Quotes from the Dead: Langston Hughes — John Fire Lame Deer 1901–1903 CE
To consider but not believe, page 48
For context, see Quotes from the Dead Intro: An endeavor to identify recorded sapience that may matter.
Quotes Cultural Physicians Yet Unborn May Value
“What happens to a dream deferred? Does it dry up like a raisin in the sun? … Or does it explode?” — Langston Hughes 1901–1967 CE, social activist, novelist, playwright, and columnist
“I am the poor white, fooled and pushed apart, I am the Negro bearing slavery’s scars, I am the red man driven from the land, I am the immigrant clutching the hope I seek — And finding only the same old stupid plan of dog eat dog, of mighty crush the weak. ” — Langston Hughes
What happens to a dream deferred? Does it dry up like a raisin in the sun? Or fester like a sore — And then run? Does it stink like rotten meat? Or crust and sugar over — like a syrupy sweet? Maybe it just sags like a heavy load. Or does it explode?” — Langston Hughes
“Many societies have educated their male children on the simple device of teaching them not to be women.” — Margaret Mead 1901–1978 CE, cultural anthropologist, author and speaker
“Children must be taught how to think, not what to think.” ― Margaret Mead
“I was wise enough never to grow up, while fooling people into believing I had.” ― Margaret Mead
“My grandmother wanted me to have an education, so she kept me out of school.” ― Margaret Mead
“The best way to govern is to leave the people alone and to follow the course of taking no action [wu wei]. This ideal of laissez faire originated in Taoism.” — Wing-tsit Chan 1901–1994 CE, scholar and professor best known for his studies of Chinese philosophy
“Taoist philosophy is naturalistic, if not atheistic, and any idea of a god is alien to it.” ― Wing-Tsit Chan
“By nature men are alike. Through practice they have become far apart.” ― Wing-Tsit Chan
“According to the Taoist view, honor leads to greed, discrimination, and strife… they frown on the idea of personal honor…. [Taoists] not exalting worthy men of superior talent and virtue is directly opposed to that of the Confucianists who honor them.” ― Wing-Tsit Chan
“Uncarved wood… metaphysically means the One, simple and undifferentiated… simplicity, plainness, genuineness in spirit and heart.” ― Wing-Tsit Chan
“Since we can never know anything for sure, it is simply not worth searching for certainty; but it is well worth searching for truth; and we do this chiefly by searching for mistakes, so that we have to correct them.” — Karl Raimund Popper 1902–1994 CE, philosopher, academic and social commentator
“Whenever a theory appears to you as the only possible one, take this as a sign that you have neither understood the theory nor the problem which it was intended to solve.” — Karl Popper
“In so far as a scientific statement speaks about reality, it must be falsifiable: and in so far as it is not falsifiable, it does not speak about reality.” ― Karl Popper
“The belief in a political Utopia is especially dangerous. This is possibly connected with the fact that the search for a better world, like the investigation of our environment, is one of the oldest and most important of all the instincts.” — Karl Popper
“True ignorance is not the absence of knowledge, but the refusal to acquire it.” ― Karl Popper
“Our knowledge can only be finite, while our ignorance must necessarily be infinite.” ― Karl Popper
“While differing widely in the various little bits we know, in our infinite ignorance we are all equal.” ― Karl Popper
“Philosophy is a necessary activity because we, all of us, take a great number of things for granted, and many of these assumptions are of a philosophical character; we act on them in private life, in politics, in our work, and in every other sphere of our lives — but while some of these assumptions are no doubt true, it is likely, that more are false and some are harmful. So the critical examination of our presuppositions — which is a philosophical activity — is morally as well as intellectually important.” ― Karl Popper
“Definitions are dogmas; only the conclusions drawn from them can afford us any new insight.” — Karl Popper
“We are social creatures to the inmost center of our being. The notion that one can begin anything at all from scratch, free from the past, or unindebted to others, could not conceivably be more wrong.” — Karl Popper
“A theory that explains everything, explains nothing” ― Karl Popper
“Oganized religion… goes back to myths which, though they may have a kernel of truth, are untrue. Why then should the Jewish myth be true and the Indian and Egyptian myths not be true?” — Karl Popper
“Science may be described as the art of systematic oversimplification.” ― Karl Popper
