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%start%%quote%I think we risk becoming the best informed society that has ever died of ignorance. //%Author%Reuben Blades//%end% %start%%quote%It is no measure of health to be well adjusted to a profoundly sick society.//%Author%Krishnamurti//%end% %start%%quote%Our modern society is engaged in polishing and decorating the cage in which man is kept imprisoned.//%Author%Swami Nirmalananda//%Source%Enlightened Anarchism//%end% %start%%quote%You're obliged to pretend respect for people and institutions you think absurd. You live attached in a cowardly fashion to moral and social conventions you despise, condemn, and know lack all foundation. It is that permanent contradiction between your ideas and desires and all the dead formalities and vain pretenses of your civilization which makes you sad, troubled and unbalanced. In that intolerable conflict you lose all joy of life and all feeling of personality, because at every moment they suppress and restrain and check the free play of your powers. That's the poisoned and mortal wound of the civilized world.//%Author%Octave Mirbeau//%Source%Torture Garden, "The Mission," Chapter 8//%end% %start%%quote%Are right and wrong convertible terms, dependant upon popular opinion?//%Author%William Lloyd Garrison//%end% %start%%quote%We create an environment where it is alright to hate, to steal, to cheat, and to lie if we dress it up with symbols of respectability, dignity and love.//%Author%Whitney Moore, Jr.//%end% %start%%quote%The danger of the past was that men became slaves. The danger of the future is that man may become robots.//%Author%Erich Fromm//%end% %start%%quote%People have become as processed as food.//%Author%Astrid Alauda//%end% %start%%quote%Choice has always been a privilege of those who could afford to pay for it.//%Author%Ellen Frankfort//%end% %start%%quote%Most people are willing to pay more to be amused than to be educated.//%Author%Robert C. Savage//%Source%Life Lessons//%end% %start%%quote%Nothing can be more readily disproved than the old saw, "You can't keep a good man down." Most human societies have been beautifully organized to keep good men down.//%Author%John W. Gardner//%end% %start%%quote%When we think of the past, we forget the fools and remember the sage. We reverse the process for our own time.//%Author%George Boas//%end% %start%%quote%Everybody gets so much information all day long that they lose their common sense.//%Author%Gertrude Stein//%end% %start%%quote%Yes, I am positive that one of the great curatives of our evils, our maladies, social, moral, and intellectual, would be a return to the soil, a rehabilitation of the work of the fields.//%Author%Charles Wagner//%end% %start%%quote%Commuter - one who spends his life In riding to and from his wife; A man who shaves and takes a train, And then rides back to shave again. ~E.B. White//%Source%"The Commuter," Poems and Sketches, 1982//%end% %start%%quote%I believe that one of the great problems for us as individuals is the depression and the tension resulting from existence in a world which is increasingly less pleasing to the eye.//%Author%Lady Bird Johnson//%end% %start%%quote%So long as all the increased wealth which modern progress brings goes but to build up great fortunes, to increase luxury and make sharper the contrast between the House of Have and the House of Want, progress is not real and cannot be permanent.//%Author%Henry George//%Source%Progress and Poverty, 1879//%end% %start%%quote%One of the definitions of sanity is the ability to tell real from unreal. Soon we'll need a new definition.//%Author%Alvin Toffler//%end% %start%%quote%The world is so dreadfully managed, one hardly knows to whom to complain.//%Author%Ronald Firbank//%end% %start%%quote%Depressed? Of course we're all depressed. We've been so quickly, violently, and irreconcilably plucked from nature, from physical labor, from kinship and village mentality, from every natural and primordial anti-depressant. The further society "progresses," the grander the scale of imbalance. Just as fluoride is put in water to prevent dental caries, we'll soon find government mandating Prozac in our water to prevent mental caries.//%Author%M. Robin D'Antan//%end% %start%%quote%We get lost in a fog of abstractions and easily forget that man is a bloodhound sniffing out the real.