Quotes about basics
page 18

“If we are really on the way towards a political entity with a common foreign policy on basic issues, then I consider that France's nuclear force should be available to serve that policy.”

Jacques Delors (1925) French economist and politician

On French television (5 January 1992), quoted in The Times (6 January 1992), p. 11
President of the European Commission

Way

“Man is endowed with choice, but the world as he has made it is a perfect example of what not to do. Man's basic needs are food, shelter, clothing, and procreation. The stock market, cosmetics, religious games, war games, the myth of teaching, and political games are the lack of these.”

Warren Leopold (1920–1998)

[Westlund, Darren, Cambria Treasures, Warren Leopold, Cambira, CA, Small Town Surrealist Productions, 1990, 39, ASIN: B000E263NM, 2019-03-17, https://www.amazon.com/Cambria-Treasures-Interviews-Noteworthy-Cambrians/dp/B000E263NM]

War, World, Food, Game

“Meditation is a way of scientifically looking at our basic situation and seeing what is important in dealing with it.”

Chögyam Trungpa (1939–1987) Tibetan Buddhist lama and writer

Source: Glimpses of Abhidharma, p. 65

Way

“Much more seriously, in those traditional eco-systems that we chose to retain, millions of non-human animals will continue periodically to starve, die horribly of thirst and disease, or even get eaten alive. This is commonly viewed as "natural" and hence basically OK. It would indeed be comforting to think that in some sense this ongoing animal holocaust doesn't matter too much. We often find it convenient to act as though the capacity to suffer were somehow inseparably bound up with linguistic ability or ratiocinative prowess. Yet there is absolutely no evidence that this is the case, and a great deal that it isn't.”

David Pearce (philosopher) (1959) British transhumanist

1.9 The Taste of Depravity https://www.hedweb.com/hedethic/hedon1.htm#taste <br class="br"> The Hedonistic Imperative https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/514875 (1995)

Disease, Nature, Thinking, Sense

“Punk rock, at its best, was just stripping down all the corporate rock I was hearing on the radio in the 1980s and getting down to its most basic roots.”

Beto O'Rourke (1972) American politician

[Tilove, Jonathan, Beto Effin’ O’Rourke: On running for Senate with the expletive undeleted First Reading, http://politics.blog.mystatesman.com/2017/09/25/beto-effin-orourke-on-running-for-senate-with-the-expletive-undeleted/, My Statesman, 12 November 2018, en, September 25, 2017] On his days in his rock band, Foss
2017

“Not only do these (Blasphemy) laws have no religious standing in Islam, they are repugnant to the basic principles of justice, equality and human rights in addition to challenging the basic spirit of the Constitution of Pakistan which guarantees equal rights to all citizens.”

Marvi Sirmed (1972) Pakistani human rights courtesan

Source: Marvi Sirmed https://blogs.tribune.com.pk/story/3270/where-did-the-blasphemy-law-come-from/

Justice, Law

“The whole justification for permitting the corporate executive to be selected by the stockholders is that the executive is an agent serving the interests of his principal. This justification disappears when the corporate executive imposes taxes and spends the proceeds for “social” purposes. He becomes in effect a public employe, a civil servant, even though he remains in name an employe of private enterprise. On grounds of political principle, it is intolerable that such civil servants—insofar as their actions in the name of social responsibility are real and not just window‐dressing—should be selected as they are now. If they are to be civil servants, then they must be selected through a political process. If they are to impose taxes and make expenditures to foster “social” objectives, then political machinery must be set up to guide the assessment of taxes and to determine through a political process the objectives to be served. This is the basic reason why the doctrine of “social responsibility” involves the acceptance of the socialist view that political mechanisms, not market mechanisms, are the appropriate way to determine the allocation of scarce resources to alternative uses.”

