Counterculture Quotes

“Children are rarely taught critical thinking anymore, and society has become so antirational that basic reason and evidence are the new counterculture: thought is the new punk.”
― Stefan Molyneux, The Art of The Argument: Western Civilization's Last Stand

“Unless a theologian has the inner fortitude of a desert saint, he has only one effective remedy against the threat of cognitive collapse in the face of these pressures: he must huddle together with like-minded fellow deviants⁠—and huddle very closely indeed. Only in a countercommunity of considerable strength does cognitive deviance have a chance to maintain itself. The countercommunity provides continuing therapy against the creeping doubt as to whether, after all, one may not be wrong and the majority right. To fulfill its functions of providing social support for the deviant body of "knowledge," the countercommunity must provide a strong sense of solidarity among its members (a "fellowship of the saints" in a world rampant with devils) and it must be quite closed vis-à-vis the outside ("Be not yoked together with unbelievers"); in sum, it must be a kind of ghetto.”
― Peter L. Berger, A Rumor of Angels: Modern Society and the Rediscovery of the Supernatural

“Live counterculturally when the culture, baptized or secular, does not affirm truth, love, faith, mercy, and justice.”
― Sarah Bessey, Jesus Feminist: An Invitation to Revisit the Bible's View of Women

“rabid distrust of what they consider authority without evidently once stopping to consider the rigid authoritarianism implicit in the rigid uniformity of their own quote unquote nonconformist uniform, vocabulary, attitudes”
― David Foster Wallace, Brief Interviews with Hideous Men

“To choose the wrong strategy is a serious matter. All the movements that only play on liberation, emancipation, on the resurrection of a subject of history, of the group, of the word based on “consciousness raising,” indeed a “raising of the unconscious” of subjects and of the masses, do not see that they are going in the direction of the system, whose imperative today is precisely the overproduction and regeneration of meaning and of speech.”
― Jean Baudrillard, Simulacra and Simulation

“As for Crowley, his reputation grew and grew. His gospel of “Do what thou wilt”—modified and transformed—appealed strongly to the socially liberated sixties generation. He resurfaced as a countercultural icon; his photograph appeared on the cover of the Beatles’ album Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band, and his ideas influenced everyone from Dr. Timothy Leary to the rock group Led Zeppelin. He was hailed as a prophet before his time for bringing together eastern and western esoteric traditions, and although he could never quite escape the “Satanist” tag that he had gained in the Edwardian newspapers, this ensured his present-day popularity.”
― George Pendle, Strange Angel: The Otherworldly Life of Rocket Scientist John Whiteside Parsons

“[Alfred] Jarry’s teaching could be summarized thus: every man is capable of showing his contempt for the cruelty and stupidity of the universe by making his own life a poem of incoherence and absurdity.”
― Barbara Wright, Ubu Roi

“What was the name of that editor of Janata? 1961:
On the front page, he wrote: “Won’t last, won’t last!”
Him? Maybe he is called Mogambo.
Then 1962, 1963, 1964, 1965, 1966
Who was that short man, wrote in the daily literary supplement
“That? How long will that last? Won’t last.”
What was his name? That man, at the Esplanade book stall
Can’t remember? Where did he go, that man?
In a famous little magazine he wrote—
Him? Maybe he is called Dr Dang
Then 1967, 1968, 1969, 1970, 1971, 1972
Can’t recall? Thick glasses, a swift stride—
Him? Maybe he is called Gabbar Singh
Why can’t you remember the names their fathers gave them?
Forgotten in just 50 years? Where did they go?
And that fellow who wore loose trousers and a bush shirt
And wrote so many times: “Won’t last, won’t last.”
Then 1973, 1974, 1975, 1976, 1977, 1978, 1979,
1980, 1981, 1982, 1983, 1984, 1985,
1986, 1987, 1988, 1989, 1990, 1991, 1992,
1993, 1994, 1995, 1996, 1997, 1998, 1999,
2000, 2001, 2002, 2003, 2004, 2005, 2006, 2007,
2008, 2009, 2010, 2011, 2012, 2013, 2014
What? Can’t remember yet? What a strange fellow you are!
So many writers, editors, poets repeatedly
Wrote: “Won’t last, won’t last, won’t last too long
People will forget soon.” And yet you struggle
To recall their names? Then let it be!
Let Mogambo, Dr Dang and Gabbar Singh
Be their names in the history of Bengalis.”
― Malay Roychoudhury, প্রিয় পচিশ - কবিতার বই

