Entry 92

Be obscure clearly.
E. B. White

Genius is more often found in a cracked pot than in a whole one.
E. B. White

I am reminded of the advice of my neighbor. "Never worry about your heart till it stops beating."
E. B. White

The terror of the atom age is not the violence of the new power but the speed of man's adjustment to it, the speed of his acceptance.
E. B. White

Entry 91

'But I don't want to go among mad people,' said Alice. 'Oh, you can't help that,' said the cat. 'We're all mad here.'
Lewis Carroll

No good fish goes anywhere without a porpoise.
Lewis Carroll


Brevity is the soul of lingerie.
Dorothy Parker

The lack of money is the root of all evil.
Mark Twain

When we remember we are all mad, the mysteries disappear and life stands explained.
Mark Twain

Entry 90

Inject a few raisins of conversation into the tasteless dough of existence.
O. Henry

It is said that love makes the world go 'round - the announcement lacks verification. It's wind from the dinner horn that does it.
O. Henry

She plucked from my lapel the invisible strand of lint (the universal act of woman to proclaim ownership).
O. Henry

Entry 89

After one look at this planet any visitor from outer space would say ''I want to see the manager.''
William Burroughs


Sometimes paranoia's just having all the facts.
William Burroughs


Silence is only frightening to people who are compulsively verbalizing.
William Burroughs

The aim of education is the knowledge, not of facts, but of values.
William Burroughs

How I hate those who are dedicated to producing conformity.
William Burroughs

Entry 88

Death doesn't affect the living because it has not happened yet. Death doesn't concern the dead because they have ceased to exist.
W. Somerset Maugham

Death is a very dull, dreary affair, and my advice to you is to have nothing whatsoever to do with it.
W. Somerset Maugham

It is not true that suffering ennobles the character; happiness does that sometimes, but suffering for the most part, makes men petty and vindictive.
W. Somerset Maugham

When I read a book I seem to read it with my eyes only, but now and then I come across a passage, perhaps only a phrase, which has a meaning for me, and it becomes part of me.
W. Somerset Maugham

Entry 87

I don't see us winning the war. We have made enemies of one billion Muslims.
Gore Vidal

Now you have people in Washington who have no interest in the country at all. They're interested in their companies, their corporations grabbing Caspian oil.
Gore Vidal


The behaviour of President Bush on 11 September certainly gives rise to not unnatural suspicions.
Gore Vidal

The four most beautiful words in our common language: I told you so.
Gore Vidal

Entry 86

Any healthy man can go without food for two days -- but not without poetry.
Baudlaire

No man is lonely while eating spaghetti; it requires so much attention.
Christopher Morley

Reading without reflecting is like eating without digesting.
Edmund Burke

Entry 85

Democracy... while it lasts is more bloody than either aristocracy or monarchy. Remember, democracy never lasts long. It soon wastes, exhausts, and murders itself. There is never a democracy that did not commit suicide.
John Adams

If Tyranny and Oppression come to this land, it will be in the guise of fighting a foreign enemy.
James Madison

Let me recommend the best medicine in the world: a long journey, at a mild season, through a pleasant country, in easy stages.
James Madison


Philosophy is common sense with big words.
James Madison

The executive has no right, in any case, to decide the question, whether there is or is not cause for declaring war.
James Madison

The means of defense against foreign danger historically have become the instruments of tyranny at home.
James Madison

Entry 84

A wise man in the company of those who are ignorant has been compared by the sages to a beautiful girl in the company of blind men.
Sadi

A handsome woman is a jewel; a good woman is a treasure.
Sadi

To give pleasure to a single heart by a single kind act is better than a thousand head-bowings in prayer.
Sadi

Entry 83

Be not astonished at new ideas; for it is well known to you that a thing does not therefore cease to be true because it is not accepted by many.
Spinoza


Do not weep; do not wax indignant. Understand.
Spinoza

It is not bigotry to be certain we are right; but it is bigotry to be unable to imagine how we might possibly have gone wrong.
G. K. Chesterton

Beauty itself is but the sensible image of the Infinite.
Francis Bacon

I do not believe that any man fears to be dead, but only the stroke of death.
Francis Bacon

Entry 82

All things are connected.
Whatever befalls the
earth befalls the sons
of the earth.
Chief Sealth

And to harm the earth is to
heap contempt on its
creator. Continue to
contaminate your bed
and you will one night
suffocate in your waste.
Chief Sealth

But sorry is the Kool-Aid of human emotions.
It's what you say when you spill a cup of coffee or throw a
gutterball when you're bowling with the girls in the league.
True sorrow is as rare as true love.
Stephen King

Entry 81

A democracy which makes or even effectively prepares for modern, scientific war must necessarily cease to be democratic. No country can be really well prepared for modern war unless it is governed by a tyrant, at the head of a highly trained and perfectly obedient bureaucracy.
Aldous Huxley

An intellectual is a person who has discovered something more interesting than sex.
Aldous Huxley

Facts do not cease to exist because they are ignored.
Aldous Huxley

Most ignorance is vincible ignorance. We don't know because we don't want to know.
Aldous Huxley


Maybe this world is another planet's hell.
Aldous Huxley

Entry 80: DEDICATED ON THIS FIRST Live Earth Day TO THOSE WHO DON'T WANT TO STOP GLOBAL WARMING or THE IRAQ WAR

I'm not disturbing the peace. I'm disturbing the war.

