Some cool quotes
I am currently reading RAW’s Cosmic Trigger II which has led me to rediscover my love for the man’s work. I have to say that I’m especially fond of the brilliant, incisive quotes that RAW generously peppers the book with, usually at the head of each chapter. I enjoyed these a lot so I thought I’d share:
“Don’t you know that if people could bottle the air they would? Don’t you know that there would be an American Air-bottling Association? And don’t you know that they would allow thousands and millions to die for want of breath, if they could not pay for air? I am not blaming anybody. I am just telling how it is.”
Robert Ingersoll, A Lay Sermon
“The enemy aggressor is always pursuing a course of larceny, murder, rapine and barbarism. We are always moving forward with high mission, a destiny imposed by the deity to regenerate our victims while incidentally capturing their markets, to civilise savage and senile and paranoid peoples while blundering accidentally into their oil wells.”
John_T._Flynn
“How many does it take to metamorphose wickedness into righteousness? One man must not kill. If he does, it is murder…. But a state or nation may kill as many as they please, and it is not murder. It is just, necessary, commendable, and right. Only get people enough to agree to it, and the butchery of myriads of human beings is perfectly innocent. But how many does it take?”
Adin Ballou - The Non-Resistant, 5 February 1845
“To plunder, to slaughter, to steal, these things they misname empire; and where they make a desert, they call it peace.”
Calgacus
Any relevance to modern day Western Foreign Policy is purely coincidental.
I also really like this haiku by Basho that I found at the front of Jim Dodge’s Fup, even though it sounds a bit too profound for the likes of me:
The temple bell stops
but the sound keeps coming
out of the flowers.
