Quotes about state
page 90

“Foreign war is a very useful tool for manipulating the popular mind and keeping the domestic population under control. War is the easiest way to shift vast, unaccountable new powers to the State. People are most uncritically obedient at the very time they need to be most vigilant.”

Kevin Carson (1963) American academic

"The Iron Fist Behind the Invisible Hand: Capitalism As a State-Guaranteed System of Privilege" (2011)

War, People, Way, Time

“From the outset of the industrial revolution, what is nostalgically called "laissez-faire" was in fact a system of continuing state intervention to subsidize accumulation, guarantee privilege, and maintain work discipline.”

Kevin Carson (1963) American academic

"The Iron Fist Behind the Invisible Hand: Capitalism As a State-Guaranteed System of Privilege" (2011)

“Capitalism was founded on an act of robbery as massive as feudalism. It has been sustained to the present by continual state intervention to protect its system of privilege, without which its survival is unimaginable.”

Kevin Carson (1963) American academic

"The Iron Fist Behind the Invisible Hand: Capitalism As a State-Guaranteed System of Privilege" (2011)

“[M]any scholars of today in Europe and the United States still cherish the existence of a "Germanic world" long antedating medieval and modern Germany.”

Walter Goffart (1934) American historian

Source: Quotaes, Barbarian Tides (2010), p. 40

World

“Property, not Conscience, is the basis of liberty. For the defence of Conscience need not arise. Property is always exposed to State interference. It is the constant object of policy.”

John Dalberg-Acton, 1st Baron Acton (1834–1902) British politician and historian

Private notes, quoted in G. E. Fasnacht, Acton's Political Philosophy. An Analysis (1952), p. 19, n. 7
Undated

“The yeoman farmers of the United States have always been the strength of the republic.”

John Dalberg-Acton, 1st Baron Acton (1834–1902) British politician and historian

The North British Review (April 1870), p. 268, quoted in G. E. Fasnacht, Acton's Political Philosophy. An Analysis (1952), p. 217

“I warn them (United States) to withdraw from this field continue to keep threatening Iranian top generals.”

Hossein Salami (1960) Iranian military officer; commander-in-chief of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps

Hossein Salami (2020) cited in: " Iranian general warns of retaliation if US threats continue https://www.taiwannews.com.tw/en/news/3865471" in Taiwan News, 27 January 2020.

“I am a marxist, a leninist and I don't even consider disagreeable Stalin, who saved us from Hitler, more than the United States.”

Gianni Vattimo (1936–2023) Italian philosopher, politician

"I do not vote for Bresso even under torture" http://www.ilgiornale.it/news/non-voto-bresso-nemmeno-sotto-tortura.html, Februry 21, 2010.

“Without an analysis of women's status in the hierarchical system and the conditions under which she was enslaved, neither the state nor the class-based system that it rests upon can be understood.”

Abdullah Öcalan (1949) Founder of the PKK

Source: The Political Thought of Abdullah Ocalan (2017), Liberating Life: Women's Revolution, p. 69

Women

“Democratic confederalism is a non-state social paradigm. It is not controlled by a state. At the same time, democratic confederalism is the organisation of democracy and culture.”

Abdullah Öcalan (1949) Founder of the PKK

The Political Thought of Abdullah Ocalan (2017), Democratic Confederalism, Principles of Democratic Confederalism

Democracy, Time

“Neither total rejection nor complete recognition of the state is useful for the democratic efforts of civil society. The overcoming of the state, particularly the nation-state, is a long-term process.”

Abdullah Öcalan (1949) Founder of the PKK

Source: The Political Thought of Abdullah Ocalan (2017), Democratic Confederalism, p. 46

Effort

“It has always been hard to measure poverty, because poverty is as much a state of mind as a condition of material well-being. Still, we seem to have made a bad situation worse.”

Robert J. Samuelson (1945) American journalist

About poverty in the United States, Will the real poverty rate please stand up? https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/will-the-real-poverty-rate-please-stand-up/2019/09/11/7df0bb80-d4ae-11e9-86ac-0f250cc91758_story.html, September 11, 2019, The Washington Post.

Bad luck

“I myself was to experience how easily one is taken in by a lying and censored press and radio in a totalitarian state.”

