Quotes about corporation
page 3

“Do we have a free press today? Sure we do. It’s free to report all the sex scandals it wants, all the stock market news we can handle, every new health fad that comes down the pike, and every celebrity marriage or divorce that happens. But when it comes to the real down and dirty stuff—stories like Tailwind, the October Surprise, the El Mozote massacre, corporate corruption, or CIA involvement in drug trafficking—that’s where we begin to see the limits of our freedoms. In today’s media environment, sadly, such stories are not even open for discussion. Back in 1938, when fascism was sweeping Europe, legendary investigative reporter George Seldes observed that “it is possible to fool all the people all the time—when government and press cooperate.””

Gary Webb (1955–2004) American investigative journalist

Unfortunately, we have reached that point.
Source: Into the Buzzsaw: Leading Journalists Expose the Myth of a Free Press., p. 156

Marriage, People, Health, Fools

“When innocent people suffer, because our political system lacks the will, or the courage, or the basic decency to enforce our laws – or worse still, has sold out to some corporate lobbyist for cash – I am not able to look the other way.”

Donald J. Trump (1946) 45th President of the United States of America

2010s, 2016, July, (21 July 2016)

People, Law, Way, Courage

“People's memories are so short and America's propaganda is so powerful that most, even the greatest losers of this appropriation, have forgotten that a profound change occurred, which we now take for granted. We have been conditioned to react skeptically, even hostilely, to criticism of our current corporate values, values which form the foundation of everyday life today. What's more appalling is that huge numbers of those left behind in the wealth transfer genuflected to the new plutocratic class, celebrating the most vicious of the uber-CEOs. This craven CEO-worshipping is still going on today- middle Americans drag themselves home after work in order to gather around the television and watch billionaire assholes like Donald Trump deliver his "You're fired!"”

Mark Ames (1965) American writer and journalist

Part III: Ragenomics, p. 87-88
Source: Going Postal: Rage, Murder, and Rebellion, From Reagan's Workplaces to Clinton's Columbine and Beyond (2005), line to some desperate, stressed-out Smithers-abee.

Life, Hostility, People, Home

“I think when we talk about corporal punishment, and we have to think about our own children, and we are rather reluctant, it seems to me, to have other people administering punishment to our own children, because we are reluctant, it puts a special obligation on us to maintain order and to send children out from our homes who accept the idea of discipline. So I would not be for corporal punishment in the school, but I would be for very strong discipline at home so we don't place an unfair burden on our teachers.”

John F. Kennedy (1917–1963) 35th president of the United States of America

1963 Source: News Conference 56 (22 May 1963) http://www.jfklibrary.org/Historical+Resources/Archives/Reference+Desk/Press+Conferences/003POF05Pressconference56_05221963.htm

Children, People, School, Home

“Free-market fundamentalism trivializes the concern for public interest. It puts fear and insecurity in the hearts of anxiety-ridden workers. It also makes money-driven, poll-obsessed elected officials deferential to corporate goals of profit – often at the cost of the common good. … The free-market fundamentalism that prevails in the United States today promotes the pervasive sleepwalking of the populace. People see that the false prophets are handsomely rewarded — with money, status and access to more power. … We are experiencing the sad gangsterization of America — an unbridled grasp at power, wealth and status.”

Cornel West (1953) African-American philosopher and political/civil rights activist

"Cornel West: Democracy Matters" in The Globalist (24 January 2005) https://web.archive.org/web/20101203073821/http://www.theglobalist.com/StoryId.aspx?StoryId=4262

Money, People, Sadness, Fear

“While we talk, the sun is getting older. It will explode in 4.5 billion years. … In comparison everything else seems insignificant. Wars, conflicts, political tension, shifts in opinion, philosophical debates, even passions—everything’s dead already if this infinite reserve from which you now draw energy to defer answers, if in short thought as a quest, dies out with the sun. … The inevitable explosion to come, the one that’s always forgotten in your intellectual ploys, can be seen in a certain way as coming before the fact to render these ploys … futile. … In 4.5 billions years there will arrive the demise of your phenomenology and your utopian politics, and there’ll be no one there to toll the death knell or hear it. It will be too late to understand that your passionate, endless questioning always depended on a “life of the mind.” … Thought borrows a horizon and orientation, the limitless limit and the end without end it assumes, from the corporeal, sensory, emotional and cognitive experience of a quite sophisticated but definitely earthly existence. With the disappearance of the earth, thought will have stopped—leaving that disappearance absolutely unthought of. … The death of the sun is a death of mind. … There’s no sublation or deferral if nothing survives. … The sun, our earth, and your thought will have been no more than a spasmodic state of energy, an instant of established order, a smile on the surface of matter in a remote corner of the cosmos. … Human death is included in the life of the mind. Solar death implies an irreparably exclusive disjunction between death and thought: if there’s death, then there’s no thought.”

Jean-François Lyotard (1924–1998) French philosopher

Source: Thought Without a Body? (1994), pp. 286-289

Life, Death, War, Smile

“The point of Obama's candidacy is that the damaged state of American democracy is not the fault of George W. Bush and his minions, the corporate-controlled media, the insurance industry, the oil industry, lobbyists, terrorists, illegal immigrants or Satan. The point is that this mess is our fault. We let in the serpents and liars, we exchanged shining ideals for a handful of nails and some two-by-fours, and we did it by resorting to the simplest, deepest-seated and readiest method we possess as human beings for trying to make sense of the world: through our fear. America has become a phobocracy.”

Michael Chabon (1963) Novelist, short story writer, essayist

Obama vs. the Phobocracy http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/02/03/AR2008020302526.html, Washington Post (February 4, 2008)

World, Fear, Democracy, Sense

“In every state and nearly every civilized nation in the developed world, readers know where to go for action and reaction of news – at least one day ahead… Free from any corporate concerns, there are simply too many to thank since the site's inception in 1994. This new attempt at the old American experiment of full freedom in reporting is ever exciting. Those in power have everything to lose by individuals who march to their own rules.”

Matt Drudge (1966) American internet journalist and talk radio host

Matt Drudge, on reaching one billion page views http://www.drudgereportarchives.com/data/2002/11/12/20021112_180331.htm (December 11, 2002)

World, Freedom

“It is not only the prisoners who grow coarse and hardened from corporeal punishment, but those as well who perpetrate the act or are present to witness it.”