“You cannot step a foot into the literature about the 1960s without being told how 'creative', 'idealistic', and 'loving' it was, especially in comparison to the 1950s. I fact, the counterculture of the Sixties represented the triumph of what the art critic Harold Rosenberg famously called the 'herd of the independent minds'. Its so-called creativity consisted in continually recirculating a small number of radical cliches; its idealism was little more than irresponsible utopianism; and its crusading for 'love' was largely a blind for hedonistic self-indulgence.”
― Roger Kimball, The Long March: How the Cultural Revolution of the 1960s Changed America

“To rediscover Christian asceticism is urgent for believers who want to train their hearts, and the hearts of their children, to resist the hedonism and consumerism at the core of contemporary culture. And it is necessary to teach us in our bones how God uses suffering to purify us for His purposes.”
― Rod Dreher, The Benedict Option: A Strategy for Christians in a Post-Christian Nation

“The Hungryalist or the hungry generation movement was a literary movement in Bengali that was launched in 1961, by a group of young Bengali poets. It was spearheaded by the famous Hungryalist quartet — Malay Roychoudhury, Samir Roychoudhury, Shakti Chattopadhyay and Debi Roy. They had coined Hungryalism from the word ‘Hungry’ used by Geoffrey Chaucer in his poetic line “in the sowre hungry tyme”. The central theme of the movement was Oswald Spengler’s idea of History, that an ailing culture feeds on cultural elements brought from outside. These writers felt that Bengali culture had reached its zenith and was now living on alien food. . . . The movement was joined by other young poets like Utpal Kumar Basu, Binoy Majumdar, Sandipan Chattopadhyay, Basudeb Dasgupta, Falguni Roy, Tridib Mitra and many more. Their poetry spoke the displaced people and also contained huge resentment towards the government as well as profanity. … On September 2, 1964, arrest warrants were issued against 11 of the Hungry poets. The charges included obscenity in literature and subversive conspiracy against the state. The court case went on for years, which drew attention worldwide. Poets like Octavio Paz, Ernesto Cardenal and Beat poets like Allen Ginsberg visited Malay Roychoudhury. The Hungryalist movement also influenced Hindi, Marathi, Assamese, Telugu & Urdu literature.”
― Maitreyee Bhattacharjee Chowdhury, The Hungryalists

“What happens to a highbrow literary culture when its fault lines-along caste, class and gender-are brutally exposed? What happens to the young iconoclasts who dare to speak and write about these issues openly? Is there such a thing as a happy ending for revolutionaries? Or are they doomed to be forever relegated to the footnotes of history?

This is the never-before-told true story of the Hungry Generation (or 'the Hungryalists')-a group of barnstorming, anti-establishment poets, writers and artists in Bengal in the 1960s. Braving social boycott, ridicule and arrests, the Hungryalists changed the literary landscape of Bengal (and many South Asian countries) forever. Along the way, they also influenced iconic poets, such as Allen Ginsberg, who struck up a lifelong friendship with the Hungryalists.”
― Maitreyee Bhattacharjee Chowdhury, The Hungryalists