William L. Shirer book The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich

The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich (1960)

Lying

“Can I just once again state my love for it and hope it gets merged soon? Maybe the code isn't perfect, but I've skimmed it, and compared to the horrors that are OpenVPN and IPSec, it's a work of art.”

Linus Torvalds (1969) Finnish-American software engineer and hacker

Torvalds, Linus, 2018-08-02, <nowiki>Linus Torvalds on the netdev mailing list about wireguard</nowiki>, 2020-04-25 https://lists.openwall.net/netdev/2018/08/02/124, 2010s, 2018

Love, Making love, Hope, Art

“Every year $1.5 trillion is spent on weapons and military which the majority of it, is related to the United States. If this money was spent to end poverty, would there be any poor people left in the world? They got money for wars But can't feed the poor”

Mahmoud Ahmadinejad (1956) 6th President of the Islamic Republic of Iran

Twitter 4 Dec 2018
2018

Money, War, People, World

“It is quite true that, to the best of my judgment, the argumentation which applies to brutes holds equally good of men; and, therefore, that all states of consciousness in us, as in them, are immediately caused by molecular changes of the brain-substance. It seems to me that in men, as in brutes, there is no proof that any state of consciousness is the cause of change in the motion of the matter of the organism. If these positions are well based, it follows that our mental conditions are simply the symbols in consciousness of the changes which takes place automatically in the organism; and that, to take an extreme illustration, the feeling we call volition is not the cause of a voluntary act, but the symbol of that state of the brain which is the immediate cause of that act.”

Thomas Henry Huxley (1825–1895) English biologist and comparative anatomist

1870s, On the Hypothesis that Animals are Automata, and Its History (1874)

Men, Feeling, Change

“Slavery to State and men has disappeared only to make room for slavery to things and Self, to one's own vices and idiotic social customs and ways. Rapid civilization, adapted to the needs of the higher and middle classes, has doomed by contrast to only greater wretchedness the starving masses.”

Helena Petrovna Blavatsky book The Key to Theosophy

The Key to Theosophy (1889)

Men, Making love, Way, Self-confidence

“Some think that we are approaching a critical moment in the history of Liberalism. ... We hear of a divergence of old Liberalism and new. ... The terrible new school, we hear, are for beginning operations by dethroning Gladstonian finance. They are for laying hands on the sacred ark. But did any one suppose that the fiscal structure which was reared in 1853 was to last for ever, incapable of improvement, and guaranteed to need no repair? ... Another heresy is imputed to this new school which fixes a deep gulf between the wicked new Liberals and the virtuous old. We are adjured to try freedom first before we try interference of the State. That is a captivating formula, but it puzzles me to find that the eminent statesman who urges us to lay this lesson to heart is strongly in favour of maintaining the control of the State over the Church? But is State interference an innovation? I thought that for 30 years past Liberals had been as much in favour as other people of this protective legislation. ... [O]ther countries have tried freedom and it is just because we have decided that freedom in such a case is only a fine name for neglect, and have tried State supervision, that we have saved our industrial population from the waste, destruction, destitution, and degradation that would otherwise have overtaken them. ... In short, gentlemen, I am not prepared to allow that the Liberty and the Property Defence League are the only people with a real grasp of Liberal principles, that Lord Bramwell and the Earl of Wemyss are the only Abdiels of the Liberal Party.”

John Morley, 1st Viscount Morley of Blackburn (1838–1923) British Liberal statesman, writer and newspaper editor

Annual presidential address to the Junior Liberal Association of Glasgow (10 February 1885), quoted in 'Mr. John Morley At Glasgow', The Times (11 February 1885), p. 10
1880s

People, School, History, Thinking

“The evils of a military system, which, after all, every day must attenuate, are light compared with the evils of an anarchic conservatism reinstated in central Europe. Divided Germany means preponderating Russia. What can be more desirable in the interests of the highest civilisation than the interposition in the heart of the European state-system, of a powerful, industrious, intelligent, and progressive people, between the western nations and the half-barbarous Russian swarms? To the careful observer of the history of modern Europe it is plain that increasing vigour and self-conscious strength in Germany are other words for the spread eastwards of the best of those ideas, the most durable of those civilising elements, in which the difference of historic development has enabled England and France to anticipate her.”