Anton Chekhov (1860–1904) Russian dramatist, author and physician

A Journey to Sakhalin (1891)

“A fundamental change is taking place in the nature and application of technology in business, a change with profound and far-reaching implications for companies of every size and shape. A multimillion dollar research program conducted by the DMR Group, Inc., studied more than 4,500 organizations in North America, Europe, and the Far East to investigate the nature and impact of changes in technology. The synthesis and analysis of this information indicate that information technology is going through its first paradigm shift. Driven by the demands of the competitive business environment and profound changes in the nature of computers, the information age is evolving into a second era. Computing platforms in most organizations today are not able to deliver the goods for corporate rebirth. It is only through open network computing that the open networked client/server enterprise can be achieved. In nontechnical language this book shows managers and professionals how to take immediate action for the short-term benefits of the new technology while positioning their organizations for long-term growth and transformation…”

Don Tapscott (1947) Canadian businessman

Don Tapscott and Art Caston (1993) Paradigm Shift: The New Promise of Information Technology. McGraw Hill, Inc. Abstract

Books, Age, Business, Nature

“While in totalitarian regimes, government controls the media and criminalizes journalists, bloggers and human rights defenders who do not echo the State’s propaganda, in numerous democratic countries, the media are largely in private hands — too few hands. Often media are controlled by conglomerates responsive to corporations and advertisers who determine the content of news and other programmes, frequently disseminating disinformation or suppressing crucial information necessary for democratic discourse. Indeed, the media blackout on important issues constitutes a grave obstacle to democracy, since absent sufficient information and without free and pluralistic media, democracy is dysfunctional and the political process, including elections, becomes a mere formality — not an expression of the will of the people.”

Alfred de Zayas (1947) American United Nations official

2013 Source: United Nations General Assembly - Promotion of a democratic and equitable international order http://www.ohchr.org/Documents/Issues/IntOrder/A-68-284_en.pdf.

People, Democracy, Country

“Above everything else, perhaps, was today’s concept of working together. I don’t mean its totalitarian version, for which Jack Havig had total loathing, or that “togetherness,” be it in a corporation or a commune, which he despised. I mean an enlightened pragmatism that rejects self-appointed aristocrats, does not believe received doctrine is necessarily true, stands ready to hear and weigh what anyone has to offer, and maintains well-developed channels to carry all ideas to the leadership and back again.”

Poul Anderson book There Will Be Time

Source: There Will Be Time (1972), Chapter 14 (p. 155)

Communication, Idea

“Corporations have neither bodies to be punished, nor souls to be condemned; they therefore do as they like.”

Edward Thurlow, 1st Baron Thurlow (1731–1806) British lawyer and Tory politician

Quoted in John Poynder, Literary Extracts (1844), vol. 1, p. 268. https://archive.org/stream/literaryextracts01poynuoft#page/268/mode/2up This is often misquoted as "Did you ever expect a corporation to have a conscience, when it has no soul to be damned, and no body to be kicked?"

Soul

“The first life insurance societies where formed in England in the years between 1692 and 1720. In America, life insurance became available to the clergy through the Presbyterian Ministers Fund, founded in 1759(still in existence), and the Episcopal Corporation, founded ten years later”

Andrew Tobias (1947) American journalist

subsequently merged
Source: The Invisible Bankers, Everything The Insurance Industry Never Wanted You To Know (1982), Chapter 14, Too Many Salesman, p. 250.

Life

“Corporate strategy is the pattern of major objectives, purposes, or goals and essential policies and plans for achieving those goals stated in such a way as to define what business the company is in or is to be in and the kind of company it is or is to be. In a changing world it is a way of expressing a persistent concept of the business so as to exclude some possible new activities and suggest entry into others.”

Kenneth R. Andrews (1916–2005) Business scholar

Source: Quote, The Concept of Strategy, 1971, p. 28

World, Way, Business, Change

“I'd just like to say to everybody that it's best to check out the independent life: the independent stores and the independent everybodies. We should try not to give our money to any corporations, if we can help it.”

Joe Strummer (1952–2002) British musician, singer, actor and songwriter

Joe Strummer: Putting a Scare into he Hearts of All Things Corporate (2002)

Life, Money, Help

“We now have single corporate enterprises employing hundreds of thousands of workers, having hundreds of thousands of stockholders, using billions of dollars' worth of the instruments of production, serving millions of customers, and controlled by a single management group. These are great collectives of enterprise, and a system composed of them might well be called "collective capitalism."”

Gardiner C. Means (1896–1988) American economist

Source: The Corporate Revolution in America, 1957, p. 288

“Technical problems can be remediated. A dishonest corporate culture is much harder to fix.”

Bruce Schneier (1963) American computer scientist

Visa and Amex Drop CardSystems, Schneier, Bruce, 2005-08-15, Cryptogram newsletter, 2006-09-08 http://www.schneier.com/crypto-gram-0508.html#16,

Problem

“Running is many things to me: survival, calmness, euphoria, solitude. It is proof of my corporeal existence, my ability to control my movement through space if not time, and the obedience, however temporary, of my body to my will.”

Audrey Niffenegger book The Time Traveler's Wife

Source: The Time Traveler’s Wife (2003), p. 154

Solitude, Time

“On my business card, I am a corporate president. In my mind, I am a game developer. But in my heart, I am a gamer.”

Satoru Iwata (1959–2015) Japanese video game programmer and businessman

Source: 2005 GDC Keynote https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w9HUMt2rrOI

Game, Business, Heart

“Stakeholder theory regards the firm as a nexus of stakeholders, commonly defined as groups or individuals who can affect or are affected by the achievement of the firm's goals (Freeman 1984). Depending on the ground for examining a firm's stakeholders, we can differentiate three approaches (Jones 1995):
The descriptive approach proposes an examination of firm-stakeholder relationships to provide an understanding of how the firm deals with different stakeholders.
The normative approach proposes an examination of firm-stakeholder relationships to discem stakeholders' interests and offer guidance on how to account for them using moral or philosophical principles.
The instrumental approach also proposes an examination of firm-stakeholder relationships to discem stakeholders' interests. However, in contrast to the normative approach, the instrumental approach involves the organizational performance consequences that stem from accounting for these interests.
The distinctive aspect of the instrumental approach to stakeholder theory is that it explicitly suggests linking stakeholder-directed activities (means) to corporate performance outcomes (ends) (Donaldson and Preston 1995; Freeman 1999).”

Christian Homburg (1962) German academic

Source: "Corporate social responsibility in business-to-business markets", 2013, p. 56; On Instrumental stakeholder theory

Understanding, Dependency

“I use emacs, which might be thought of as a thermonuclear word processor. It was created by Richard Stallman; enough said. It is written in Lisp, which is the only computer language that is beautiful. It is colossal, and yet it only edits straight ASCII text files, which is to say, no fonts, no boldface, no underlining. In other words, the engineer-hours that, in the case of Microsoft Word, were devoted to features like mail merge, and the ability to embed feature-length motion pictures in corporate memoranda, were, in the case of emacs, focused with maniacal intensity on the deceptively simple-seeming problem of editing text.”

