Recommended quotes
page 85

Thomas Sowell photo

“The problem isn't that Johnny can't read. The problem isn't even that Johnny can't think. The problem is that Johnny doesn't know what thinking is; he confuses it with feeling.”

Thomas Sowell (1930) American economist, social theorist, political philosopher and author

José Antonio Primo de Rivera photo

“Fascism was born to inspire a faith not of the Right (which at bottom aspires to conserve everything, even injustice) or of the Left (which at bottom aspires to destroy everything, even goodness), but a collective, integral, national faith.”

José Antonio Primo de Rivera (1903–1936) Spanish noble and politician

Stanley G. Payne, Falange: A History of Spanish Fascism (1961), p. 31.

Lewis Carroll photo

“Either it brings tears to their eyes, or else -"
"Or else what?" said Alice, for the Knight had made a sudden pause.
"Or else it doesn't, you know.”

Lewis Carroll book Alice's Adventures in Wonderland

Source: Alice in Wonderland

“We are one of those couples i used to watch, thinking to myself that I'd never be on the inside of something so special. I remember reassuring myself that it probably looked nicer than it actually was, I am happy to be wrong about that.”

Emily Giffin Something Borrowed

Source: Something Borrowed

“The poet, says Baudelaire, is a decipherer, a Kabbalist of reality, a decoder. Ordinary life, if it is not a message in code, a system of symbols for something else, is unacceptable. It must be a cryptogram; it can't be what it seems. The poet's task is to decode the incomprehensible obvious. His life becomes a deliberately constructed paranoia, as Rimbaud, Breton, Artaud were to say generations later.
As we read him, we discover that Baudelaire believes in the charm, the incantation, the cryptogram, but he ceases to believe in the secret. The spirits have not risen. The code says nothing. This is the mystery concealed by the disorder of the world. The visionary experience ends in itself; the light of the illuminated comes only from and falls only on himself.”

Kenneth Rexroth (1905–1982) American poet, writer, anarchist, academic and conscientious objector

Baudelaire: Poems (p. 175)
Classics Revisited (1968)

“It is a commonplace that Racine is untranslatable. This is not because his verse is difficult, but because it is not.”

Kenneth Rexroth (1905–1982) American poet, writer, anarchist, academic and conscientious objector

Racine: Phèdre (p. 54)
More Classics Revisited (1989)

“It takes great labor to uncover the convincing simple speech of the heart. Poetic candor comes with hard labor, so even does impetuosity and impudence.”

Kenneth Rexroth (1905–1982) American poet, writer, anarchist, academic and conscientious objector

Catullus (p. 28)
More Classics Revisited (1989)

G. K. Chesterton photo

“No man’s really any good till he knows how bad he is, or might be; till he’s realized exactly how much right he has to all this snobbery, and sneering, and talking about ‘criminals,’ as if they were apes in a forest ten thousand miles away; till he’s got rid of all the dirty self-deception of talking about low types and deficient skulls; till he’s squeezed out of his soul the last drop of the oil of the Pharisees; till his only hope is somehow or other to have captured one criminal, and kept him safe and sane under his own hat.”

G. K. Chesterton book The Secret of Father Brown

The Secret of Father Brown (1927) The Secret of Father Brown
The Father Brown Mystery Series (1910 - 1927)

Osama bin Laden photo

“In today's wars, there are no morals. We believe the worst thieves in the world today and the worst terrorists are the Americans. We do not have to differentiate between military or civilian. As far as we are concerned, they are all targets.”

Osama bin Laden (1957–2011) founder of al-Qaeda

As quoted in &quot;The Most Wanted Man in the World&quot; http://www.time.com/time/covers/1101010924/wosama.html (16 September 2001), Time magazine profile. <br class="br">2000s, 2001

Mikhail Bakunin photo

“All exercise of authority perverts, and submission to authority humiliates.”

Mikhail Bakunin (1814–1876) Russian revolutionary, philosopher, and theorist of collectivist anarchism

As quoted in Michael Bakunin (1937), E.H. Carr, p. 453

Jeffrey Epstein photo

“I'm also not dead.”

Jeffrey Epstein (1953–2019) American financier, science and education philanthropist and sex offender

Jeffrey Epstein photo

“I invest in people — be it politics or science. It's what I do. … If you were a boxer at the downtown gymnasium at 14th Street and Mike Tyson walked in, your face would have the same look as these foreign leaders had when Clinton entered the room. He is the world's greatest politician.”