John Morley, 1st Viscount Morley of Blackburn (1838–1923) British Liberal statesman, writer and newspaper editor

Fortnightly Review (September 1870), p. 371
1870s

People, History, Intelligence, Idea

“Ministers and favorites are a sort of people who have a state prisoner in their custody, the whole management of whose understanding and actions they can easily engross.”

William Godwin (1756–1836) English journalist, political philosopher and novelist

Book V, Ch. 5
Enquiry Concerning Political Justice (1793)

People, Understanding

“As a terrified, half-aware imbecile, I might even scream for a priest at the close of business, though I hereby state while I am still lucid that the entity thus humiliating itself would not in fact be "me."”

Christopher Hitchens (1949–2011) British American author and journalist

Bear this in mind, in case of any later rumors or fabrications.

II
2010s, 2011, Mortality (2012)

Business

“If a great city or a great state should fall as the result of an apparent "accident", the there would be a general reason why it required only an accident to make it fall.”

Christopher Hitchens (1949–2011) British American author and journalist

"No One Left To Lie To" (1991).
1990s, For the Sake of Argument: Essays and Minority Reports (1993)

Making love

“The secular state assumes that the Semitic religions and the Hindu traditions are instances of the same kind”

S. N. Balagangadhara (1952) Indian philosopher

quoted from Koenraad Elst, On Modi Time : Merits And Flaws of Hindu Activism In Its Day Of Incumbency – 2015. Ch. 3. The Lost Honour of India Studies

Religion

“Prayers will be offered up for the success of our work in temples and in churches also; for it will bring relief from an old burden, which all have suffered.
But we must first bring enlightenment to men's minds. The idea must make its way into the most distant, miserable holes where our people dwell. They will awaken from gloomy brooding, for into their lives will come a new significance. Every man need think only of himself, and the movement will assume vast proportions.
And what glory awaits those who fight unselfishly for the cause!
Therefore I believe that a wondrous generation of Jews will spring into existence. The Maccabeans will rise again.
Let me repeat once more my opening words: The Jews who wish for a State will have it.
We shall live at last as free men on our own soil, and die peacefully in our own homes.
The world will be freed by our liberty, enriched by our wealth, magnified by our greatness.
And whatever we attempt there to accomplish for our own welfare, will react powerfully and beneficially for the good of humanity.”

Theodor Herzl (1860–1904) Austro-Hungarian journalist and writer

VI : Conclusion
Der Judenstaat [The Jewish State] (1896)

Men, People, World, Making love

“Hindu [educational] institutions have no fundamental right to compensation in case of compulsory acquisition of their property by the state... a lasting solution to this problem lies only in amending Article 30 of the Constitution...”

K. R. Malkani (1921–2003) Indian politician

K.R. Malkani, quoted in Elst, Koenraad (2001). Decolonizing the Hindu mind: Ideological development of Hindu revivalism. New Delhi: Rupa. 525 ff.

Education, Problem

“No state is forever strong or forever weak. If those who uphold the law are strong, the state will be strong; if they are weak, the state will be weak.”

Han Fei (-279–-232 BC) Chinese philosopher

國無常強，無常弱。奉法者強則國強，奉法者弱則國弱。
Source: "On Having Standards", in Han Feizi: Basic Writings (2003)

Law, Strong

“The political principles and the political will of the State are above all else.”

Jiang Shigong (1967) Chinese legal and political theorist

法制与治理：国家转型中的法律 [Legal System and Governance: Law in a Transforming State] (2003), translated by Samuel Seppänen in Ideological Conflict and the Rule of Law in Contemporary China https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=soyJDAAAQBAJ, p. 162

“From an outsider's point of view, a naked woman out of doors is either a sun-worshipper or a rape victim; a man in the same state is either a sexual criminal or a plain lunatic.”

Kingsley Amis The Green Man

Maurice Allington in Ch. 2
The Green Man (1969)

Sun

“I told myself that I could soon start to relish the state of being alone […], only to find as usual that I was stuck with myself.[…] Two's company, which is bad enough in all conscience, but one's a crowd.”