Neal Stephenson (1959) American science fiction writer

"OS Shock"
In the Beginning... was the Command Line (1999)

Beauty, Problem

“Vulgar libertarian apologists for capitalism use the term "free market" in an equivocal sense: they seem to have trouble remembering, from one moment to the next, whether they’re defending actually existing capitalism or free market principles. … When prodded, they’ll grudgingly admit that the present system is not a free market, and that it includes a lot of state intervention on behalf of the rich. But as soon as they think they can get away with it, they go right back to defending the wealth of existing corporations.”

Kevin Carson (1963) American academic

Studies in Mutualist Political Economy (2007), Chapter 4.
Studies in Mutualist Political Economy (2007)

Thinking, Sense, Wealth

“The more freely abstract the form becomes, the purer, and also the more primitive it sounds. Therefore, in a composition in which corporeal elements are more or less superfluous, they can be more or less omitted and replaced by purely abstract forms, or by corporeal forms that have been completely abstracted... Here we are confronted by the question: Must we not then renounce the object altogether, throw it to the winds and instead lay bare the purely abstract? This is a question that naturally arises, the answer to which is at once indicated by an analysis of the concordance of the two elements of form (the objective and the abstract). Just as every word spoken (tree, sky, man) awakens an inner vibration, so too does every pictorially represented object. To deprive oneself of the possibility of this calling up vibrations would be to narrow one's arsenal of expressive means. At least, that is how it is today. But apart from today's answer, the above question receives the eternal answer to every question in art that begins with 'must.”

Wassily Kandinsky (1866–1944) Russian painter

There is no 'must' in art, which is forever free.
Quote from: Kandinsky: Complete Writings on Art, eds. Kenneth C. Lindsay and Peter Vergo, 2 Vols. (transl. Peter Vergo); Boston: G.K. Hall & Co., (1982), p. 195; as cited in: Samet, Jennifer Sachs. Painterly Representation in New York, 1945-1975. Dissertation, The City University of New York, 2010. p. 25
1910 - 1915

Art, Question, Nature, Tree

“This deadly impasse, the tightening of the corporate totalitarian noose, would have continued if Snowden had not jolted the nation awake by disclosing the massive crimes of the prerogative state.”

Chris Hedges (1956) American journalist

39:25 “ Our Only Hope Will Come Through Rebellion http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TOlg_2qAbUA” (2014)

“Wall Street, corporations, and the super-rich, should finally pay their fair share of taxes. That’s why I support the so-called ‘Buffett Rule,’ because multi-millionaires should not be able to pay a lower tax rate than their secretaries. We should also add a new tax on multi-millionaires, crack down on tax gaming by corporations and close the carried interest loophole.”

Hillary Clinton (1947) American politician, senator, Secretary of State, First Lady

Presidential campaign (April 12, 2015 – 2016), Speech in Warren, Michigan (August 11, 2016)

Game, Support

“The media, itself an arm of mega-corporate power, feeds the fear industry, so that people are primed like pumps to support wars on rumor, innuendo, legends, and lies.”

Mumia Abu-Jamal (1954) Prisoner, Journalist, Broadcaster, Author, Activist

"A Year In: More Same Than Change" http://prisonradio.org/more_of_same.htm

War, People, Fear, Support

“The doves are pleased that [Robert McNamara] finally concedes that "our blundering efforts to do good" turned into a "dangerous mistake," as Anthony Lewis put the matter long after corporate America had determined that the game was not worth the candle. As the doves had by then come to recognize, although we had pursued aims that were "noble" and "motivated by the loftiest intentions," they were nevertheless "illusory" and it ended up as a "failed crusade" (Stanley Karnow). McNamara has now "paid his debt," Theodore Draper writes in the New York Review, finally recognizing that "The Vietnam War peculiarly demanded a hardheaded assessment of what it was worth in the national interest of the United States," just as the invasion of Afghanistan "peculiarly demanded" such an assessment in the Kremlin. Draper is outraged by the "vitriolic and protracted campaign" against McNamara by the New York Times. "The case against McNamara largely hinges on the premise that he did not express his doubts" about "whether American troops should continue to die" early on, but the Times did not either (though Draper did, he proudly reminds us). Could there be another question?”

Noam Chomsky (1928) american linguist, philosopher and activist

Quotes 1990s, 1995-1999, Z Magazine, July 1995

War, Game, Motivation, Question

“In fact, the nation's biggest investment pools are the retirement funds of the large corporations and governmental bodies, such as the California Public Employees Retirement System (CALPERS), which manages an astounding $170 billion. These plans receive a level of professional management that even the nations wealthiest investors can only dream of.”

William J. Bernstein (1948) economist

Source: The Four Pillars of Investing (2002), Chapter 3, The Market Is Smarter Than You Are, p. 85.

Dreams

“I maintain that in every special natural doctrine only so much science proper is to be met with as mathematics; for… science proper, especially of nature, requires a pure portion, lying at the foundation of the empirical, and based upon à priori knowledge of natural things. …the conception should be constructed. But the cognition of the reason through construction of conceptions is mathematical. A pure philosophy of nature in general, namely, one that only investigates what constitutes a nature in general, may thus be possible without mathematics; but a pure doctrine of nature respecting determinate natural things (corporeal doctrine and mental doctrine), is only possible by means of mathematics; and as in every natural doctrine only so much science proper is to be met with therein as there is cognition à priori, a doctrine of nature can only contain so much science proper as there is in it of applied mathematics.”

Immanuel Kant book Metaphysical Foundations of Natural Science

Preface, Tr. https://books.google.com/books?id=OCJLAAAAMAAJ Ernest Belfort Bax (1883) Metaphysical Foundations of Natural Science (1786)

Lying, Mathematics, Nature, Knowledge

“The Scoutmaster guides the boy in the spirit of an older brother…. He has simply to be a boy-man, that is: (1) He must have the boy spirit in him: and must be able to place himself in the right plane with his boys as a first step. (2) He must realise the needs, outlooks and desires of the different ages of boy life. (3) He must deal with the individual boy rather than with the mass. (4) He then needs to promote a corporate spirit among his individuals to gain the best results.”

Robert Baden-Powell book Aids to Scoutmastership

Aids to Scoutmastership (1920)

Life, Age, Boy

““You’re not corporate,” she said definitely. “Corporates don’t do this stuff. Not like this.”
“The corporates do whatever turns a profit. Don’t let your prejudices blind you. Sure, they’ll burn down entire villages if it pays. But if having a human face is what cuts it, they’ll whip out a human face and put it on.””

Richard K. Morgan book Altered Carbon

Source: Altered Carbon (2002), Chapter 30 (p. 377)

“Perhaps the greatest and least visible form of impoverishment caused by the Corporate State is the destruction of community.”

