Panos Diakakis > Panos's Quotes

“Να μας λυπηθεί. «Κι εσάς κι εμάς». Το λεν πια σχεδόν μόνιμα. Άρχισαν να μην μπορούν να ξεχωρίζουν τις δυο μοίρες, τη δική τους και τη δική μας. Τρέμουν τους αξιωματικούς τους και τους τσαουσάδες τους δικούς μας. Αυτούς τους ίδιους μισούμε κι εμείς. Ικετεύουν για το «μεμλεκέτ», ένα καλύβι κάπου. Κι εμείς.
Λοιπόν;”
― Ηλίας Βενέζης, Το νούμερο 31328

“While all societies make their own imaginaries (institutions, laws, traditions, beliefs and behaviors), autonomous societies are those that their members are aware of this fact, and explicitly self-institute (αυτο-νομούνται). In contrast, the members of heteronomous societies attribute their imaginaries to some extra-social authority (i.e. God, ancestors, historical necessity)”
― Cornelius Castoriadis, The Imaginary Institution of Society

“Reification, the essential tendency of capitalism, can never be wholly realized. If it were, if the system were actually able to change individuals into things moved only by economic “forces,” it would collapse not in the long run, but immediately. The struggle of people against reification is, just as much as the tendency towards reification, the condition for the functioning of capitalism. Capitalism can function only by continually drawing upon the genuinely human activity of those subject to it, while at the same time trying to level and dehumanize them as much as possible.”
― Cornelius Castoriadis, The Imaginary Institution of Society

“Some people never go crazy. What truly horrible lives they must lead.”
― Charles Bukowski

“For those who believe in God, most of the big questions are answered. But for those of us who can't readily accept the God formula, the big answers don't remain stone-written. We adjust to new conditions and discoveries. We are pliable. Love need not be a command nor faith a dictum. I am my own god. We are here to unlearn the teachings of the church, state, and our educational system. We are here to drink beer. We are here to kill war. We are here to laugh at the odds and live our lives so well that Death will tremble to take us.”
― Charles Bukowski

“A man who procrastinates in his choosing will inevitably have his choice made for him by circumstance.”
― Hunter S. Thompson, The Proud Highway: Saga of a Desperate Southern Gentleman, 1955-1967

“Life should not be a journey to the grave with the intention of arriving safely in a pretty and well preserved body, but rather to skid in broadside in a cloud of smoke, thoroughly used up, totally worn out, and loudly proclaiming "Wow! What a Ride!”
― Hunter S. Thompson, The Proud Highway: Saga of a Desperate Southern Gentleman, 1955-1967

“Copyright law has got to give up its obsession with 'the copy.' The law should not regulate 'copies' or 'modern reproductions' on their own. It should instead regulate uses--like public distributions of copies of copyrighted work--that connect directly to the economic incentive copyright law was intended to foster.”
― Lawrence Lessig, Remix: Making Art and Commerce Thrive in the Hybrid Economy

“Why should it be that just when technology is
most encouraging of creativity, the law should be most restrictive?”
― Lawrence Lessig, Remix: Making Art and Commerce Thrive in the Hybrid Economy

“Every generation welcomes the pirates from the last.”
― Lawrence Lessig, Free Culture: The Nature and Future of Creativity

“Be yourself; everyone else is already taken.”
― Oscar Wilde

“Always forgive your enemies; nothing annoys them so much.”
― Oscar Wilde

“I am so clever that sometimes I don't understand a single word of what I am saying.”
― Oscar Wilde, The Happy Prince and Other Stories

“We are the people of the book. We love our books. We fill our houses with books. We treasure books we inherit from our parents, and we cherish the idea of passing those books on to our children. Indeed, how many of us started reading with a beloved book that belonged to one of our parents? We force worthy books on our friends, and we insist that they read them. We even feel a weird kinship for the people we see on buses or airplanes reading our books, the books that we claim. If anyone tries to take away our books—some oppressive government, some censor gone off the rails—we would defend them with everything that we have. We know our tribespeople when we visit their homes because every wall is lined with books. There are teetering piles of books beside the bed and on the floor; there are masses of swollen paperbacks in the bathroom. Our books are us. They are our outboard memory banks and they contain the moral, intellectual, and imaginative influences that make us the people we are today.”
― Cory Doctorow

“Never underestimate the determination of a kid who is time-rich and cash-poor.”
― Cory Doctorow, Little Brother

“You differ from a great man in only one respect: the great man was once a very little man, but he developed one important quality: he recognized the smallness and narrowness of his thoughts and actions. Under the pressure of some task that meant a great deal to him, he learned to see how his smallness, his pettiness endangered his happiness. In other words, a great man knows when and in what way he is a little man. A little man does not know he is little and is afraid to know. He hides his pettiness and narrowness behind illusions of strength and greatness, someone else's strength and greatness. He's proud of his great generals but not of himself. He admires an idea he has not had, not one he has had. The less he understands something, the more firmly he believes in it. And the better he understands an idea, the less he believes in it.”
― Wilhelm Reich, Listen, Little Man!

“Man's right to know, to learn, to inquire, to make bona fide errors, to investigate human emotions must, by all means, be safe, if the word "freedom" should ever be more than an empty political slogan.”
― Wilhelm Reich

“Only the liberation of the natural capacity for love in human beings can master their sadistic destructiveness.”
― Wilhelm Reich

“My generation failed to change the world, but at least I did not let the world change me.”
― Chronis Missios

“Genius is the recovery of childhood at will.”
― Arthur Rimbaud

“Ό,τι κολακεύει την ψυχή σέρνει πίσω του ψίθυρους και περίπλοκα παραμύθια.”
― Κωστής Παπαγιώργης, Σύνδρομο αγοραφοβίας

“...κάθε στιγμή προσφέρεται ως δυσανάγνωστο χειρόγραφο μιας άγνωστης γλώσσας, όπου ο λαθραναγνώστης πλάνης διαβάζει συλλαβιστά κάτι από τη μοίρα του. Κι όσο πιο μεθυσμένος, τόσο πιο διαυγής.”
― Κωστής Παπαγιώργης, Περί μέθης

“The most radical revolutionary will become a conservative the day after the revolution.”
― Hannah Arendt

“The sad truth is that most evil is done by people who never make up their minds to be good or evil.”
― Hannah Arendt, The Life of the Mind

“Storytelling reveals meaning without committing the error of defining it.”
― Hannah Arendt

“[...]the only people for me are the mad ones, the ones who are mad to live, mad to talk, mad to be saved, desirous of everything at the same time, the ones who never yawn or say a commonplace thing, but burn, burn, burn like fabulous yellow roman candles exploding like spiders across the stars and in the middle you see the blue centerlight pop and everybody goes “Awww!”
― Jack Kerouac, On the Road

“Live, travel, adventure, bless, and don't be sorry.”
― Jack Kerouac

“Literature is the most agreeable way of ignoring life.”
― Fernando Pessoa, The Book of Disquiet

“No intelligent idea can gain general acceptance unless some stupidity is mixed in with it”
― Fernando Pessoa

“The feelings that hurt most, the emotions that sting most, are those that are absurd - The longing for impossible things, precisely because they are impossible; nostalgia for what never was; the desire for what could have been; regret over not being someone else; dissatisfaction with the world’s existence. All these half-tones of the soul’s consciousness create in us a painful landscape, an eternal sunset of what we are.”
― Fernando Pessoa