“Ricky Marigold was his name up at the commune. He was seventeen, had run away from home in Pacoima and was a righteous grasshead. He wasn't a bad kid, just fucked up. He was for: love, truth, gentleness, getting high, staying high, good sounds, pleasant weather, funky clothes and rapping with his friends. He was against: Viet Nam, the Laws with their riot sticks, violence, bigotry, random hatred, nine-to-five jobs, squares who tried to get you to conform, grass full of seeds and stems, and bringdowns in general.
He met Jack Gardiner on the corner of Laurel Canyon and Sunset, across from Schwab's where the starlets went to show off their asses. He saw Jack Gardiner as a little too old to be making the scene, but the guy looked flaky enough: lumberjack shirt, good beard, bright eyes; and he seemed to be friendly enough.
So Ricky invited him to come along.
They walked up Laurel Canyon, hunching along next to the curb on the sidewalkless street. "Gonna be a quiet scene," Ricky said. "Just a buncha beautiful people groovin' on themselves, maybe turning on, you know." The older man nodded; his hands were deep in his pants pockets.
They walked quite a while, finally turning up Stone Canyon Road. A mile up the twisting road. Jack Gardiner slipped a step behind Ricky Marigold and pulled out the blade. Ricky had started to turn, just as Connie's father drove the shaft into Ricky's back, near the base of the spine. Ricky was instantly paralyzed, though not dead. He slipped to the street, and Jack Gardiner dragged him into the high weeds and junk of an empty lot. He left him there to die.
Unable to speak, unable to move, Ricky Marigold found all the love draining out of him. Slowly, for six hours, through the small of his back.”
― Harlan Ellison, The Deadly Streets

“As punk rock was able to sweep the board clean in music, so must the board be cleared in visual art.”
― Brian Clarke, Architectural Stained Glass

“Men and women are different. One is not inferior or superior, nor is one isn’t lesser or greater. Rather we are complementary. We are serving each other to complete each other. What we lack the other sex fills. Where we excel the other sex lacks.”
― George Fisher

“Youth is lies. Youth is evil.

Those who incessantly celebrate their teenage years are lying both to themselves and to those around them. These people interpret everything in their environment as an affirmation of their beliefs, and when they make mistakes that prove fatal, they see those very mistakes as proof of the value of the Teen experience, looking back on it all as part of a beautiful memory.

For example, when people like this dirty their hands with criminal Acts like shoplifting or gang violence, they call it mere "youthful indiscretion." When they fail exams, they say that school is about more than just studying. they will twist any common sense or normal interpretation of their actions in the name of the word youth. In their minds, secrets, lies, and even crimes and failures are naught but the spice of youth. And in their wrongdoing and their failures, they discover their own uniqueness. they then conclude that these failures were all entirely part of the Teen experience, but the failures of others are merely defeat. If failure is the proof of the Teen experience, then wouldn't an individual who has failed to make friends be having the ultimate teen experience? But these people would never accept that as truth.

Is there a certian are nothing but an excuse. Their principles are based entirely on their own convenience. Thus, their principles are deceit. Lies, deceit, secrets, and fraud are all reprehensible things.

These people are evil. And that means, paradoxically, that those who do not celebrate their teenage years are correct and righteous.

In conclusion:
YOU NORMIES CAN GO DIE IN A FIRE.”
― Wataru Watari, My Youth Romantic Comedy Is Wrong, As I Expected @ comic, Vol. 3

“Even amid the erratic crowd and the loud voices that drowned everything in coffee, Ginsberg commanded attention. Samir had recalled to Malay:

He approached our table, where Sunil, Shakti, Utpal and I sat, with no hesitation whatsoever. There was no awkwardness in talking to people he hadn’t ever met. None of us had seen such sahibs before, with torn clothes, cheap rubber chappals and a jhola. We were quite curious. At that time, we were not aware of how well known a poet he was back in the US. But I remember his eyes—they were kind and curious. He sat there with us, braving the most suspicious of an entire cadre of wary and sceptical Bengalis, shorn of all their niceties—they were the fiercest lot of Bengali poets—but, somehow, he had managed to disarm us all. He made us listen to him and tried to genuinely learn from us whatever it was that he’d wanted to learn, or thought we had to offer. Much later, we came to know that there had been suspicions about him being a CIA agent, an accusation he was able to disprove. In the end, we just warmed up to him, even liked him. He became one of us—a fagging, crazy, city poet with no direction or end in sight.”
― Maitreyee Bhattacharjee Chowdhury, The Hungryalists