Kingsley Amis The Green Man

Maurice Allington in Ch. 2
The Green Man (1969)

Bad luck

“History has proved us, and all who thought like us, wrong. It has made it clear that the state of economic development on the Continent at that time [1848] was not, by a long way, ripe for the removal of capitalist production.”

Friedrich Engels (1820–1895) German social scientist, author, political theorist, and philosopher

Introduction (1895) https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1850/class-struggles-france/intro.htm to Marx's The Class Struggles in France (1848-50)

Way, History, Time

“The chief lesson to be learnt from it is the futility of all argumentation that precedes understanding. We cannot profitably attack any opinion until we have discovered what it expresses as well as what it states.”

I. A. Richards (1893–1979) English literary critic and rhetorician

[Richards, I. A., Principles of Literary Criticism, 1924]
Principles of Literary Criticism

Understanding

“[T]he state may be reasonably called upon to place instruction in pure science within the reach of all its citizens. ...The scientific habit of mind is one which may be acquired by all, and the readiest means of attaining to it ought to be placed within the reach of all.”

Karl Pearson book The Grammar of Science

Introductory
The Grammar of Science (1900)

Science

“Humanity could live in peace - but it doesn't, because from the cradle we are taught to compete and fight, win, dominate and kill each other. These lessons and the world view behind them becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy: a state of affairs is created where you have to compete, fight and kill.”

Yrjö Kallinen (1886–1976) Finnish politician

World, Peace, Fight, Self-confidence

“The wisdom obtained in the higher states of consciousness is different from that obtained by inference and testimony as it refers to particulars.”

Patañjali (-200–-150 BC) ancient Indian scholar(s) of grammar and linguistics, of yoga, of medical treatises

Patanjali, in Hinduism http://books.google.co.in/books?id=GmQ_yp4vVhsC&pg=PA63, p. 63.

Wisdom

“Who best
Bear his mild yoke, they serve him best: his state
Is kingly; thousands at his bidding speed,
And post o'er land and ocean without rest;
They also serve who only stand and wait.”

John Milton (1608–1674) English epic poet

On His Blindness (1652)

Compare "Patience is also a form of action." Attributed to Auguste Rodin in: Leonard William Doob (1990). Hesitation: Impulsivity and Reflection. p. 124

Waiting, Speed

“But for my own part I believe that for the enjoyment of true happiness, which depends chiefly upon a man's character and disposition, it makes no difference whether he be born in an obscure state or of an ill-favoured mother, or not.”

Plutarch book Parallel Lives

Demosthenes, sec. 1
Parallel Lives

Happiness, Making love, Parting, Dependency

“…When I’m not working, I safeguard my time to go into a dream state and not have to think about the commercialization of my art or the commodification of myself...”

Liz Phair (1967) American musician

On separating herself from her stage persona in “In Conversation: Liz Phair” https://www.vulture.com/2019/09/liz-phair-horror-stories-in-conversation.html in Vulture (Sept 2019)

Dreams, Art, Thinking, Time

“We say that homosexuality is a perfectly natural state, a fact, a way of life, and that we enjoy our sexuality, without feelings of inferiority or guilt. We seek and find love, and approach love, as a feeling of loving mutuality.”

Harry Hay (1912–2002) American gay rights activist

Statement of Purpose: Gay Liberation Front (Dec. 1969)

Love, Life, Making love, Way

“I was in a state of rage, also. I was so angry and I couldn't really explain why. I didn't have the language for it. And so I turned to what I knew, I remembered the kind of woman my mother had been — in a lot of ways, I was acting out, I was performing the same thing.”

Jaquira Díaz Puerto Rican writer

On becoming a juvenile delinquent in “In New Memoir 'Ordinary Girls,' Jaquira Díaz Searches For Home” https://www.npr.org/2019/10/29/774306278/jaquira-d-az-on-her-memoir-ordinary-girls in NPR (2019 Oct 29)

Way, Rage

“Current relations between Russia and the US struggle through the worst times. Historians, politicians, political scientists cannot recall any other time, when our relations were in such a miserable state. Other countries, international peace and security suffer because of this...”

