Quotes about state
page 89

“The hegemonic powers also used religion and nationalism to preserve their supremacy. In all parts of Kurdistan, Islam is a state religion used as a tool for controlling the population. Even if these regimes embrace secularism, the entanglement of political and religious institutions is obvious.”

Abdullah Öcalan (1949) Founder of the PKK

Source: The Political Thought of Abdullah Ocalan (2017), War and Peace in Kurdistan, p.11

Religion, Parting

“States only administrate, while democracies govern.”

Abdullah Öcalan (1949) Founder of the PKK

Source: The Political Thought of Abdullah Ocalan (2017), Democratic Confederalism, p. 39

Democracy

“Sexism, just as nationalism, is an ideology through which power is generated and nation-states are built. Sexism is not a function of biological differences.”

Abdullah Öcalan (1949) Founder of the PKK

Source: The Political Thought of Abdullah Ocalan (2017), Liberating Life: Women's Revolution, pp.72

“Responsibility is actually at the opposite end of the vibrational scale from self-blame. But it takes a high degree of emotional awareness to see them as opposing states because both states recognize the self in a position of causation. For this reason, self-blame can disguise itself as responsibility like a wolf wearing sheep’s clothing. But one is self-hating, the other self-loving. One condemns the self and the other saves the self. If you are taking responsibility, you are feeling empowered. If you are self blaming, you are feeling bad about yourself and disempowered.”

Teal Swan (1984) American spiritual teacher

Love, Hate, Bad luck, Making love

“Empathy is not a state that is accessible to those who are afraid to feel negative emotion.”

Teal Swan (1984) American spiritual teacher

Feeling

“To all Christian governments Christianity was not a rule of means but a means of rule; Christ was for the people, Machiavelli was preferred by the kings. The state in some measure had civilized man, but who would civilize the state?”

Will Durant book The Story of Civilization

Source: The Story of Civilization (1935–1975), VI - The Reformation (1957), Chapter 6, p. 229

People, Christ

“If the First Amendment means anything, it means that a State has no business telling a man, sitting alone in his own house, what books he may read or what films he may watch. Our whole constitutional heritage rebels at the thought of giving government the power to control men's minds.”

Thurgood Marshall (1908–1993) Associate Justice of the United States Supreme Court

Writing for the court, Stanley v. Georgia, 394 U.S. 557 (1969)

Men, Books, Business, Reading

“Nothing in the history of the United State of America has eroded the protection of our Bill of Rights nearly as much as our government’s War on Drugs… Conventional wisdom says that the only way to stem the tide is to grant law enforcement agencies greater and greater powers and to let them intrude more and more completely into the private lives of our people.”

James P. Gray (1945) American judge

Source: Why Our Drug Laws Have Failed and What We Can Do About It: A Judicial Indictment of the War on Drugs, 2011, p. 95

Wisdom, War, People, Law

“Not only have more and more people realized that alcoholism really is a disease, but the legal system has also stated clearly in the California Supreme Court case of Sundance v. Municipal Court that people who are addicted to alcohol cannot be punished merely for their addition… It remains a critical part of our zero-tolerance policy that people who use illegal drugs cannot be considered in human terms. They must be treated as demons and we must contrast ‘drug cultures,’ on the one hand, with ‘decent’ people, on the other.”

James P. Gray (1945) American judge

Source: Why Our Drug Laws Have Failed and What We Can Do About It: A Judicial Indictment of the War on Drugs, 2011, pp. 124-125

People, Alcohol, Disease, Parting

“Because so many of our writers were born in ugly environments, in monstrous poverty and humilitation, they continue to assert that this is the natural environment, reality, and that beauty is artifice. Why should the natural state be ugliness? Natural to whom? We may be born in ugliness, but the natural consequences should be a thirst for its opposite. To mistake ugliness for reality is one of the frauds of the realistic school. A hunger for the unknown, and an aspiration towards beauty were inseparable from civilization. In America the word art was distorted to mean artificial.
We are born with the power to alter what we are given at birth.
When the Japanese paint flowers or the sea on a kimono they mean to establish a link with nature. But they select only what is beautiful in nature to maintain their love of life.
The creative personality never remains fixed on the first world it discovers. It never resigns itself to anything. That is the deepest meaning of rebellion, not the wearing of different clothes, haircuts, or the adopting of other cultures.”

Anaïs Nin book The Novel of the Future

The Novel of the Future (1969)

Love, Life, Hunger, World

“It's very beneficial to Mexico that these workers [come to the U. S.]. It relieves a lot of social tension. It empties out the countryside of the poor and the needy. It stops revolution from happening. And it's sending back a tidal wave of money. The remittance money from the United States is the second or third largest source of income in Mexico now. I guess you could argue that we have an extremely generous foreign policy…”

Luis Alberto Urrea (1955) Mexican-American poet

On how migrant workers benefit Mexico in some way in “INTERVIEWS: Luis Alberto Urrea” https://bookpage.com/interviews/8248-luis-alberto-urrea-nonfiction#.XcMKh7lKjcs in BookPage (April 2004)

Money

“The kitchen was the United States; the living room was Mexico…One side was struggling with all her might to make me an American boy, and the other side, with all of his might, was trying to keep me a Mexican boy.”

Luis Alberto Urrea (1955) Mexican-American poet

On feeling like a border wall ran through his childhood home in “Mexican-American Author Finds Inspiration In Family, Tragedy And Trump” https://www.npr.org/2018/03/05/590839936/mexican-american-author-finds-inspiration-in-family-tragedy-and-trump in NPR (2018 Mar 5)

Making love, Boy

“I was lucky to enter economics in 1932. Analytical economics was poised for its take-off. I faced a lovely vacuum that young economists today can hardly imagine. So much remained to be done. Everything was still in an imperfect state. It was like fishing in a virgin lake: a whopper at every cast, but so many lovely new specimens that the palate never cloyed.”

Paul A. Samuelson (1915–2009) American economist

Introduction to the Enlarged Edition
1940s, Foundations of Economic Analysis (1947; 1983)

Love, Making love, Imagination, Fish

“The struggle for power is universal in time and space and is an undeniable fact of experience. It cannot be denied that throughout historic time, regardless of social, economic and political conditions, states have met each other in contests for power. Even though anthropologists have shown that certain primitive peoples seem to be free from the desire for power, nobody has yet shown how their state of mind can be re-created on a worldwide scale so as to eliminate the struggle for power from the international scene. … International politics, like all politics, is a struggle for power. Whatever the ultimate aims of international politics, power is always the immediate aim.”

Hans Morgenthau book Politics Among Nations

Source: Politics Among Nations (1948), p. 29 (1978 edition)

People, Universe, Time

“What we are witnessing below, these thousands upon thousands and ten thousands upon ten thousands of people, who, in a frenzied delirium of exultation and enthusiasm, are acclaiming the new leadership of the state -- this is truly the fulfillment of our dearest wish, the crowning achievement of our work. We are fully justified in saying Germany is awakening!”

Joseph Goebbels (1897–1945) Nazi politician and Propaganda Minister

Wolfgang Benz, A Concise History of the Third Reich, Berkeley and Los Angeles, CA: University of California Press (2006) p. 20. Quote from January 30, 1933
1930s

People

“Everybody may have peace if they are willing to pay any price for it. Part of this any price is slavery, dishonor of your women, destruction of your homes, denial of your God. I have seen all of these abominations in other parts of the world paid as the price of not resisting invasion, and I have no thought that the inhabitants of this state of my birth have any desire for peace at that price, or that they lack the fortitude that is necessary to discourage aggression by the barbarians who are now about to be driven back to their kennels, or by any other savages who may arise at some later date against our civilized Christian world.”

William D. Leahy (1875–1959) United States admiral, ambassador to France, Chief of Staff

Commencement speech at Cornell College in Iowa on 5 June 1944, as quoted by Henry H. Adams in Witness to Power: The Life of Fleet Admiral William D. Leahy (1985), p. 246
1940s

Women, God, World, Peace

“Taking my life will not compensate for the loss of the others. The State is murdering me.”

John Wayne Gacy (1942–1994) American serial killer and torturer

Final words before execution by lethal injection. Quoted in Kozenczak, Joseph R.; Kozencz, Karen M.; The Chicago Killer: The Hunt for Serial Killer John Wayne Gacy (2003), Xlibris US, pg. 253

Life, Loss

“The social insecurity of the worker is the real cause of their being a perishable to the state.”

Otto von Bismarck (1815–1898) German statesman, Chancellor of Germany

Speech to the Landtag (18 October 1849), quoted in Henry E. Sigerist, 'From Bismarck to Beveridge: Developments and Trends in Social Security Legislation', Journal of Public Health Policy, Vol. 20, No. 4 (1999), p. 484
1840s

“On this day the whole nation at all levels, in all its professions, occupations, and estates, acknowledges the dignity and blessedness of labour. On a day when in former times we heard the rattles of machine-guns and the hate-inspired songs of the class struggle and the Internationale, in this first year of Hitler’s government and the German people is assembled in unanimous, unswerving loyalty to the state, the race (Volk), and the German nation to which we all belong. Every difference is wiped away. The barriers of class hatred and the arrogance of social status that for over 50 years divided the nation from itself have been torn down. Germans of all classes, tribes (Stämme), professions, and denominations have joined hands across the barriers that separated them and have vowed henceforth to live as a community, to work and fight for the fatherland that unites us all. … The class struggle is at an end. The idea of the national community rises above the ruins of the bankrupt liberal-capitalist state. … Thus the German people marches into the future.”

Joseph Goebbels (1897–1945) Nazi politician and Propaganda Minister

Speech at the first Labor Day celebration held under Nazi auspices (1 May 1933) Sheri Berman, Democracy and Dictatorship in Europe: From the Ancient Regime to the Present Day, New York, Oxford University Press, (2019) p. 254
1930s

Hate, People, Communication, Idea

“Production that is essentially completed, which no longer requires strength, ability, inventiveness, entrepreneurship and brilliance (e.g., the transportation system, trusts, conglomerates) will be brought back to state ownership.”

Joseph Goebbels (1897–1945) Nazi politician and Propaganda Minister

Der Nazi-Sozi https://research.calvin.edu/german-propaganda-archive/nazi-sozi.htm, Elberfeld: Verlag der Nationalsozialistischen Briefe (1927) 1920s

“It is strange that philosophers first show how one animal supports itself by destroying another, and then enter into discussions on the apparent admirable order of things in their present state. But though this may be a necessary contrivance, and the only way in which life can be supported, it can never be a beautiful one, in our short sights, notwithstanding that something worse might be, were this not the case.”

Lewis Gompertz (1783–1861) Early animal rights activist

Source: Moral Inquiries on the Situation of Man and of Brutes (1824), Chapter 2, pp. 49–50

Life, Beauty, Way, Support

“And though I cannot conceive how any person can shut his eyes to the general state of misery throughout the universe, I still think that it is for a wise purpose; that the evils of life, which could not properly be otherwise, will in the course of time be rectified, and the exquisite pleasures for which we are formed will be enjoyed in our progeny: also that we may ourselves become the inhabitants of the improved world, or of some other world improved in a like manner; and that even if the different species of all the present animals should become extinct, as indicated by what we have observed of the different bones in the several strata, the discoveries of the present time may enrich the future, unless every trace of them should be destroyed at once.”

Lewis Gompertz (1783–1861) Early animal rights activist

Source: Moral Inquiries on the Situation of Man and of Brutes (1824), Chapter 2, p. 48

Life, Pleasure, World, Thinking

“Perhaps there is some hope that its capacity for death and terror among the defenseless may restrain nations from using the atom bomb against each other, just as in the last war such fears made them avoid employment of the new and deadlier poison gases developed since World War I. However, I am forced to a reluctant conclusion that for the security of my own country which has been the guiding principle in my approach to all problems faced during my career, there is but one course open to us: Until the United Nations, or some world organization, can guarantee- and have the power to enforce that guarantee- that the world will be spared the terrors of atomic warfare, the United States must have more and better atomic bombs than any potential enemy.”

William D. Leahy (1875–1959) United States admiral, ambassador to France, Chief of Staff

Source: I Was There (1950), p. 442

Death, War, World, Fear

“Government welfare is communism. Free money from the state, whether in terms of benefits, handouts, or non-universal tax-breaks, is a trap that will draw people into socialism and beyond. It’s a lot like cancer.”

Trevor Loudon New Zealand politician

"Government Welfare: A Cancer Known as Communism" https://www.theepochtimes.com/government-welfare-a-cancer-known-as-communism_2787169.html

Money, People, Communication, Universe

“I only said that independence was one theoretical option for Hong Kong if the party collapses, alongside a federal state or an EU-style confederation.”

Benny Tai (1964) Hong Kong activist and writer

April 23, 2018 Free speech fears as Beijing attacks Hong Kong professor https://www.ft.com/content/02439b1e-3efb-11e8-b7e0-52972418fec4

“While others make obtuse remarks about the state of our roads and some turn into anthropological visitors who come to ogle the condition of our people, we cannot stand by as a society and do nothing. We have an obligation to answer this difficult question of poverty and also do something about it. First, we need to understand poverty in a very basic way and how it is impacting our society.”

Samuel Sejjaaka (1964) Ugandan businessman

When our potholes, poverty become tourist attractions https://www.monitor.co.ug/OpEd/Commentary/-potholes-poverty-tourist-attractions-politicians/689364-5472846-14ittep/index.html (February 29, 2020), Daily Monitor.

People, Making love, Way, Understanding

“The artist, however faithful to his personal vision of reality, becomes the last champion of the individual mind and sensibility against an intrusive society and an officious state. The great artist is thus a solitary figure. He has, as Frost said, a lover's quarrel with the world. In pursuing his perceptions of reality, he must often sail against the currents of his time. This is not a popular role. If Robert Frost was much honored in his lifetime, it was because a good many preferred to ignore his darker truths. Yet in retrospect, we see how the artist's fidelity has strengthened the fiber of our national life. If sometimes our great artist have been the most critical of our society, it is because their sensitivity and their concern for justice, which must motivate any true artist, makes him aware that our Nation falls short of its highest potential. I see little of more importance to the future of our country and our civilization than full recognition of the place of the artist.”

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

1963, Speech at Amherst College

Life, Truth, World, Making love

“To Iranian President Rouhani: NEVER, EVER THREATEN THE UNITED STATES AGAIN OR YOU WILL SUFFER CONSEQUENCES THE LIKES OF WHICH FEW THROUGHOUT HISTORY HAVE EVER SUFFERED BEFORE. WE ARE NO LONGER A COUNTRY THAT WILL STAND FOR YOUR DEMENTED WORDS OF VIOLENCE & DEATH. BE CAUTIOUS!”

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

https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/1021234525626609666 Donald Trump on social media, Twitter

Death, History, Suffering, Country

“North Korea’s interest in confederation is in first disarming and then eliminating the rival state.”

Brian Reynolds Myers (1963) American professor of international studies

2010s, "Conspiracy Theory"? (August 2019)

“The North wants unification under its own flag, while South Korean progressives want the two states to coalesce over decades of mutually beneficial economic cooperation.”

Brian Reynolds Myers (1963) American professor of international studies

2010s, Portrait of the Ally as an Intermediary (March 2018)

“Socialism is possible only in a state that is united domestically and free internationally. The bourgeoisie and Marxism are responsible for failing to reach both goals, domestic unity and international freedom. No matter how national and social these two forces present themselves, they are the sworn enemies of a socialist national state.”

Joseph Goebbels (1897–1945) Nazi politician and Propaganda Minister

1930s, Die verfluchten Hakenkreuzler. Etwas zum Nachdenken (1932)

Freedom

“The sin of liberal thinking was to overlook socialism’s nation-building strengths, thereby allowing its energies to go in anti-national directions. The sin of Marxism was to degrade socialism into a question of wages and the stomach, putting it in conflict with the state and its national existence.”

Joseph Goebbels (1897–1945) Nazi politician and Propaganda Minister

1930s, Die verfluchten Hakenkreuzler. Etwas zum Nachdenken (1932)

Question, Thinking

“We are for the first German national state of a socialist nature!”

Joseph Goebbels (1897–1945) Nazi politician and Propaganda Minister

1930s, Die verfluchten Hakenkreuzler. Etwas zum Nachdenken (1932)

Nature

“South Koreans do not consider the integrity of their state important enough to go to war for.”

Brian Reynolds Myers (1963) American professor of international studies

2010s, Interview with Chad O'Carroll (2012)

War

“Humanity has only one religion, state, cast, and colour, which teaches us every human is equal.”

Umair Ahmad (1997) Entrepreneur, Writer, Researcher & Film Producer

LINK BUILDING FOR SEO: The Definitive Guide Oxford University Press, (May 16, 2019), ISBN-10: 1099305861, ISBN-13: 978-1099305863

Religion

“The real issue is not whether you're black or white, whether you're a woman or a man. In my view, a woman could be elected president of the United States. The real issue is whose side are you on? Are you on the side of workers and poor people, or are you on the side of big money and the corporations?”

Bernie Sanders (1941) American politician, senator for Vermont

1988, quoted in * 2020-01-14
Video emerges of Sanders saying in 1988 a woman could be elected president
Zack Budryk
The Hill
https://thehill.com/homenews/campaign/478299-video-emerges-of-sanders-saying-a-woman-could-be-elected-president-in-1988
1980s

Money, People

“In place of a slave colony, we want a restored German national state. The state is not an end in itself for us, but rather a means to an end. The true end is the race, the sum of all the living, creative forces of the people. The structure that today calls itself the German republic is not a way to maintain our racial inheritance. It has become an end in itself with no real connection to the people and their needs.”

Joseph Goebbels (1897–1945) Nazi politician and Propaganda Minister

1930s, Die verfluchten Hakenkreuzler. Etwas zum Nachdenken (1932)

People, Way

“The world is far too complex, and variation between societal types is too vast, for a categorisation dividing it into two mutually exclusive kinds of society to be meaningful. In addition, as argued above, one cannot once and for all draw the boundaries of a society. For this reason, it is more accurate to state that anthropologists study social life rather than saying that they study societies.”

Thomas Hylland Eriksen (1962) Norwegian social anthropologist and professor

Source: What is Anthropology? (2nd ed., 2017), Ch. 2 : Key Concepts

Life, World, Study, Drawing

“Many social scientists, including anthropologists, have been interested in the power inherent in gender relations, often described through the idiom of female oppression. It can be argued that men usually tend to exert more power over women than vice versa. In most societies, men generally hold the most important political and religious positions, and very often men control the formal economy. In some societies, it may even be prescribed for women to cover their body and face when they appear in the public sphere, and, paradoxically, these practices sometimes become more common as their societies become more modern. On the other hand, women are often capable of exerting considerable informal power, not least in the domestic sphere. Anthropologists cannot state unequivocally that women are oppressed before they have investigated all aspects of their society, including how the women (and men) themselves perceive their situation. One cannot dismiss the possibility that certain women in western Asia (the Middle East) see the ‘liberated’ western woman as more oppressed – by professional career pressure, demands to look good and other expectations – than themselves.
When studying societies undergoing change, which perhaps most anthropologists do today, it is important to look at the value conflicts and tensions between different interest groups that are particularly central. Often these conflicts are expressed through gender relations.”

Thomas Hylland Eriksen (1962) Norwegian social anthropologist and professor

Source: What is Anthropology? (2nd ed., 2017), Ch. 2 : Key Concepts

Women, Men, Study, Appearance

“the government did not fulfil the urge in their hearts and felt that the public wished to see me openly revealing my sympathy for our kinsmen; how could I as the head of state!”

Wilhelmina of the Netherlands (1880–1962) Queen of the Netherlands 1898 - 1948

Heart

“The United States is the only country where these revolutions are simultaneously in progress and organically linked in such a way as to constitute a single revolution.”

Jean-François Revel (1924–2006) French writer and philosopher

Without Marx or Jesus; the new American Revolution has begun https://archive.org/details/withoutmarxorjes00reverich (1971) quoted in The Aquarian Conspiracy, The Aquarian Conspiracy, by Marilyn Ferguson (1980) 1970s

Way, Country

“Now there is no more noise, no more confusion, no more talking, no more parliament, or parliamentarism. The Corps Législatif, the Senate, the Council of State, have all had their mouths sewn up.”

Victor Hugo (1802–1885) French poet, novelist, and dramatist

Napoleon the Little (1852), Book V, IX
Napoleon the Little (1852)

“We who combat them are "the eternal enemies of order.". We are—for they can as yet find nothing but this worn-out word—we are demagogues. In the language of the Duke of Alva, to believe in the sacredness of the human conscience, to resist the Inquisition, to brave the state for one's faith, to draw the sword for one's country, to defend one's worship, one's city, one's home, one's house, one's family, and one's God, was called vagabondism... The man is a demagogue in the nineteenth century, who in the sixteenth would have been a vagabond.”

Victor Hugo (1802–1885) French poet, novelist, and dramatist

Book II, XI
Napoleon the Little (1852)

God, Family, Faith, Home

“Mental states such as loneliness, compulsion, anguish, attachment, pain, and faith are not just "all in the head" but in the brain as well. Brain, mind, and body are a continuum. Our thoughts—intention, fear, images, suggestion, expectation— alter the brain's chemistry. And it works both ways; thoughts can be altered by changing the brain's chemistry with drugs, nutrients, oxygen. The brain is hopelessly complex.”

Marilyn Ferguson (1938–2008) American writer

The Aquarian Conspiracy (1980), Chapter Six, Liberating Knowledge: News from the Frontiers of Science

Pain, Fear, Faith, Way

“The stuff of revolution, and its first success, must be the ability to innovate. In that sense, there is more revolutionary spirit in the United States today, even on the Right, than elsewhere on the Left. The relative freedom in the United States would make it possible for such a revolution to occur bloodlessly, Revel said.”

Marilyn Ferguson (1938–2008) American writer

The Aquarian Conspiracy (1980), Chapter Five, The American Matrix for Transformation

Making love, Sense, Freedom, Success

“There has never been a time, until the last fifty years, when a majority of any population had regular and constant access to drama, and used this access. . . . It seems probable that in societies like Britain and the United States more drama is watched in a week or weekend, by the majority of viewers, than would have been watched in a year or in some cases a lifetime in any previous historical period. It is clearly one of the unique characteristics of advanced industrial societies that drama as an experience is now an intrinsic part of everyday life, at a quantitative level which is so very much greater than any precedent as to seem a fundamental qualitative change. Whatever the social and cultural reasons may finally be, it is clear that watching dramatic simulation of a wide range of experiences is now an essential part of our modern cultural pattern.”

Raymond Williams (1921–1988) philosopher

Television: Technology and Cultural Form

Life, Change, Time, Parting

“For me, the measures of success will be both environmental and social. What I’d like to see us do is as a nation have a set of measures that we use consistently so that the public can hold us to account. But as I’ve also said all the way through this campaign, the measure of success to me is not how a financial commentator or an economic commentator from abroad views New Zealand, but how a New Zealander feels about their state of affairs, their hope and chances for the future.”

Jacinda Ardern (1980) Prime Minister of New Zealand

Interview with Lisa Owen at Newshub Nation, 21 October 2017

Hope, Way, Feeling, Chance

“We Anglophones tend to use the words nation and state more or less interchangeably, but when one nation is divided into two states, it’s important to stick to the Koreans’ own practice of distinguishing clearly between nationalism (minjokjuŭi) and patriotism / state spirit (aeguksim, kukka chŏngsin, kukkajuŭi, etc). Historians do this even in English when discussing the Weimar Republic, where nationalism undermined support for the state — and for liberal democracy — just as it does in South Korea today.”

Brian Reynolds Myers (1963) American professor of international studies

2010s, On Experts and Exegetes (September 2017)

Democracy, Support

“Far from making ‘America great again,’ this epic policy failure will further tarnish the United States’ reputation as a country that knows how to do things effectively.”

Stephen M. Walt (1955) American political scientist

Quoted byJulian Borger in US awol from world stage as China tries on global leadership for size, The Guardian https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/mar/29/us-awol-from-world-stage-as-china-tries-on-global-leadership-for-size, Berger followed the quote with the words: Walt wrote in Foreign Policy, in a commentary titled “the death of American competence https://foreignpolicy.com/2020/03/23/death-american-competence-reputation-coronavirus/”, March 29, 2020

Making love, Failure, Country

“Nor at present, nor in the past, we have ever denied,
That your sense of justice is trumpeted far and wide.
Whatever has been happening, we also accept
Fell within the limits of law, with justice as your guide.
Even when you ordered firing on the helpless multitude,
You didn't even by a hair-breadth the law of land defied.
But this truth too cannot be lightly brushed aside,
Thay your act unleashed a deluge of death in the twinkling of an eye,
The handsome youth when they fell before your deadly fire],
Wondered if it was the doom, or the stars shooting from the [[sky.
The arch and pulpit of the mosque were left riddled with bullets,
But the mosque needs perhaps such patterns on its front and sides.
Fast-fettered did they watch, the convicts and the passers-by,
And the police took the stand: How can we, the servants, the sovereign's fiat defy?
But let's state the fact, you may or may not like,
We are the oppressed folk, you are not the oppressor, right!”

Shibli Nomani (1857–1914) Indian scholar

Masterpieces of Patriotic Urdu Poetry, p. 105
Poetry, Oppression

Death, Truth, Youth, Justice

“In the wake of the pandemic we can be sure that fascists and reactionaries will seek to mobilize tropes of ⁠— racial, national, economic ⁠— purity, purification, parasitism, and pollution to impose their long-festering dreams on reality. The vengeful romance of the border, now more politicized than ever, will haunt all of us in the years to come. The “new” authoritarians, whether they emphasize the totalitarian state or the totalitarian market ⁠— or both ⁠— will insist that we all recognize we now live ⁠— have always lived ⁠— in a ruthless, competitive world and must take measures to wall ourselves in and cast out the undesirable.”

Max Haiven (1981)

No return to normal: for a post-pandemic liberation (March 23, 2020)

World, Dreams, Reality

“There are heroes in education, as there have always been heroes, trying to transcend the limits of the old structure; but their efforts are too often thwarted by peers, administrators, parents. Mario Fantini, former Ford consultant on education, now at the State University of New York, said bluntly, The psychology of becoming has to be smuggled into the schools.”

Marilyn Ferguson (1938–2008) American writer

The Aquarian Conspiracy (1980), Chapter Nine, Flying and Seeing: New Ways to Learn

Education, School, Parent, Effort

“A healing state of mind has specific benefits for the healer, however, and for the rapport between therapist and sufferer. A British scientist has observed a particular configuration of brain rhythms in most of the spiritual healers he has tested. (England has thousands of licensed healers, and they are permitted to work in hospitals.) One anxious physician wired to the brainwave device did not show that pattern. Finally the sympathetic researcher said, "Imagine you are about to treat a patient. You have no medicine, no equipment. You have nothing to give but your compassion."”

Marilyn Ferguson (1938–2008) American writer

Suddenly the physician's brainwave activity shifted into the "healing state" pattern. p. 277
The Aquarian Conspiracy (1980), Chapter Eight, Healing Ourselves

Imagination, Suffering

“Within a few short years, without a shot's being fired, the concept of holistic health has been legitimized by federal and state programs, endorsed by politicians, urged and underwritten by insurance companies, co-opted in terminology (if not always in practice) by many physicians, and adopted by medical students. Consumers demand "holistic health," a whole new assortment of entrepreneurs promise it, and medical groups look for speakers to explain it.”

Marilyn Ferguson (1938–2008) American writer

Source: The Aquarian Conspiracy (1980), Chapter Eight, Healing Ourselves, p. 242

Health

“My administration has taken the most aggressive action in modern history to prevent the spread of this illness in the United States. We are ready. We are ready. Totally ready. On January 31st, I ordered the suspension of foreign nationals who have recently been in China from entering the United States. An action which the Democrats loudly criticized and protested and now everybody’s complimenting me saying, “Thank you very much. You were 100% correct.””

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

Could’ve been a whole different story. But I say, so let’s get this right. A virus starts in China, bleeds its way into various countries all around the world, doesn’t spread widely at all in the United States because of the early actions that myself and my administration took against a lot of other wishes, and the Democrats’ single talking point, and you see it, is that it’s Donald Trump’s fault, right? It’s Donald Trump’s fault. No, just things that happened.
2020s, 2020, February, Donald Trump Charleston, South Carolina Rally (February 28, 2020)

History

“No, it’s crazy. Crazy! It’s a crazy deal. No, the fake news media, they’ve been trying to figure this out for years. They still don’t get it though. They don’t get it. Look at all of those cameras. Look at all of those cameras. That’s a lot of cameras. That’s a lot of cameras, Lindsey and Tim, that’s a lot of… They heard you guys were here. They heard Tim was here and that Lindsey was here and that… And they said, “We’re not going to attend that rally,” but when we heard those two guys plus our great congressmen, they’re here, great congressmen. But this is an incredible time for our nation. We’re thrilled to be in the midst of what we call the Great American Comeback and that’s what it is. Jobs are booming, incomes are soaring, factories are returning, poverty is plummeting, confidence is surging, and we have completely rebuilt the awesome power of the United States military. Our country is stronger than ever before.”

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

2020s, 2020, February, Donald Trump Charleston, South Carolina Rally (February 28, 2020)

Guy, Confidence, Time, Self-confidence

“For the soul arrives therebye at a certain fixed and invincible state, a state which is genuinely heroic, and from out of which the greatest deeds it ever performs are executed.”

Charles Augustin Sainte-Beuve (1804–1869) French literary critic

On “the phenomenon of grace.”

As quoted by william james in Varieties of Religious Experience Lecture 11, paragraph 3.

Soul

“Contemporary slang reflects this animal state: children are "mice," "rabbits," "kittens," women are called "chicks," in England "birds," "hens," "dumb clucks," "silly geese," "old mares," "bitches."”

Shulamith Firestone book The Dialectic of Sex

Similar terminology is used about males as a defamation of character, or more broadly only about pressed males males: stud, wold, cat, stag, jack - and then it is used much more rarely, and often with a specifically sexual connotation.

Chapter Four
The Dialectic of Sex (1970)

Women, Children, Bird, Animals

“The problem to which the eminent domain clause is directed is that of political obligation and organization. What are the reasons for the formation of the state? What can the state demand of the individuals citizens whom it both governs and represents?”

Richard Epstein (1943) American legal scholar

[Takings: Private Property and the Power of Eminent Domain, https://books.google.com/books?id=uz7nJkFvVn0C, 1985, Harvard University Press, 978-0-674-86729-1] (quote from p. 3)

Problem

“New York State calls this attack on Jussie Smollett what it is — a hate crime. Homophobia and racism will not be tolerated.”

Andrew Cuomo (1957) 56th Governor of New York

29 January 2019 https://twitter.com/NYGovCuomo/status/1090437558549561344 regarding Jussie Smollett

Hate

“Of course, working people ultimately cannot rely upon the federal government or the state governments (whose purpose is to maintain the hegemony of the markets and the rule of capital) to fix this crisis in any equitable way. Only the working class has the power to make this happen through mass strikes and work actions. In order to act swiftly in the case of any layoffs, lockouts, or shutdowns, working people ultimately must organize themselves at their workplaces and in the streets, whether they are in a union or not, and be prepared to use their collective power to demand that all necessary resources be employed for the well being of the whole class with full compensation and benefits, that full back pay be provided to all workers upon returning to work, and that everyone has access to well compensated employment.”

James Dennis Hoff

Freeze Layoffs: Make the Capitalists Pay (March 23, 2020)

People, Making love, Way

“All I can say is that the fake news just doesn’t get it, do they? They don’t get it. [inaudible 00:02:54] They just don’t get it. Hello Charleston, and I’m thrilled to be back in the great state of South Carolina with thousands of hardworking American Patriots who believe in faith, family, God, and country. Thank you. It’s a phenomenal crowd, only topped by the number of people outside that didn’t get in. If anybody would like to give up where you’re standing or your seat, please raise your hand. All right. Then let’s begin, right? Thank you all very much though. This is great. No, they don’t get it. Down the road, they have a rally for one of the people that are going to be running tomorrow. They’re trying to get to a hundred, but they’re not going to make it. So I think they’re going to set up a round table. Well, that’s what they do. So people want to go to a rally, they end up sitting at a round table talking about their definition of impeachment. Crazy.”

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

2020s, 2020, February, Donald Trump Charleston, South Carolina Rally (February 28, 2020)

God, People, Making love, Family

“Journalism is the most Americanized of all professions, and nothing is more American than the belief that economic matters trump ideological ones. There is very little talk of ideology in coverage of any country. Western journalists here see a poor North facing off against a rich South and laugh at the notion that the former might have serious designs on the latter. They don’t seem aware of what I call the South’s state-loyalty deficit.”

Brian Reynolds Myers (1963) American professor of international studies

2010s, Interview with Isaac Chotiner (January 2018)

Loyalty, Country

“What is most dangerous is that although this virus will eventually disappear, the assault on our civil liberties is not likely to be reversed. From this point on, whenever local officials, county officials, state governors, or federal bureaucrats decide there is sufficient reason to suspend the Constitution they will not hesitate to do so. Anyone who challenges the suspension of the Constitution “for our own good” will be labeled “unpatriotic” and perhaps even reported to the authorities. We have already seen hotlines springing up across the country for Americans to report other Americans who dare venture outside to enjoy the sun and build up their vitamin D protection against the coronavirus. The government is justified in cancelling the Constitution, we are told, because we are in an emergency situation caused by the Covid-19 virus. But do people forget that the Constitution itself was written and adopted while we were in an “emergency situation”? Did the framers of the Constitution fail to add an 11th Amendment to the Bill of Rights saying, “oh by the way, none of this counts if we get sick?””

Ron Paul (1935) American politician and physician

Of course not! Those who wrote our Constitution understood that these rights are not granted by the government, but rather by our Creator. Thus it was never a question as to when or under what conditions they could be suspended: the government had no authority to suspend them at all because it did not grant them in the first place.
2020, End the Shutdown; It’s Time for Resurrection!

People, Way, Spring, Sun

“To the mind carefully brought to adulthood in the United States, the truths of anticommunism are self-evident, as self-evident as the flatness of the world once was to an earlier mind...”

William Blum (1933–2018) American author and historian

Killing Hope: US Military and CIA Interventions Since World War II, Introduction

Truth, World, Adulthood, Self-confidence

“Let's examine the right of freedom of speech. Nobody will shut us up! We don't owe to any bum anything in this State or Country! Here we don't have censorship!”

Luiz Carlos Alborghetti (1945–2009) Italian-Brazilian radio commenter, showman and political figure

Original: (pt) Vamos analisar o direito da liberdade de expressão. Ninguém vai nos calar a boca! Não devemos a vagabundo nenhum nesse Estado e nesse País! Aqui não há censura!

Source: [1 March 2006, 31 March 2019, Cadeia Sem Censura, Web Rádio Intervalo, 1 March 2006]

Freedom, Country

“Cuba had become what Washington had always feared from the Third World—a good example. Parallel to the military and economic belligerence, the United States has long maintained a relentless propaganda offensive against Cuba. A number of examples of this occurring in other countries can be found in other chapters of this book. In addition to its vast overseas journalistic empire, the CIA has maintained anti-Castro news-article factories in the United States for decades.”

William Blum (1933–2018) American author and historian

Killing Hope: US Military and CIA Interventions Since World War II, Chapter 30. Cuba 1959 to 1980s: The unforgivable revolution

Books, World, Fear, Country

“What undoubtedly was an even more sensitive venture was the use of chemical and biological weapons against Cuba by the United States....The full extent of American chemical and biological warfare against Cuba will never be known. Over the years, the Castro government has in fact blamed the United States for a number of other plagues which afflicted various animals and crops. And in 1977, newly-released CIA documents disclosed that the Agency "maintained a clandestine anti-crop warfare research program targeted during the 1960s at a number of countries..."”

William Blum (1933–2018) American author and historian

Killing Hope: US Military and CIA Interventions Since World War II, Chapter 30. Cuba 1959 to 1980s: The unforgivable revolution

Affliction, Animals, Country

“There are 2.9 hospital beds for every 1,000 people in the United States. That’s fewer than Turkmenistan (7.4 beds per 1,000), Mongolia (7.0), Argentina (5.0) and Libya (3.7). In fact, the US ranks 69th out of 182 countries analyzed by the World Health Organization. This lack of hospital beds is forcing doctors across the country to ration care under Covid-19, pushing up the number of preventable deaths. America’s numbers are similarly unimpressive when it comes to medical doctors. The United States has 2.6 doctors per 1,000 people, placing it behind Trinidad & Tobago (2.7), and Russia (4.0 doctors per 1,000, for a country that is described as being “in transition”). Life expectancies at birth are lower in the US than they are in Chile or China. The US has a higher maternal mortality rate than Iran or Saudi Arabia.”

Mona Chalabi (1987) British data journalist

Coronavirus is revealing how broken America’s economy really is, 6 April 2020

Life, Death, People, Health

“As the most powerful state, the U.S. makes its own laws, using force and conducting economic warfare at will. It also threatens sanctions against countries that do not abide by its conveniently flexible notions of "free trade."”

Noam Chomsky (1928) american linguist, philosopher and activist

In one important case, Washington has employed such threats with great effectiveness (and GATT approval) to force open Asian markets for U.S. tobacco exports and advertising, aimed primarily at the growing markets of women and children. The U.S. Agriculture Department has provided grants to tobacco firms to promote smoking overseas. Asian countries have attempted to conduct educational anti-smoking campaigns, but they are overwhelmed by the miracles of the market, reinforced by U.S. state power through the sanctions threat. Philip Morris, with an advertising and promotion budget of close to $9 billion in 1992, became China's largest advertiser. The effect of Reaganite sanction threats was to increase advertising and promotion of cigarette smoking (particularly U.S. brands) quite sharply in Japan, Taiwan, and South Korea, along with the use of these lethal substances. In South Korea, for example, the rate of growth in smoking more than tripled when markets for U.S. lethal drugs were opened in 1988. The Bush Administration extended the threats to Thailand, at exactly the same time that the "war on drugs" was declared; the media were kind enough to overlook the coincidence, even suppressing the outraged denunciations by the very conservative Surgeon-General. Oxford University epidemiologist Richard Peto estimates that among Chinese children under 20 today, 50 million will die of cigarette-related diseases, an achievement that ranks high even by 20th century standards. In Tony Evans (ed.), Human Rights Fifty Years on: A Reappraisal, 1997 https://chomsky.info/199811__/ Quotes 1990s, 1995–1999

Making love, Law, Country

“States are violent institutions. The government of any country, including ours, represents some sort of domestic power structure, and it's usually violent. States are violent to the extent that they're powerful, that's roughly accurate.”

Noam Chomsky (1928) american linguist, philosopher and activist

Quotes 1990s, 1990–1994, Manufacturing Consent: Noam Chomsky and the Media, 1992

Country

“The president of the United States just threatened the safety and security of immigrants the world over.”

Richard Wolffe (1968) American journalist

Let's drop the euphemisms: Donald Trump is a racist president (2018)

World

“We are taking responsibility for Slovakia at a time when confidence in police and courts is minimal, when Slovakia tops corruption rankings.. We'll do anything to ensure that citizens will trust their state again.”

Igor Matovič (1973) Slovak politician

Igor Matovic sworn in as Slovakia's prime minister, By Sommer Brokaw, UPI https://www.upi.com/Top_News/World-News/2020/03/21/Igor-Matovic-sworn-in-as-Slovakias-prime-minister/4591584810212/, 21 March 2020

Confidence, Time, Self-confidence

“Too many of our preferences reflect nasty behaviours and states of mind that were genetically adaptive in the ancestral environment. Instead, wouldn't it be better if we rewrote our own corrupt code?”

David Pearce (philosopher) (1959) British transhumanist

" The Abolitionist Project https://www.abolitionist.com/", Talks given at the FHI (Oxford University) and the Charity International Happiness Conference, 2007

“I should say that when people talk about capitalism it's a bit of a joke. There's no such thing. No country, no business class, has ever been willing to subject itself to the free market, free market discipline. Free markets are for others. Like, the Third World is the Third World because they had free markets rammed down their throat. Meanwhile, the enlightened states, England, the United States, others, resorted to massive state intervention to protect private power, and still do. That's right up to the present. I mean, the Reagan administration for example was the most protectionist in post-war American history. Virtually the entire dynamic economy in the United States is based crucially on state initiative and intervention: computers, the internet, telecommunication, automation, pharmaceutical, you just name it. Run through it, and you find massive ripoffs of the public, meaning, a system in which under one guise or another the public pays the costs and takes the risks, and profit is privatized. That's very remote from a free market. Free market is like what India had to suffer for a couple hundred years, and most of the rest of the Third World.”

Noam Chomsky (1928) american linguist, philosopher and activist

Quotes 1990s, 1995–1999, Sovereignty and World Order, 1999

War, People, World, History

“If democracy is not to excel centralised absolutism in the breeding of bureaucracies, it must be built up on an elaborately organised self-government with a corresponding economic, personal responsibility of all the units of administration as well as of the adult citizens of the state. Nothing is more injurious to its healthy development than enforced uniformity and a too abundant amount of protectionism or subventionism.”

Eduard Bernstein (1850–1932) German politician

Source: "Evolutionary Socialism" (1899) https://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/bernstein/works/1899/evsoc/index.htm, Chapter III, The Tasks and Possibilities of Social Democracy

Democracy, Personality, Self-confidence

“Dictators may torture or kill us, but they shall not succeed in demoralizing the soul of our movement, in bringing it to a state where for the sake of saving its life it is willing to renounce its ideal. Our cause will conquer in spite of everything, for in economic life as well as in politics the highest ability to accomplish and to advance things belongs to communities and organizations of free men working in free cooperation. These free communities will far outstrip every collective body, every organization that is built on compulsion and that can be maintained only by brute force; and ultimately the communities based on oppression will perish.”

Karl Kautsky (1854–1938) Czech-Austrian philosopher, journalist, and Marxist theoretician

Chap. V, The Period of Dictatorship "Hitlerism and Social Democracy" (1934) https://www.marxists.org/archive/kautsky/1934/hitler/index.htm

Life, Men, Soul, Communication

“Governments are by their nature aggressive and dominating. No society is safe if its neighbor is a state.”

Peter Gelderloos (1982) American anarchist

Source: "The Failure of Nonviolence" (2013) https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/peter-gelderloos-the-failure-of-nonviolence, Chapter 2. Recuperation is How We Lose

Nature

“Government violence is not the result of violent revolutions, but the product of government itself. Any movement that leaves the State intact will fail in ending the oppressions we are fighting against. A nonviolent movement that replaces one government with another—and this is the greatest victory a nonviolent movement has ever achieved in the history of the world—ends up betraying itself, allowing Power to change its masks without addressing the fundamental problems of society. Nonviolence as an analytical tool has no means of understanding this kind of defeat—the kind that looks like victory.”

Peter Gelderloos (1982) American anarchist

Source: "The Failure of Nonviolence" (2013) https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/peter-gelderloos-the-failure-of-nonviolence, Chapter 2. Recuperation is How We Lose

World, History, Understanding, Problem

“When someone is president of the United States the authority is total.”

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

Coronavirus task force press briefing, , quoted by * 2020-04-13

CNN reporter flat-out contradicts Trump to his face when he claims king-like authority

Cody Fenwick

RawStory

https://www.rawstory.com/2020/04/cnn-reporter-flat-out-contradicts-trump-to-his-face-when-he-claims-king-like-authority/
2020s, 2020, April

“As far as East Pakistan is concerned, its decision seems to indicate that all non-Muslims will be driven out from there. It is an Islamic state….non-Muslims cannot live there…”

Lal Bahadur Shastri (1904–1966) The second Prime Minister of the Republic of India and a leader of the Indian National Congress party

Shastri as having told Parliament in 1964, during a discussion on refugees from Pakistan, In speeches to Parliament, PM Modi quotes Nehru, Ambedkar, Shastri on welcoming Hindu refugees. February 7, 2020 https://indianexpress.com/article/india/in-speech-pm-modi-quotes-nehru-ambedkar-shastri-on-welcoming-hindu-refugees-6255071/

Decision

“First is the argument from intentionality:
# According to Dr. Rosenberg, if naturalism is true then I cannot think about anything. That is because there are no intentional states.
# But I am thinking about naturalism. From which it follows,
# Therefore, naturalism is not true.
So, if you think that you ever think about anything you should conclude that naturalism is false.”

William Lane Craig (1949) American Christian apologist and evangelist

Nature, Thinking, Falseness

“The Telecenter and LAN house are good examples of how things work in Brazil. The Telecenter has rules, limits and control; in the LAN house the user is free to do whatever she wants, as long as she pays for the hour. It is the constant clash between the regulatory welfare state and the neoliberal policies.”

David Nemer

Source: Favela Digital- The other side of technology. (2013), p. 96

Housing

“[Sweden and Britain are] two weak and spineless dhimmi states”

Robert Spencer (1962) American author and blogger

Sweden, Britain in talks with Iran to free tanker seized by Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps https://www.jihadwatch.org/2019/07/sweden-britain-in-talks-with-iran-to-free-tanker-seized-by-islamic-revolutionary-guard-corps, jihadwatch (Jul 25, 2019) 2010s