//%Author%Robert C. Pollock//%end% %start%%quote%Failure seems to be regarded as the one unpardonable crime, success as the all-redeeming virtue, the acquisition of wealth as the single worthy aim of life. The hair-raising revelations of skullduggery and grand-scale thievery merely incite others to surpass by yet bolder outrages and more corrupt combinations.//%Author%Charles Francis Adams//%end% %start%%quote%The world is governed more by appearance than realities so that it is fully as necessary to seem to know something as to know it.//%Author%Daniel Webster//%end% %start%%quote%The tragedy of it is that nobody sees the look of desperation on my face. Thousands and thousands of us, and we're passing one another without a look of recognition.//%Author%Henry Miller//%end% %start%%quote%Most people know more about their congressmen via smear campaigns than they know about their own neighbor via conversations, and a lot of people know more about Britney Spears via tabloids than they know about their own congressmen via voting booklets. Does anyone else see the problem here?//%Author%Brock Fiant//%end% %start%%quote%Armaments, universal debt and planned obsolescence - those are the three pillars of Western prosperity.//%Author%Aldous Huxley//%Source%Island//%end% %start%%quote%Flowers don't open to the clock but to the sunshine spontaneous; for modern humans that manner of instinct is now extraneous. ~Astrid Alauda//%Source%"If I Cry Will I Rust"//%end% %start%%quote%People haven't time to learn anything. They buy things ready-made in stores. But since there are no stores where you can buy friends, people no longer have friends.//%Author%Antoine de Saint-Exupéry//%Source%The Little Prince, 1943, translated from French by Richard Howard//%end% %start%%quote%You taught me to be nice, so nice that now I am so full of niceness, I have no sense of right and wrong, no outrage, no passion.//%Author%Garrison Keillor//%end% %start%%quote%Fame is proof that the people are gullible.//%Author%Ralph Waldo Emerson//%end% %start%%quote%I don't believe medical discoveries are doing much to advance human life. As fast as we create ways to extend it we are inventing ways to shorten it.//%Author%Christiaan Barnard//%end% %start%%quote%Society is always engaged in a vast conspiracy to preserve itself - at the expense of the new demands of each new generation.//%Author%John Haynes Holmes//%end% %start%%quote%The age of chivalry is gone. That of sophisters, economists and calculators has succeeded.//%Author%Edmund Burke//%Source%Reflections on the Revolution in France//%end% %start%%quote%It is one of the maladies of our age to profess a frenzied allegiance to truth in unimportant matters, and to refuse consistently to face her where graver issues are at stake.//%Author%Norman Douglas//%end% %start%%quote%There's a standard formula for success in the entertainment medium, and that is: "Beat it to death if it succeeds."//%Author%Ernie Kovacs//%end% %start%%quote%[H]istory assures us that civilizations decay quite leisurely.//%Author%Will and Ariel Durant//%Source%Lessons of History//%end% %start%%quote%Usually, terrible things that are done with the excuse that progress requires them are not really progress at all, but just terrible things.//%Author%Russell Baker//%end% %start%%quote%The art of living is the art of knowing how to believe lies.//%Author%Cesare Pavese//%end% %start%%quote%The things that are wrong with the country today are the sum total of all the things that are wrong with us as individuals.//%Author%Charles W. Tobey//%end% %start%%quote%Punishment is now unfashionable... because it creates moral distinctions among men, which, to the democratic mind, are odious. We prefer a meaningless collective guilt to a meaningful individual responsibility.//%Author%Thomas Szasz//%end% %start%%quote%Most of our diversions do not so much delay death as accustom us to it.//%Author%Mignon McLaughlin//%Source%The Second Neurotic's Notebook, 1966//%end% %start%%quote%It is madness beyond compare To try to reform the world.//%Author%Molière//%Source%The Misanthrope, 1666//%end% %start%%quote%The object of life is not to be on the side of the majority, but to escape finding oneself in the ranks of the insane.//%Author%Marcus Aurelius//%end% %start%%quote%The public is hedged about by so many goddam bookkeepers that no time is left in which to produce. More time is spent in carrying out garbage than in carrying in food.