Charles A. Reich book The Greening of America

Source: The Greening of America (1970), Chapter VII : "It's Just Like Living", p. 181

Communication

“Industry's high powered lobbying effort is actually about much more than just passing bills. A convenient side effect of this lobbying crusade is to apply corporate spin to maximize effect. The rhetoric surrounding the lobbying shapes the broader debate related to who is to blame for obesity and diet-related health problems. Because lawsuits are such a hot-button issue, industry can take full advantage of the popular scapegoating of trial lawyers, while at the same time invoke all-American values and shove the personal responsibility theory down the nation's collective throat.”

Michele Simon (1965) public health lawyer

Source: Appetite for Profit (2006), pp. 287-288

Health, Problem, Effort, Time

“To a right-winger, unions are awful. Why do right-wingers hate unions? Because collective bargaining is the power that a worker has against the corporation. Right-wingers hate that.”

Janeane Garofalo (1964) comedian, actress, political activist, writer

Majority Report, June 3, 2005 broadcast
Majority Report

Hate

“They [universities] may be said to resemble antiquated coquettes of the last age, who think everything ridiculous and intolerable but what was in fashion when they were young, and yet are standing proofs of the progress of taste and the vanity of human pretensions. Our universities are, in a great measure, become cisterns to hold, not conduits to disperse knowledge. … they can only be of service as a check-weight on the too hasty and rapid career of innovation. … The unavoidable aim of all corporate bodies of learning is not to grow wise, or teach others wisdom, but to prevent any one else from being or seeming wiser than themselves.”

William Hazlitt (1778–1830) English writer

"On Corporate Bodies" Table Talk: Essays On Men And Manners http://www.blupete.com/Literature/Essays/TableHazIV.htm (1821-1822)

Wisdom, Age, Fashion, Knowledge

“Old-fashioned values may count when conservatives appear on the stump, but once conservatives are in office the only old-fashioned situation they care to revive is an economic regimen of low wages and lax regulations. Over the last three decades they have smashed the welfare state, reduced the tax burden on corporations and the wealthy, and generally facilitated the country’s return to a nineteenth-century pattern of wealth distribution. Thus the primary contradiction of the backlash: it is a working-class movement that has done incalculable, historic harm to working class people.The leaders of the backlash may talk Christ, but they walk corporate. Values may "matter most" to voters, but they always take a backseat to the needs of money once the elections are won. This is a basic earmark of the phenomenon, absolutely consistent across its decades-long history. Abortion is never halted. Affirmative action is never abolished. The culture industry is never forced to clean up its act.”

Thomas Frank book What's the Matter with Kansas?

Ibid. (p. 6).
What's the Matter with Kansas? (2004)

Money, History, Fashion, Appearance

“Liberalism has merely cleared a field in which every soul and every corporate interest may fight with every other for domination. Whoever is victorious in this struggle will make an end of liberalism; and the new order, which will deem itself saved, will have to defend itself in the following age against a new crop of rebels.”

George Santayana (1863–1952) 20th-century Spanish-American philosopher associated with Pragmatism

"The Irony of Liberalism"
Soliloquies in England and Later Soliloquies (1922)

Age, Soul, Victory, Fight

“We have to build an economy that works for everyone, not just those at the top. … How are we going to do it? We're going to do it by having the wealthy pay their fair share and close the corporate loopholes.”

Hillary Clinton (1947) American politician, senator, Secretary of State, First Lady

Presidential campaign (April 12, 2015 – 2016), First presidential debate (September 26, 2016)

“How could this be, the land of the free, home of the brave.. indigenous holocaust and the home of the slaves. Corporate America dancing offbeat to the rhythm. You really think this country never sponsored terrorism? Human rights violations we continue the saga, El Salvador and the Contras in Nicaragua. And on top of that you still want to take me to prison, just cause I won't trade humanity for patriotism.”

Immortal Technique (1978) American rapper and activist

The 4th Branch
Albums, Revolutionary Vol. 2 (2003)

Home, Thinking, Dance, Country

“Because of that corporate life, transfusing you, giving to you and taking from you - conditioning you as it does in countless oblique and unapparent ways - you are still compelled to react in to many suggestions which you are no longer able to respect: controlled, to the last moment of your bodily existence and perhaps afterwords, by habit, custom, the good old average way of misunderstanding the world.”

Evelyn Underhill book Practical Mysticism

Source: Practical Mysticism (1914), Chapter X, The Mystical Life, p. 175-176

Life, World, Way

“Unlike members of Congress, Big Business knew what the WTO agreements contained. That's because corporate lobbyists helped draft them.”

Ralph Nader (1934) American consumer rights activist and corporate critic

The Good Fight (2004)

Business, Help

“[C++] certainly has its good points. But by and large I think it's a bad language. It does a lot of things half well and it’s just a garbage heap of ideas that are mutually exclusive. Everybody I know, whether it’s personal or corporate, selects a subset and these subsets are different. So it’s not a good language to transport an algorithm—to say, "I wrote it; here, take it." It’s way too big, way too complex. And it’s obviously built by a committee. Stroustrup campaigned for years and years and years, way beyond any sort of technical contributions he made to the language, to get it adopted and used. And he sort of ran all the standards committees with a whip and a chair. And he said "no" to no one. He put every feature in that language that ever existed. It wasn't cleanly designed—it was just the union of everything that came along. And I think it suffered drastically from that.”

Ken Thompson (1943) American computer scientist, creator of the Unix operating system

Ken Thompson; cited in
"Coders At Work", 2009

Way, Idea, Thinking, Suffering

“It was a doctrine old as the common law, maintained by our Anglo-Saxon ancestors centuries before it was planted in the American Colonies, that taxation and representation were inseparable correlatives, the one a duty based upon the other as a right But the neglect of the government to provide a system which made the Parliamentary representation conform to the increase of population, and the growth and decadence of cities and boroughs, had, by almost imperceptible degrees, disfranchised the great mass of the British people, and placed the legislative power in the hands of a few leading families of the realm. Towards the close of the last century the question of Parliamentary reform assumed a definite shape, and since that time has constituted one of the most prominent features in British politics. It was found not only that the basis of representation was unequal and unjust, but that the right of the elective franchise was granted to but few of the inhabitants, and was regulated by no fixed and equitable rule. Here I may quote from May's Constitutional History: 'In some of the corporate towns, the inhabitants paying scot and lot, and freemen, were admitted to vote; in some, the freemen only; and in many, none but the governing body of the corporation. At Buckingham and at Bewdley the right of election was confined to the bailiff and twelve burgesses; at Bath, to the mayor, ten aldermen, and twenty-four common-councilmen; at Salisbury, to the mayor and corporation, consisting of fifty-six persons. And where more popular rights of election were acknowledged, there were often very few inhabitants to exercise them. Gatton enjoyed a liberal franchise. All freeholders and inhabitants paying scot and lot were entitled to vote, but they only amounted to seven. At Tavistock all freeholders rejoiced in the franchise, but there were only ten. At St. Michael all inhabitants paying scot and lot were electors, but there were only seven. In 1793 the Society of the Friends of the People were prepared to prove that in England and Wales seventy members were returned by thirty-five places in which there were scarcely any electors at all; that ninety members were returned by forty-six places with less than fifty electors; and thirty-seven members by nineteen places having not more than one hundred electors. Such places were returning members, while Leeds, Birmingham, and Manchester were unrepresented; and the members whom they sent to Parliament were the nominees of peers and other wealthy patrons. No abuse was more flagrant than the direct control of peers over the constitution of the Lower House. The Duke of Norfolk was represented by eleven members; Lord Lonsdale by nine; Lord Darlington by seven; the Duke of Rutland, the Marquis of Buckingham, and Lord Carrington, each by six. Seats were held in both Houses alike by hereditary right.”