“For those of us who identify with the movements of the sixties this period represents not so much a decade as a state of consciousness, characterized by the transpersonal expansion, the questioning of authority, a sense of empowerment, and the experience of sensuous beauty and community. This state of consciousness reached well into the seventies. In fact, one could say that the sixties came to an end only in December 1980 with the shot that killed John Lennon.”
― Fritjof Capra, Uncommon Wisdom : Conversations With Remarkable People

“Statistically, GHB is most commonly used by POC and LGBTQ+ groups from low-income backgrounds who cannot afford the limitless amount of ketamine, coke, and alcohol during their nights out. Why not put the energy into educating and providing your community with providing harm reduction guides on how to use it rather than shame and condemn it. The ban approach hasn't worked for the scene in the past decade, if anything it's killing more people, harming more communities and scrutinizing our spaces even more.”
― Salman Jaberi, Rave Scout Cookies Handbook

“But for the most part things that are marginalized are left to fend for themselves and develop their own resources. Marginalized people have done this for thousands of years and develop their own culture, diet, customs, and artwork. Marginalized individuals in society develop freethinking, unlimited by social pressures and academic controls.”
― Wayne Weiseman

“Here is a body of Christ.' The priest put a wafer into the mouth of the first person on the right of the altar. I lurked through the red curtain, preparing a thick line of amphetamine on the edge of the confessional.
'Amen.' I swallowed the body of God in the ritual of holy communion. Speed disappeared in my right nostril. The pressure struck straight away in my brain, sending me somewhere over the altar and beyond holy figures of the saints. The bell was tolling. Organs played in the background. People were singing a holy song. I could feel my hair rise up to reach heaven at that holy moment. I was high. I was a High Priest!”
― Aleks Koval, Explosives Under Special Supervision

“I remember when we went into Kezar Stadium on the march (April 15, 1967, San Francisco) playing that song—I felt like I was part of some surrealistic dream. We were riding along in this truck. The band was playing. It was like a misty kind of rain. It was early in the morning. The streets were lined with people hanging out of windows and everything. And we were going up the street. I was just stoned out of my head on LSD, everything kind of like vibrating and I was looking around and you could see soldiers and people sneering and you see pictures of napalmed children and signs saying “End the War” and we were playing this joyous incredible music and people were dancing all around the truck just dancing and throwing flowers up in the air and everything and we were singing, “Whoopee, we’re all gonna die!” And it was like we were sort of heading off to these beautiful pastoral gas chambers, we were all going to parade ourselves into these gas chambers and then they were going to wipe us out…
I mean, if you gotta go, you might as well go out dancing and singing.”
― Country Joe McDonald

“The lesson here is that tools often move faster than people. The ability to do something on a technical level doesn’t mean it’s destined to become a lifestyle movement. For that to happen, people first need a human character to represent whatever the new possibility might be; to make it feel more real.”
― Lauren Razavi, Global Natives: The New Frontiers of Work, Travel, and Innovation

“2002 yılı civarında doğanlar AKP Hükümetinin gölgesinde büyüdüler, oy kullanma yaşına girenlerin hafızasında da kıyaslama yapabilecekleri başka bir siyasi iktidar yok. İlk gençlik dönemine adım atmış bir kuşağın duygularından davranışlarına, beğenilerinden zevklerine kadar her şey, ekseninde AKP’nin olduğu bir kültür dünyasında şekillenmiş sayılır. Çizgileri şimdi bir hayli netleşmiş kültür dünyasının geçmişteki ipuçlarını ve eğer herhangi bir kırılma yaşanmazsa yakın gelecekteki muhtemel evrimini içeren bir tablo çizmek için yeterince uzun bir süre bu. Toplumsal bir dönüşüm yaratmak iddiasıyla iktidara gelen AKP açısından kültür bir derlenip toparlanma, saflaşma aracı olduğu kadar kendisini geçmişe ve muhaliflerine karşı korunaklı kılan, muhalifleri ile yandaşları arasında sınır çizen bir kimlik vurgusuydu. Bu yüzden etrafında saflaştırdığı kesimlerin canını acıtacak iktisadi düzenlemeleri yaparken de, politik kararları alırken de dikkati hep partinin kültürel iddialarında toplamaya çalıştı. Bunda da bir hayli başarılı olduğu söylenebilir.