//%Author%Martin H. Fischer//%end% %start%%quote%The greater the mental charlatan, the more definite his insistence on the wickedness and weaknesses of human nature. Yet how can anyone speak of it today, with every soul in a prison, with every heart fettered, wounded, and maimed?... With human nature caged in a narrow space, whipped daily into submission, how can we speak of its potentialities?//%Author%Emma Goldman//%Source%Anarchism//%end% %start%%quote%Beggars should be abolished. It annoys one to give to them, and it annoys one not to give to them.//%Author%Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche//%Source%"On the Pitying," Thus Spake Zarathustra//%end% %start%%quote%I believe... that security declines as security machinery expands.//%Author%E.B. White//%end% %start%%quote%Society honors its living conformists and its dead troublemakers.//%Author%Mignon McLaughlin//%end% %start%%quote%Any society that needs disclaimers has too many lawyers.//%Author%Erik Pepke//%end% %start%%quote%The human race's prospects of survival were considerably better when we were defenceless against tigers than they are today when we have become defenceless against ourselves.//%Author%Arnold Toynbee//%end% %start%%quote%American youth attributes much more importance to arriving at driver's-license age than at voting age.//%Author%Marshall McLuhan//%Source%Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man, 1964//%end% %start%%quote%No matter what happens, somebody will find a way to take it too seriously.//%Author%Dave Barry//%Source%Dave Barry Turns 50//%end% %start%%quote%It's difficult to view the world outside our human context. Staying alive and paying the bills both require our attention squarely fixed on our own business. Our sprawling cities and suburbs are wonderful and frightening tributes to creative self-absorption. In them, we spend our microscheduled days bustling between work and the endless details of our private lives, turning in our moments of rest to the buzzing distractions of television and computers - all accelerating toward some ultimate, unseen fulfillment of convenience and hyperreality. Little encourages us to pause and look around, much less question the end goal of all our busyness. Anything slower than the quick cuts of TV commercials is overwhelmed by our impatience and short attention. Unfortunately, we might be missing something important - to our happiness and to our survival. The purpose of this book is to help remind us.//%Author%Jason Gardner//%Source%From the introduction to The Sacred Earth: Writers on Nature & Spirit, edited by Jason Gardner, 1998, New World Library//%end% %start%%quote%Formerly, when religion was strong and science weak, men mistook magic for medicine; now, when science is strong and religion weak, men mistake medicine for magic.//%Author%Thomas Szasz//%Source%The Second Sin, 1973//%end% %start%%quote%Somebody recently figured out that we have 35 million laws to enforce the ten commandments.//%Author%//%Source%Attributed to both Bert Masterson and Earl Wilson//%end% %start%%quote%In the lifetime of one person, we went from figuring out where we came from to figuring out how to get rid of ourselves.//%Author%Jack Horner//%Source%on the eighty years between Darwin's On the Origin of Species and the nuclear bomb, in Time, 26 April 1993//%end% %start%%quote%A Galileo could no more be elected president of the United States than he could be elected Pope of Rome. Both high posts are reserved for men favored by God with an extraordinary genius for swathing the bitter facts of life in bandages of self-illusion.//%Author%H.L. Mencken//%end% %start%%quote%Social reform aims to improve the condition of the poor by worsening the condition of the rich.//%Author%Martin H. Fischer//%end% %start%%quote%Progress imposes not only new possibilities for the future but new restrictions.//%Author%Norbert Wiener//%Source%The Human Use of Human Beings, 1950//%end% %start%%quote%The quintessential revolution is that of the spirit, born of an intellectual conviction of the need for change in those mental attitudes and values which shape the course of a nation's development. A revolution which aims merely at changing official policies and institutions with a view to an improvement in material conditions has little chance of genuine success. Without a revolution in spirit, the forces which had produced inequities of the old order would continue to be operative, posing a constant threat to the process of reform and regeneration. It is not enough merely to call for freedom, democracy and human rights. There has to be a united determination to persevere in the struggle, to make sacrifices in the name of enduring truths, to resist the corrupting influences of desire, ill will, ignorance, and fear.