James A. Garfield (1831–1881) American politician, 20th President of the United States (in office in 1881)

1860s, Oration at Ravenna, Ohio (1865)

People, Family, Law, Quotes

“To gain control over this resource, and have probably military bases there, is a tremendous achievement for world control. You read counter-arguments to this, and they're worth looking at. So it's argued that it can't be true, because the costs of reconstruction are going to be greater than the profits that will be made. Well, maybe that's true, maybe it isn't, but it's totally irrelevant. And the reason is because the costs of reconstruction are going to be paid by the taxpayer, by you, and the profits are going to go right into the pockets of the energy corporations. So yeah, it doesn't matter how they balance out, it's just another taxpayer subsidy to the rich.”

Noam Chomsky (1928) american linguist, philosopher and activist

KGNU benefit at the University of Colorado at Boulder, April 5, 2003 http://www.freespeech.org/fscm2/contentviewer.php?content_id=418 Quotes 2000s, 2003

World, Reading

“The irony is that Barack Obama would not even be president if it were not for the courage of persecuted dissidents such as Martin Luther King or Malcolm X, spied upon by their own government. But Obama understands where power lies. It does not lie with the citizen. It lies with Wall Street and our corporate boardrooms, which have carried out a slow motion coup d’état. And a system of mass surveillance is designed to keep these elites in these boardrooms powerful and the rest of us powerless.”

Chris Hedges (1956) American journalist

21:20 “ Our Only Hope Will Come Through Rebellion http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TOlg_2qAbUA” (2014)

Lie, Courage, Understanding

“We must agree right now that the Bill of Rights takes precedence over everything else and may not be suppressed by a pall of political correctness on campuses, in the media, in corporate life, or anywhere else. There is no right not to be offended by the free expression of others. Those of us who can afford it should sue those who try to deprive us of our freedom of speech. Mine is worth at least ten figures.”

L. Neil Smith (1946) American writer

"Revenge of the Cookie Monster" http://www.ncc-1776.org/tle2010/tle555-20100131-04.html 31 January 2010.

Life, Freedom

“A tablet without software is just an inconveniently fragile and poorly reflective mirror, so the thing I want to be sure of when I buy a device is that I don't have to implicitly trust one corporation's judgment about what software I should and shouldn't be using.”

Cory Doctorow (1971) Canadian-British blogger, journalist, and science fiction author

"Why Samsung's Galaxy Tab is 'meh'" in The Guardian (25 July 2011) http://theguardian.com/technology/2011/jul/25/why-samsung-galaxy-tab-is-meh

“Project management has long been discussed by corporate executives and academics as one of several workable possibilities for organizational forms of the future that could integrate complex efforts and reduce bureaucracy…. This approach does not really destroy the vertical, bureaucratic flow of work but simply requires that line organizations talk to the other horizontally so work will be accomplished more smoothly throughout the organization”

Harold Kerzner (1940) American engineer, management consultant

Source: Project management for executives (1982), p. 2

Effort, Future

“You don't rely on a great army of people to spoon-feed you. Today's classical-music world is very self-defeating. I love the fact that all these corporations are falling apart. They're sinking millions into acts and getting it wrong. And I know why - it's not about the music, or the audiences. So in many ways this is a very encouraging time.”

Joanna MacGregor (1959) British musician

The Independent, 23/06/2003
On Classical Music

Love, People, World, Music

“While corporations dominate society and write the laws, each advance in technology is an opening for them to further restrict its users.”

Richard Stallman (1953) American software freedom activist, short story writer and computer programmer, founder of the GNU project

Stallman's Law (2012) https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/stallmans-law.html 2010s Variant: While corporations dominate society and write the laws, each advance or change in technology is an opening for them to further restrict or mistreat its users.

Law

“Under NAFTA, in other words, the right of corporations to bring thousands of tons of hazardous waste into local communities overrides the right of residents to protect their health.”

David McNally (1953) Canadian political scientist

Source: Another World Is Possible : Globalization and Anti-capitalism (2002), Chapter 2, Globalization - It's Not About Free Trade, p. 41

Health, Communication

“I hold that the first form of a body is the first corporeal mover. But this is light, which as it multiplies itself and expands without the body of matter moving with it, makes its passage instantaneously through the transparent medium and is not motion but a state of change. But, indeed, when light is expanding itself in different directions it is incorporated with matter, if the body of matter extends with it, and it makes a rarefaction or augmentation of matter; for when light is itself charged with the body of matter, it produces condensation or rarefaction. So when light generates itself in one direction drawing matter with it, it produces local motion; and when light within matter is sent out and what is outside is sent in, it produces qualitative change. From this it is clear that corporeal motion is a multiplicative power of light, and this is a corporeal and natural appetite.”

Robert Grosseteste (1175–1253) English bishop and philosopher

see De Luce Tr. Ludwig Baur (1912) pp. 51-52
De Luce seu de Inchoatione Formarum (c. 1215-1220)

Nature, Light, Change, Drawing

“Diet for a New America let me in on the truth that I kind of knew but didn't want to think about—about how animals are processed for food for human consumption. … Some of the most disgusting things you'll see is when corporations feed people, because they're bottom-line-minded. In that situation I think that respect for life is forgotten. … Think for yourself, think about what you eat, and try a little compassion.”

John Campbell (bassist)

On vegetarianism. “Lamb of God interview,” by Peta2.com, on YouTube (19 February 2007) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D91k1aOy1tY.

Life, People, Truth, Food

“We believe that capitalism, and unfettered capitalism poses a threat to human existence through the commodification of the person and nature. And we believe in defending people and nature through democratic association, and confronting and constraining the domination of capital through building a balance of interests in corporate governance and public sector. We take on, we’ve taken on the banks in the city of London. That’s who we are.”