Ammon Hennacy

Our enemies...never stop thinking about new ways to harm our country and our people, and neither do we.

George W. Bush

All wars are fought for money.

Socrates

All progress has resulted from people who took unpopular positions.

Adlai Stevenson

If I am brutal, and you use brutal methods to overcome me, you become brutal just like me.

Krishnamarti

There is nothing that war has ever achieved that we could not better achieve without it.

Havelock Ellis

After every ''victory'' you have more enemies.

Jeanette Winterson

Violence, even well intentioned, always rebounds upon oneself.

Lao Tzu

Men like war: they do not hold much sway over birth, so they make up for it with death. Unlike women, men menstruate by shedding other people's blood.

Lucy Ellman

Why do we kill people who are killing people to show that killing people is wrong?

Holly Near

Permanent good can never be the outcome of untruth and violence.

Mahatma Gandhi

I believe in compulsory cannibalism. If people were forced to eat what they killed there would be no more war.

Abbie Hoffman

In order to rally people, governments need enemies. They want us to be afraid, to hate, so we will rally behind them.

Thich Nhat Hanh

O peace! how many wars were waged in thy name.

Alexander Pope

War is just one more big government program.

Joseph Sobran

All war is deception.

Sun-tzu

A state of war only serves as an excuse for domestic tyranny.

Alexander Solzhenitsyn

Is it not a strange blindness on our part to teach publicly the techniques of warfare and to reward with medals those who prove to be the most adroit killers?

Marquis de Sade

Every government has as much of a duty to avoid war as a ship's captain has to avoid a shipwreck.

Guy de Maupassant

[It's tragic and too bad that George W. Bush didn't know this.]

An empire founded by war has to maintain itself by war.

Montesquieu

I abhor war and view it as the greatest scourge of mankind.

Thomas Jefferson

Terrorism is the war of the poor, and war is the terrorism of the rich.

Patrick J. Buchanan

I just want you to know that, when we talk about war, we're really talking about peace.

George W. Bush

Everybody's worried about stopping terrorism. Well, there's a really easy way: stop participating in it.

Noam Chomsky

Petroleum is a more likely cause of international conflict than wheat.

Simone Weil

He who fights with monsters might take care lest he thereby become a monster.

Freidrich Nietzsche

A patriot must always be ready to defend his country against his government.

Edward Abbey

Entry 79

The liar's punishment is not in the least that he is not believed, but that he cannot believe anyone else.

George Bernard Shaw

Entry 78

The people never give up their liberties but under some delusion.
Edmund Burke


Fishing is a delusion entirely surrounded by liars in old clothes.
Don Marquis

I seek the truth...it is only persistence in self-delusion and ignorance that does harm.
Marcus Aurelius

Entry 77

A country cannot subsist well without liberty, nor liberty without virtue.
Jean-Jacques Rousseau


To preserve the freedom of the human mind then and freedom of the press, every spirit should be ready to devote itself to martyrdom; for as long as we may think as we will, and speak as we think, the condition of man will proceed in improvement.
Thomas Jefferson


So, two cheers for Democracy: one because it admits variety and two because it permits criticism.
E. M. Forster

The Constitution is not an instrument for the government to restrain the people, it is an instrument for the people to restrain the government -- lest it come to dominate our lives and interests.
Patrick Henry

The strength of the Constitution, lies in the will of the people to defend it.
-- Thomas Edison


I prefer a man who will burn the flag and then wrap himself in the Constitution to a man who will burn the Constitution and then wrap himself in the flag.
Craig Washington


From Watergate we learned what generations before us have known; our Constitution works. And during Watergate years it was interpreted again as to reaffirm that no one---absolutely no one---is above the law.
Leon Jaworski

Entry 76

Certain thoughts are prayers. There are moments when, whatever be the attitude of the body, the soul is on its knees.
Victor Hugo

I don't mind what Congress does, as long as they don't do it in the streets and frighten the horses.
Victor Hugo


I met in the street a very poor young man who was in love. His hat was old, his coat worn, his cloak was out at the elbows, the water passed through his shoes, - and the stars through his soul.
Victor Hugo

I'm religiously opposed to religion.
Victor Hugo

Peace is the virtue of civilization. War is its crime.
Victor Hugo

Entry 75

Statistically, the probability of any of us being here is so small that you'd think the mere fact of existing would keep us all in contented dazzlement of surprise.

Lewis Thomas

Ants are so much like human beings as to be an embarrassment. They farm fungi, raise aphids as livestock, launch armies into war, use chemical sprays to alarm and confuse enemies, capture slaves, engage in child labor, exchange information ceaselessly. They do everything but watch television.

Lewis Thomas

The cloning of humans is on most of the lists of things to worry about from Science, along with behaviour control, genetic engineering, transplanted heads, computer poetry and the unrestrained growth of plastic flowers.

Lewis Thomas