ks > ks's Quotes

“Being born a woman is my awful tragedy. From the moment I was conceived I was doomed to sprout breasts and ovaries rather than penis and scrotum; to have my whole circle of action, thought and feeling rigidly circumscribed by my inescapable feminity. Yes, my consuming desire to mingle with road crews, sailors and soldiers, bar room regulars--to be a part of a scene, anonymous, listening, recording--all is spoiled by the fact that I am a girl, a female always in danger of assault and battery. My consuming interest in men and their lives is often misconstrued as a desire to seduce them, or as an invitation to intimacy. Yet, God, I want to talk to everybody I can as deeply as I can. I want to be able to sleep in an open field, to travel west, to walk freely at night...”
― Sylvia Plath, The Unabridged Journals of Sylvia Plath

“Farewell Hope, and with Hope farewell Fear”
― John Milton

“There are two kinds of people in the world, those who believe there are two kinds of people in the world and those who don't.”
― Robert Benchley

“It took me fifteen years to discover that I had no talent for writing, but I couldn't give it up because by that time I was too famous.”
― Robert Benchley

“The only cure for a real hangover is death.”
― Robert Benchley

“Mental illness is primarily an unconscious escape from this design, a form of passive resistance.”
― John Zerzan

“a minute freed from the order of time has recreated in us ... the individual freed from the order of time,”
― John Zerzan, Running on Emptiness: The Pathology of Civilization

“As Proust put it, the only paradises are those we have lost.”
― John Zerzan, Running on Emptiness: The Pathology of Civilization

“To symbolize is to express time consciousness, for the symbol embodies the structure of time”
― John Zerzan, Running on Emptiness: The Pathology of Civilization

“Ritual regulation
of production and belligerence means that domestication has become the decisive factor. "The emergence of systematic warfare, fortifications, and weapons of destruction," says Hassan, "follows the path of agriculture.”
― John Zerzan, Twilight of the Machines

“A science so recent cannot be criticized for errors and probings if it sees to it that their recurrence is avoided.”
― Émile Durkheim, Suicide: A Study in Sociology

“Man cannot become attached to higher aims and submit to a rule if he sees nothing above him to which he belongs. To free him from all social pressure is to abandon him to himself and demoralize him.”
― Émile Durkheim, Suicide: A Study in Sociology

“I know that these mental disturbances of mine are not dangerous and give no promise of a storm; to express what I complain of in apt metaphor, I am distressed, not by a tempest, but by sea-sickness. ”
― Seneca, The Stoic Philosophy of Seneca: Essays and Letters

“In a state of anomie, the absence of justice becomes the panacea for justice”
― Mawuena Addo, Roses in the Rainbow

“The most elementary communication is not possible without some degree of conformity to the “conventions” of the symbolic system.”
― Talcott Parsons

“The lure of the distant and the difficult is deceptive. The great opportunity is where you are.”
― John Burroughs

“A man can fail many times, but he isn't a failure until he begins to blame somebody else.”
― John Burroughs

“Leap and the net will appear”
― John Burroughs

“The smallest deed is better than the greatest intention.”
― John Burroughs

“The kingdom of heaven in not a place but a state of mind.”
― John Burroughs

“There is pleasure from learning the simple truth, and there is a pleasure from learning that the truth is not simple.”
― Wayne C. Booth, The Rhetoric of Fiction

“A literary work ... is, during the time one reads it, a friend with whom one has chosen to spend one's time. The question now is, what does this friendship do to my mind? What does this new friend ask me to notice, to desire, to care about? How does he or she invite me to view my fellow human beings?”
― Wayne Booth

“Outside of a dog, a book is man's best friend. Inside of a dog it's too dark to read.”
― Groucho Marx, The Essential Groucho: Writings For By And About Groucho Marx

“Humor is reason gone mad.”
― Groucho Marx

“Whatever it is, I'm against it.”
― Groucho Marx

“Life is a whim of several billion cells to be you for a while”
― Groucho Marx

“I intend to live forever, or die trying.”
― Groucho Marx

“I have nothing but respect for you -- and not much of that.”
― Groucho Marx

“I never forget a face, but in your case I'll be glad to make an exception.”
― Groucho Marx

“Those who cannot remember the past, are condemned to repeat it.”
― George Santayana, The Life of Reason: Five Volumes in One