Maurice Glasman, Baron Glasman (1961) British philosopher

Interview with Australian Fabians: http://www.fabians.org.au/interview_with_maurice_glasman

People, Nature, Personality

“A statute of 1344 shows some weakness; but the statute of 1391 is memorable, not merely as being the Mortmain Code of three centuries, but as extending the rule of mortmain to all bodies, religious and secular alike, having perpetual succession. For this extension marks the definite recognition by English Law of the corporation, or, as it is sometimes called, the 'fictitious person' - the legal personality which is not restricted to the limits of individual life. The gradual evolution of this institution is one of the most fascinating chapters in legal history…”

Edward Jenks (1861–1939) British legal scholar

Source: A Short History Of The English Law (First Edition) (1912), Chapter VIII, Methods Of Alienation, p. 106

Life, Law, History, Success

“I think that the corporation is running it and will always make it appeal to the lowest common denominator. I think we're going to have to forget about the radio and just go back to word of mouth.”

Joe Strummer (1952–2002) British musician, singer, actor and songwriter

About mainstream radio.
Joe Strummer: Putting a Scare into he Hearts of All Things Corporate (2002)

Thinking, Forgetting

“We [Emilio and I] have diversified: We run four restaurants, a hotel, a recording studio, a publishing company, and we have our corporate offices and a lot of other real estate.”

Gloria Estefan (1957) Cuban-American singer-songwriter, actress and divorciada

Billboard Magazine (11 October 2003)
2007, 2008

“According to the World Bank, the concentration of wealth and the structures of corporate economic power have no bearing on woman's rights.”

Michel Chossudovsky (1946) Canadian economist

Source: The Globalization of Poverty and the New World Order - Second Edition - (2003), Chapter 4, The World Bank and Woman's Rights, p. 67

World, Wealth

“The manipulation of public opinion both by governments and corporate media, and the manufacturing of consent undermine the essence of democracy, which is genuine participation. The harassment, imprisonment and killing of human rights defenders, including journalists, in many countries shocks the conscience. But also certain aspects of the war on terrorism and the abuse of anti-terrorist legislation have significantly eroded human rights and fundamental freedoms. In a democratic society it is crucial for citizens to know whether their governments are acting constitutionally, or are engaged in policies that violate international law and human rights. It is their civic duty to protest against government secrecy and covers-up, against disproportionate surveillance, acts of intimidation and harassment, arbitrary arrests and defamation of human rights defenders, including whistleblowers as unpatriotic or even traitors, when in fact they are necessary defenders of the rule of law.”

Alfred de Zayas (1947) American United Nations official

Alfred de Zayas' comments to the remarks made by NGOs and States during the United Nations (UN) Human Rights Council Session http://www.ohchr.org/EN/NewsEvents/Pages/DisplayNews.aspx?NewsID=13713&LangID=E Comments by Alfred de Zayas, Independent Expert on the promotion of a democratic and equitable international order, following the Interactive Dialogue on the presentation of his thematic report. 2013

War, Law, Democracy, Freedom

“Those who are endowed with a moral conscience refuse to commit crimes, even those sanctioned by the corporate state, because they do not in the end want to live with criminals—themselves.”

Chris Hedges (1956) American journalist

“Why the United States Is Destroying Its Education System” (2011)

“Reform will come and only come through the building of mass movements and alternative centers of power that can overthrow—let me repeat that word for Homeland Security—overthrow the corporate state. If we fail to sever these chains, we will become like many who did not rise up in time to save their civil society’s human chattel. This means we too must defy the law and engage in civil disobedience”

Chris Hedges (1956) American journalist

42:45 “ Our Only Hope Will Come Through Rebellion http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TOlg_2qAbUA” (2014)

Law, Time

“I only know three songs by REM and guess what? I don't like two of them! That's right, I'm not cool- I don't like REM. Don't hang out with me, I'm a nerd.
I saw REM, they're the best. The lead singer is so serious and heavy, he comes out, all, 'This next song is about the overcommercialization of rock and roll and how corporations have come and' -- hey, just sing the goddamn songs, alright buddy? I'm already depressed, I want you to make me shiny and happy!
The thing about Showtime is, it's basically softcore porn. I'm into it. I forget I have Showtime, until like, Saturday mornings when I get home from work, and it's: cartoon, cartoon, cartoon, 'Warning: This program contains massive nudity.”

David Spade (1964) American stand-up comedian

Yeeeah!
David Spade: Take the Hit, HBO Special, 1997

Home, Singing, Forgetting, Happiness

“Power is dispersed through many different families, churches, schools, universities, corporations, partnerships, business associations, scientific societies, unions, clubs, and myriad other associations. There’s plenty of competition, and people have overlapping interests. The social order isn’t controlled by anybody—it evolves spontaneously.”

Rudolph Rummel (1932–2014) American academic

People, School, Family, Business

“When I asked Amin [Husain] and Katie [Davison] what Occupy Wall Street’s ultimate goal was, they said, “A government accountable to the people, freed up from corporate influence.” … Organizers described Occupy Wall Street as “a way of being,” of “sharing your life together in assembly.” … The ambitions of the core group of activists were more cultural than political, in the sense that they sought to influence the way people think about their lives. “Ours is a transformational movement,” Amin told me with a solemn air. Transformation had to occur face to face; what it offered, especially to the young, was an antidote to the empty gaze of the screen.
In meetings and elsewhere, this Tolstoyan experience of undergoing a personal crisis of meaning, both political and of the soul, seemed deeply shared. Apart from Amin, I’ve met an architect, a film editor, an advertising consultant, an unemployed stock trader, a spattering of lawyers, and people with various other jobs who, after joining OWS, found themselves psychologically unable to go about their lives as before. … Michael Ellick, the minister at Judson Memorial Church in Greenwich Village, said that when he first visited Zuccotti Park he was reminded of his years at a monastery. “When people enter a monastery, they don’t know why they’ve come,” said Ellick. “They are there to find out why they are there, why they were compelled to leave the other world.””

Michael Greenberg (1952) American author

“What Future for Occupy Wall Street?” The New York Review of Books, vol. 59, no. 2, February 9, 2012

Life, People, World, Way

“There are no Reconstruction reenactors. And who would want to be? Reconstruction is the disappointing epilogue to the American Civil War, a sort of Grimm fairy tale stepchild of the war and the ugly duckling of American history. Even Abraham Lincoln was uneasy at using the word "reconstruction"--he qualified it with add-ons like "what is called reconstruction" or "a plan of reconstruction (as the phrase goes)"--and preferred to speak of the "re-inauguration of the national authority" or the need to "reinaugurate loyal state governments." Unlike the drama of the war years, Reconstruction has no official starting or ending date. Although we usually bookend the period with the Confederate surrender in 1865 and the withdrawal of federal occupation troops in 1877, people had been talking about "reconstruction" even before the shooting began in 1861, and the federal occupation troops who were withdrawn in 1877 were by that time little more than a corporal's guard. In some sense, Reconstruction ended when Democrats managed to regain control of the House of Representatives in 1874; other parts of it spluttered on…”

Allen C. Guelzo (1953) American historian

2010s, Defending Reconstruction (2017)

War, People, Disappointment, History

“I firmly believe that any organization, in order to survive and achieve success, must have a sound set of beliefs on which it premises all its policies and actions.
Next I believe that the most important single factor in corporate success is faithful adherence to those beliefs.
And, finally I believe if an organization is to meet the challenge of a changing world, it must be prepared to change everything about itself except those beliefs as it moves through corporate life.
Basic philosophy, spirit and drive of an organization have far more to do with its relative achievements than do technological or economic resources, organizational structure, innovation and timing…”

Thomas Watson, Jr. (1914–1993) American businessman and diplomat

Watson, Jr. (1962) as cited in: Heather Clark, John Chandler, Jim Barry (1994) Organisation and Identities: : Text and Readings in Organizational Behaviour. p. 355.

Life, World, Faith, Change

“To Donham, the case study stood squarely in the legal and cultural tradition of Anglo-American thought. Unlike French or Spanish law. Donham emphasized, English law was grounded on the doctrine of stare decisis, in which the written case decisions of the past shape, and instantiate, the law. Just as the recording of cases allowed English common law to break the arbitrariness of local law. Donham argued in 1925, business needed to universalize its procedures by itself adopting the case system. The chaos of local law that ruled in England before the common law. Donham contended, "is exactly the same situation that we have [in the world of business] where practically every large corporation is tightly hound by traditions which are precedents in its particular narrow field and narrow held only The recording of decisions from industry to industry [enables] us to start from facts and draw inferences from those facts; [it] will introduce principle… in the field of business to such an extent that it will control executive action in the field where executive action is haphazard or unprincipled or bound by narrow, instead of broad precedent and decision"”

Peter Galison (1955) American physicist

W. Donham, transcript of talk to the Association of Coll. School of Business Committee Reports and Other Literature, 5-7 May 1925. Harvard Business School, box 17, folder 10. 62
Source: Image and Logic, 1997, p. 57, footnote 66

World, School, Law, Literature

“Seth's book The Nature of Personal Reality, stresses the importance of personal beliefs in the private creation of daily reality. He emphasizes that it's important not to be afraid of thoughts or feelings, particularly of aggressive ones. Expressed naturally and easily through body motion, gestures, and activity, these are a necessary part of corporal reality. Only when we fear them and impede their natural expression dop they back up or become dangerous.”

Jane Roberts (1929–1984) American Writer

Source: Adventures In Consciousness: An Introduction to Aspect Psychology (1975), p. 247

Books, Fear, Feeling, Nature

“Since I expressed my views…in July last year, I have sought to negotiate a position which would allow me to defend my stance in public, especially when it is questioned. The BBC has required that I do not speak on matters on which my stance is already known. That is not acceptable to me. I have therefore asked the corporation to accept my resignation as South Asia correspondent.”

Mark Tully (1935) British journalist

When he quit BBC due to differences with John Birt, the Director General of BBC. Source: Peter Victor, " Tully quits BBC http://www.independent.co.uk/news/tully-quits-bbc-1412865.html," The Independent, 10 July 1994

Question

“We are organization watchers in our role as citizens. Increasing attention has been ﬁxed in recent years upon the functioning of society’s organizations: its large corporations and its governments. Hence this could also be described as a book for Everyman–for it proposes a way of thinking about organizational issues that concern us all.”

Herbert A. Simon (1916–2001) American political scientist, economist, sociologist, and psychologist

Simon (1975, p. ix); As cited in Stefano Franchi(2006) " Herbert simon, anti-philosopher http://cleinias.org/sites/default/files/Simon-anti-Philosopher-preprint.pdf." Computing and Philosophy. p. 34. 1960s-1970s

Books, Way, Thinking

“American corporations often say human resources are their most important asset. In our national discourse, everyone talks about jobs. Yet as a society we somehow tolerate persistent high unemployment, 30 years of stagnating wages and growing wage inequality, two decades of declining job satisfaction and loss of pension and retirement benefits, and continuous challenges from the consequences of unemployment on family life. If we really valued work and human resources, we would address these problems with the vigor required to solve them.”

Thomas A. Kochan (1947) American academic

Thomas A. Kochan in: "An interview with Thomas A. Kochan," in: Harvard Magazine, Sept. 2012. online at harvardmagazine.com.

Life, Family, Problem, Loss

“Our movement is about replacing a failed and corrupt - and when I say corrupt, I'm talking about totally corrupt - political establishment [Obamacare] with a new government controlled by you, the American people. There is nothing the political establishment will not do. No lie that they won't tell to hold their prestige and power at your expense and that's what's been happening. The Washington establishment and the financial and media corporations that funded exist for only one reason: to protect and enrich itself. The establishment has trillions of dollars at stake in this election. As an example, just one single trade deal they'd like to pass involves trillions of dollars controlled by many countries, corporations, and lobbyists. For those who controlled the levels of power in Washington, and for the global special interests, they partner with these people that don't have your good in mind. Our campaign represents a true existential threat like they haven't seen before.”

Donald J. Trump (1946) 45th President of the United States of America

At a campaign rally in Florida (13 October 2016)
2010s, 2016, October

People, Lie, Country

“Mr. Rockefeller not only owns the Standard Oil supplies: he controls the railways, the banks, the shops…upon which his Trust depends. The Steel Corporation not only makes steel; it owns coal and iron fields, ore steamers, the Erie and Pittsburgh mineral railway, as well as the operatives in Homestead. We oppose the Trust, not as an organisation, but because it is controlled by individuals for their own ends…But the Trust points out the line of British advance. In this country, however, the introduction of the Trust should be marked by public ownership.”

Ramsay MacDonald (1866–1937) British statesman; prime minister of the United Kingdom

The Zollverein and British Industry (1903), pp. 159-160
1900s

Dependency, Country

“The property owner who invests in a modern corporation so far surrenders his wealth to those in control of the corporation that he has exchanged the position of independent owner for one in which he may become merely recipient of the wages of capital… [Such owners] have surrendered the right that the corporation should be operated in their sole interest…”

Adolf A. Berle (1895–1971) American diplomat

Source: The Modern Corporation and Private Property. 1932/1967, p. 355

Wealth

“The success story of the word postmodernism demands to be written, no doubt in best-seller format; such lexical neoevents, in which the coinage of a neologism has all the reality impact of a corporate merger, are among the novelties of media society which require not merely study but the establishment of a whole new media-lexicological subdiscipline.”

Fredric Jameson (1934) American academic

Introduction
Postmodernism: Or, The Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism (1991)

Reality, Study, Success

“Whole organization systems. At one limit these would be plants or equivalent self-standing workplaces. At the other, they would be entire corporations or public agencies. They persist by maintaining a steady state with their environment.”