Milton Friedman (1912–2006) American economist, statistician, and writer

“A Friedman doctrine‐- The Social Responsibility Of Business Is to Increase Its Profits” (Sept. 1970)

Making love, Way

“IN a free‐enterprise, private‐property system, a corporate executive is an employe of the owners of the business. He has direct responsibility to his employers. That responsibility is to conduct the business in accordance with their desires, which generally will be to make as much money as possible while conforming to the basic rules of the society, both those embodied in law and those embodied in ethical custom. Of course, in some cases his employers may have a different objective. A group of persons might establish a corporation for an eleemosynary purpose—for example, a hospital or school. The manager of such a corporation will not have money profit as his objective but the rendering of certain services. In either case, the key point is that, in his capacity as a corporate executive, the manager is the agent of the individuals who own the corporation or establish the eleemosynary institution, and his primary responsibility is to them.”

Milton Friedman (1912–2006) American economist, statistician, and writer

“A Friedman doctrine‐- The Social Responsibility Of Business Is to Increase Its Profits” (Sept. 1970)

Money, Making love, School, Law

“To me, America used to be a place that made steel, and cars, and had giant department stores. Now, basically, we produce amateur talent and people [who] judge amateur talent.”

Jerry Seinfeld (1954) American comedian and actor

Comedians in Cars Getting Coffee (2012 — Present), Season 3 (2014)

People, Cars

“The continuation of diachrony in perceptions of life and death spreads across a form of antinatalism essentially co-opted from a kind of Western fetishism of Buddhism, namely efilism. Coming etymologically from the reverse of 'life', efilism claims it is better never to have been. Efilist philosophers such as David Benatar hinge their arguments on basic binaries of pleasure and pain which roughly correlate to good and bad and extend to a vindication of life and death. Efilism has a vague correspondence with utilitarianism but emphasizes the suffering of life over utilitarianism's greater good. Both are absolute in their perception of the capacity to evaluate which is which, making both dependent on economic measure of value as an either/or, and to an extent both on (anthropocentric) determinism. Efilism's redeeming feature is that it promotes antinatalism, and often veganism, in its aspirations to a reduction in suffering, and this attitude promises potentials for opening the world through the cessation of the human.”

Patricia MacCormack Australian Scholar

Embracing Death, pp. 152-153
The Ahuman Manifesto: Activism for the End of the Anthropocene (2020)

Life, Death, Pain, Bad luck

“I never took any courses. I think I might have taken a very basic one at some point during film school. I think it was a required class you had to take, and I think they went over the format a little bit. Other than that, I never took any writing courses or screenwriting courses or anything like that. I just tried to read as much as possible.”

Aaron Guzikowski (1974) American screenwriter

School, Thinking, Reading

“The Liberal is distinguished from the Conservative and the Radical, not only by his basic philosophy but by his methods. Never does he believe that a good end justifies and evil means. He seeks to find everything that binds men together, rather than what divides them, for he loves persuasion and detests coercion.”

Dorothy Thompson (1893–1961) American journalist and radio broadcaster

Dorothy Thompson’s Political Guide: A Study of American Liberalism and its Relationship to Modern Totalitarian States (1938)
Source: A Study of American Liberalism and its Relationship to Modern Totalitarian States (1938)
p. 90

Love, Men, Making love, Evil

“What we need to think about perhaps for Mission Blue is increasing the biologging capacity. How is it that we can actually take this type of activity elsewhere? And then finally -- to basically get the message home -- maybe use live links from animals such as blue whales and white sharks. Make killer apps, if you will. A lot of people are excited when sharks actually went under the Golden Gate Bridge. Let's connect the public to this activity right on their iPhone. That way we do away with a few internet myths. So we can save the bluefin tuna. We can save the white shark. We have the science and technology. Hope is here. Yes we can. We need just to apply this capacity further in the oceans.”

