d. > d.'s Quotes

“Farting, don't think, just fart.”
― John Cage, M: Writings '67–'72

“You're under no obligation to be the same person you were 5 minutes ago.”
― Alan Watts

“One line plus one line results in many meanings.”
― Josef Albers

“Camus said there is only really one serious philosophical question, which is whether or not to commit suicide. I think there are four or five serious philosophical questions:
The first one is: Who started it?
The second is: Are we going to make it?
The third is: Where are we going to put it?
The fourth is: Who's going to clean up?
And the fifth: Is it serious?
Out Of Your Mind (2004), Audio lecture 1: The Nature of Consciousness: A Game That's Worth The Candle.”
― Alan Watts

“Whereof one cannot speak, thereof one must be silent.”
― Ludwig Wittgenstein, Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus

“Knowledge is not an encounter between two separate things - a knowing subject and a known object. Knowledge, or better, knowing is a relationship in which knower and known are like the poles in a magnetic field. Human beings are aware of a world because, and only because, it is the sort of world that breeds knowing organisms. Humanity is not one thing and the world another; it has always been difficult for us to see that any organism is so embedded in its environment that the evolution of so complex and intelligent a creature as man could never have come to pass without a reciprocal evolution of the environ­ment. An intelligent man argues, without any resort to supernaturalism, an intelligent universe.”
― Alan W. Watts, The Two Hands of God: The Myths of Polarity

“I will come to you, my friend, when I no longer need you. Then you will find a palace, not an almshouse.”
― Henry David Thoreau

“The moment of queer pride is a refusal to be shamed by witnessing the other as being ashamed of you.”
― Maggie Nelson, The Argonauts

“It is our duty to fight for our freedom.
It is our duty to win.
We must love each other and support each other.
We have nothing to lose but our chains.”
― Assata Shakur, Assata: An Autobiography

“The function, the very serious function of racism is distraction. It keeps you from doing your work. It keeps you explaining, over and over again, your reason for being. Somebody says you have no language and you spend twenty years proving that you do. Somebody says your head isn’t shaped properly so you have scientists working on the fact that it is. Somebody says you have no art, so you dredge that up. Somebody says you have no kingdoms, so you dredge that up. None of this is necessary. There will always be one more thing.”
― Toni Morrison

“History repeats itself, first as tragedy, second as farce”
― Karl Marx, The Communist Manifesto

“All that you touch
You Change.

All that you Change
Changes you.

The only lasting truth
is Change.

God
is Change.”
― Octavia E. Butler

“Love has never been a popular movement. And no one's ever wanted, really, to be free. The world is held together, really it is held together, by the love and the passion of a very few people. Otherwise, of course, you can despair. Walk down the street of any city, any afternoon, and look around you. What you've got to remember is what you're looking at is also you. Everyone you're looking at is also you. You could be that person. You could be that monster, you could be that cop. And you have to decide, in yourself, not to be.”
― James Baldwin

“The old world is dying, and the new world struggles to be born: now is the time of monsters.”
― Antonio Gramsci

“Are you sure, sweetheart, that you want to be well?… Just so’s you’re sure, sweetheart, and ready to be healed, cause wholeness is no trifling matter. A lot of weight when you’re well.”
― Toni Cade Bambara , The Salt Eaters