欧宝娱乐

“That is human nature, that people come after you, willingly enough, provided only that you no longer love or want them.”
― A.S. Byatt, Possession

“Consciousness is a much smaller part of our mental life than we are conscious of, because we cannot be conscious of what we are not conscious of. How simple that is to say; how difficult to appreciate! It is like asking a flashlight in a dark room to search around for something that does not have any light shining upon it. The flashlight, since there is light in whatever direction it turns, would have to conclude that there is light everywhere. And so consciousness can seem to pervade all mentality when actually it does not.”
― Julian Jaynes, The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind

“All scholars are a bit mad. All obsessions are dangerous.”
― A.S. Byatt, Possession

“It was immediately clear that the book had been undisturbed for a very long time, perhaps even since it had been laid to rest. The librarian fetched a checked duster, and wiped away the dust, a black, thick, tenacious Victorian dust, a dust composed of smoke and fog particles accumulated before the Clean Air acts.”
― A.S. Byatt, Possession

“They valued themselves. Once, they knew God valued them. Then they began to think there was no God, only blind forces. So they valued themselves, they loved themselves and attended to their natures鈥�”
― A.S. Byatt, Possession

“He settles back with a small handful of cashews; dry-roasted, they have a little acid sting to them, the tang of poison that he likes.”
― John Updike, Rabbit at Rest

“Harry has heard this before. Thelma's voice is dutiful and deliberately calm, issuing small family talk when both know that what she wants to discuss is her old issue, that flared up a minute ago, of whether he loves her or not, or why at least he doesn't need her as much as she does him. But their relationship at the start was established with her in pursuit of him, and all the years since, of hidden meetings, of wise decisions to end it and thrilling abject collapses back into sex, have not disrupted the fundamental pattern of her giving and his taking, of her fearing their end more than he, and clinging, and disliking herself for clinging, and wanting to punish him for her dislike, and him shrugging and continuing to bask in the sun of her love, that rises every day whether he is there or not. He can't believe it, quite, and has to keep testing her.”
― John Updike, Rabbit at Rest

“Val was eating cornflakes. She ate very little else, at home. They were light, they were pleasant, they were comforting, and then after a day or two they were like cotton wool.”
― A.S. Byatt, Possession

“Assimilation and melting into the American pot has always been easier [for white people]. It's very hard for blackfolk to melt into the pot. When we melt into the pot we usually become charred crust at the bottom. We have to be able to persevere by different tactics and methods.”
― Chuck D, Lyrics of a Rap Revolutionary, Vol. 1

“Tall as he is, there is no carrying the slope under his shirt as anything other than a loose gut, a paunch that in itself must weigh as much as a starving Ethiopian child.”
― John Updike, Rabbit at Rest

“He imagines the plane exploding as it touches down, ignited by one of its glints, in a ball of red flame shadowed in black like you see on TV all the time, and he is shocked to find within himself, imagining this, not much emotion, just a cold thrill at being a witness, a kind of bleak wonder at the fury of chemicals, and relief that he hadn't been on the plane himself but was instead safe on this side of the glass, with his faint pronged sense of doom.”
― John Updike, Rabbit at Rest

“Inside, upstairs, where the planes are met, the spaces are long and low and lined in tasteful felt gray like that cocky stewardess's cap and filled with the kind of music you become aware of only when the elevator stops or when the dentist stops drilling. Plucked strings, no vocals, music that's used to being ignored, a kind of carpet in the air, to cover up a silence that might remind you of death.”
― John Updike, Rabbit at Rest

“I think we're moving toward a world where all the consumers under a certain age will probably tend to identify more with their consumer status or with the products they consume then they would with ... any sort of antiquated notion of nationality.”
― Gibson, William

“Now what is the will of God? That's the big question. You can't say the will of God is to disrespect your fellow man. You can't say the will of God is to disrespect His creations, and you can't say the will of God is to disrespect the planet that you live on. You can say you're anything [any religion], but if your disrespect comes in any of those three categories, you're not anything, you're whack. I think the principles of religion start from there. Then you get into man's interpretation and bookology.”
― Chuck D, Lyrics of a Rap Revolutionary, Vol. 1

“Signal learning (or classical or Pavlovian conditioning) is the simplest example [of learning without consciousness]. If a light signal immediately followed by a puff of air through a rubber tube is directed at a person's eye about ten times, the eyelid, which previously blinked only to the puff of air, will begin to blink to the light signal alone, and this becomes more and more frequent as trials proceed. Subjects who have undergone this well-known procedure of signal learning report that it has no conscious component whatever. Indeed, consciousness, in this example the intrusion of voluntary eye blinks to try to assist the signal learning, blocks it from occurring.”
― Julian Jaynes, The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind

“...in Eastern Europe they'll believe we've got a democracy. They'll love to have a VCR. And with each step forward they'll become more entrapped in the same totalitarian system that is much more subtle than the crude and simple one that many of them have overthrown.”
― Rick Roderick

“Lenin's difficulty with Marxian revisionism and those who accorded an important role to liberals is symptomatic of a doctrinal and psychological problem peculiar to Marxism and absent in the old narodnik creed. Marx had revealed the systematic necessity of class exploitation. Capitalism was by its very nature savagely unjust. Since most revolutionaries were not simply thinking machines looking for the most rational foundation for production and distribution but possessed of "religious" attitudes, or, in any case, of a sense of mission, they found in Marx and Engels the description of a morally intolerable system in which the wealth of the few could only be gotten at the expense of the poverty of the many. On the other hand, Marx posited the necessary contribution of each historical phase to economic and social progress. The bourgeoisie and their liberal institutions could not disappear from history until they had developed the forces of production as far as they could, when the onset of the inevitable and fatal crisis of capitalism would occur. Capitalism was a necessary evil on the way to socialism. But Marx had no blueprint for its many historical variations, only his laws of capitalism and their consequences. Neither he nor Engels had a revolutionary timetable either, and it was possible for their followers to lapse into a purely "scientific" and morally slothful type of Marxism, an academic Marxism without a sense of urgency about revolutionary tasks to be performed. On the other hand, the most morally mobilized would find ways to hasten capitalism's final hour, even while separating themselves from the narodniki, whose revolutionism was "unscientific." Thus, during a period of mainly doctrinal debates and sectarianism, revolutionaries who were temperamentally quite close to each other engaged in combat; but when the real revolutionary moment arrived, they often found themselves working together.”
― Philip Pomper, Lenin, Trotsky, and Stalin: The Intelligentsia and Power

“Unfortunately, Stalin's collected works contain very little mention of his early comrades. Ketskhoveli's relationship with Stalin must be inferred from the accounts of third parties. Official biographers evidently thought it unseemly to dwell too much on the connection between the leader of the Soviet Union and a tertiary figure, who figured only in the history of Georgian Social Democracy for about a decade and then died in prison in a quixotic gesture in 1903. The historical literature about Stalin is patently designed to create parallels between him and Lenin and, whenever possible, links. Thus, Stalin had to be no less a leader in Tbilisi than Lenin had been in St. Petersburg. In the official version Stalin is already first among equals in his relationship with the central figures of Brzdola (The Struggle), the underground Georgian Marxist organ. But by his own admission, in 1898 he was still an apprentice seeking sponsorship and advice from the leaders of Georgian Marxism.”
― Philip Pomper, Lenin, Trotsky, and Stalin: The Intelligentsia and Power

“Lenin's analysis in The Development of Capitalism in Russia is a kind of profession de foi in a new and powerful idiom. To appeal to the intelligentsia, modern doctrines must combine faith and realism, or science, and Lenin's faith in the correctness of his "science" sustained him through lean years. The notion of faith raises the vexing issue of resemblances between Marxism and earlier Judeo-Christian traditions.

A rough human sense that there will be justice, that wrongs will be righted, that sufferings and humiliations will be revenged, that the rich will not enter either a heavenly kingdom or earthly socialist paradise, underlies a great many religious and secular doctrines, expressed in a variety of "sacred" and "scientific" idioms. Another common denominator of such doctrines is their identification of victims who are chosen to be saved and oppressors who are doomed, whether by God's love and justice or history's dialectic. Needless to say, this kind of hopeful and militant vision, when sustained over a long period of time, yields a history of struggle, frustration, adaptation, sectarianism, and defection. Like their religious predecessors, the new secular movements spread out over a spectrum of positions reflecting defeated expectations, changed historical conditions, and the psychologies of individuals creating the movements' doctrines and strategies.”
― Philip Pomper, Lenin, Trotsky, and Stalin: The Intelligentsia and Power

“Koba's appearance and his vulgarity in argument always made his sallies unpleasant. His speeches were always devoid of wit and had the character of straightforward exposition. But what was perpetually astonishing was his machinelike memory. When you stared at his poorly developed forehead and small cranium, it seemed like you could puncture it like a cylinder of gas, and all of Marx's Kapital would hiss out noisily. Marxism was his element; in it he was indomitable. There was no power that could budge him from a position.鈥� He knew how to place any phenomenon under an appropriate Marxian formula.”
― S. Vereshchak, Lenin, Trotsky, and Stalin: The Intelligentsia and Power

