Sam Kassim > Sam's Quotes

“The saddest aspect of life right now is that science gathers knowledge faster than society gathers wisdom.”
― Isaac Asimov

“المصريون هكذا يصبرون طويلا ثم ينفجرون فى فورة حماس سرعان ماتنطفئ ,، ويعود كل شئ إلى ماكان عليه ,, إنهم يبدأون ثوارا على كل ظلم ، ثم ينصرفون إلى الإهتمام بمصالحهم الخاصة.”
― صنع الله إبراهيم, وردة

“You talk when you cease to be at peace with your thoughts.”
― Kahlil Gibran, The Prophet

“The current ruling ontology denies any possibility of a social causation of mental illness. The chemico-biologization of mental illness is of course strictly commensurate with its depoliticization. Considering mental illness an individual chemico-biological problem has enormous benefits for capitalism. First, it reinforces Capital’s drive towards atomistic individualization (you are sick because of your brain chemistry). Second, it provides an enormously lucrative market in which multinational pharmaceutical companies can peddle their pharmaceuticals (we can cure you with our SSRIs). It goes without saying that all mental illnesses are neurologically instantiated, but this says nothing about their causation. If it is true, for instance, that depression is constituted by low serotonin levels, what still needs to be explained is why particular individuals have low levels of serotonin. This requires a social and political explanation; and the task of repoliticizing mental illness is an urgent one if the left wants to challenge capitalist realism.”
― Mark Fisher, Capitalist Realism: Is There No Alternative?

“Of all that is written, I love only what a person hath written with his blood. Write with blood, and thou wilt find that blood is spirit.
It is no easy task to understand unfamiliar blood; I hate the reading idlers.
He who knoweth the reader, doeth nothing more for the reader. Another century of readers--and spirit itself will stink.
Every one being allowed to learn to read, ruineth in the long run not only writing but also thinking.
Once spirit was God, then it became man, and now it even becometh populace.
He that writeth in blood and proverbs doth not want to be read, but learnt by heart.
In the mountains the shortest way is from peak to peak, but for that route thou must have long legs. Proverbs should be peaks, and those spoken to should be big and tall.
The atmosphere rare and pure, danger near and the spirit full of a joyful wickedness: thus are things well matched.
I want to have goblins about me, for I am courageous. The courage which scareth away ghosts, createth for itself goblins--it wanteth to laugh.”
― Friedrich Nietzsche, Thus Spoke Zarathustra

“Language is a virus from outer space”
― William S. Burroughs

“At the fourth, the fractal (or viral, or radiant) stage of value, there is no point of reference at all, and value radiates in all directions, occupying all interstices, without reference to anything whatsoever, by virtue of pure contiguity. At the fractal stage there is no longer any equivalence, whether natural or general. Properly speaking there is now no law of value, merely a sort of epidemic of value, a sort of general metastasis of value, a haphazard proliferation and dispersal of value. Indeed, we should really no longer speak of 'value' at all, for this kind of propagation or chain reaction makes all valuation possible.”
― Jean Baudrillard, The Transparency of Evil: Essays in Extreme Phenomena

“I find myself only by losing myself.”
― Paul Ricoeur

“The ideological blackmail that has been in place since the original Live Aid concerts in 1985 has insisted that ‘caring individuals’ could end famine directly, without the need for any kind of political solution or systemic reorganization. It is necessary to act straight away, we were told; politics has to be suspended in the name of ethical immediacy. Bono’s Product Red brand wanted to dispense even with the philanthropic intermediary. ‘Philanthropy is like hippy music, holding hands’, Bono proclaimed. ‘Red is more like punk rock, hip hop, this should feel like hard commerce’. The point was not to offer an alternative to capitalism - on the contrary, Product Red’s ‘punk rock’ or ‘hip hop’ character consisted in its ‘realistic’ acceptance that capitalism is the only game in town. No, the aim was only to ensure that some of the proceeds of particular transactions went to good causes. The fantasy being that western consumerism, far from being intrinsically implicated in systemic global inequalities, could itself solve them. All we have to do is buy the right products.”
― Mark Fisher, Capitalist Realism: Is There No Alternative?

“Only prisoners have time to read, and if you want to engage in a twenty-year long research project funded by the state, you will have to kill someone.”
― Mark Fisher

“The pandemic of mental anguish that afflicts our time cannot be properly understood, or healed, if viewed as a private problem suffered by damaged individuals.”
― Mark Fisher, Capitalist Realism: Is There No Alternative?

“وَلَقَد ذَكَرتُكِ والرِّماحُ نَواهِلٌ - مِنّي وبِيضُ الهِندِ تَقطُرُ مِن دَمي
فَوَدَدتُ تَقبيلَ السُيوفِ لأَنَّها - لَمَعَت كَبارِقِ ثَغرِكِ المُتَبَسِّمِ”
― عَنتَرة بِن شَدّاد

“Nothing evokes the end of the world more than a man running straight ahead on a beach, swathed in the sounds of his walkman . . . Primitives, when in despair, would commit suicide by swimming out to sea until they could swim no longer. The jogger commits suicide by running up and down the beach. His eyes are wild, saliva drips from his mouth. Do not stop him.”
― Jean Baudrillard, America

“زي الهوي
زي الهوي الساري ...
و خيال الطيف

أحلي سنين العمر بينا تمر
يا نعيش هوانا حلم ليلة صيف
يا تـِتـُوه خُطانا في ليل شـِتانا المر

و لما تتلاقي الوشوش مرتين
ما بيتلاقوش يوم اللُقا التاني
عمر الوشوش ما بتبقي بعد السنين.....
نفس الوشوش دي بتبقي شئ تاني

بتبدل الأيام ملامحنا
..تـِـرعشنا
..تنعشنا
...تشوّشنا
يا تري اللي بيعيش الزمن ... إحنا
، ولاّ الزمن هو اللي بيعيشنا ؟!!

و لمّا تتلاقي الوشوش مرتين
مبيتلاقوش يوم اللقا التاني
عمر الوشوش ما بتبقي بعد السنين.....
نفس الوشوش دي بتبقي شئ تاني”
― سيد حجاب