Kevin K

“America is not a young land: it is old and dirty and evil. Before the settlers, before the Indians... the evil was there... waiting.”
― William S. Burroughs

“. . . according to Lem's Law, 'No one reads; if someone does read, he doesn't understand; if he understands, he immediately forgets' -- owing to general lack of time, the oversupply of books, and the perfection of advertising.”
― Stanislaw Lem

“The problem of 'tolerance' (liberalism, laxism, the 'permissive society', etc.) takes the same form. The fact that those who were once mortal enemies are now on speaking terms, that the most fiercely opposed ideologies 'enter into dialogue', that a kind of peaceful coexistence has set in at all levels, that morality is less strict than it was, in no sense signifies some 'humanist' progress in human relations, a greater under­standing of problems or any such airy nonsense. It indicates simply that, since ideologies, opinions, virtues and vices are ultimately merely material for exchange and communication, all contradictory elements are equivalent in the play of signs. Tolerance in this context is no longer either a psychological trait or a virtue: it is a modality of the system itself. It is like the total compatibility and elasticity of the elements of fashion: long skirts and mini-skirts 'tolerate' each other very well (indeed they signify nothing other than the relationship which holds between them).”
― Jean Baudrillard, The Consumer Society: Myths and Structures

“The simplest Surrealist act consists of dashing down the street, pistol in hand, and firing blindly, as fast as you can pull the trigger, into the crowd. Anyone who, at least once in his life, has not dreamed of thus putting an end to the petty system of debasement and cretinization in effect has a well-defined place in that crowd with his belly at barrel-level.”
― André Breton, Manifestoes of Surrealism