“The nationalities question fit ill with Marxism. It was perhaps even more puzzling than the peasant problem. One could at least delude oneself into believing that the peasant problem was soluble in Marxian terms by extrapolating from economic data, constructing Procrustean sociologies, and predicting the inevitable splitting of the peasants along class lines. But how did one fit nationality into the Marxist scheme? Of course, according to Marxian theory national boundaries created superficial divisions compared to economic forces and the relations of production, but nationalist passion seemed to inflame people and mobilize them even more than their class interests. World War I would show how ready people were to make sacrifices for the sake of the national or imperial dignity or, in the case of the Slavs of the Russian Empire, for related ethnic groups and coreligionists. Even the discredited Romanov dynasty would be able to rally its people around the war effort鈥攁t least at the outset. This was a complication鈥攊ndeed, as history has showed, a fatal one鈥攆or a Marxian socialist with a genuinely internationalist orientation.”
― Philip Pomper, Lenin, Trotsky, and Stalin: The Intelligentsia and Power

“There was more than a little truth in Trotsky's angry accusation of April 1912, after he had suffered the theft of the title of his journal [Pravda], that Lenin nourished himself on discord and chaos. But so did all revolutionary politicians, for revolutionary changes issue from profound crises. The bloody trenches of World War I created an enormous new revolutionary constituency, and only those leaders who knew how to exploit it would be prepared for the struggles that lay ahead.”
― Philip Pomper, Lenin, Trotsky, and Stalin: The Intelligentsia and Power

“In a complex situation, when confronted with new considerations, Koba prefers to bide his time, to keep his peace, or to retreat. In all those instances when it is necessary for him to choose between the idea and the political machine, he invariably inclines toward the machine. The program must first of all create its bureaucracy before Koba can have any respect for it. Lack of confidence in the masses, as well as in individuals, is the basis of his nature. His empiricism always compels him to choose the path of least resistance. That is why, as a rule, at all the great turning points of history this near-sighted revolutionist assumes an opportunist position, which brings him exceedingly close to the Mensheviks and on occasion places him in the right of them. At the same time he invariably is inclined to favor the most resolute actions in solving the problems he has mastered. Under all conditions well-organized violence seems to him the shortest distance between two points. Here an analogy begs to be drawn. The Russian terrorists were in essence petty bourgeois democrats, yet they were extremely resolute and audacious. Marxists were wont to refer to them as "liberals with a bomb." Stalin has always been what he remains to this day鈥攁 politician of the golden mean who does not hesitate to resort to the most extreme measures. Strategically he is an opportunist; tactically he is a "revolutionist." He is a kind of opportunist with a bomb.”
― Leon Trotsky, Lenin, Trotsky, and Stalin: The Intelligentsia and Power

“One of the major weaknesses in Marxism as a doctrine resided in its failure to examine closely the moral characteristics of an immiserated proletariat. The notion that the miserable and oppressed will proceed to create a better world is, of course, inherently problematic.”
― Philip Pomper, Lenin, Trotsky, and Stalin: The Intelligentsia and Power

“THE YEAR OF MIRACLES, 1990
A young woman is on a plane coming from the Eastern Mediterranean, and is joined by a man who says, 鈥楾ell me what鈥檚 been happening in the world. I鈥檝e been in the Himalayas for months, and I鈥檝e not seen a newspaper nor heard the news. Thank God.鈥�
鈥榃ell now, let me see鈥�, says she. 鈥楾he Soviet Union has given up communism, the Soviet colonies have given up the Soviet Union. The Berlin Wall is down and Germany is united. In South Africa they have given up apartheid.鈥�
鈥榁ery funny鈥�, says he, 鈥榓nd now tell me what has really happened.”
― Doris Lessing, African Laughter: Four Visits to Zimbabwe

“Throughout my my career 鈥� which began in 1990 right when the press became unionized 鈥� the themes have generally been social-political issues: police brutality, state terrorism, corruption, political maneuvers鈥nd not just in Brazil, the themes I tackle looking abroad include war, armed conflicts, and torture. I鈥檝e also done a lot about the Brazilian military dictatorship.

(Interview in Brasilwire)”
― Carlos Latuff

“I remember when I first used the internet in the 1990鈥檚 that it looked interesting. It was very slow on a dial up modem and frustrating to use. In the 2020鈥檚 it had become a staple of life and was really fast on fiber optics!”
― Steven Magee

“And if there is one sure sign in Hegel鈥檚 philosophy that history isn鈥檛 over, of course it鈥檚 a war. Because there are embodied people in struggle with different views about what freedom is and how to live.”
― Rick Roderick

“I think the trick, as far as possible, is to be sort of anonymous within this society. You know, to sort of vanish.”
― Ralph Rumney

“I did my electrician鈥檚 apprenticeship at the Royal Liverpool Hospital in the UK from 1986 to 1990. In 2024, the hospital was demolished.”
― Steven Magee