Tyler Davis

“One might almost define intelligence as the level at which an aware organism demands, 'What's in it for me?”
― Robert A. Heinlein

“I really don't like art with a message, unless the message is crystal clear.
If you have a message that really needs to be said, just fuckin' say it! Don't hide it in indecipherable lyrics... a sculpture, it's a play, the subtext... just fuckin' say it, 'cause the people who need to hear messages are dumb as shit--the masses of humanity are dumb as shit, and you're really just pandering to your friends. Say what the fuck you mean, just say it! Title the song 'eat more leafy greens'. 'Give a hoot, don't pollute' is as much message and art combined, 'cause I get that, it's a poem but I'm pretty sure you're saying 'don't pollute'. But if you have something... 'ooh, I have the cure for cancer...and I've hidden it in this Rubix cube!!' -- just fuckin' say it!
- Before Turning the Gun on Himself [2012]”
― Doug Stanhope

“It is not the case that one can create new people on the assumption that if they are not pleased to have come into existence they can simply kill themselves. Once somebody has come into existence and attachments with that person have been formed, suicide can cause the kind of pain that makes the pain of childlessness mild by comparison. Somebody contemplating suicide knows (or should know) this. This places an important obstacle in the way of suicide. One’s life may be bad, but one must consider what affect ending it would have on one’s family and friends. There will be times when life has become so bad that it is unreasonable for the interests of the loved ones in having the person alive to outweigh that person’s interests in ceasing to exist. When this is true will depend in part on particular features of the person for whom continued life is a burden. Different people are able to bear different magnitudes of burden. It may even be indecent for family members to expect that person to continue living. On other occasions one’s life may be bad but not so bad as to warrant killing oneself and thereby making the lives of one’s family and friends still much worse than they already are.”
― David Benatar, Better Never to Have Been: The Harm of Coming into Existence

“members of labor unions, and un-organized unskilled workers, will sooner or later realize that their government is not even trying to prevent wages from sinking or to prevent jobs from being exported. Around the same time, they will realize that suburban white-collar workers - themselves desparately afraid of being downsized - are not going to let themselves be taxed to provide social benefits for anyone else.
At that point, something will crack. The non-suburban electorate will decide that the system has failed and start looking around for a strongman to vote for - someone willing to assure them that once he is elected, the smug bureaucrats, tricky lawyers, overpaid bond salesmen and post modernist professors will no longer be calling the shots...
One thing that is very likely to happen is that the gains made in the past forty years by black and brown Americans, and by homosexuals, will be wiped out. Jocular contempt for women will come back into fashion... All the resentment which badly educated Americans feel about having their manners dictated to them by college graduates will find an outlet pp89-90”
― Richard M. Rorty