Anatoly Antonov (1955) Russian diplomat and statesman, Russian Ambassador to the United States (since 2017)

Speech at the James Martin Center for Nonproliferation Studies, Monterrey (13 October 2018)

Peace, Suffering, Relation ships, Time

“Talks between the Russian and US presidents are important not only for our countries, but for the entire world as well. Russia and the United States bear special responsibility for global security, so they need to act in a balanced way and avoid confrontation”

Anatoly Antonov (1955) Russian diplomat and statesman, Russian Ambassador to the United States (since 2017)

World, Way, Country

“...to be redeemed to aim at the highest value, to sacrifice what's no longer uses, existence on a deep state of meaning that”

Jordan Peterson (1962) Canadian clinical psychologist, cultural critic, and professor of psychology

"Well and if we all got our act together collectively and stopped making things worse; because that’s another thing people do all the time. Not only do they not do what they should to make things better, they actively attempt to make things worse because they’re spiteful, or resentful, or arrogant, or deceitful, or homicidal, or genocidal, or all of those things all bundled together in an absolutely pathological package. If people stopped really, really trying just to make things worse, we have no idea how much better they would get just because of that."
Other

“It is remarkable that none of these early Arab travellers speak about any Indian converts to Islam. The Merchant Sulaiman explicitly states: "In his time he knew neither Indians nor Chines who had accepted Islam or spoke Arabic.”

Ram Gopal (1925) Indian author and historian

RA Jairazbhoy, quoted in Misra, R. G. (2005). Indian resistance to early Muslim invaders up to 1206 A.D. p.14
Indian Resistance to Early Muslim Invaders Upto 1206 A.D.

Travel, Time

“China has been working very hard to contain the Coronavirus. The United States greatly appreciates their efforts and transparency.”

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

Cited by * 2020-01-24
Trump Is Inciting a Coronavirus Culture War to Save Himself
Adam Serwer
The Atlantic
2020s, 2020, January
Source: https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2020/03/trump-is-the-chinese-governments-most-useful-idiot/608638/

Effort

“One critic called me one of the most magnificent resources Canada has allowed to escape to the United States. Because I was born and raised in Vancouver and lived up there until I was 17. My kids sons Bruce and Michael are, of course, American citizens. But not me. I defiantly refuse to change.”

Yvonne De Carlo (1922–2007) Canadian-American actress, dancer, and singer

As quoted in "A girl no longer, but . . . De Carlo's a beauty still" (1975)

Change

“Men of all countries are brothers, and the different peoples should help one another to the best of their ability, like citizens of the same state.”

Maximilien Robespierre (1758–1794) French revolutionary lawyer and politician

"Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen, proposed by Maximilien Robespierre" (24 April, 1793)
Original: (fr) XXXV. Les hommes de tous les pays sont frères, et les différents peuples doivent s'entraider selon leur pouvoir comme les citoyens du même état.

Men, People, Help, Country

“The United States of America fought a horrific civil war that ended slavery. Yes, slavery was the reason for the Civil War.”

Dennis Prager (1948) American writer, speaker, radio and TV commentator, theologian

Source: 2010s, Why the Left Hates America (2015)

War

“The use of science in the practice of virtue, is considerable: the man who knows the beauty of virtue will follow it, however possible. Knowing the evil of wrong, he will avoid it, however possible. He listens to worthy praise, and keeps his distance from unworthy praise. From this is derived that science has a part in every virtue, and that ignorance has one in every vice. Man who is illiterate and who still practices virtue must be extremely pure, a virtuous being. This is the state of Prophets (PBUH) because God had conveyed goodness to them without they acquiring it from men.”

Ibn Hazm (994–1064) Arab theologian

ibid

Men, God, Beauty, Science

“I’m for an independent, strong Israel that is not a client state and not a reliant state.”

