K. Zen

“If war is gods way of teaching geography to Americans, then recession is his way of teaching little economics to everyone”
― Raj Patel, The Value of Nothing: How to Reshape Market Society and Redefine Democracy

“My guess is that you would find that the intellectual elite is the most heavily indoctrinated sector [of society], for good reasons. It's their role as a secular priesthood to really believe the nonsense that they put forth. Other people can repeat it, but it's not that crucial that they really believe it. But for the intellectual elite themselves, it's crucial that they believe it because, after all, they are the guardians of the faith. Except for a very rare person who's an outright liar, it's hard to be a convincing exponent of the faith unless you've internalized it and come to believe it.”
― Noam Chomsky

“People with self-respect exhibit a certain toughness, a kind of moral nerve; they display what was once called *character,* a quality which, although approved in the abstract, sometimes loses ground to the other, more instantly negotiable virtues.... character--the willingness to accept responsibility for one's own life--is the source from which self-respect springs.”
― Joan Didion, Slouching Towards Bethlehem

“Most of us, most of the time, act within plays the lines of which were written long ago, the images of which require recognition, not invention.”
― Sidney W. Mintz, Sweetness and Power: The Place of Sugar in Modern History