Elliot Brent

“The preservation of liberty depends upon the intellectual and moral character of the people.”
― David McCullough, John Adams

“I do not think it is a fair picture of human life. I do not think so because, by definition, a human being is endowed with free will. He can use this to choose between good and evil. If he can only perform good or only evil, then he is a clockwork orange--meaning that he has the appearance of an organism lovely with colour and juice but is in fact only a clockwork toy to be wound up by God or the Devil or (since this is increasingly replacing both) the Almighty State. It is as inhuman to be totally good as it is to be totally evil. The important thing is moral choice. Evil has to exist along with good, in order that moral choice may operate. Life is sustained by the grinding opposition of moral entities. This is what the television news is all about. Unfortunately there is so much original sin in us all that we find evil rather attractive. To devastate is easier and more spectacular than to create. We like to have the pants scared off us by visions of cosmic destruction. To sit down in a dull room and compose the Missa Solemnis or The Anatomy of Melancholy does not make headlines or news flashes.”
― Anthony Burgess, A Clockwork Orange

“To come right down to it, if I take the kind of things in which I believe, then add to that the kind of temperament that I have, plus the one hundred percent dedication I have to whatever I believe in--these are ingredients which make it just about impossible for me to die of old age.
-- The autobiography of Malcom X”
― Walter Dean Myers, Malcolm X: By Any Means Necessary

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