I will not stand for anything that’s crooked or unfair.
I’m strictly on the up-and-up. So everyone, beware.
If anyone’s caught taking graft, and I don’t get my share,
We’ll stand him up against the wall and pop goes the weasel.
-Bert Kalmar
Dice, n. Small polka-dotted cubes of ivory, constructed like a lawyer to lie on any side, but commonly on the wrong one.
Ambrose Bierce
– William Morris
In a populistic culture like ours, which seems to lack a responsible elite with political and moral autonomy, and in which it is possible to exploit the wildest currents of public sentiment for private purposes, it is at least conceivable that a highly organized, vocal, active, and well-financed minority could create a political climate in which the rational pursuit of our well-being and safety would become impossible.
Richard Hofstader
The Paranoid Style in American Politics (1965)
“Inside, we’re ageless. And when we talk to ourselves, it’s the same person we were talking to, the same age, when we were little, and it’s the body that’s changing around that ageless center.”
– David Lynch
We live in capitalism. Its power seems inescapable. So did the divine right of kings. Any human power can be resisted and changed by human beings. Resistance and change often begin in art, and very often in our art, the art of words.
- Ursula K. Le Guin…
I did not believe that a Cause which stood for a beautiful ideal, for anarchism, for release and freedom from conventions and prejudice, should demand the denial of life and joy… If it meant that, I did not want it.
Emma Goldman
Often misquoted as some variation of “If I can’t dance, I don’t want to be part of your revolution.”
“I do not want art for a few, any more than I want education for a few, or freedom for a few.”
William Morris
I see my recent desire to acquire The Strawberry Thief-print rugs, and cover our big living room walls with a Morris floral is entirely justified on many levels.
That quotation is as wonderful and gorgeous as his artwork.
I think I may have found your ideal football shirt
Otto Sander and Horst Buchholz in Faraway, So Close! (1993)
From “Deconstructing Harry”:
“All people know the same truth. Our lives consist of how we choose to distort it.”
“Between air conditioning and the Pope, I chose air conditioning.”
“Tradition is the illusion of permanence.”
“Be careful what you swallow. Chew!”
–Gwendolyn Brooks