Cosmic Arcata

“The problem is not that Afghans unite and then cannot be conquered; the problem is that Afghans fragment and then cannot be governed”
― Tamim Ansary, Games Without Rules: The Often Interrupted History of Afghanistan

“There are certain queer ones and occasions in this strange mixed affair we call life when a man takes this whole universe for a vast practical joke, though the wit thereof he but dimly discerns, and more than suspects that the joke is at nobody's expense but his own... And as for small difficulties and worryings, prospects of sudden disaster, peril of life and limb; all these, and death itself, seem to him only sly good-natured hits, and jolly punches in the side bestowed by the unseen and unaccountable old joker.”
― Herman Melville, Moby-Dick or, The Whale

“Of all games in the world, the one most universally and eternally popular is the game of school. You collect six children and put them on a doorstep, while you walk up and down with the book and cane. Only one thing mars it: the tendency of one and all of other six children to clamour for their turn with the book and cane. The reason, I am sure, that journalism is so popular a calling, in spite of its many drawbacks, is this: each journalist feels he is the boy walking up and down with the cane. The Government, the Classes, and the Masses, Society, Art, and Literature, are the other children sitting on the doorstep.

[published in 1900]”
― Jerome K. Jerome, Three Men on the Bummel

“In Germany to-day one hears a good deal concerning Socialism, but it is a Socialism that would only be despotism under another name. Individualism makes no appeal to the German voter. He is willing, nay, anxious to be controlled and regulated in all things.

'You get yourself born,' says the German Government to the German citizen, 'we do the rest. Indoors and out of doors, in sickness and in health, in pleasure and in work, we will tell you what to do, and we will see to it that you do it. Don't you worry yourself anything.'

And the German doesn't.

[published in 1900]”
― Jerome K. Jerome, Three Men on the Bummel