Rand Paul (1963) American politician, ophthalmologist, and United States Senator from Kentucky

2013 Source: 18 January 2013 https://www.timesofisrael.com/paul-cuts-to-israel-aid-would-not-be-immediate-dramatic/

Strong

“Technology revolutionaries succeeded not because of some collectivist vision that seeks to regulate “fairness”, “neutrality”, “privacy” or “competition” through coercive state actions, or that views the Internet and technology as a vast commons that must be freely available to all, but rather because of the same belief as America’s Founders who understood that private property is the foundation of prosperity and freedom itself. Technology revolutionaries succeed because of the decentralized nature of the Internet, which defies government control. As a consequence, decentralization has unlocked individual self-empowerment, entrepreneurialism, creativity, innovation and the creation of new markets in ways never before imagined in human history...Around the world, the real threat to Internet freedom comes not from bad people or inefficient markets -- we can and will always route around them -- but from governments' foolish attempts to manage and control innovation. And it is not just the tyrannies we must fear. The road away from freedom is paved with good intentions.”

Rand Paul (1963) American politician, ophthalmologist, and United States Senator from Kentucky

2012-07-06
Rand Paul Wants to Save the Internet, Conservative-Style
Alex
Fitzpatrick
Mashable
http://mashable.com/2012/07/06/ron-rand-paul-internet-freedom/
2015-03-01

Bad luck, People, World, Fear

“I learned, after my mother's death, that she could read, and that she was the only one of all the slaves and colored people in Tuckahoe who enjoyed that advantage. How she acquired this knowledge, I know not, for Tuckahoe is the last place in the world where she would be apt to find facilities for learning. I can, therefore, fondly and proudly ascribe to her an earnest love of knowledge. That a "field hand" should learn to read, in any slave state, is remarkable; but the achievement of my mother, considering the place, was very extraordinary; and, in view of that fact, I am quite willing, and even happy, to attribute any love of letters I possess, and for which I have got—despite of prejudices—only too much credit, not to my admitted Anglo-Saxon paternity, but to the native genius of my sable, unprotected, and uncultivated mother—a woman, who belonged to a race whose mental endowments it is, at present, fashionable to hold in disparagement and contempt.”

Frederick Douglass book My Bondage and My Freedom

Source: 1850s, My Bondage and My Freedom (1855), Chapter 3: Parentage.

Love, Death, Happiness, People

“When I see the present Socialist Government denouncing capitalism in all its forms, mocking with derision and contempt the tremendous free enterprise capitalist system on which the mighty production of the United States is founded, I cannot help feeling that as a nation we are not acting honourably or even honestly.”

Winston S. Churchill (1874–1965) Prime Minister of the United Kingdom

Churchill By Himself: The Definitive Collections of Quotations, ed. Richard Langworth, 2008, p. 124, (1948, 10 July) Woodford, Essex, Europe, 374)
Post-war years (1945–1955)

Feeling, Help

“Turn where we may,—within,—around,—the voice of great events is proclaiming to us, Reform, that you may preserve. Now, therefore, while every thing at home and abroad forebodes ruin to those who persist in a hopeless struggle against the spirit of the age,—now, while the crash of the proudest throne of the continent is still resounding in our ears,—now, while the roof of a British palace affords an ignominious shelter to the exiled heir of forty kings,—now, while we see on every side ancient institutions subverted, and great societies dissolved,—now, while the heart of England is still sound,—now, while the old feelings and the old associations retain a power and a charm which may too soon pass away,—now, in this your accepted time,—now in this your day of salvation,—take counsel, not of prejudice,—not of party spirit,—not of the ignominious pride of a fatal consistency,—but of history,—of reason,—of the ages which are past,—of the signs of this most portentous time. Pronounce in a manner worthy of the expectation with which this great Debate has been anticipated, and of the long remembrance which it will leave behind. Renew the youth of the State. Save property divided against itself. Save the multitude, endangered by their own ungovernable passions. Save the aristocracy, endangered by its own unpopular power. Save the greatest, and fairest, and most highly civilized community that ever existed, from calamities which may in a few days sweep away all the rich heritage of many ages of wisdom and glory. The danger is terrible. The time is short. If this Bill should be rejected, I pray to God that none of those who concur in rejecting it may ever remember their votes with unavailing regret, amidst the wreck of laws, the confusion of ranks, the spoliation of property, and the dissolution of social order.”

