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life & politics

"An eye for eye only ends up making the whole world blind."
- Gandhi

“Some people went around interviewing dying patients and not one person said they regretted not making more money or working harder, they all seemed to say their regrets were not spending more time with the people they love, and not traveling more and not relating more… to the world”
- From the 1 Giant Leap Album.

"What difference does it make to the dead, the orphans, and the homeless, whether the mad destruction is wrought under the name of totalitarianism or the holy name of liberty and democracy?"
- Gandhi

"If there's anything more important than my ego around, I want it caught and shot now."
- Douglas Adams

"Poverty is the parent of revolution and crime."
- Aristotle

"When I was young and free and my imagination had no limits, I dreamed of changing the world. As I grew older and wiser, I discovered the world would not change, so I shortened my sights somewhat and decided to change only my country... But it, too, seemed immovable... As I grew into my twilight years, in one last desperate attempt, I settled for changing only my family, those closest to me, but alas, they would have none of it... And now, as I lie on my deathbed, I suddenly realise: If I had only changed myself first, then by example I would have changed my family... From their inspiration and encouragement, I would then have been able to better my country, and who knows, I may have even changed the world."
- inscribed on the tomb of an Anglican Bishop in Westminster Abby (1100 A.D.)

"To be governed is to be watched over, inspected, spied upon, directed, legislated at, regulated, docketed, indoctrinated, preached at, controlled, assessed, weighed, censored, ordered about. Such is government, such is justice, such is morality."
- Pierre-Joseph Proudhon, one of the founders of anarchism

'We are never so defenseless against suffering as when we love."
- Freud

"There is more to life than simply increasing its speed."
- Gandhi

"It is not always the same thing to be a good man and a good citizen."
- Aristotle

"Never look down on anybody unless you're helping him up."
- Jesse Jackson

"To be yourself in a world that is constantly trying to make you something else is the greatest accomplishment."
Ralph Waldo Emerson

"Ever has it been that love knows not its own depth until the hour of separation."
- Kahlil Gibra

"The 2001-9-11 attack, and many earlier attacks, resulted from decades of humiliation... Heaping on further humiliation after humiliation will not bring security... The approach which works with a personal slave will not work with a billion Muslims."
- Unknown

"Rise like lions after slumber, In unvanquishable number, Shake your chains to earth like dew, Which in sleep had fallen on you, Ye are many they are few."
- Percy Bysshe Shelley, a great revolutionary poet

"You must be the change you wish to see in the world."
– Gandhi

'Whoever loves, becomes humble. Those who love, have, so to speak, pawned a part of their narcissism."
- Freud

"Thousands of years ago the Egyptians worshiped cats as gods. Cats have never forgotten this."
- Charles Herbig

“Black sky at night; night. Black sky in the morning; you’ve got up too early.”
– Harry Hill

"It is a great art to laugh at your own misfortune."
- Unknown

"Come the millennium, month 12, In the home of greatest power, The village idiot will come forth, To be acclaimed the leader."
- Nostradamus (1555)

"What luck for rulers, that men do not think."
- Nazi nutjob, Adolf Hitler

“In a testament to India's diversity and capacity for co-existence, Mrs. [Sonia] Gandhi, raised a Roman Catholic, is making way for a Sikh prime minister who will be sworn in by a Muslim president, A.P.J. Abdul Kalam.”
– Amy Waldman, New York Times, May 19, 2004

"Anarchy doesn't mean out of control; it means out of their control."
- Jim Dodge, American bio-regionalist

"We never know the worth of water ‘til the well is dry."
- Unknown

"Is there a more loathsome phenomenon than newspapers owned by right-wing tax-dodging billionaires trying to convince ordinary British people that the greatest problem confronting us comes from the wretched and the helpless?"
- Johann Hari writing for the UK newspaper the Independent about the demonisation of asylum seekers by the press.

"If you can’t beat them, join them – and then beat them."
- Unknown

"When people decry civilian deaths caused by the U.S government, they're aiding propaganda efforts. In sharp contrast, when civilian deaths are caused by bombers who hate America, the perpetrators are evil and those deaths are tragedies. When they put bombs in cars and kill people, they're uncivilized killers. When we put bombs on missiles and kill people, we're upholding civilized values. When they kill, they're terrorists. When we kill, we're striking against terror."
- Norman Solomon from "Orwellian Logic 101 - A Few Simple Lessons".

