“It's simply a national acknowledgement that in any kind of priority, the needs of human beings must come first. Poverty is here and now. Hunger is here and now. Racial tension is here and now. Pollution is here and now. These are the things that scream for a response. And if we don't listen to that scream - and if we don't respond to it - we may well wind up sitting amidst our own rubble, looking for the truck that hit us - or the bomb that pulverized us. Get the license number of whatever it was that destroyed the dream. And I think we will find that the vehicle was registered in our own name.
[from a Commencement Address at the University of Southern California; March 17, 1970]”
―
[from a Commencement Address at the University of Southern California; March 17, 1970]”
―
“The arts are not a way to make a living. They are a very human way of making life more bearable.”
― A Man Without a Country
― A Man Without a Country
“Here lies a
wretched corse, of wretched soul bereft:
Seek not my name: a plague consume you wicked
caitiffs left!
Here lie I, Timon; who, alive, all living men did hate:
Pass by and curse thy fill, but pass and stay
not here thy gait.”
― Timon of Athens
wretched corse, of wretched soul bereft:
Seek not my name: a plague consume you wicked
caitiffs left!
Here lie I, Timon; who, alive, all living men did hate:
Pass by and curse thy fill, but pass and stay
not here thy gait.”
― Timon of Athens
“And I like Strauss and Mozart and all that, but the priceless gift that African Americans gave the world when they were still in slavery was a gift so great that it is now almost the only reason many foreigners still like us at least a little bit. That specific remedy for the worldwide epidemic of depression is a gift called the blues. All pop music today-jazz, swing, be-bop, Elvis Presley, the Beatles, the Stones, rock and roll, hip hop and on and on- is derived from the blues.”
― A Man Without a Country
― A Man Without a Country
“What our contempt often hurls from us,
We wish it our again; the present pleasure,
By revolution lowering, does become
The opposite of itself”
― Antony and Cleopatra
We wish it our again; the present pleasure,
By revolution lowering, does become
The opposite of itself”
― Antony and Cleopatra
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Raunaq’s 2025 Year in Books
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