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W Quotes

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All W Quotes

“When an earthquake hits, things don't usually quickly return to normal. The rise of the populist right-wing charlatan has been a political earthquake. We can't expect normal programming to simply resume and the political battle to return to more normal fault lines. The charlatans are going to be around for a while. But there's one incontrovertible truth when it comes to charlatans: they eventually get found out. (p.125)”

“When an economist attempts to prove that it is "irrational" to vote in national elections (because the effort expended outweighs the likely benefit to the individual voter), they use the term because they do not wish to say "irrational for actors for whom civic participation, political ideals, of the common good are not values in themselves, but who view public affairs only in terms of personal advantage.”

“When an editor works with an author, she cannot help seeing into the medicine cabinet of his soul. All the terrible emotions, the desire for vindications, the paranoia, and the projection are bottled in there, along with all the excesses of envy, desire for revenge, all the hypochondriacal responses, rituals, defenses, and the twin obsessions with sex and money. It other words, the stuff of great books.”

“When an entire segment of the world is burned and reduced to a lawless battleground for thugs and mercenaries, a land where government does not exist, where the slate of history is being wiped out and hope has drowned in gallons of innocent blood, the only respite comes in the form of the open seas and what lies beyond the horizon. So ships are boarded and pain is tolerated just a little while longer.”

“When an entire world had abandoned us, or at least while we felt like that, and even when nasty ogres killed my monk and Arnd's chevalier the brutal way, gathering to be a group of heroes & heroines gave us the recovery and idealism to live-on nonetheless. I had hate, contempt, puzzled looks, and sometimes even understanding for those mainstreamers who knew nothing but sex about adulthood. As I have the roots of a European Barbarian who shared his tales at the campfire (old way of books) PLUS knowing that the intimacy of a mature relationship can be spoiled by sex, but it can never be built and maintained by sex alone... Nah, much to contemplative and honest. Let's link-in some light-hearted fun: Mikey Mason, over at youtube dot com has the songs 'Best Game Ever, and Summer of 83'...”

“When an entire world had abandoned us, or at least while we felt like that, and even when nasty ogres killed my monk and Arnd's chevalier the brutal way, gathering to be a group of heroes & heroines gave us the recovery and idealism to live-on nonetheless. I had hate, contempt, puzzled looks, and sometimes even understanding for those mainstreamers who knew nothing but sex about adulthood. As I have the roots of a European Barbarian who shared his tales at the campfire (old way of books) PLUS knowing that the intimicy of a mature relationship can be spoiled by sex, but it can never be built and maintained by sex alone... Nah, much to contemplative and honest. Let's link-in some light-hearted fun: Mikey Mason, over at youtube dot come has the songs 'Best Game Ever, and Summer of 83'...”

“When an entrepreneur becomes a billionaire by sucking all the resources from the world, nobody calls them a thief, yet when a homeless person steals a loaf of bread it is considered a heinous crime against humanity. If this is humanity, then I beg to report, you people are worse than animals.”

“When an event and the broadcasting of that event in real time are too close together, the event is rendered undecidable and virtual; it is stripped of its historical dimension and removed from memory. We are in a generalized feedback effect. Wherever a mingling of this kind - a collision of poles - occurs, then the vital tension is discharged. Even in 'reality TV' where, in the live telling of the story, the immediate televisual acting, we see the confusion of existence and its double. There is no separation any longer, no emptiness, no absence: you enter the screen and the visual image unimpeded. You enter life itself as though walking on to a screen. You slip on your own life like a data suit.”

“When an event is ongoing, it's impossible to mourn it. I'm thinking about having to abandon my dying father when I fled. Grief sets in and stays with you for life. I have never been able to mourn my father. The same goes for our country – the division of Korea into two countries is ongoing, so we cannot mourn it, and that is why we suffer so.”

“When an "evil" becomes customary, it tends to lose the negative value put on it and in men's minds tends to become a "good." And so, we hear much these days in praise of the very kind of government which the Founding Fathers tried to prevent by their blueprint; that is, of a paternalistic establishment ruling for and over a subject people. A virtue has been made of what was once considered a vice. This transmutation of political values has been accompanied by a transmutation of moral values, as a matter of necessity; people who have no rights are presumably without free will; at least, there is no call for the exercise of free will (as in the case of a slave) when a paternalistic government assumes the obligations of living. Why, for instance, should one be charitable when the government provides for the incompetent or the unfortunate? Why should one be honest when all that is necessary to "get by" is to obey the law? Why should one give thought to one's future when the matter can be left to a munificent government? And, with the government providing "free" schooling, including "free" lunches, even the parents' obligations to their children can be sloughed off.”

“When an evil deed is recurrent, the initial repugnance diminishes to tolerance; the tolerance transforms to acceptance. The acceptance leads to expectance. For instance, the term necessary evil confers on it the status of benevolence, hence indispensable. This is how, the unbecoming becomes the becoming and the becoming becomes the unbecoming.”

“When an honest man speaks, he says only what he believes to be true; and for the liar, it is correspondingly indispensable that he considers his statements to be false. For the bullshitter, however, all these bets are off: he is neither on the side of the true nor on the side of the false. His eye is not on the facts at all, as the eyes of the honest man and of the liar are, except insofar as they may be pertinent to his interest in getting away with what he says. He does not care whether the things he says describe reality correctly. He just picks them out, or makes them up, to suit his purpose.”