"At a time of universal deceit - telling the truth is a revolutionary act."
- George Orwell, UK writer.

"[In the West] unpopular ideas can be silenced, and inconvenient facts kept dark, without any need for an official ban."
- George Orwell, UK writer.

"Shock, rage and grief there has been aplenty. But any glimmer of recognition of why people might have been driven to carry out such atrocities, sacrificing their own lives in the process - or why the United States is hated with such bitterness, not only in Arab and Muslim countries, but across the developing world - seems almost entirely absent."
- Seumas Milne, "They can't see why they are hated", an article in The Guardian, September 13, 2001.

"...yesterday's rebels have become today's conservatives... People's lives change over time. They grow fatalistic. They direct their energies towards new goals, sometimes more selfish goals. They acquire crippling responsibilities. They become different people. They don't reject their old beliefs, they renege on them without realising it."
- Hans Weingartner, film director

"It's important to put an end to anxiety, to stop worrying about safety and security. Freedom is more strenuous than safety, but it's also more exciting. It brings greater rewards. I believe that human beings are nomadic. They need to be free. And nowadays, very few of us are. Most people are... prisoners of their own possessions. 'What you own,' someone once said, 'One day owns you.'"
- Hans Weingartner, film director

"Tell a big lie long enough, loud enough; people will believe it."
- Joseph Goebbels, Nazi Information Chief

"It is arguable that the success of business propaganda in persuading us, for so long, that we are free from propaganda is one of the most significant propaganda achievements of the 20th Century."
- Alex Carey

"Nelson Mandela... as the first liberation president, he ordered a ridiculous and bloody invasion of tiny Lesotho. He allowed South African armaments to be sold to Algeria, Colombia and Peru, which have notorious human rights records. He invited the Indonesian mass murderer General Suharto to South Africa and gave him the country's highest award . . . He recognised the brutal Burmese junta as a legitimate government."
- John Pilger

travel

"Travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry and narrow-mindedness and many of our people need it solely on these accounts. Broad, wholesome, charitable views of men and things cannot be acquired by vegetating in one corner of the earth all one's lifetime."
- Mark Twain

"The World is a book, and those who do not travel read only a page"
- St. Augustine

"A good traveller has no fixed plans, and is not intent on arriving"
- Lao Tzu

"Travel and change of place impart new vigour to the mind"
- Seneca

"The traveller was active; he went strenuously in search of people, of adventure, of experience. The tourist is passive; he expects interesting things to happen to him. He goes 'sight-seeing'"
- Daniel J. Boorstin

"Follow the local custom when you go to a foreign place."
- Chinese Proverb

" It is not down in any map; true places never are"
- Herman Melville

"What you've done becomes the judge of what you're going to do - especially in other people's minds. When you're travelling, you are what you are right there and then. People don't have your past to hold against you. No yesterdays on the road"
- William Least Heat Moon, Blue Highways

"The traveller sees what he sees. The tourist sees what he has come to see"
- G.K. Chesterton

" I have found out that there ain't no surer way to find out whether you like people or hate them than to travel with them"
- Mark Twain

"To travel is to discover that everyone is wrong about other countries"
- Aldous Huxley

"I travel a lot; I hate having my life disrupted by routine"
- Caskie Stinnett

"…see the whole thing is a world full of rucksack wanderers, Dharma Bums refusing to subscribe to the general demand that they consume production and therefore have to work for the privilege of consuming, all that crap they didn’t really want anyway such as refrigerators, TV sets, cars, …all of them imprisoned in a system of work, produce, consume, work, produce, consume, I see a vision of a great rucksack revolution thousands or even millions of young Americans wandering around with rucksacks, going up to mountains to pray, making children laugh and old men glad, making young girls happy and old girls happier, all of ‘em Zen Lunatics who go about writing poems that happen to appear in their heads for no reason and also by being kind and also by strange unexpected acts keep giving visions of eternal freedom to everybody and to all living creatures."
- Jack Kerouac (The Dharma Bums) 1958

"Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things that you didn't do than by the ones you did do. So throw off the bowlines. Sail away from the safe harbor. Catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore. Dream. Discover."
- Mark Twain

"When preparing to travel, lay out all your clothes and all your money. Then take half the clothes and twice the money."
- Susan Heller

"He who would travel happily must travel light."
- Antoine de St. Exupery

"A journey is best measured in friends, rather than miles"
- Tim Cahill

"Like all great travellers, I have seen more than I remember, and remember more than I have seen."
– Benjamin Disraeli

