Mean quotes
28K quotes on this topic — from poets, philosophers, and thinkers across history.
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"The local grocery store was a gathering, a community place. You knew the owner, if you didn't have any money they'd let you go for a couple days. You talked. It was a friendly place. Supermarkets are totally impersonal. I mean, you may say hello to the checkout girl or something, but the personal connections are all gone."
"You also have to get beyond that to dismantle the system of production for profit rather than production for use. That means dismantling at least large parts of market systems."
"Anarchism means all sort of things to different people but the traditional anarchists' movements assumed that there'd be a highly organized society, just one organized from below with direct participation and so on. Actually, one piece of the media confusion has a basis because there really are two different strands in the occupy movement, both important, but different."
"Wikileaks is providing information on what ambassadors are sending to Washington and things like that. Maybe some of that has a right to some kind of secrecy, but there is a heavy burden and I think its pretty hard to meet. I haven't read everything from Wikileaks by any means but the parts that I have read and seen I think are things the public should know."
"I really suggest listening to talk radio. I mean, if you just listen to what the talk hosts are saying, they sound like they are lunatics."
"What's called "liberal" in the intelectual culture means highly conformist to power, but mildly critical."
"Let's take Pravda in the 1980s. I mean you could have read things in Pravda saying that it was a stupid error to invade Afghanistan: "it was a dumb thing to do, we have to get out, it's costing us too much." I mean that U.S. analog of that would be "extreme liberalism," and it has been pretty well studied."
"Go back to the Bible, the Old Testament. I mean there were people who we would call intelectuals, there, they were called prophets, but they were basically intelectuals: they were people who were doing critical, geopolitical analysis, talking about the decisions of the king were going to lead to destruction; condemning inmorality, calling for justice for widows and orphans. What we would call dissident intelectuals. Were they nicely treated? No, they were driven into the desert, they were imprisoned, they were denounced. They were intelectuals who conformed."
"I mean the reason the sit-down strikes struck such fear in the hearts of management was that they knew that a sit-down strike was just one step short of taking over the factory."
"Just take ease of interchange between people. Your email is of course faster than letter - on the other hand the transition from sailing ship to telegraphs was far greater than the shift from the postal service to email. That was a fabulous change. If you sent a letter to England, instead of waiting a couple of months for a response you got it instantly. That's a huge change. Every one of these changes of course increases opportunities and also increases means of control and domination."
"I think when I say universal, it means making a project that everybody can enjoy but also a project where they're getting closer to you."
"I couldn't imagine any other way of living, outside of books, outside my work. Which doesn't mean I am not interested in other things, of course - I am interested in many things. But the center, the crux, is always literature."
"There is nothing more flattering than a woman to say 'I'm a fan' or 'I think you're beautiful.' I don't know why, but it means a lot to get a compliment from a woman."
"In France, the leader of Jacobinism perished on the guillotine; with us, the change of leadership was achieved by means of arrest and banishment. The technique of the process is gentler, but its essence is the same."
"A program of "disarmament," while imperialist antagonisms survive, is the most pernicious of fictions. Even if it were realized by way of general agreement - an obviously fantastic assumption!- that would by no means prevent a new war. The imperialists do not make war because there are armaments; on the contrary, they forge arms when they need to fight."
"To win the X Factor would mean the world to me and my family. I'd buy mum and dad a house and then I think I would buy myself a car and have a little shopping trip."
"When you're younger, you do have that thing that you were talking about where the mouth goes dry. I mean you have reactions, and you do fall in love."
"Perspective is a most subtle discovery in mathematical studies, for by means of lines it causes to appear distant that which is near, and large that which is small."
"Perspective is nothing more than a rational demonstration applied to the consideration of how objects in front of the eye transmit their image to it, by means of a pyramid of lines. The Pyramid is the name I apply to the lines which, starting from the surface and edges of each object, converge from a distance and meet in a single point."
"I like movies! No, I like theater too. And paintings are great, and all of that! But to me, the great sort of artistic medium I think, of our time, is film. I really feel that. I mean to me, there's nothing else out there, where I can sort of suspend disbelief for two hours."
