Ez > Ez's Quotes

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#1

“Voting for the lesser of two evils is still voting for evil. Next time, go all out and write in Lucifer on the ballot.”
― Jarod Kintz, 99 Cents For Some Nonsense

91 likes

#2

“People get used to anything. The less you think about your oppression, the more your tolerance for it grows. After a while, people just think oppression is the normal state of things. But to become free, you have to be acutely aware of being a slave.”
― Assata Shakur, Assata: An Autobiography

tags: liberation, oppression, resistance

474 likes

#3

“The first and most important thing an individual can do is to become an individual again, decontrol himself, train himself as to what is going on and win back as much independent ground for himself as possible”
― William S. Burroughs

tags: art, creativity, philosophy

502 likes

#4

“The darkest secret of this country, I am afraid, is that too many of its citizens imagine that they belong to a much higher civilization somewhere else. That higher civilization doesn’t have to be another country. It can be the past instead—the United States as it was before it was spoiled by immigrants and the enfranchisement of the blacks.

This state of mind allows too many of us to lie and cheat and steal from the rest of us, to sell us junk and addictive poisons and corrupting entertainments. What are the rest of us, after all, but sub-human aborigines?”
― Kurt Vonnegut, Bluebeard

tags: class, colonialism, imperialism, inequality, poverty, race

109 likes

#5

“‎Using his burgeoning intelligence, this most successful of all mammals has exploited the environment to produce food for an ever increasing population. Instead of controlling the environment for the benefit of the population, perhaps it's time we controlled the population to allow the survival of the environment.”
― David Attenborough

tags: mankind, nature, population, science, survival

43 likes

#6

“We can be seduced...by powerful political groups that promise more wealth and lower taxes. Those with power can use clever, psychological tricks and play upon our weaknesses and brokenness in order to attract us to their way of thinking. We can be manipulated into illusion.”
― Jean Vanier, Finding Peace

tags: illusion, manipulation, power, progressive, truth

16 likes

#7

“People are sheep. TV is the shepherd.”
― Jess C. Scott, Literary Heroin (Gluttony): A Twilight Parody

tags: dark-humor, entertainment, herd-mentality, humor, hype, mainstream-media, mass-media, media, mindlessness, pop-culture, sheep, sheep-mentality, sheeple, television

180 likes

#8

“I no longer feel any allegiance to these monsters called human beings, despise being one myself.”
― Suzanne Collins, Mockingjay

tags: allegiance, beings, human, humanity

119 likes

#9

“We're so self-important. So arrogant. Everybody's going to save something now. Save the trees, save the bees, save the whales, save the snails. And the supreme arrogance? Save the planet! Are these people kidding? Save the planet? We don't even know how to take care of ourselves; we haven't learned how to care for one another. We're gonna save the fuckin' planet? . . . And, by the way, there's nothing wrong with the planet in the first place. The planet is fine. The people are fucked! Compared with the people, the planet is doin' great. It's been here over four billion years . . . The planet isn't goin' anywhere, folks. We are! We're goin' away. Pack your shit, we're goin' away. And we won't leave much of a trace. Thank God for that. Nothing left. Maybe a little Styrofoam. The planet will be here, and we'll be gone. Another failed mutation; another closed-end biological mistake.”
― George Carlin

2258 likes

#10

“Don't be afraid to give up the good to go for the great.”
― John D. Rockefeller

tags: john, rockefeller, success

142 likes

#11

“In a society in which nearly everybody is dominated by somebody else's mind or by a disembodied mind, it becomes increasingly difficult to learn the truth about the activities of governments and corporations, about the quality or value of products, or about the health of one's own place and economy.
In such a society, also, our private economies will depend less and less upon the private ownership of real, usable property, and more and more upon property that is institutional and abstract, beyond individual control, such as money, insurance policies, certificates of deposit, stocks, and shares. And as our private economies become more abstract, the mutual, free helps and pleasures of family and community life will be supplanted by a kind of displaced or placeless citizenship and by commerce with impersonal and self-interested suppliers...
Thus, although we are not slaves in name, and cannot be carried to market and sold as somebody else's legal chattels, we are free only within narrow limits. For all our talk about liberation and personal autonomy, there are few choices that we are free to make. What would be the point, for example, if a majority of our people decided to be self-employed?
The great enemy of freedom is the alignment of political power with wealth. This alignment destroys the commonwealth - that is, the natural wealth of localities and the local economies of household, neighborhood, and community - and so destroys democracy, of which the commonwealth is the foundation and practical means.”
― Wendell Berry, The Art of the Commonplace: The Agrarian Essays

