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Quote by Jan Ellison

“Stories don't like to end when you want them to, do they? Loose ends aren't easy to snip with scissors or tuck inside a hem. They tempt you. They want you to keep pulling until there is nothing left to keep you warm.”

Quote by Jan Ellison

Book:A Small Indiscretion
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A Small Indiscretion

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Jan Ellison

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“The religionists are the enemies of liberty, and the friends of liberty attack religion; the high-minded and the noble advocate bondage, and the meanest and most servile preach independence; honest and enlightened citizens are opposed to all progress, whilst men without patriotism and without principle put themselves forward as the apostles of civilization and intelligence. Has such been the fate of the centuries which have preceded our own? and has man always inhabited a world like the present, where all things are out of their natural connections, where virtue is without genius, and genius without honor; where the love of order is confounded with a taste for oppression, and the holy rites of freedom with a contempt of law; where the light thrown by conscience on human actions is dim, and where nothing seems to be any longer forbidden or allowed, honorable or shameful, false or true?”

ReligionLibertySocietyPostmodernismDegeneration1835
Book:Democracy in America
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“On 21 February 2006 the United States Supreme Court ruled, in accordance with the Constitution, that a church in New Mexico should be exempt from the law, which everybody else has to obey, against the taking of hallucinogenic drugs.8 Faithful members of the Centro Espirita Beneficiente Uniao do Vegetal believe that they can understand God only by drinking hoasca tea, which contains the illegal hallucinogenic drug dimethyltryptamine. Note that it is sufficient that they believe that the drug enhances their understanding. They do not have to produce evidence. Conversely, there is plenty of evidence that cannabis eases the nausea and discomfort of cancer sufferers undergoing chemotherapy. Yet, again in accordance with the Constitution, the Supreme Court ruled in 2005 that all patients who use cannabis for medicinal purposes are vulnerable to federal prosecution (even in the minority of states where such specialist use is legalized). Religion, as ever, is the trump card. Imagine members of an art appreciation society pleading in court that they ‘believe’ they need a hallucinogenic drug in order to enhance their understanding of Impressionist or Surrealist paintings. Yet, when a church claims an equivalent need, it is backed by the highest court in the land. Such is the power of religion as a talisman.”

MarijuanaDrugsCannabisReligious Privilege
Book:The God Delusion
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“My dilemma is that of the civil servant. If a civil servant takes an initiative and things go right with it, he cannot, in the nature of his employment, look for much in the way of reward; whereas if his initiative goes wrong, he can expect all kinds of trouble, everything from reprimand to blocked promotion, and a permanent black mark against his name in the files. It is accepted, therefore, that the way to advance in the civil service, or in any field where civil service conditions prevail, is never take an initiative and never to support anyone else's. It is inevitable that this should be so.”

InitiativeCivil Service
Book:The Unsettled Dust
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“A healthy agency does not require relevance to the national agenda so much as the APPEARANCE of relevance to the national agenda," Humphrey explained. "It is perhaps the second-most important tool in ensuring continued funding." "And the most important?" "A friend on the Appropriations committee.”

GovernmentBureaucracyCivil Service
Book:The Weed Agency: A Comic Tale of Federal Bureaucracy Without Limits
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“If I Were Head of State (The Sonnet) If I were the head of state, my first act in government will be, to dissolve the government, and redistribute all powers of society, to experts in their respective fields. Civil servants and experts run a nation anyway, While brainless politicians take all the credit. Time to give credit and power where they're due, Putting an end to the circus of representatives. Instead of trading one incompetent fool for another, We gotta rotate the civil servants office to office. In a civilized democracy, civilians are the law, Never you forget that, never let anyone forget it! If I were the head of state, that is the end of state. Dictatorships empower leaders, democracy empowers citizens.”

DictatorshipSocial ResponsibilityPolitical PhilosophyNation BuildingGovernment CorruptionCivic DutyCivil ServiceNonpartisanismPolitical PoetryRepresentative Democracy
Book:Vande Vasudhaivam: 100 Sonnets for Our Planetary Pueblo
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