Another batch: my favorite quotes

Here's another batch of quotes I have been collecting. It's a constantly growing collection, supplemented by my personal review of anything I happen to read. I realize that this collection is getting quite large. Here's the latest batch: "Live and let live," writes a clear-headed Austrian officer, "is no device for an army. Contempt for one's own comrades, for the troops of the enemy, and, above all, fierce contempt for one's own person, are what war demands of every one. Far better is it for an army to be too savage, too cruel, too barbarous, than to possess too much sentimentality and human reasonableness." - William James. From The Varieties of Religious Experience. “School is the advertising agency which makes you believe that you need the society as it is.” ― Ivan Illich "If I'd written all the truth I knew for the past ten years, about 600 people, including me, would be rotting in prison cells from Rio to Seattle today. Absolute truth is a very rare and dangerous commodity in the context of professional journalism." -Hunter Thompson “You may choose to look the other way but you can never say again that you did not know.” ― William Wilberforce "Life should not be a journey to the grave with the intention of arriving safely in a pretty and well-preserved body, but rather to skid in broadside in a cloud of smoke, thoroughly used up, totally worn out, and loudly proclaiming, 'Wow! What a ride!" -Hunter Thompson "Learn how to see. Realize that everything connects to everything else." -Leonardo da Vinci "The most merciful thing in the world, I think, is the inability of the human mind to correlate all its contents." H. P. Lovecraft (1890 - 1937), "The Call of Cthulhu", "Public speaking is the art of diluting a two-minute idea with a two-hour vocabulary." Evan Esar (1899 - 1995) [More . . . ]

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Delightful unplayable music

Those of you who read music might enjoy John Stump's score titled "Faerie's Aire and Death Waltz (from "A tribute to Zdenko G. Fibich"). I ran across this and enjoyed its repeated moments of musical absurdity. Faerie aire I searched for some background for the piece and found this:

The composition Faerie's Aire and Death Waltz (from "A Tribute to Zdenko G. Fibich") by John Stump is an unpublished satirical work written and copyrighted in 1980 that is best known for, simultaneously, its humor and unplayability. The piece is most often seen hanging on the walls in music rooms and orchestral settings for the musicians' amusement, due to musical directions such as "Rigatoni", "light explosives now... and... now", "insert peanuts", "Moon-walk", "release the penguins", and "Like a Dirigible".

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The extent of income inequality in America

"The numbers in this Alternet article are shocking. We are well on our way to having a country of very poor Americans ruled over by very rich Americans. Some would say, what are you proposing, COMMUNISM? No, just end the current corporate communism (privatized profits, socialized risks). We need go back to something like the tax codes of prior decades, and consider the other suggestions in the above article as well as the basic principles announced by Dylan Ratigan in his famous rant. Why should it matter to those who are still reasonably well off that there is a stark growing divide between rich and poor Americans? Because social science has demonstrated the clear correlation between income inequality and societal dysfunction.

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