tags: commonwealth, community, democracy, economy, freedom, government, markets, money, politics, slavery, wealth

387 likes

#12

“Your mental make-ups are the contents of your everyday thinking; they carry a charge that can either transform, reform or destroy you. Watch your thoughts, they determine your life!”
― Israelmore Ayivor, The Great Hand Book of Quotes

tags: be-positive, charge, contents, deform, determine, every-day, everyday-life, food-for-thought, israelmore-ayivor, life, life-quotes, make-up, make-up-your-own-mind, make-ups, mentality, positive-thinking, reform, think, think-positively, thoughts, transform, watch-your-thoughts, watch-your-words

17 likes

#13

“It must be remembered that there is nothing more difficult to plan, more doubtful of success, nor more dangerous to manage than a new system. For the initiator has the enmity of all who would profit by the preservation of the old institution and merely lukewarm defenders in those who gain by the new ones. ”
― Niccolò Machiavelli

228 likes

#14

“In this country American means white. Everybody else has to hyphenate.”
― Toni Morrison

tags: bigotry, politics, racism

751 likes

#15

“A nation of sheep will beget a government of wolves.”
― Edward R. Murrow

893 likes

#16

“The state can't give you free speech, and the state can't take it away. You're born with it, like your eyes, like your ears. Freedom is something you assume, then you wait for someone to try to take it away. The degree to which you resist is the degree to which you are free...”
― Utah Phillips

tags: free-speech, free-speech-movement, freedom, political, politics

138 likes

#17

“Because we’ve been lied to and lied to, and it hurts to be lied to. It’s ultimately just about that complicated: it hurts. It denies you respect for yourself, for the liar, for the world. Especially if the lies are chronic, systemic, if hard experience seems to teach that everything you’re supposed to believe in’s really a game based on lies. Young Voters have been taught well and thoroughly. You may not personally remember Vietnam or Watergate, but it’s a good bet you remember ‘No new taxes’ and ‘Out of the loop’ and ‘No direct knowledge of any impropriety at this time’ and Did not inhale’ and ‘Did not have sex with that woman’ and etc. etc. It’s depressing and painful to believe that the would-be ‘public servants’ you’re forced to choose between are all phonies whose only real concern is their own care and feeding and who will lie so outrageously with such a straight face that you just know they have to believe you’re an idiot. So who wouldn’t fall all over themselves for a top politician who actually seemed to talk to you like you were a person, an intelligent adult worthy of respect?”
― David Foster Wallace, The Best American Essays 2007

tags: lies, politics, vote

135 likes

#18

“You must read, you must persevere, you must sit up nights, you must inquire, and exert the utmost power of your mind. If one way does not lead to the desired meaning, take another; if obstacles arise, then still another; until, if your strength holds out, you will find that clear which at first looked dark.”
― Giovanni Boccaccio

tags: boccaccio, clarity, mind, power, read

223 likes

#19

“Today we live in a society in which spurious realities are manufactured by the media, by governments, by big corporations, by religious groups, political groups... So I ask, in my writing, What is real? Because unceasingly we are bombarded with pseudo-realities manufactured by very sophisticated people using very sophisticated electronic mechanisms. I do not distrust their motives; I distrust their power. They have a lot of it. And it is an astonishing power: that of creating whole universes, universes of the mind. I ought to know. I do the same thing.”
― Philip K. Dick

tags: discourse, media, postmodern, power, science-fiction

841 likes

#20

“Today is a new day. Don't let your history interfere with your destiny! Let today be the day you stop being a victim of your circumstances and start taking action towards the life you want. You have the power and the time to shape your life. Break free from the poisonous victim mentality and embrace the truth of your greatness. You were not meant for a mundane or mediocre life!”
― Steve Maraboli

tags: action, circumstances, destiny, greatness, history, inspirational, life, mediocre, motivational, mundane, new-day, power, shape, today, truth, victim, victim-mentality