Barbara Block (1958) American marine biologist

Source: Tagging tuna in the deep ocean https://www.ted.com/talks/barbara_block_tagging_tuna_in_the_deep_ocean (April 2010)

People, Making love, Hope, Way

“I have been in some kind of fight – for freedom, equality, basic human rights – for nearly my entire life. I have never faced a fight quite like the one I have now.”

John Lewis (civil rights leader) (1940) American politician and civil rights leader

Source: Twitter https://twitter.com/repjohnlewis/status/1207420638748725250, (30 December 2019)

Life, Freedom, Fight

“The most basic problem for democracy raided by propaganda is the possibility that the vocabulary of liberal democracy is used to mask an undemocratic reality. If so, there could be a state that appeared to be a liberal democracy. It would be a state the citizens of which believed was a liberal democracy. But the appearance of liberal democracy would be merely the outer trappings of an illiberal, undemocratic reality.”

Jason Stanley book How Propaganda Works

Source: How Propaganda Works (2015), p. 11

Democracy, Problem, Reality, Appearance

“[W]e understand that if the child were to give in to the overpowering character of reality and experience he would not be able to act with the kind of equanimity we need in our non-instinctive world. So one of the first things a child has to do is to learn to “abandon ecstasy,” to do without awe, to leave fear and trembling behind. Only then can he act with a certain oblivious self-confidence, when he has naturalized his world. We say “naturalized” but we mean unnaturalized, falsified, with the truth obscured, the despair of the human condition hidden, a despair that the child glimpses in his night terrors and daytime phobias and neuroses. This despair he avoids by building defenses; and these defenses allow him to feel a basic sense of self-worth, of meaningfulness, of power. They allow him to feel that he controls his life and his death, that he really does live and act as a willful and free individual, that he has a unique and self-fashioned identity, that he is somebody—not just a trembling accident germinated on a hothouse planet that Carlyle for all time called a “hall of doom.””

Ernest Becker book The Denial of Death

We called one’s life style a vital lie, and now we can understand better why we said it was vital: it is a necessary and basic dishonesty about oneself and one’s whole situation. This revelation is what the Freudian revolution in thought really ends up in and is the basic reason that we still strain against Freud We don’t want to admit that we arerevelation is what the Freudian revolution in thought really ends up in and is the basic reason that we still strain against Freud. We don’t want to admit that we are fundamentally dishonest about reality, that we do not really control our own lives. We don’t want to admit that we do not stand alone, that we always rely on something that transcends us, some system of ideas and powers in which we are embedded and which support us. This power is not always obvious. It need not be overtly a god or openly a stronger person, but it can be the power of an all-absorbing activity, a passion, a dedication to a game, a way of life, that like a comfortable web keeps a person buoyed up and ignorant of himself, of the fact that he does not rest on his own center. All of us are driven to be supported in a self-forgetful way, ignorant of what energies we really draw on, of the kind of lie we have fashioned in order to live securely and serenely. Augustine was a master analyst of this, as were Kierkegaard, Scheler, and Tillich in our day. They saw that man could strut and boast all he wanted, but that he really drew his “courage to be” from a god, a string of sexual conquests, a Big Brother, a flag, the proletariat, and the fetish of money and the size of a bank balance.
Human Character as a Vital Lie
The Denial of Death (1973)

Life, Death, Truth, World

“The idea that religion was conceived as originally designed for a particular people relating to a specific god falls well within the experiences of the rest of humankind and may conceivably be considered a basic factor in the existence of religion.”