Elinizdeki kitap AKP’nin kurduğu kültür dünyasının artık tamamlanmış resmindeki öğeleri, bunların arasındaki bağıntıları irdelemeye ve denk düştükleri iktisadi ve sosyal ilişkileri tartışmaya çalışıyor. Dizginsiz bir piyasaya Neo-Osmanlıcı ütopyanın tuğrasının basıldığı böyle bir dönemde yoksulun takvasının İslami burjuvazinin marka hırsıyla imtihanından çıkan sonuç AKP döneminin de temel çelişkisi olarak beliriyor. Yeni Türkiye bu ikisi arasındaki kurgulanmış uyumdan değil gizlenemeyen derin çelişkiden doğacak gibi görünüyor.”
― Ulaş Başar Gezgin, Marka, Takva, Tuğra: AKP Döneminde Kültür ve Politika

“In this collection of essays and reflection, we present a detailed portrait of Gezi not only as a an act of resistance but as an intentional community that will serve as a beacon for generations in Turkey to come- and, globally, more widely- as examples of resistance to neoliberal and neoconservative and Fascist assault, through chapters by local and international left politicians, activists and academics, providing a deeper insight to Gezi and social movements. As “this is just the beginning”, as we “continue the struggle”; this book is also a beginning, an open text that will never be concluded until the demise of the societies of inequality and injustice.”
― Ulaş Başar Gezgin, The Gezi Revolt: People's Revolutionary Resistance Against Neoliberal Capitalism in Turkey

“The dogmas of the quiet past, are inadequate to the stormy present. The occasion is piled high with difficulty, and we must rise with the occasion. As our case is new, so we must think anew, and act anew. We must disenthrall ourselves, and then we shall save our country. Fellow citizens, we cannot escape history. We of this Congress and this administration, will be remembered in spite of ourselves. No personal significance of insignificance, can spare one or another of us. The fiery trial through which we pass, will light us down, in honor of dishonor, to the latest generation. We SAY we are for the Union. The world will not forget that we say this. We know how to save the Union. The world knows we do know how to save it. We-even we here- hold the power, and bear the responsibility. In GIVING freedom to the slave, we assure freedom to the free- honorable alike in what we give, and what we preserve. We shall nobly save, or meanly lose, the last best hope on earth. Other means may succeed; this could not fail. The way is plain, peaceful, generous, just- a way which, if followed, the world will forever applaud, and God must forever bless.”
― Abraham Lincoln (second message to congress 1862)

“Being countercultural isn’t about breaking rules for the sake of breaking rules... It's about changing cultural norms that harm those you lead.”
― Nick Chellsen, A Leader Worth Imitating: 33 Leadership Principles From the Life of Jesus

“But if there was a mood of paranoia amongst the counterculture, the spies appeared to be gripped by their own fantasies of the 'reds under the beds' variety. Keith Locke, son of communists Elsie and Jack Locke, discovers that the SIS had a file on him when he was eleven years old. In it it had been noted such suspicious activities as attending a Christchurch performance of the Moscow Circus.”
― Nick Bollinger, Jumping Sundays: The Rise and Fall of the Counterculture in Aotearoa New Zealand

“Our society is distracted, unfocused, and in a hurry. A curriculum that rushes through content perpetuates the anxiety of our time. Reading a book (slowly and leisurely) is a countercultural act.”
― Brian Tolentino

“...All of these writings could be reduced to mere “thought-provoking content,” for the system devours everything in its path like a never-satisfied monster—even its own “critics,” or perhaps especially its “critics.” The system sells even its own “resistance,” which is why “counterculture” is, in fact, bound to and created by the very thing it claims to oppose.”
― Sov8840