“Hitler succeeded in degrading the moral standards of our Western world, and that in the world of today there is more violence and brutal force than would have been tolerated even in the decade after the first World war. And we must face the possibility that our civilization may ultimately be destroyed by those new weapons which Hitlerism wished upon us… for no doubt, the spirit of Hitlerism won its greatest victory over us when, after its defeat, we used the weapons which the threat of Nazism had induced us to develop.” — Karl Popper
“No rational argument will have a rational effect on a man who does not want to adopt a rational attitude.” ― Karl Popper
“Unlimited tolerance must lead to the disappearance of tolerance. If we extend unlimited tolerance even to those who are intolerant, if we are not prepared to defend a tolerant society against the onslaught of the intolerant, then the tolerant will be destroyed, and tolerance with them…. We should therefore claim, in the name of tolerance, the right not to tolerate the intolerant. We should claim that any movement preaching intolerance places itself outside the law, and we should consider incitement to intolerance and persecution as criminal, in the same way as we should consider incitement to murder, or to kidnapping, or to the revival of the slave trade, as criminal.” — Karl Popper
“For myself, I am interested in science and in philosophy only because I want to learn something about the riddle of the world in which we live, and the riddle of man’s knowledge of that world. And I believe that only a revival of interest in these riddles can save the sciences and philosophy from an obscurantist faith in the expert’s special skill and in his personal knowledge and authority.” ― Karl Popper
“A world technology means either a world government or world suicide.” — Max Lerner 1902–1992 CE, journalist and educator
“Either men will learn to live like brothers or they will die like beasts.” — Max Lerner
“When choosing the lesser of two evils, always remember, it is still an evil.” ― Max Lerner
“The so-called lessons of history are for the most part the rationalizations of the victors. History is written by the survivors.” ― Max Lerner
“The crime of book purging is that it involves a rejection of the word. For the word is never absolute truth, but only man’s frail and human effort to approach the truth. To reject the word is to reject the human search.” ― Max Lerner
“Doublethink means the power of holding two contradictory beliefs in one’s mind simultaneously, and accepting both of them.” — George Orwell 1903–1950 CE
“All issues are political issues, and politics itself is a mass of lies, evasions, folly, hatred and schizophrenia.” — George Orwell
“A people that elect corrupt politicians, imposters, thieves and traitors are not victims, but accomplices.” — George Orwell
“In a time of universal denial and deceit — telling the truth is a revolutionary act.’” — George Orwell
“The horrible thing about the Two Minutes Hate was not that one was obliged to act a part, but that it was impossible to avoid joining in. Within thirty seconds any pretense was always unnecessary. A hideous ecstasy of fear and vindictiveness, a desire to kill, to torture, to smash faces in with a sledge hammer, seemed to flow through the whole group of people like an electric current.” — George Orwell
“All animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others.” ― George Orwell
“War is peace. Freedom is slavery. Ignorance is strength.” ― George Orwell, 1984
“If you want a picture of the future, imagine a boot stamping on a human face — for ever.” ― George Orwell, 1984
“Doublethink means the power of holding two contradictory beliefs in one’s mind simultaneously, and accepting both of them.” ― George Orwell, 1984
“Reality exists in the human mind, and nowhere else.” ― George Orwell, 1984
“Now I will tell you the answer to my question. It is this. The Party seeks power entirely for its own sake. We are not interested in the good of others; we are interested solely in power, pure power. What pure power means you will understand presently. We are different from the oligarchies of the past in that we know what we are doing. All the others, even those who resembled ourselves, were cowards and hypocrites. The German Nazis and the Russian Communists came very close to us in their methods, but they never had the courage to recognize their own motives. They pretended, perhaps they even believed, that they had seized power unwillingly and for a limited time, and that just around the corner there lay a paradise where human beings would be free and equal. We are not like that. We know that no one ever seizes power with the intention of relinquishing it. Power is not a means; it is an end. One does not establish a dictatorship in order to safeguard a revolution; one makes the revolution in order to establish the dictatorship. The object of persecution is persecution. The object of torture is torture. The object of power is power. Now you begin to understand me.” ― George Orwell, 1984