Vine Deloria Jr. (1933–2005) American writer

Source: God Is Red (1973), p. 204

God, People, Religion, Idea

“If you think about things that happen, as being computations... a computation in the sense that it has definite rules... You follow them many steps and you get some result. ...If you look at all these different computations that can happen, whether... in the natural world... in our brains... in our mathematics, whatever else, the big question is how do these computations compare. ...Are there dumb ...and smart computations, or are they somehow all equivalent? ...[T]he thing that I ...was ...surprised to realize from ...experiments ...in the early 90s, and now we have tons more evidence for ...[is] this ...principle of computational equivalence, which basically says that when one of these computations ...doesn't seem like it's doing something obviously simple, then it has reached this ...equivalent layer of computational sophistication of everything. So what does that mean? ...You might say that ...I'm studying this tiny little program ...and my brain is surely much smarter ...I'm going to be able to systematically outrun [it] because I have a more sophisticated computation ...but ...the principle ...says ...that doesn't work. Our brains are doing computations that are exactly equivalent to the kinds of computations that are being done in all these other sorts of systems. ...It means that we can't systematically outrun these systems. These systems are computationally irreducible in the sense that there's no ...shortcut ...that jumps to the answer.”

Stephen Wolfram (1959) British-American computer scientist, mathematician, physicist, writer and businessman

Stephen Wolfram: Fundamental Theory of Physics, Life, and the Universe (Sep 15, 2020)

World, Mathematics, Question, Nature

“The basic premise of libertarianism is that each individual should be free to do as he or she pleases so long as he or she does not harm others.”

Mary Ruwart (1949) American scientist and libertarian activist

Source: Healing Our World: In An Age of Aggression, (2003), p. 161

“When we consider that resources will one day be mined from planets other than the earth, that matter and energy are totally interchangeable, and that basic chemical elements can be transmuted, we realize that resource seeds are so abundant that they do not impose practical limitations on the creation of wealth at all.”

Mary Ruwart (1949) American scientist and libertarian activist

Source: Healing Our World: In An Age of Aggression, (2003), p. 19

Wealth

“I am certain that a solution of the general problem of peace must rest on broad and basic understanding on the part of its peoples. Great single endeavors like a League of Nations, a United Nations, and undertakings of that character, are of great importance and in fact absolutely necessary, but they must be treated as steps toward the desired end.”

George Marshall (1880–1959) US military leader, Army Chief of Staff

Essentials to Peace (1953)

People, Peace, Understanding, Problem

“Legislatures have rewritten basic business laws, some whose principles date back thousands of years. Too often the goal has been to thwart competition, artificially inflate prices, hold down wages by decimating unions, reduce worker benefits and... restrict or bar access to the courts by those aggrieved.”

David Cay Johnston (1948) Investigative journalist and author

The Fine Print (2013)

Law, Business

“Basically, I exploited the phenomenon of the technician’s often blind devotion to his task. Because of what seems to be the moral neutrality of technology, these people were without any scruples about their activities. The more technical the world imposed on us by the war, the more dangerous was this indifference of the technician to the direct consequences of his anonymous activities.”

Albert Speer book Inside the Third Reich

Source: Inside the Third Reich: Memoirs (1970), p. 310

War, People, World, Indifference

“Technically, it’s about getting the basic forms and proportions right for your goal. It’s NOT about details. Details are easy and definitely keep designs alive onscreen, but if the basic forms are not natural, believable and convincing, no amount of details is going to make much difference. And when in doubt, study Mother Nature.”

Chris Walas (1955) American special effects artist and film director

TALKING WITH CREATURE EFFECTS LEGEND CHRIS WALAS…OR AS I KNOW HIM, UNCLE CHRIS https://www.starwars.com/news/talking-with-creature-effects-legend-chris-walas-or-as-i-know-him-uncle-chris (March 1, 2016)

Making love, Nature, Study

“To all the people out there, you know just live out your dreams, if you dream something, just pursue it and do it because if you can put your mind to it you can do basically anything and everything you want to. I mean look at me, I came from a country that was falling apart because of communism and escaping to America, not knowing the language and then not learning it from beginning, and overcoming that and where I am now, you know it just shows you that if you put your mind to it you can do anything you want to.”