"Don't tell me how educated you are, tell me how much you have travelled."
- Mohammed

"Why is it that traveling Americans are always so dreadful?"
- Dodsworth by Sinclair Lewis

"Travelling tends to magnify all human emotions."
- Peter Hoeg

"To awaken alone in a strange town is one of the pleasantest sensations in the world."
- Freya Stark

movie quotes

"I cant believe it, I'm losing to a rug"
- Genie of the lamp, Aladdin

Jan: "I've got news for you, Corporate Man: your days are numbered! All this goddamn technology has made you soft but the rest of the world is angry. Sooner or later you won't be able to keep them sedated with game shows and shopping. The antidepressants won't work forever either. People are sick of your fucked-up system."
Hardenburg: "I admit that some of what you say is true, but I'm the wrong person to be blamed for. Yes, I've been playing the game but I didn't make up the rules."
Peter: "It's not who invented the gun, man. It's who pulls the trigger."
- The Edukators

"God damn it, an entire generation pumping gas, waiting tables; slaves with white collars. Advertising has us chasing cars and clothes, working jobs we hate so we can buy shit we don't need. We're the middle children of history, man. No purpose or place. We have no Great War. No Great Depression. Our Great War's a spiritual war... our Great Depression is our lives. We've all been raised on television to believe that one day we'd all be millionaires, and movie gods, and rock stars. But we won't. And we're slowly learning that fact."
– Tyler Durden, Fight Club

[Dr. Evil has left Austin and Vanessa to their doom]
Scott Evil: "Wait, aren't you even going to watch them? They could get away!"
Dr. Evil: "No, no, no. I'm going to leave them alone and not actually witness them dying. I'm just gonna assume it all went to plan... What?"
- Austin Powers

"You're not your job. You're not how much money you have in the bank. You're not the car you drive. You're not the contents of your wallet. You're not your fucking khakis. You're the all-singing, all-dancing crap of the world."
– Tyler Durden, Fight Club

"I like to play"
– Garth, Wayne’s World

Lieutenant Daniel Taylor: "I'm here to try out my sea legs."
Forrest Gump: "But you ain't got no legs, Lieutenant Dan."
- Forest Gump

Shooter: "Stay out of my way, or you'll pay. Listen to what I say."
Happy Gilmore: "Yeah, why don't I go eat some hay. I can make things out of clay, or lay by the bay, I just may. Whaddya say?"
- Happy Gilmore

"You think I'm funny? I'm funny to you? Am I a clown to you?"
- Joe Pesci, Goodfellas

“The details of my life are quite inconsequential... very well, where do I begin? My father was a relentlessly self-improving boulangerie owner from Belgium with low grade narcolepsy and a penchant for buggery. My mother was a fifteen year old French prostitute named Chloe with webbed feet. My father would womanize, he would drink. He would make outrageous claims like he invented the question mark. Sometimes he would accuse chestnuts of being lazy. The sort of general malaise that only the genius possess and the insane lament. My childhood was typical. Summers in Rangoon, luge lessons. In the spring we'd make meat helmets. When I was insolent I was placed in a burlap bag and beaten with reeds- pretty standard really. At the age of twelve I received my first scribe. At the age of fourteen a Zoroastrian named Vilma ritualistically shaved my testicles. There really is nothing like a shorn scrotum... it's breathtaking- I highly suggest you try it."
– Dr Evil, Austin Powers.

Dr. Evil: "Scott, I want you to meet daddy's nemesis, Austin Powers."
Scott Evil: "What? Are you feeding him? Why don't you just kill him?"
Dr. Evil: "I have an even better idea. I'm going to place him in an easily escapable situation involving an overly elaborate and exotic death."
- Austin Powers

"It's only after we've lost everything, that we're free to do anything."
- Tyler Durden

"We just had a near-life experience"
- Tyler Durden, Fight Club

"I say let me never be complete. I say let me never be content. I say deliver me from Swedish furniture. I say deliver me from clever art. I say deliver me from clear skin and perfect teeth. I say you have to give up. I say evolve and let the chips fall where they may."
- Narrator, Fight Club

"Right. We're consumers. We're by-products of a lifestyle obsession. Murder, crime, poverty -- these things don't concern me. What concerns me is celebrity magazines, televeision with five hundred channels, some guy's name on my underwear. Rogaine, Viagra, Olestra."
- Tyler Durden, Fight Club

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