Kenneth Laddish > Kenneth's Quotes

“There is nothing so loathsome as a sentimental surrealist.”
― Thomas Pynchon, Gravity's Rainbow

“Shit now is the color white folks are afraid of. Shit is the presence of death, not some abstract-arty character with a scythe but the stiff and rotting corpse inside the whiteman’s warm and private own asshole, which is getting pretty intimate. That’s what the toilet is for. You see many brown toilets? Nope, toilet’s the color of gravestones, classical columns of mausoleums, that white emblems the very emblem of Odorless and Official death.”
― Thomas Pynchon

“Be yourself; everyone else is already taken.”
― Oscar Wilde

“Almost nobody dances sober, unless they happen to be insane.”
― Howard Phillips Lovecraft

“In the U.S. you have to be a deviant or die of boredom.”
― William Burroughs

“Never do business with a religious son-of-a-bitch. His word ain't worth a shit -- not with the Good Lord telling him how to fuck you on the deal.”
― William S. Burroughs

“Artists to my mind are the real architects of change, and not the political legislators who implement change after the fact. ”
― William S. Burroughs

“Cheat your landlord if you can -- and must -- but do not try to shortchange the Muse.”
― William S. Burroughs

“Fas est ab hoste doceri.
One should learn even from one's enemies.”
― Ovid, Metamorphoses

“Today is truly the Golden Age: gold buys hornor, gold procures love”
― Publius Ovidius Naso

“Dignity and love do not blend well, nor do they continue long together. ”
― Ovid

“Resist much, obey little.”
― Walt Whitman, Leaves of Grass

“This is what you shall do; Love the earth and sun and the animals, despise riches, give alms to every one that asks, stand up for the stupid and crazy, devote your income and labor to others, hate tyrants, argue not concerning God, have patience and indulgence toward the people, take off your hat to nothing known or unknown or to any man or number of men, go freely with powerful uneducated persons and with the young and with the mothers of families, read these leaves in the open air every season of every year of your life, re-examine all you have been told at school or church or in any book, dismiss whatever insults your own soul, and your very flesh shall be a great poem and have the richest fluency not only in its words but in the silent lines of its lips and face and between the lashes of your eyes and in every motion and joint of your body.”
― Walt Whitman

“Nitimur in vetitum" -- "We strive after the forbidden”
― Publius Ovidius Naso

“I think God, in creating man, somewhat overestimated his ability.”
― Oscar Wilde

“To argue with a man who has renounced the use and authority of reason, and whose philosophy consists in holding humanity in contempt, is like administering medicine to the dead, or endeavoring to convert an atheist by scripture.”
― Thomas Paine, The American Crisis

“It is from the Bible that man has learned cruelty, rapine, and murder; for the belief of a cruel God makes a cruel man.”
― Thomas Paine, The Age of Reason

“Government, even in its best state, is but a necessary evil; in its worst state, an intolerable one.”
― Thomas Paine

“Moderation in temper is always a virtue; but moderation in principle is always a vice.”
― Thomas Paine

“I do not believe in the creed professed by the Jewish church, by the Roman church, by the Greek church, by the Turkish church, by the Protestant church, nor by any church that I know of. My own mind is my own church.

All national institutions of churches, whether Jewish, Christian, or Turkish, appear to me no other than human inventions set up to terrify and enslave mankind, and monopolize power and profit.”
― Thomas Paine, The Age of Reason

“belief is the death of intelligence.”
― Robert Anton Wilson, Cosmic Trigger: Die letzten Geheimnisse der Illuminaten oder An den Grenzen des erweiterten Bewusstseins

“There are periods of history when the visions of madmen and dope fiends are a better guide to reality than the common-sense interpretation of data available to the so-called normal mind. This is one such period, if you haven't noticed already.”
― Robert Anton Wilson

“The map is not the territory.”
― Alfred Korzybski

“Men will never be free until the last king is strangled with the entrails of the last priest.”
― Denis Diderot

“[L]e philosophe n'a jamais tué de prêtres et le prêtre a tué beaucoup de philosophes...

(The philosopher has never killed any priests, whereas the priest has killed a great many philosophers.)”
― Denis Diderot, Political Writings

“As long as the centuries continue to unfold, the number of books will grow continually, and one can predict that a time will come when it will be almost as difficult to learn anything from books as from the direct study of the whole universe. It will be almost as convenient to search for some bit of truth concealed in nature as it will be to find it hidden away in an immense multitude of bound volumes.”
― Denis Diderot, Encyclopédie, ou Dictionnaire raisonné des sciences des arts et des métiers: textes choisis

“la propriété, c'est le vol!”
― Pierre-Joseph Proudhon, Théorie de la propriété

“Property is theft!”
― Pierre Joseph Proudhon, Quest-ce que la propriété? ou Recherches sur le principe du droit et du gouvernement

“Outward looks are not enough,
Beauty is not common stuff-
Of merriment it is compact,
Playful grace in every act,
Witty laughter, laughing wit:
These are things that go with it,
These surpass the simple graces
In beautiful and silly faces.
Art is beauty; and I say:
Take the lovely fool away!-
If she strips from foot to head
And doesn't ask me into bed.”
― Petronius

“Reality is that which, when you stop believing in it, doesn't go away.”
― Philip K. Dick, I Hope I Shall Arrive Soon