Kevin Ramos

The conscious and intelligent manipulation of the organized habits and opinions of the masses is an important element in democratic society. Those who manipulate this unseen mechanism of society constitute an invisible government which is the true ruling power of our country. We are governed, our minds are molded, our tastes formed, our ideas suggested, largely by men we have never heard of. This is a logical result of the way in which our democratic society is organized. Vast numbers of human beings must cooperate in this manner if they are to live together as a smoothly functioning society.

— Edward Bernays

Posted October 27, 2011 at 9:41pm

On some positions, Cowardice asks the question, “Is it safe?” Expediency asks the question, “Is it politic?” And Vanity comes along and asks the question, “Is it popular?” But Conscience asks the question “Is it right?” And there comes a time when one must take a position that is neither safe, nor politic, nor popular, but he must do it because Conscience tells him it is right. I believe today that there is a need for all people of good will to come together with a massive act of conscience and say in the words of the old Negro spiritual, “We ain’t goin’ study war no more.” This is the challenge facing modern man.

— Martin Luther King, Jr.

Posted October 14, 2011 at 1:23pm | 2 notes

If I had never dropped out, I would have never dropped in on this calligraphy class, and personal computers might not have the wonderful typography that they do. Of course it was impossible to connect the dots looking forward when I was in college. But it was very, very clear looking backwards ten years later.

Again, you can’t connect the dots looking forward; you can only connect them looking backwards. So you have to trust that the dots will somehow connect in your future. You have to trust in something — your gut, destiny, life, karma, whatever. This approach has never let me down, and it has made all the difference in my life.

— Steve Jobs

Posted October 5, 2011 at 7:14pm | 16 notes

“Wherever I go and whatever I do I am always in the straight-jacket of junk, unable to move a finger to free myself.”

“I want to be rid of junk more than I ever wanted anything.”

— William S. Burroughs, 1955, 1956

Posted September 24, 2011 at 12:06am | 2 notes

In short, all good things are wild and free. There is something in a strain of music, whether produced by an instrument or by the human voice — take the sound of a bugle in a summer night, for instance, — which by its wildness, to speak without satire, reminds me of the cries emitted by wild beasts in their native forests. It is so much of their wildness as I can understand. Give me for my friends and neighbors wild men, not tame ones…

— Henry David Thoreau

Posted September 23, 2011 at 2:52pm

That is really the power of genius—the force of will to make all the mistakes necessary to get the right answer.

— Michio Kaku

Posted September 20, 2011 at 2:10am | 2 notes

Mystics, contrary to religionists, are always saying that reality is not two things — God and the world — but one thing, consciousness. It is a monistic view of reality based on consciousness that mystics claim to directly intuit. The problem with science has always been that most scientists believe that science must be done within a different monistic framework, one based on the primacy of matter. And then, quantum physics showed us that we must change that myopic prejudice of scientists, otherwise we cannot comprehend quantum physics. So now we have science within consciousness, a new paradigm of science based on the primacy of consciousness that is gradually replacing the old materialist science. Why? Not only because you can’t understand quantum physics without this new metaphysics but also because the new paradigm resolves many other paradoxes of the old paradigm and explains much anomalous data.

— Amit Goswami

Posted September 16, 2011 at 4:26am

The more mature person is not the person who has all the questions settled. No, the mature person is the person who enters ever more deeply, ever farther and farther and farther into the mystery and into the wonder.

— The Human Experience

Posted September 16, 2011 at 1:17am | 3 notes

Indignation about the crimes of others is easy and cheap and not particularly attractive, sometimes even shameful. Looking in the mirror is far more important, much more difficult…

— Noam Chomsky

Posted September 15, 2011 at 2:00am

Friends can help each other. A true friend is someone who lets you have total freedom to be yourself—and especially to feel. Or not feel. Whatever you happen to be feeling at the moment is fine with them. That’s what real love amounts to: letting a person be what he really is… Most people love you for who you pretend to be… To keep their love, you keep pretending, preforming. You get to love your pretense… It’s true, we’re locked in an image, an act. And the sad thing is, people get so used to their image—they grow attached to their masks. They love their chains. They forgot all about who they really are. And if you try to remind them, they hate you for it—they feel like you’re trying to steal their most precious possession.

— Jim Morrison

Posted September 8, 2011 at 6:06pm

The press is certainly a business. And in order to survive it must be a successful business. But the right balance must be found between marketing considerations and journalistic responsibility. Society’s problems can’t be solved until they’re identified. On a higher plane, the press is a service industry and the service it provides is awareness. Every story does not have to sell something; there is also a time to give.

— James Nachtwey

Posted August 19, 2011 at 2:16am

The fuckers. The bean-counters, the lawyers, all of these assholes at every label. Those are people that wreck the music business. Not Napster, not some college kid downloading shit. The people without vision.

— Anton Newcombe

Posted August 19, 2011 at 1:12am

expect the unexpected

— Heraclitus

Posted August 8, 2011 at 4:30pm | 2 notes

No, let us not make God in our image, poor inhabitants that we are of a distant planet lost in infinite space. However brilliant and sublime our intelligence may be, it is scarcely more than a small spark which shines and in an instant is extinguished, and it alone can give us no idea of that blaze, that conflagration, that ocean of light.

— José Rizal

Posted August 1, 2011 at 8:13pm | 1 note

My father was a writer. You would’ve liked him. He used to say that artists use lies to tell the truth, while politicians use them to cover the truth up.

— V for Vendetta

Posted July 27, 2011 at 1:43pm | 61 notes