//%Author%Aung San Suu Kyi//%end% %start%%quote%We have a system that increasingly taxes work and subsidizes nonwork.//%Author%Milton Friedman//%end% %start%%quote%Do not waste your time on Social Questions. What is the matter with the poor is Poverty; what is the matter with the rich is Uselessness.//%Author%George Bernard Shaw, Maxims for Revolutionists //%end% %start%%quote%Our democratic capitalist society has converted Eros into an employee of Mammon.//%Author%Octavio Paz//%end% Natives who beat drums to drive off evil spirits are objects of scorn to smart Americans who blow horns to break up traffic jams.//%Author%Mary Ellen Kelly It would be a service to mankind if the pill were available in slot machines and the cigarette were placed on prescription.//%Author%Malcolm Potts, MD Suburbia is where the developer bulldozes out the trees, then names the streets after them.//%Author%Bill Vaughn Perhaps in time the so-called Dark Ages will be thought of as including our own.//%Author%Georg Christoph Lichtenberg When people go to work, they shouldn't have to leave their hearts at home.//%Author%Betty Bender In these times you have to be an optimist to open your eyes when you awake in the morning.//%Author%Carl Sandburg, New York Post, 9 September 1960 Mammalia, n.pl. A family of vertebrate animals whose females in a state of nature suckle their young, but when civilized and enlightened put them out to nurse, or use the bottle.//%Author%Ambrose Bierce You can't make up anything anymore. The world itself is a satire. All you're doing is recording it.//%Author%Art Buchwald Those persons who are burning to display heroism may rest assured that the course of social evolution will offer them every opportunity.//%Author%Havelock Ellis The trouble with our age is that it is all signposts and no destination.//%Author%The War Cry It isn't so much that hard times are coming; the change observed is mostly soft times going.//%Author%Groucho Marx We have produced a world of contented bodies and discontented minds.//%Author%Adam Clayton Powell, Keep the Faith, Baby!, 1967 Think what a better world it would be if we all - the whole world - had cookies and milk about three o’clock every afternoon and then lay down with our blankies for a nap.//%Author%Robert Fulghum, All I Really Need to Know I Learned in Kindergarten, commonly misattributed to Barbara Jordan because she quoted Fulghum in a commencement address The world has achieved brilliance without conscience.//%Author%Omar Bradley Being human in our modern civilization is being forced into a boxing ring with Nature. And we're bloodied every time.//%Author%M. Robin D'Antan We are living in a world today where lemonade is made from artificial flavors and furniture polish is made from real lemons.//%Author%Alfred E. Newman The trouble with our times is that the future is not what it used to be.//%Author%Paul Valery Life has been reduced to getting food out of cans.//%Author%Martin H. Fischer Food. Water. Shelter. Air. Sleep. Societal inflation has expanded need into greed. Suddenly the basic survival needs also include a cell phone, cable TV, and French manicured fingernails.... We've become the absolute biggest whiners of all human history with the absolute smallest justification for whining.//%Author%Charlie Diekatze Unhappy is a people that has run out of words to describe what is going on.//%Author%Thurman Arnold The human race has had long experience and a fine tradition in surviving adversity. But we now face a task for which we have little experience, the task of surviving prosperity.//%Author%Alan Gregg Junk mail, junk food, our society is full of junk living, period.//%Author%Carrie Latet [The] men of the technostructure are the new and universal priesthood. Their religion is business success; their test of virtue is growth and profit. Their bible is the computer printout; their communion bench is the committee room.//%Author%J.K. Galbraith, The Age of Uncertainty, 1977 With each passing year, one has less to say, and knows better how to say it.