Thuy Trang (1973–2001) Vietnamese actress (1973-2001)

Thuy Trang Interview (Encyclopedia of Martial Arts: Hollywood Stars) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MwNZAqDAFng&t=54s&ab_channel=DietColaTime (1995)

People, Dreams, Communication, Learning

“Technology is nothing. What’s important is that you have a faith in people, that they’re basically good and smart, and if you give them tools, they’ll do wonderful things with them.”

Steve Jobs (1955–2011) American entrepreneur and co-founder of Apple Inc.

People, Faith

“I believe that we are fundamentally the same and have the same basic potential.”

Tenzin Gyatso (1935) spiritual leader of Tibet

“We’re basically mediating our lives and our communication through these small, glowing rectangles. I think that that’s not really how people are made to interact.”

Mark Zuckerberg (1984) American internet entrepreneur

Source: https://www.theverge.com/22588022/mark-zuckerberg-facebook-ceo-metaverse-interview

People, Communication, Thinking

“The basic elements that make a person more or less interesting are: intelligence and character.”

Prevale (1983) Italian DJ and producer

Original: (it) Gli elementi fondamentali che rendono più o meno interessante una persona sono: l'intelligenza e il carattere.
Source: prevale.net

Intelligence, Personality

“A genuine era of happiness is only possible when we aren’t clouded by the uncertainties of aging and when bearing and raising children is truly considered a blessing. No citizen should be left to fear that he or she might not be able to meet the basic requirements of life.”

Park Geun-hye (1952) eleventh President of South Korea

Excerpts from inaugural address (February 25, 2013)

Life, Happiness, Children, Age

“The rhythm of music, akin to the human heart-beat and to the ceaseless change and motion, which is the basic fact in all life, apeals at once to our own physical vitality.”

Walter Raymond Spalding (1865–1962) American music pedagogue and author

Page 3 https://books.google.com/books?id=pQARAAAAIAAJ&pg=PA3. <br class="br">Music: An Art and a Language (1920), Preliminary Considerations (Ch. I)

Life, Music, Change, Heart

“The basic unit of writing practice is the timed exercise.
1. Keep your hand moving.
2. Don't cross out.
3. Don't worry about spelling, punctuation, grammar.
4. Lose control.
5. Don't think. Don't get logical.
6. Go for the jugular.
[…] That is the discipline: to continue to sit.”

Natalie Goldberg book Writing Down the Bones

Essay, "First thoughts". p.8, 9
Writing Down the Bones (1986)

Exercises, Thinking, Time

“My basic ideas have not changed. I see no reason to change them.”

Israel Epstein (1915–2005) Chinese politician

Israel Epstein, Prominent Chinese Communist, Dies at 90 in The New York Times https://www.nytimes.com/2005/06/02/world/asia/israel-epstein-prominent-chinese-communist-dies-at-90.html (2 June 2005)

Idea, Change

“I’ve never seen a religion that wasn’t basically evil.”

Rudy Rucker book Master of Space and Time

Source: Master of Space and Time (1984), Chapter 10, “God’s Laws” (p. 72)

Religion, Evil

“Skipping the basic methods will cost you more at the top than following the full process of doing things while you are still at the bottom of the ladder”

Mwanandeke Kindembo (1996) Congolese author

“The fundamental... the basic law of life is the law of cause and effect... the law of Karma as they call it in the east. It was put out by Jesus very simply in His time in a way that would be understood by the farmers... as you sow, so shall you reap... it's the basic law of life.”

Benjamin Creme (1922–2016) artist, author, esotericist

The State of the World 2010, public lecture in New York City, USA, (July 2010)

Life, Law, Way, Time

“Filtering out extraneous information is one of the basic functions of our consciousness.”

Barry Schwartz book The Paradox of Choice: Why More Is Less

The Paradox of Choice (2004)

“Every religion has basic principles that is designed to uplift people's mind and teaches good morals and ethics, the tools which lead to a harmonious society where people do not encroach, but help one another.”