Thomas Babington Macaulay, 1st Baron Macaulay (1800–1859) British historian and Whig politician

Speech in the House of Commons (2 March 1831) https://api.parliament.uk/historic-hansard/commons/1831/mar/02/ministerial-plan-of-parliamentary-reform#column_1204 in favour of the Reform Bill 1830s

Wisdom, God, Youth, Age

“Humanity is entirely responsible for being at the root of the problems arising from global warming. We need to rethink the way we live on earth in order to preserve life. Global warming is out of control…. Time is not on our side, which is why I am calling on all young millennials to hasten this radical revolution. You are a part of nature and compassion decrees that you take care of it as much as you do yourselves. It is only through mutual support and co-operation that you will be able to contain disasters that are fuelled by economic and social injustice and are fuelled by greed, selfishness, and other negative states of mind…. You are responsible for the wellbeing of billions of humans and all manner of living species sharing the adventure of life on earth. It is up to you to protect natural resources and guard over air, water, oceans, forests, fauna and flora. To do so it is essential that you realize your potential for love and compassion in order to care for the earth. Learn to love it through sharing it rather than striving to possess it and thereby destroying it.”

Tenzin Gyatso (1935) spiritual leader of Tibet

A Call for Revolution (2017-2018)

Love, Life, Making love, Way

“What I fear is a new direction for the president and his administration and what could very likely be a catastrophe for the working men and women, small business and entrepreneurs, our middle class, the American family, the very people this president has represented from the moment he announced he would run for the presidency.
That Mr. Trump would advance the interest of the globalist elites ahead of our citizens would be a tragic reversal on any day,
But today, on the same day the Commerce Department reported the United States had the largest trade deficit in our history ... it all means the White House has simply lost its way.
The nation’s heart will be, after all, broken by the very same people who brought 50 years of consecutive trade deficit and the export of millions of middle-class jobs and who have fed the swamp for decades”

Lou Dobbs (1945) American Television Host

6 March 2019 episode of Donahue Tonight on Fox Business Network https://twitter.com/LouDobbs/status/1103453101036658688, reported on 7 March 2019 by The Hill https://thehill.com/homenews/media/432993-lou-dobbs-trump-white-house-has-lost-its-way

Women, Men, People, Fear

“Tell your governor to open up your state.”

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

On September 14, 2020, in front of hundreds of supporters packed together, according to Nevada Governor Steve Sisolak says Trump took 'reckless and selfish actions' by holding indoor rally https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/elections/2020/09/13/donald-trump-latino-voters-las-vegas-ahead-rally/5784501002/ 2020s, 2020, September

“If the United States and other religious fundamentalist countries of any religion see themselves as God's people, all I can say is bring on the Antichrist and End of Days.”

Patricia MacCormack Australian Scholar

Occulture: Secular Spirituality, pp. 111-112
The Ahuman Manifesto: Activism for the End of the Anthropocene (2020)

God, People, Religion, Country

“For many citizens of the Western world, this situation proved, as you might imagine, troubling—especially in the United States, where reality has never enjoyed a great deal of prestige.”

James K. Morrow (1947) (1947-) science fiction author

Source: Blameless in Abaddon (1996), Chapter 6 (p. 129; spoken by the Devil)

World, Imagination, Reality

“[T]he United States is not “much of the world.””

Bret Stephens (1973) far-right American

We are a sovereign state, not a nation-state. Unlike, say, Denmark, we have no official language and no state religion. Our identity is oriented toward the future, not the past. We do have birthright citizenship — though that, curiously, is something many of today’s national conservatives want to abolish. Our national borders have changed repeatedly and may change again.America is the country under whose banner the descendants of slaves give military orders to the descendants of slave owners and stand guard alongside the children of immigrants from Greece and Mexico in places like Panmunjom. It’s where the biological son of a Syrian immigrant created our first trillion-dollar company. It’s where Jews celebrate Christmas by going out for Chinese food.All this is the essence of America’s exceptionalism. It does not require open borders, rule by U.N. mandarins, obeisance to progressive pieties or any of the other ostensible predations of “globalism” that conservative nationalism claims to oppose.
The New Conservative Pyrite (2019)

World

“A thousand departments of mental and physical activity foster and in turn are fostered by its achievement. People must be governed, and there must be those who govern. Laws must be made, and there must be those who study, and those who execute these laws. People must be taught, and there must be teachers. All these and the Church, the newspaper, the theatre, the fine arts are essential to the completeness of the State, to the happiness and safety of its people; but Commerce is the main stem, or trunk, where they are all branches, supplied with the sap of its far-reaching wealth. It is as necessary to the existence of any nation as blood to the physical man. That country in which trade flourishes is accounted happy, while that in which Commerce droops provokes shaking of heads and prophecies of downfall.”