Jeffrey Epstein (1953–2019) American financier, science and education philanthropist and sex offender

per March 2003 article by New York Magazine http://nymag.com/nymetro/news/people/n_7912/

Jeffrey Epstein photo

“I just want you to know I’m not a pedophile. … Maybe the only thing worse than being called a pedophile is being called a hedge fund manager.”

Jeffrey Epstein (1953–2019) American financier, science and education philanthropist and sex offender

As quoted by Charlie Gasparino in Jeffrey Epstein before he died https://www.foxbusiness.com/features/jeffrey-epstein-exclusive-hedge-fund, FOXBusiness, 13 August 2019

Jeffrey Epstein photo

“I invest in people — be it politics or science. It's what I do.”

Jeffrey Epstein (1953–2019) American financier, science and education philanthropist and sex offender

Quoted in Jeffrey Epstein: International Moneyman of Mystery By Landon Thomas Jr., New York Magazine http://nymag.com/nymetro/news/people/n_7912/ Oct. 28, 2002

Jeffrey Epstein photo

“I realize what I am. I’m very comfortable in my own skin. I’m not a helicopter pilot. What I’m really free to do is I feel free to follow my own personality. As we discussed yesterday, I can’t be totally wacko in what I do. It affects lots of other people who will get angry with what I do because then it affects me again. But on my own island or on my own ranch, I can think the thoughts I want to think. I can do the work I want to do and I’m free to explore as I see fit.”

Jeffrey Epstein (1953–2019) American financier, science and education philanthropist and sex offender

In a January 2003 interview with David Bank, as quoted by Tyler Durden in Epstein Tapes Emerge: Dead Pedophile Describes His Lifestyle In Unearthed Recordings https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2019-08-14/epstein-tapes-emerge-jeffrey-epstein-describes-his-lifestyle-unearthed-recordings, ZeroHedge, 15 August 2019. See also: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M511Wp-elHE, Bloomberg Markets and Finance, YouTube

Thomas Szasz photo

“As Justice Olive Wendell Holmes, Jr. put it, censorship rests on the idea that “every idea is an incitement.” Perhaps he should have specified “every interesting idea,” for a dull idea is not. By the same token, every interesting drug is an incitement. And so is everything else that people find interesting.”

Thomas Szasz (1920–2012) Hungarian psychiatrist

Source: Our Right to Drugs (1992), p. 35.

Thomas Szasz photo

“It is customary to define psychiatry as a medical specialty concerned with the study, diagnosis and treatment of mental illnesses. This is a worthless and misleading definition. Mental illness is a myth. Psychiatrists are not concerned with mental illnesses and their treatments. In actual practice they deal with personal, social and ethical problems in living.
I have argued that, today, the notion of a person "having a mental illness" is scientifically crippling. It provides professional assent to a popular rationalization — namely that problems in living experienced and expressed in terms of so-called psychiatric symptoms are basically similar to bodily diseases.
Moreover, the concept of mental illness also undermines the principle of personal responsibility, the ground on which all free political institutions rest.”

Thomas Szasz (1920–2012) Hungarian psychiatrist

Conclusions.
The Myth of Mental Illness: Foundations of a Theory of Personal Conduct (1961)

Thomas Szasz photo

“The homosexual is a scapegoat who evokes no sympathy. Hence, he can only be a victim, never a martyr.”

Thomas Szasz (1920–2012) Hungarian psychiatrist

Source: The Manufacture of Madness: A Comparative Study of the Inquisition and the Mental Health Movement (1997), p. 169.

Thomas Szasz photo

“Prostitution is said to be the world’s oldest profession.”

Thomas Szasz (1920–2012) Hungarian psychiatrist

It is, indeed, a model of all professional work: the worker relinquishes control over himself … in exchange for money. Because of the passivity it entails, this is a difficult and, for many, a distasteful role.
Source: The Second Sin (1973), p. 45.

Thomas Szasz photo

“Psychiatry is institutionalized scientism: it is the systematic imitation, impersonation, counterfeiting, and deception. This is the formula: every adult smokes (drinks, engages in sexual activity, etc.); hence, to prove that he is an adult, the adolescent smokes (drinks, engages in sexual activity, etc). Mutatis mutandis: every science consists of classification, control, and prediction; hence to prove psychiatry is a science, the psychiatrist classifies, controls, predicts. The result is that he classifies people as mad; that he confines them as dangerous (to themselves or others); and that he predicts people's behavior, robbing them of their free will and hence of their very humanity.”

Thomas Szasz (1920–2012) Hungarian psychiatrist

"Science and Scientism", p. 115.
The Second Sin (1973)