Yingluck Shinawatra (1967) Thai businesswoman and politician

"Speech On The Occasion Of The End Of Ramadan H. 1432" https://www.thaiembassy.sg/announcements/speech-by-prime-minister-yingluck-shinawatra-on-the-occasion-of-the-end-of-ramadan-h-1 (2011)

People, Religion, Help

“I’m not particularly interested in collecting things, but there’s one sort of running motif in my life: despite my basic indifference, objects just seem to collect around me, of their own volition.”

Haruki Murakami (1949) Japanese author, novelist

Source: Haruki Murakami official FB profile https://www.facebook.com/photo/?fbid=440734884083102&set=a.294927818663810

Life, Indifference

“All of us are out there to be servants in the same way that Jesus served the will of the Father. It seemed to me that that’s our goal, and that we’re trying to make an impact but then basically not leave a particularly big wake. You know what I mean? We come in quietly, we go out quietly.”

Joel Matthias Konzen (1950) Roman Catholic bishop

Source: An interview with Bishop Konzen https://georgiabulletin.org/news/2018/04/an-interview-with-bishop-konzen/ (19 April 2018)

Way

“The steps taken today serve to preserve the basic features of socialist renewal. All the reforms will be continued in an atmosphere of order, businesslike discussion and discipline, also economic reform.”

Wojciech Jaruzelski (1923–2014) Polish military officer and politician

Source: Excerpts of Martial law speech (14 December 1981)

“[T]he basic decisions are... about aims... what is desirable... the greater good or the lesser evil in the case of conflicting aims... what sacrifice we are willing to make for a certain achievement, and at what point the sacrifice outweighs the advantages.”

Peter F. Drucker (1909–2005) American business consultant

Source: 1930s- 1950s, The Future of Industrial Man (1942), p. 120

Decision, Evil

“Often, in writing, granting the basic skill of writing a literate English sentence—which can no longer be taken for granted even in college graduates—all it takes is determination.”

Marion Zimmer Bradley (1930–1999) Novelist, editor

Source: Introduction to Waterwise in Marion Zimmer Bradley (ed.), Sword and Sorceress 7 (1990), p. 199

“Ending our support of Saudi Arabia isn’t about political gamesmanship. It’s about basic humanity. It’s about doing everything to stop the bombing in Yemen so we can get food and medicine to the hundreds of thousands of children who are at immediate risk of starving to death.”

Ro Khanna (1976) U.S. Representative from California

Source: Twitter post https://twitter.com/RoKhanna/status/1078370178595991552 (27 December 2018)

Death, Children, Food, Support

“People don't change their basic nature, they just accumulate more stuff upon which they can apply their stupidity, selfishness, and horniness. From this perspective, the future isn't hard to predict.”

Scott Adams (1957) cartoonist, writer

Source: Books, The Dilbert Future (1997)

People, Stupidity, Nature, Change

“Much has been lost in U.S. culture because of secularism. The values of the immigrants are very basic, reflecting a profound Catholicism where faith, family, and expressions of piety, etc., are part of our daily life.”

José Horacio Gómez (1951) Roman Catholic archbishop

Source: Latin Influence and the Future of the Church in U.S. https://zenit.org/2005/06/20/latin-influence-and-the-future-of-the-church-in-u-s/ (20 June 2005)

Life, Family, Faith, Parting

“I made mistakes, in communication. In the beginning, I put too much emphasis on people's own responsibility and not enough on the mandatory measures (with regards to COVID-19 pandemic). The second is that I did not succeed in convincing people to a sufficient extent about the basic measures.”

Mark Rutte (1967) 50th Prime Minister of the Netherlands

Source: Mark Rutte (2021) cited in: " Rutte: I made coronavirus policy mistakes; King can help speed up Cabinet formation https://nltimes.nl/2021/12/24/rutte-made-coronavirus-policy-mistakes-king-can-help-speed-cabinet-formation" in NL Times, 24 December 2021.

People, Communication

“The basic ideological programme of the great proletarian Cultural Revolution is 'to combat selfishness and criticize revisionism.'”

Mao Zedong (1893–1976) Chairman of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China

Source: Directives on the Cultural Revolution (1966-1972)

Selfishness

“Without God, there could be no American form of Government, nor an American way of life. Recognition of the Supreme Being is the first—the most basic—expression of Americanism. Thus the Founding Fathers saw it, and thus, with God's help, it will continue to be.”

Dwight D. Eisenhower (1890–1969) American general and politician, 34th president of the United States (in office from 1953 to 1961)

Source: From remarks recorded for the "Back to God" Program http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/?pid=10414 of the American Legion, which was broadcast over radio and television from 8:00 – 8:30 PM on 20 February 1955

Life, God, Way, Help

“When self-willed microunits combine to form and sustain a durable macrounit, certain freedoms of action are curtailed.
This is the basic process of Organization.
The more numerous and erratic the microunits, the more complex must be the structure and function of the macrounit—hence the more pervasive and restricting the details of Organization.”

Jack Vance (1916–2013) American mystery and speculative fiction writer

Dodkin’s Job (p. 7)
Short fiction, Future Tense (1964)

Freedom

“This is a kindness, a thing done to another human being for no reason other than compassion. A private, dignified act of basic human decency, which history, being the bastard that it is, will probably neglect to commemorate.”

Alastair Reynolds book On the Steel Breeze

Source: On the Steel Breeze (2013), Chapter 28 (p. 304)

History

“The provision of the wheelchairs would therefore address some challenges (for the disabled) such as integration into society as well as access to health and basic services and fill other gaps. We cannot talk about inclusivity if we do not empower people, at the grassroots level.”

Saara Kuugongelwa (1967) Prime Minister of Namibia

Source: Saara Kuugongelwa (2021) cited in: " Modern wheelchairs enables mobility, accessibility to disabled in Namibia http://www.china.org.cn/world/Off_the_Wire/2021-12/20/content_77940581.htm" in China.org.cn, 20 December 2021.

People, Health

“I love Wisconsin, I love coming here. I've performed here a lot because I've discovered that you people apparently have some sort of federal grant for drinking. [audience cheers] It's–you're insane! You pay less for liquor than anybody I know anywhere in the country. Nobody pays any less for liquor than you. What're you–what're you–HOW?! I don't know if you're using that farm subsidy money, or if you're just hijacking liquor trucks, but this is fucking insane. [audience member shouts something] Is it volume? It's unbe–fucking–lievable, it's staggering! I come here because basically if I spend four days here drinking, and even with the plane ticket, it's cheaper than drinking in New York. How do you know when it's New Year's? That's the big mystery to me. What's the difference? I've been in bars here and it's like New Year's every fucking night! "Uh, New Year's, that's when we–we drink with hats on."”

Lewis Black (1948) American stand-up comedian, author, playwright, social critic and actor

Source: The White Album (2000)

Love, Money, People, Drink

“Religious faith and its practice cannot be taken for granted and we must be resolved in our defense of our cherished freedom to practice our faith, especially in the context of a secular culture which many times is opposed to its basic beliefs. History has witnessed many instances of blatant disregard for religious liberty which has resulted in devastating persecution.”

Gerald Barbarito (1950) Bishop of the Catholic Diocese of Palm Beach, Florida

Source: This 'Fortnight for Freedom' https://www.catholicnewsagency.com/column/52207/this-fortnight-for-freedom (28 June 2012)

Faith, History, Freedom, Time

“There are essentially two types of society: mixed economies with public checks and balances, and oligarchies that dismantle and privatize the state, taking over its monetary and credit system, the land and basic infrastructure to enrich themselves but choking the economy, not helping it grow.”

