Showing posts with label quote. Show all posts
Showing posts with label quote. Show all posts

Saturday, 26 August 2017

“Talk sense to a fool and he calls you foolish.” - Euripides

The big problem with stupid people is that they are usually too stupid to know that they are stupid. Of course the dilemma and possible irony of me saying this is that I could well be stupid too. Ignorance I suppose is bliss.


"Questioning anything and everything, to me, is punk rock." Henry Rollins






Sunday, 14 May 2017

Superstition

Religion and right wing politics exist to exploit and oppress large groups of people; enabling a few to control the many. They both offer easy answers. Answers that people can accept at face value without any thought. Answers that are no more than advertising slogans. It doesn't matter that the answers they give are not evidence based, or what they promise fails to materialise; there will either be an excuse, a distraction or a lie to cover up their failings, a papering over the cracks to hide their charlatanism.

Reactionaries and devotees of magic men with beards (right wing politicians and clerics to the simple) operate using the K.I.S.S. form of delivery: 'Keep it simple, stupid'. Not my phrase but one once used in business presentation circles. People like simple. Simple enables them to believe without intellect. They can relate to X being the problem and Y being the solution. They can't relate to the possibility that the solution might require measures that are complex and perhaps need to run in tandem or appear on the surface not to be directly connected. If chaos theory is correct (obviously it's a theory so it might or might not be) then existence is a multitudinal array of chain reactions going on ad infinitum.

Of course some questions/problems in life might not have a known answer/solution. This never worries the right-wing politician or man of religion. In religion if there's something wrong it's the work of a devil or the punishment of a god; little matter that there is absolutely no proof of the existence of either. In right-wing politics if there is a problem it's the fault of someone 'different' to their perceived norm; they'll blame foreigners, the sick, the infirm, the poor etc. There's always a handy scapegoat.

'Humankind cannot bear very much reality'. T. S. Eliot.

It used to be said that the Church of England was the Tory party at prayer. I'm not sure how accurate that is but in many ways they were/are similar in one respect in that they both peddle lies. Religion and reactionary politics are not based on facts; they are based on a warped faith. Faith is illogical, it is not thinking, but laziness. They are each no more than superstition.


Nothing is ever black and white. There isn't always an answer.




And now a few words from the master of right-wing propaganda* Joseph Goebbels:

'A lie told once remains a lie but a lie told a thousand times becomes the truth.'

'There was no point in seeking to convert the intellectuals. For intellectuals would never be converted and would anyway always yield to the stronger, and this will always be "the man in the street." Arguments must therefore be crude, clear and forcible, and appeal to emotions and instincts, not the intellect. Truth was unimportant and entirely subordinate to tactics and psychology.'

'...the rank and file are usually much more primitive than we imagine. Propaganda must therefore always be essentially simple and repetitious.'







* These principles are still being used today.



Thursday, 2 October 2014

Quote unquote

"Written in pain, written in awe
By a puzzled man who questioned
What we were here for"
David Bowie (Oh You Pretty Things)


"There Are None So Blind As Those Who Will Not See":
• According to the ‘Random House Dictionary of Popular Proverbs and Sayings’ this proverb has been traced back to 1546 (John Heywood),


jealousy is the mother of invention


"We do not own the world, and its riches are not ours to dispose of at will. Show a loving consideration for all creatures, and seek to maintain the beauty and variety of the world. Work to ensure that our increasing power over nature is used responsibly, with reverence for life. Rejoice in the splendour of God's continuing creation." Advices and Queries - 42 (Quakers in Britain)

Wednesday, 19 September 2012

If I had a hammer

“If you only have a hammer, you tend to see every problem as a nail”

- Abraham Maslow

Wednesday, 23 June 2010

Serious sport...

#world cup
" Serious sport has nothing to do with fair play. It is bound up with hatred, jealousy, boastfulness, disregard of all rules and sadistic pleasure in witnessing violence. In other words: it is war minus the shooting. "

Friday, 1 January 2010

Thought for a new year

“An eye for an eye makes the whole world blind.”

Mahatma Gandhi

Sunday, 13 July 2008

A thought

”It should be your care, therefore, and mine, to elevate the minds of our team members and exalt their courage; to accelerate and animate their industry and activity; to excite in them an habitual contempt of meanness, abhorrence of injustice and inhumanity, and an ambition to excel in every capacity, faculty, and virtue.”

I don't know who originally said it, but I received this quotation last week in an email from the CEO of our parent company. I'll leave it with you.