//%Author%Mignon McLaughlin, The Second Neurotic's Notebook, 1966 Society is now one polish'd horde, Formed of two mighty tribes, the Bores and Bored. ~Lord Byron, Don Juan, Canto XIII, stanza 95 I've been reading a lot lately about Indian captives. One woman who had been captured by the Indians and made a squaw was resentful when she was rescued because she'd found that there was a lot more work to do as the wife of a white man.//%Author%Stephen Vincent Benét Information should be used as food for thought, not poison to the soul.//%Author%Shellie R. Warren The twentieth century seems afflicted by a gigantic... power failure. Powerlessness and the sense of powerlessness may be the environmental disease of the age.//%Author%Russell Baker, New York Times, 1 May 1969 The atom bombs are piling up in the factories, the police are prowling through the cities, the lies are streaming from the loudspeakers, but the earth is still going round the sun.//%Author%George Orwell, Shooting an Elephant, 1950 It is perfectly easy to be original by violating the laws of decency and the canons of good taste.//%Author%Oliver Wendell Holmes, Over the Teacups, 1891 The three horrors of modern life - talk without meaning, desire without love, work without satisfaction.//%Author%Mignon McLaughlin, The Neurotic's Notebook, 1960 There is no appeal from the ways of the world, which must continue on its own terms or take us all down with it into chaos and confusion.//%Author%Mark van Doren Once the Xerox copier was invented, private diplomacy died. There's no such thing as secrecy. It's just a question of whether it's leaked or revealed openly.//%Author%Andrew Young I think societal instinct much deeper than sex instinct - and societal repression much more devastating.//%Author%D.H. Lawrence Noise, crowding, pollution, and the sheer rush of our complex, modern society are rapidly becoming as oppressive to many individuals as the worst kind of political dictatorship.//%Author%Thomas F. Eagleton I am not quite sure what the advantage is in having a few more dollars to spend if the air is too dirty to breathe, the water too polluted to drink, the commuters are losing out in the struggle to get in and out of the city, the streets are filthy, and the schools so bad that the young perhaps wisely stay away, and the hoodlums roll citizens for some of the dollars they saved in the tax cut.//%Author%John Kenneth Galbraith We have smothered ourselves, buried ourselves, in the vast heap of information which all of us have and none of us has.//%Author%Gamaliel Bradford The secret to living contently and sanely in this modern world is to... find the beautiful in the ugly - but don't get confused which is which.//%Author%Leslie Grimutter If some people got their rights they would complain of being deprived of their wrongs.//%Author%Oliver Herford How can a society that exists on instant mashed potatoes, packaged cake mixes, frozen dinners, and instant cameras teach patience to its young?//%Author%Paul Sweeney Final Ruin fiercely drives Her ploughshare o'er creation. ~Edward Young Psychoanalysis can provide a theory of 'progress,' but only by viewing history as a neurosis.//%Author%Norman O. Brown, Life Against Death My meaningless office job: they pay me for my body and mind, but my heart gets no paycheck and my soul pays the taxes.//%Author%Carrie Latet Everything is for the eye these days - TV, Life, Look, the movies. Nothing is just for the mind. The next generation will have eyeballs as big as cantaloupes and no brain at all.//%Author%Fred Allen Living in this modern toxic world, we are all slowly being poisoned to death.//%Author%Carrie Latet Death is losing its terror. It is the emergency exit for a world that is becoming more frightening than death ever was.//%Author%Julian Green, Diary, 28 December 1958 Science is now the craft of the manipulation, substitution and deflection of the forces of nature. What I see coming is a gigantic slaughterhouse, an Auschwitz, in which valuable enzymes, hormones, and so on will be extracted instead of gold teeth.//%Author%Erwin Chargaff, Columbia Forum, Summer 1969 Man is the animal that intends to shoot himself out into interplanetary space, after having given up on the problem of an efficient way to get himself five miles to work and back each day.//%Author%Bill Vaughan If our American way of life fails the child, it fails us all.//%Author%Pearl S. Buck There is more to life than increasing its speed.//%Author%Mohandas K. Gandhi

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