“The most effective way to destroy people is to deny and obliterate their own understanding of their history.” ― George Orwell
“Every generation imagines itself to be more intelligent than the one that went before it, and wiser than the one that comes after it.” ― George Orwell [only one generation can be right]
“Power worship blurs political judgment because it leads, almost unavoidably, to the belief that present trends will continue.” — George Orwell
“Political language is designed to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable, and to give an appearance of solidity to pure wind. ” ― George Orwell
“If people cannot write well, they cannot think well. And if they cannot think well, others will do their thinking for them.” — George Orwell
“The essential act of war is destruction, not necessarily of human lives, but of the products of human labor. War is a way of shattering to pieces, or pouring into the stratosphere, or sinking in the depths of the sea, materials which might otherwise be used to make the masses too comfortable, and hence, in the long run, too intelligent… the object of waging a war is always to be in a better position in which to wage another war.” — George Orwell
“‘Who controls the past’ ran the Party slogan, ‘controls the future: who controls the present controls the past.’” — George Orwell
“Films, football, beer, and above all, gambling filled up the horizon of their minds. To keep them in control was not difficult…. All that was required of them was a primitive patriotism which could be appealed to whenever it was necessary” — George Orwell
“When human beings are governed by ‘thou shalt not,’ the individual can practice a certain amount of eccentricity: when they are supposedly governed by ‘love’ or ‘reason,’ he is under continuous pressure to make him behave exactly the same way as everyone else.” — George Orwell
“Orthodoxy means not thinking — not needing to think. Orthodoxy is unconsciousness.” — George Orwell
“All rulers in all ages have tried to impose a false view of the world upon their followers.” — George Orwell
“Men can only be happy when they do not assume that the object of life is happiness.” — George Orwell
“But if thought corrupts language, language can also corrupt thought… the English language becomes ugly and inaccurate because our thoughts are foolish, but the slovenliness of our language makes it easier for us to have foolish thoughts… the process is reversible” — George Orwell
“If liberty means anything at all, it means the right to tell people what they do not want to hear.” — George Orwell
“Writing a book is a horrible, exhausting struggle, like a long bout with some painful illness. One would never undertake such a thing if one were not driven on by some demon whom one can neither resist nor understand.” ― George Orwell
“Americans are bred like stuffed geese — to be consumers, not human beings. The moment they stop consuming and buying, the frog-skin world has no more use for them. They have become frogs themselves… this is the real world, not the Green Frog Skin World. That’s only a bad dream, a streamlined, smog-filled nightmare.” — John Fire Lame Deer 1903–1976 CE, Lakota holy man, member of the Heyoka society
“Desire killed that man, as desire has killed many before and after him If this earth should ever be destroyed, it will be by desire, by the lust of pleasure and self-gratification, by greed.” — John Fire Lame Deer
“All Creatures exist for a purpose. Even an ant knows what that purpose is — not with its brain, but somehow it knows. Only human beings have come to a point where they no longer know why they exist.” ― John (Fire) Lame Deer
“Before our white brothers came to civilize us we had no jails. Therefore we had no criminals. You can’t have criminals without a jail. We had no locks or keys, and so we had no thieves. If a man was so poor that he had no horse, tipi or blanket, someone gave him these things. We were too uncivilized to set much value on personal belongings. We wanted to have things only in order to give them away. We had no money, and therefore a man’s worth couldn’t be measured by it. We had no written law, no attorneys or politicians, therefore we couldn’t cheat. We really were in a bad way before the white men came, and I don’t know how we managed to get along without these basic things which, we are told, are absolutely necessary to make a civilized society.” ― John Lame Deer