Harry Gordon Selfridge (1858–1947) America born English businessman

The Romance of Commerce (1918), Concerning Commerce

Happiness, People, Law, Art

“Commerce creates wealth, and it is the foundation of the great state. Armies are raised and paid for to win, or to protect the countries' trade, or commerce. Ships are constructed, colonies established, inventions encouraged, governments built up, or pulled down, for Commerce. Commerce cuts the way, and all professions, all arts follow.”

Harry Gordon Selfridge (1858–1947) America born English businessman

The Romance of Commerce (1918), Concerning Commerce

Art, Way, Relation ships, Country

“The United States shows more CASES than other countries, which the Lamestream Fake News Media pounces on daily, because it TESTS at such a high (and costly) level.”

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

2020s, 2020, October

Country

“I think the United States military was as humane and careful as it possibly could have been in the Kosovo campaign. But still, civilians died. And I’ll always regret that.”

Wesley Clark (1944) American general and former Democratic Party presidential candidate

Interview with Amy Goodman on Democracy Now (2 March 2007)

Thinking

“...the French business is no light or trivial thing, or such as has commonly occurd in the course of political Events. At present the whole political State of Europe hinges upon it. On the Continent there is little doubt; every thing will take is future shape and colour from the good or ill success of the Duke of Brunswick. In my opinion, it is the most important crisis that ever existed in the World. ... My poor opinion is, that these principles...cannot possibly be realized in practice in France, without an absolute certainty and that at no remote period, of overturning the whole fabrick of the British Constitution.”

Edmund Burke (1729–1797) Anglo-Irish statesman

1790s
Source: Letter to the Foreign Secretary Lord Grenville (19 September 1792), quoted in P. J. Marshall and John A. Woods (eds.), The Correspondence of Edmund Burke, Volume VII: January 1792–August 1794 (1968), pp. 218-219

World, Business, Light, Success

“It is not calling the landed estates, possessed by old prescriptive rights, the 'accumulations of ignorance and superstition', that can support me in shaking that grand title, which supersedes all other title, and which all my studies of general jurisprudence have taught me to consider as one principal cause of the formation of states; I mean the ascertaining and securing prescription. But these are donations made in 'ages of ignorance and superstition.'”

Edmund Burke (1729–1797) Anglo-Irish statesman

Be it so. It proves that these donations were made long ago; and this is prescription; and this gives right and title.
Letter to Captain Thomas Mercer (26 February 1790), quoted in Alfred Cobban and Robert A. Smith (eds.), The Correspondence of Edmund Burke, Volume VI: July 1789–December 1791 (1967), p. 95
1790s

Age, Support, Study

“...what the freedom is that I love, and that to which I think all men intitled. It is not solitary, unconnected, individual, selfish Liberty. As if every Man was to regulate the whole of his Conduct by his own will. The Liberty I mean is social freedom. It is that state of things in which Liberty is secured by the equality of Restraint; A Constitution of things in which the liberty of no one Man, and no body of Men and no Number of men, can find Means to trespass on the liberty of any Person, or any description of Persons in the Society. This kind of liberty is indeed but another name for Justice, as ascertained by wise Laws, and secured by well-constructed institutions.”

Edmund Burke (1729–1797) Anglo-Irish statesman

Letter to Charles-Jean-François Depont (November 1789), quoted in Alfred Cobban and Robert A. Smith (eds.), The Correspondence of Edmund Burke, Volume VI: July 1789–December 1791 (1967), p. 42
1780s

Love, Men, Making love, Justice

“I remain terrified of the capacity of the media, the capacity of spin doctors, here and abroad, particularly the United States media, to perpetuate false lies, perpetuate lies.”

John le Carré (1931) British novelist and spy

John le Carré (1931-2020) on the Iraq War, Corporate Power, the Exploitation of Africa & More, Democracy Now! https://www.democracynow.org/2020/12/25/john_le_carre_1931_2020_on (25 December 2020)

Falseness