Michael Hudson (economist) (1939) American economist

Source: The Destiny of Civilization https://michael-hudson.com/2022/05/the-destiny-of-civilization/, May 15, 2022

Help

“The basic principle [of hermetic drift semiotics] is not only that the similar can be known through the similar but also that from similarity to similarity everything can be connected with everything else, so that everything can be in turn either the expression or the content of any other thing.”

Umberto Eco (1932–2016) Italian semiotician, essayist, philosopher, literary critic, and novelist

U. Eco (1990), The limits of Intepretation, as quoted in Thomas A. Sebeok, Jean Umiker-Sebeok (2020), The Semiotic Web 1991: Biosemiotics https://books.google.it/books?id=NUK0DwAAQBAJ&pg=PA53.

“That’s what this is all about: responding to basic human desires that we share for dignity, for safety, and for security. And when those basics are absent in one place, that’s when people make the desperate decision to seek them elsewhere.”

Joe Biden (1942) 47th Vice President of the United States (in office from 2009 to 2017)

2022, June 2022, Remarks by President Biden at the Inaugural Ceremony of the Ninth Summit of the Americas

People, Decision

“A new reality is being formed: the unipolar world is irrevocably becoming a thing of the past, a multipolar one is taking shape. It’s an objective process. It’s unstoppable. In this reality, more than one power will “rule” it will be necessary to negotiate between all the key states that today have a decisive influence on the world economy and politics. At the same time, realizing their special situation, these countries ensure compliance with the basic principles of the UN Charter, including the fundamental one – the sovereign equality of states. No one on this Earth should be seen as a minor player. Everyone is equal and sovereign.”

Sergey Lavrov (1950) Russian politician and Foreign Minister

As quoted in Meet the New, Resource-Based Global Reserve Currency https://www.unz.com/pescobar/meet-the-new-resource-based-global-reserve-currency/, 31 March 2022

World, Reality, Decision, Time

“If there's anything more exhausting than having to battle for our basic human rights, it's letting them go without a fight.”

Michelle Wu (1985) City Councilor in Boston, Massachusetts

24 June 2022 "Boston Mayor Michelle Wu says overturning Roe v. Wade will 'ruin lives'" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WrmQGDRoWCY

Fight

“You must be very scrupulous not to gather power in to the center just because you can do it. Power corrupts, that’s the basic law of politics. Maybe the only law.”

Kim Stanley Robinson (1952) American science fiction writer

Source: Blue Mars (1996), Chapter 3, “A New Constitution” (p. 156)

Law

“If enough data points trouble the theory, the theory may be wrong. If the theory is basic, the paradigm may have to change.”

Kim Stanley Robinson book Green Mars

Source: Green Mars (1993), Chapter 8, “Social Engineering” (p. 410)

Change

“It was a mistake to speak one’s mind at any time, unless it perfectly matched your political purpose; and it never did. Best to strip all statements of real content, this was a basic law of diplomacy.”

Kim Stanley Robinson (1952) American science fiction writer

Source: Red Mars (1992), Chapter 6, “Guns Under the Table” (p. 418)

Law, Time

“I think that I am being blamed for everything. I am basically there to make money. I cannot and do not look at the social consequences of what I do.”

George Soros (1930) Hungarian-American business magnate, investor, and philanthropist

60 Minutes interview (1998)

Money, Thinking

“Environmental protection is both the objective and the basic content of sustainable development. Nowadays, climate change, environmental pollution, energy security, water security... have become global problems, but no one country can deal with them alone.”

Nguyễn Tấn Dũng (1949) Prime Minister of Vietnam

"Prime Minister Nguyễn Tấn Dũng’s speech at the 4th National Conference on Environment" http://tapchimoitruong.vn/english-edition-i-2015-39/Prime-Minister-Nguy%E1%BB%85n-T%E1%BA%A5n-D%C5%A9ng%E2%80%99s-speech-at-the-4th-National-Conference-on-Environment-18093 (30 October 2015)

Problem, Water, Change, Country