonight, CNN (January 18, 2011)

“Under a system of permanent revelry, we will witness the Golden Age of the dilettante which will put the Renaissance to shame. There won't be any more jobs, just things to do and people to do them.”

Bob Black book The Abolition of Work

The Abolition of Work (1985)
Context: What I really want to see is work turned into play. A first step is to discard the notions of a "job" and an "occupation." Even activities that already have some ludic content lose most of it by being reduced to jobs which certain people, and only those people, are forced to do to the exclusion of all else. Is it not odd that farm workers toil painfully in the fields while their airconditioned masters go home every weekend and putter about in their gardens? Under a system of permanent revelry, we will witness the Golden Age of the dilettante which will put the Renaissance to shame. There won't be any more jobs, just things to do and people to do them.

“To me the great divide is between the talkative and the quiet. Do they just say everything that’s on their minds, even before it’s on their minds? Sometimes I think I could just turn up my head like a walkman so what’s going on there could be heard by others. But there would still be a difference. For inside the head they are talking to people like them, and I am talking to someone like me: he is quiet and doesn’t much like being talked at; he can’t conceal how easily he gets bored.”

James Richardson (1950) American poet

#127
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“He may look like an idiot and talk like an idiot but don't let that fool you. He really is an idiot.”

Groucho Marx (1890–1977) American comedian

“Our worlds, our suns, our ages, stream,
like a dateless dream.
Each drop of blood is a starry song
and our souls are breaths of eternity.
Eyes, say, why were ye given your sight?
To light a star, to welcome of immortal skies.”

Alexis Karpouzos (1967)

Source: https://twitter.com/AKarpouzos/status/1616451289977868288

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Philip Roth 95

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