Eric Trist (1909–1993) British scientist

The evolution of socio-technical systems, (1981)

“The finance conception of the modern corporation, which currently dominates, emphasizes control through the use of financial tools which measure performance according to profit rates. Product lines are evaluated on their short-run profitability and important management decisions are based on the potential profitability of each line. Firms are viewed as collections of assets earning differing rates of return, not as producers of given goods. The firm is not seen as being a member of only one industry. Consequently if the prospect of an industry in which it participates declines, the firm disinvests. The problem for management from this perspective is to maximize short-run rates of return by altering product mix, thereby increasing shareholder equity and keeping the stock price high”

Neil Fligstein (1951) American sociologist

Source: The transformation of corporate control, 1993, p. 15

Problem, Decision

“The corporation, like the psychopathic personality it resembles, is programmed to exploit others for profit.”

Joel Bakan (1959) Canadian writer, musician, filmmaker and legal scholar

Source: The Corporation: The Pathological Pursuit of Profit and Power (2004), Chapter 3, The Externalizing Machines, p. 69

Personality

“No tin-hat brigade of goose-stepping vigilantes or bibble-babbling mob of blackguarding and corporation paid scoundrels will prevent the onward march of labor, or divert its purpose to play its natural and rational part in the development of the economic, political and social life of our nation.”

John L. Lewis (1880–1969) American labor leader

Labor and the Nation speech (September 3, 1937)

Life, Nature, Parting

“Human artifacts not only include material structures and objects, such as buildings, machines, and automobiles, but they also include organizations, organizational structures like extended families... tribes, nations, corporations, churches, political parties, governments, and so on. Some of these may grow unconsciously, but they all originate and are sustained by the images in the human mind.”

Kenneth E. Boulding (1910–1993) British-American economist

Source: 1970s, Ecodynamics: A New Theory Of Societal Evolution, 1978, p. 121

Family

“And knowing that in every specific battle, what we are fighting for is merely the substitution of the human agenda for the corporate agenda is what can guide and sustain us.”

Robin Hahnel (1946) American economist

Source: Panic Rules!: Everything You Need to Know about the Global Economy, 1999, p. 103

Fight

“ We used many techniques, but probably the most common is that we will go to a country that has resources that our corporations covet- like oil- and we will arrange a huge loan to that country from an organization like the World Bank or one of its sisters. But almost all of the money goes to U. S. corporations, not to the country itself, corporations like Bechtel and Halliburton, General Motors, General Electric, these types of organizations, and they build huge infrastructure projects in the country- power plants, highways, ports, industrial parks- things that serve the very rich and seldom even reach the poor.In fact the poor suffer because the loans have to be repaid, and they are huge loans, and the repayment of them means that poor won’t get education, health, and other social services and the country is left holding a huge debt, by intention. We go back, we economic hitmen, to this country and say, “Look, you owe us a lot of money. You can’t repay your debts, so give us a pound of flesh”.”

John Perkins (1945) American author

Zeitgeist Addendum (2008)

Money, Health, World, Education

“The long-awaited "campaign finance reform" vote finally took place last week, with the House ultimately passing the measure. The debate was full of hypocritical high-minded talk about cleaning up corruption, all by the very politicians of both parties who dole out billions in corporate subsidies and welfare pork. It was quite a spectacle watching the big-spending, perennially-incumbent politicians argue that new laws were needed to protect them from themselves!”

Ron Paul (1935) American politician and physician

Don't Believe the Hype- "Campaign Finance Reform" Serves Entrenched Interests http://www.ronpaullibrary.org/document.php?id=240 (February 18, 2002). 2000s, 2001-2005

Law, Housing

“You know, some people like to call me Mad Max like in the movie.
They may believe it’s an insult. But let me tell you something:
It’s true. I am mad!
I’m mad about government waste!
I’m mad about government borrowing money on the backs of future generations, to benefit big corporations!
I’M MAD THAT THE LIBERALS ARE RUNNING OUR COUNTRY’S FINANCES, AND OUR NATION’S FUTURE, INTO THE GROUND!
I’M MAD THAT THE LIBERAL GOVERNMENT SHRINKS OUR PAYCHECK WITH HIGHT TAXES AND TAKES AWAY OUR FREEDOM.
I’m mad about the federal government constantly meddling in provincial jurisdictions!
I’m mad at politicians who promise anything to get elected!
So yes, you can call me Mad Max.
I don’t mind!
I’m asking you to get mad like me and take your future into your hands.”

Maxime Bernier (1963) Canadian politician

3 October 2016 Facebook post https://www.facebook.com/hon.maximebernier/posts/10154565323228703 quoted 28 May 2018 on Toronto Sun https://torontosun.com/opinion/columnists/bonokoski-mad-maxs-dustup-over-a-liberal-mps-skin-colour-comments About

Money, People, Freedom, Future

“A credit default swap was confusing mainly because it wasn't really a swap at all. It was an insurance policy, typically on a corporate bond, with semiannual premium payments and a fixed term.”

Michael Lewis book The Big Short

Source: The Big Short (2010), Chapter Two, In the Land Of The Blind, p. 29

“Even the existence of this corporeal element, low as it in reality is, because it is the source of death and all evils, is likewise good for the permanence of the Universe and the continuation of the order of things, so that one thing departs and the other succeeds.”

Maimónides book The Guide for the Perplexed

Source: Guide for the Perplexed (c. 1190), Part III, Ch.10

Death, Reality, Universe, Evil

“The most powerful entities on earth are not governments but the multi-national corporations that see women as their territory, indoctrinating them with their versions of beauty, health and hygiene, medicating them and cultivating their dependency in order to medicate them some more.”

Germaine Greer (1939) Australian feminist author

Liberation (pg. 336)
The Whole Woman (1999)

Women, Health, Beauty, Dependency

“Take responsibility for your own happiness, rather than claiming telepathy you don’t have (unless you are telepathic) or ascribing to others ugly thoughts you can’t verify, and aiming endless, nonspecific blame for your mediocrity at the Trilateral Commission, “the media,” SKULL, the RAND Corporation, the long-disbanded Treemasons, the MAN, the Black Helicopter Legion, or the perennial favorite of paranoiacs, “Them.””

Malcolm Azania book From the Notebooks of Dr. Brain

Source: From the Notebooks of Dr. Brain (2007), Chapter 5 “Limited Series” (p. 151)

Happiness

“I believe it has come out of the zombie effect of assimilation. Certain young people are fed up with the commercialization of society, of corporations and political parties trying to define us, of stereotypes and racism based [on] greed and power and of the dominant culture building parking lots and malls over our heritage sites.”

Lorin Morgan-Richards (1975) American poet, cartoonist, and children's writer

Regarding a new generational movement in the States to reconnect with and feel empowered by their ancestry. as quoted in "Wales Arts Review" http://www.walesartsreview.org/the-welsh-in-america/ The Welsh in America” (31 October 2013).

People