342 likes

#21

“I value my own
independence so highly that I can fancy no degradation greater than that
of having another man perpetually directing and advising and lecturing
me, or even planning too closely in any way about my actions. He might
be the wisest of men, or the most powerful--I should equally rebel and
resent his interference...”
― Elizabeth Gaskell, North and South

tags: independence, power, rebel, self

107 likes

#22

“If you want to be a slave in life, then continue going around asking others to do for you. They will oblige, but you will find the price is your choices, your freedom, your life itself. They will do for you, and as a result you will be in bondage to them forever, having given your identity away for a paltry price. Then, and only then, you will be a nobody, a slave, because you yourself and nobody else made it so.”
― Terry Goodkind, The Pillars of Creation

tags: dependency, freedom, individualism, power, slave

60 likes

#23

“Over the years, I have come to realize that the greatest trap in our life is not success, popularity, or power, but self-rejection. Success, popularity, and power can indeed present a great temptation, but their seductive quality often comes from the way they are part of the much larger temptation to self-rejection. When we have come to believe in the voices that call us worthless and unlovable, then success, popularity, and power are easily perceived as attractive solutions. The real trap, however, is self-rejection. As soon as someone accuses me or criticizes me, as soon as I am rejected, left alone, or abandoned, I find myself thinking, "Well, that proves once again that I am a nobody." ... [My dark side says,] I am no good... I deserve to be pushed aside, forgotten, rejected, and abandoned. Self-rejection is the greatest enemy of the spiritual life because it contradicts the sacred voice that calls us the "Beloved." Being the Beloved constitutes the core truth of our existence.”
― Henri J.M. Nouwen

tags: beloved, christianity, faith, feelings, identity, rejection, self, spiritual-life, spiritual-warfare, success, temptation, truth

1218 likes

#24

“If we are worried about the future, then we must look today at the upbringing of children.”
― Gordon B. Hinckley, Standing for Something: 10 Neglected Virtues That Will Heal Our Hearts and Homes

tags: children, future, responsibility, worry

200 likes

#25

“Never say that you can't do something, or that something seems impossible, or that something can't be done, no matter how discouraging or harrowing it may be; human beings are limited only by what we allow ourselves to be limited by: our own minds. We are each the masters of our own reality; when we become self-aware to this: absolutely anything in the world is possible.

Master yourself, and become king of the world around you. Let no odds, chastisement, exile, doubt, fear, or ANY mental virii prevent you from accomplishing your dreams. Never be a victim of life; be it's conqueror.”
― Mike Norton

tags: accomplish, can-t, chastisement, conqueror, discouragement, disorder, doubt, dream, empowerment, exile, fear, impossible, king, master, mental, mind, possibility, reality, relative, resilience, truth, victim, virii, virus, viruses, world

250 likes

#26

“The burn is my girlfriend, failure is my ex. I'm married to the track and engaged to success.”
― Andre Bramble

tags: inspirational, motivational-quotes, sports, track-and-field

3 likes

#27

“Either you make things happen or you quit.”
― Vivian Weissman

tags: inspirational, motivational-quotes, persistence

3 likes

#28

“Commitment is the difference between people who "have potential" and people who have results.”
― Demond Jackson

tags: motivational-quotes, success-qoutes

12 likes

#29

“Whether it be training, dieting, working out, or work ethic, for every great excuse "Not" to do something, there are 100 "better" reasons for you to do it.”
― Mark W. Boyer

tags: boyer, inspirational-quotes, mark-boyer, motivational-quotes, training, wisdom-inspirational, work-ethic

2 likes