Mark > Mark's Quotes

“Scholars had known for more than fifteen hundred years that the world was large and round. Colón disputed both facts.”
― Charles C. Mann, 1493: Uncovering the New World Columbus Created

“Menaced by environmental problems, torn by struggles between the tiny coterie of wealthy Spaniards at the center and a teeming, fractious polyglot periphery, battered by a corrupt and inept civic and religious establishment, troubled by a past that it barely understood—to the contemporary eye, sixteenth- and seventeenth-century Mexico City looks oddly familiar. In its dystopic way, it was an amazingly contemporary place, unlike any other then on the planet. It was the first twenty-first-century city, the first of today’s modern, globalized megalopolises.”
― Charles C. Mann, 1493: Uncovering the New World Columbus Created

“How could the colonists starve in the midst of plenty? One reason was that the English feared leaving Jamestown to fish, because Powhatan’s fighters were waiting outside the colony walls. A second reason was that a startlingly large proportion of the colonists were gentlemen, a status defined by not having to perform manual labor.”
― Charles C. Mann, 1493: Uncovering the New World Columbus Created

“Nothing says failed lesbianism quite like an accidental pregnancy.”
― Carlie Martece, Toxic Nursery

“This episode was brought to you by a letter from Satan, a shitload of numbers, and the popular phrase, Overly Dramatic Fantasy Revenge Sequence.”
― Carlie Martece, Deragon Hex: The Vipdile Key

“One repays a teacher badly if one always remains nothing but a pupil.”
― Friedrich Nietzsche, Thus Spoke Zarathustra

“God is dead. God remains dead. And we have killed him. How shall we comfort ourselves, the murderers of all murderers? What was holiest and mightiest of all that the world has yet owned has bled to death under our knives: who will wipe this blood off us? What water is there for us to clean ourselves? What festivals of atonement, what sacred games shall we have to invent? Is not the greatness of this deed too great for us? Must we ourselves not become gods simply to appear worthy of it?”
― Friedrich Nietzsche

“Secondary school was horrific. There was continued pressure to become an adult human, and we had never prepared for this, having planned to become an alien warrior princess before primary school was over.”
― Carlie Martece, Toxic Nursery

“There is something to be learned from a rainstorm. When meeting with a sudden shower, you try not to get wet and run quickly along the road. But doing such things as passing under the eaves of houses, you still get wet. When you are resolved from the beginning, you will not be perplexed, though you will still get the same soaking. This understanding extends to everything.”
― Tsunetomo Yamamoto, The Hagakure: A code to the way of samurai

“In this building, on a cold Wednesday afternoon, 10 March 1948, a group of eleven men, veteran Zionist leaders together with young military Jewish officers, put the final touches to a plan for the ethnic cleansing of Palestine. That same evening, military orders were dispatched to the units on the ground to prepare for the systematic expulsion of the Palestinians from vast areas of the country.3 The orders came with a detailed description of the methods to be employed to forcibly evict the people: large-scale intimidation; laying siege to and bombarding villages and population centres; setting fire to homes, properties and goods; expulsion; demolition; and, finally, planting mines among the rubble to prevent any of the expelled inhabitants from returning.”
― Ilan Pappé, The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine

“Palestinian sources show clearly how months before the entry of Arab forces into Palestine, and while the British were still responsible for law and order in the country – namely before 15 May – the Jewish forces had already succeeded in forcibly expelling almost a quarter of a million Palestinians.12”
― Ilan Pappé, The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine