text:
Contact (1997 American film)

Contact is a 1997 film about a scientist, after years of searching, finds conclusive radio proof of intelligent aliens, who send plans for a mysterious machine.
 * Directed by Robert Zemeckis. Written by James V. Hart and Michael Goldenberg, based on the novel by Carl Sagan.

A message from deep space. Who will be the first to go? A journey to the heart of the universe. Taglines

Ellie Arroway

 * So what's more likely? That an all-powerful, mysterious god created the universe, and decided not to give any proof of his existence? Or, that he simply doesn't exist at all, and that we created him, so that we wouldn't have to feel so small and alone?

Palmer Joss

 * What I'm asking is... are we happier, as a human race? Is the world fundamentally a better place because of science and technology? We shop at home, we surf the Web, and at the same time we feel emptier, lonelier, and more cut off from each other than at any other time in human history...

S.R. Hadden

 * I've had a long time to make enemies, doctor. So many governments, business interests, even religious leaders that would like to see me depart this Earth. I'll grant them their wish soon enough. But before I do, I wish to make a small contribution. A final gesture of good will to the people of this little planet who have given—from whom I have taken—so much.

Others

 * Jay Leno: So it turns out there's life on other planets. Boy, this is really going to change the Miss Universe contest, you know what I mean?
 * Alien: You're an interesting species, an interesting mix. You're capable of such beautiful dreams and such horrible nightmares. You feel so lost, so cut off, so alone, only you're not. See, in all our searching, the only thing we've found that makes the emptiness bearable is each other.

Dialogue

 * Young Ellie Arroway: Dad, do you think there's people on other planets?
 * Ted Arroway: I don't know, Sparks. But I guess I'd say if it is just us... seems like an awful waste of space.

 * [Executives at Hadden Industries seem to be giving Ellie Arroway the runaround]
 * Executive: We must confess that your proposal seems less like science and more like science fiction.
 * Ellie Arroway: Science fiction. You're right, it's crazy. In fact, it's even worse than that, it's nuts. You wanna hear something really nutty? I heard of a couple guys who wanna build something called an airplane, you know you get people to go in, and fly around like birds, it's ridiculous, right? And what about breaking the sound barrier, or rockets to the moon? Atomic energy, or a mission to Mars? Science fiction, right? Look, all I'm asking is for you to just have the tiniest bit of vision. You know, to just sit back for one minute and look at the big picture. To take a chance on something that just might end up being the most profoundly impactful moment for humanity, for the history... of history.

 * Michael Kitz: Your having sent this announcement all over the world may well constitute a breach of national security.
 * Ellie Arroway: This isn't a person-to-person call. You can't possibly think that a civilization sending this kind of message would intend it just for Americans.
 * Kitz: I'm saying you might have consulted us; obviously, the contents of this message could be extremely sensitive.
 * Arroway: You want to classify prime numbers now?

 * Palmer Joss: By doing this, you're willing to give your life, you're willing to die for it. Why?
 * Ellie Arroway: For as long as I can remember, I've been searching for something, some reason why we're here. What are we doing here? Who are we? If this is a chance to find out even just a little part of that answer... I don't know, I think it's worth a human life. Don't you?

 * [US officials are incensed that the extrapolated audio signal is actually a video image from the 1936 Olympics]
 * Rachel Constantine: [about Adolf Hitler] Twenty million people died defeating that son of a bitch, and he's our first ambassador to outer space?
 * Ellie Arroway: Actually the Hitler broadcast from the...
 * David Drumlin: [interrupting] '36 Olympics was the first television transmission of any power that went in to space. That they recorded it, and sent it back, is simply a way of saying "hello, we heard you."
 * Michael Kitz: Or, "Sieg Heil, you're our kind of people."

 * [As The Machine gets ready for its trial run, Ellie Arroway sees a suspicious man inside the walkway leading to the transport machine, then turns a security camera with a joystick so it faces him.]
 * Ellie Arroway: We've got a security problem here!
 * Security Official: Are you sure?
 * Arroway: Yeah. That man? [points to suspicious man on-screen] I know him! He's not supposed to be there! [puts on a headset with a microphone attached to it; to technician] Get me Drumlin on a secure loop please. [speaking to David Drumlin] David, can you hear me?
 * David Drumlin: Yeah, I hear.
 * Arroway: We have a security breach.

 * [at the Capitol, former National Security Advisor Michael Kitz leads the grilling of Ellie Arroway]
 * Senator: Dr. Arroway, You come to us with no evidence, no record... no artifacts. Only a story that, to put it mildly, strains credibility. Over half a trillion dollars were spent. Dozens of lives were lost. Are you really gonna sit there and tell us we should just take this all... on faith?
 * Michael Kitz: Please answer the question, doctor.
 * Ellie Arroway: Is it possible that it didn't happen? Yes... As a scientist, I must concede that. I must volunteer that.
 * Kitz: Wait a minute, let me get this straight. You admit you have absolutely no physical evidence to back up your story?
 * Arroway: Yes.
 * Kitz: You admit that you very well may have hallucinated this whole thing?
 * Arroway: Yes
 * Kitz: You admit that if you were in our position... you would respond with exactly the same degree of incredulity and skepticism?
 * Arroway: Yes.
 * Kitz: [raises voice] Then why don't you simply withdraw your testimony and admit that this journey to the center of the galaxy, IN FACT, NEVER TOOK PLACE!!??
 * Arroway: Because I can't! I had an experience... I can't prove it, I can't even explain it, but everything that I know as a human being, everything that I am tells me that it was real! I was given something wonderful, something that changed me forever... A vision of the universe that tells us, undeniably, how tiny, and insignificant and how... rare, and precious we all are! A vision that tells us that we belong to something that is greater than ourselves, that we are not — that none of us — are alone! I wish I could share that. I wish, that everyone, if even for one moment, could feel that awe, and humility, and hope! But... that continues to be my wish.

 * Rachel Constantine: I assume you read the confidential findings report from the investigating committee.
 * Michael Kitz: I flipped through it.
 * Constantine: I was especially interested in the section on Arroway's video unit. The one that recorded the static?
 * Kitz: Continue.
 * Constantine: The fact that it recorded static isn't what interests me.
 * Kitz: [pauses] Continue...
 * Constantine: What interests me is that it recorded approximately 18 hours of it.
 * Kitz: That is interesting, isn't it?

Cast

 * Jodie Foster - Eleanor Arroway
 * Matthew McConaughey - Palmer Joss
 * John Hurt - S.R. Hadden
 * Tom Skerritt - David Drumlin
 * Jena Malone - Young Ellie
 * David Morse - Ted Arroway
 * William Fichtner - Kent
 * James Woods - US National Security Advisor Michael Kitz
 * Angela Bassett - Rachel Constantine
 * Rob Lowe - Richard Rank

title: Contact (1997 American film)


text:
Normality

Quotes about normality

Quotes

 * I wouldn't say I'm normal, but I'm relatively stable. When I think of normalcy I think of mediocrity and mediocrity scares the fuck out of me.
 * Gillian Anderson, Allure "Planet Hollywood Harriet Winslow" (December, 1997)

 * Nobody realizes that some people expend tremendous energy merely to be normal.
 * Albert Camus, Notebook IV in Notebooks: 1942-1951

 * America's present need is not heroics, but healing; not nostrums, but normalcy; not revolution, but restoration.
 * Warren Gamaliel Harding, quoted in Frederick E. Schortemeier, Rededicating America (1920), ch.17

 * My darling girl, when are you going to realize that being normal is not necessarily a virtue? It rather denotes a lack of courage.
 * Alice Hoffman Practical Magic (1995)

 * The note I wanted; that of the strange and sinister embroidered on the very type of the normal and easy.
 * Henry James, Prefaces (1909), "The Altar of the Dead"

 * Society highly values its normal man. It educates children to lose themselves and to become absurd, and thus to be normal. Normal men have killed perhaps 100,000,000 of their fellow normal men in the last fifty years.
 * Ronald David Laing, The Politics of Experience (1967), p. 28

 * The Normal is the good smile in a child's eyes - all right. It is also the dead stare in a million adults.
 * Peter Shaffer, Equus, Act 1, Scene 19

 * Normal is enormously susceptible to swinging with the gusts of politics and history. Disguised as scientific and fixed, it is subjective and protean. That is why I used the word normative above, a term derived from statistics, simply meaning what most people do.

 * Don't become a well-rounded person. Well rounded people are smooth and dull. Become a thoroughly spiky person. Grow spikes from every angle. Stick in their throats like a pufferfish.
 * Bruce Sterling, 1991 speech to computer game developers

 * What is abnormal is that I am normal. That I survived the Holocaust and went on to love beautiful girls, to talk, to write, to have toast and tea and live my life — that is what is abnormal.
 * Elie Wiesel, After being asked "What does it take to be normal again, after having your humanity stripped away by the Nazis?" in an interview in O : The Oprah Magazine Nov. 2000.

license: Creative Commons - Attribution Share-Alike - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/

title: Normality


text:
Ecology

Ecology is the scientific analysis and study of interactions among organisms and their environment, such as the interactions organisms have with each other and with their abiotic environment.

 * Arranged alphabetically by author or source:
 * A - F · G - L · M - R · S - Z · See also · External links

Quotes

 * Quotes are arranged alphabetically by author

A - F

 * A humbling blow to our arrogant outlook, ecology reveals that humans – who conceive of themselves as the most autonomous and exalted forms of life – are entirely dependent upon the natural world, biodiversity, and in particular, the crucial role nonhuman animals play in maintaining and enriching nature. Indeed, earthworms, dung beetles, butterflies, and bees are far more important to the integrity and diversity of nature than humans are – the latter being the only species one could remove from earth ecosystems with positive effect. From an ecological perspective, humans are an overpopulated, parasitic swarm, living in total ignorance of natural "laws" they foolishly think they can master, but in truth must conform to and harmonize with if they intend to survive.
 * Steven Best, The Politics of Total Liberation: Revolution for the 21st Century (Palgrave Macmillan, 2014), pp. 119-120.

 * If we recognise that every ecosystem can also be viewed as a food web, we can think of it as a circular, interlacing nexus of plant animal relationships (rather than a stratified pyramid with man at the apex)... Each species, be it a form of bacteria or deer, is knitted together in a network of interdependence, however indirect the links may be.
 * Murray Bookchin, The Ecology of Freedom (1982).

 * If we have been slow to develop the general concepts of ecology and conservation, we have been even more tardy in recognizing the facts of the ecology and conservation of man himself. We may hope that this will be the next major phase in the development of biology. Here and there awareness is growing that man, far from being the overlord of all creation, is himself part of nature, subject to the same cosmic forces that control all other life. Man's future welfare and probably even his survival depend upon his learning to live in harmony, rather than in combat, with these forces.
 * Rachel Carson, "Essay on the Biological Sciences" in Good Reading (1958).

 * Man has been endowed with reason, with the power to create, so that he can add to what he's been given. But up to now he hasn't been a creator, only a destroyer.  Forests keep disappearing, rivers dry up, wild life's become extinct, the climate's ruined and the land grows poorer and uglier every day.
 * Anton Chekhov, Uncle Vanya, 1897

 * We need to renegotiate our contract with nature. Ecology is a unifying force that can diminish intolerance and expand our empathy towards others—both human and animal.
 * Gregory Colbert, "Peace and Harmony: The Message of Our Discovery" in Photo No. 427 (March 2006)

G - L

 * The study of public administration must include its ecology. "Ecology," states the Webster Dictionary, "is the mutual relations, collectively, between organisms and their environment." J. W. Bews points out that "the word itself is derived from the Greek oikos a house or home, the same root word as occurs in economy and economics. Economics is a subject with which ecology has much in common, but ecology is much wider. It deals with all the inter-relationships of living organisms and their environment." Some social scientists have been returning to the use of the term, chiefly employed by the biologist and botanist, especially under the stimulus of studies of anthropologists, sociologists, and pioneers who defy easy classification, such as the late Sir in Britain.
 * John M. Gaus, Reflections on public administration, 1947, p. 6

 * The disruption of the world's ecological systems — from the rise of global warming and the consequent damage to our climate balance, to the loss of living species and the depletion of ocean fisheries and forest habitats — continues at a frightening rate. Practically every day, it becomes clearer to us that must act now to protect our Earth, while preserving and creating jobs for our people.
 * Al Gore, Address to the International Press Institute, Boston, Massachusetts (30 April 2000.

 * The extinction of Partula is unfair to Partula. That is the conventional argument, and I do not challenge its primacy. But we need a humanistic ecology as well, both for the practical reason that people will always touch people more than snails do or can, and for the moral reason that humans are legitimately the measure of all ethical questions—for these are our issues, not nature's.
 * Stephen Jay Gould,"Unenchanted Evening", (1993).

 * All life is impermanent. We are all children of the Earth, and, at some time, she will take us back to herself again. We are continually arising from Mother Earth, being nurtured by her, and then returning to her. Like us, plants are born, live for a period of time, and then return to the Earth. When they decompose, they fertilize our gardens. Living vegetables and decomposing vegetables are part of the same reality. Without one, the other cannot be. After six months, compost becomes fresh vegetables again. Plants and the Earth rely on each other. Whether the Earth is fresh, beautiful, and green, or arid and parched depends on the plants. It also depends on us.
 * Thích Nhất Hạnh  The World We Have: A Buddhist Approach to Peace and Ecology (2008), Ch. 1 : The Bells of Mindfulness, p. 3

 * Our way of walking on the Earth has a great influence on animals and plants. We have killed so many animals and plants and destroyed their environments. Many are now extinct. In turn, our environment is now harming us. We are like sleepwalkers, not knowing what we are doing or where we are heading. Whether we can wake up or not depends on whether we can walk mindfully on our Mother Earth. The future of all life, including our own, depends on our mindful steps.
 * Thích Nhất Hạnh  The World We Have: A Buddhist Approach to Peace and Ecology (2008), Ch. 1 : The Bells of Mindfulness, p. 3

 * The thing the ecologically illiterate don't realize about an ecosystem is that it's a system. A system! A system maintains a certain fluid stability that can be destroyed by a misstep in just one niche. A system has order, a flowing from point to point. If something dams the flow, order collapses. The untrained miss the collapse until too late. That's why the highest function of ecology is the understanding of consequences.
 * Frank Herbert, in Dune ("Appendix I: The Ecology of Dune")

 * Ecology is a dirty seven-letter word to many people. They are like heavy sleepers refusing to be aroused. "Leave me alone! It's not time to get up yet!"
 * Frank Herbert, "Introduction" to New World or No World (1970), an anthology of writing on environmentalism.

 * I will clarify a distinction that I consider fundamental to political ecology. I shall distinguish the environment as commons from the environment as resource. On our ability to make this particular distinction depends not only the construction of a sound theoretical ecology, but also — and more importantly — effective ecological jurisprudence.
 * Ivan Illich, Silence is a Commons (1982).

 * That land is a community is the basic concept of ecology, but that land is to be loved and respected is an extension of ethics.
 * Aldo Leopold, A Sand County Almanac, 1949.

M - R

 * If there are favourable habitats and favorable forms of association for animals and plants, as ecology demonstrates, why not for men? If each particular natural environment has has its own balance; is there not perhaps an equivalent of this in culture?
 * Lewis Mumford, The Culture of Cities, Secker & Warburg, 1938.

 * Even when the pioneer didn't rape Nature, he divorced her a little too easily: he missed the great lesson that both ecology and medicine teach - that Man's great mission is not to conquer nature by main force but to cooperate with her intelligently but lovingly for his own purposes.
 * Lewis Mumford, "California and the Human Prospect", Sierra Club Bulletin, vol. 47, no. 9, 1962, pp. 45-6.

S - Z

 * A Healthy Ecology is the Basis for a Healthy Economy
 * Claudine Schneider, U.S. Representative in The Green Lifestyle Handbook.

 * Many people are under the illusion that before the meddling of humans, the populations of different types of plants and animals tended to be pretty much constant. This isn’t really the way things work, however, in a finite world. Instead, the populations of many species cycle up and down, depending on particular conditions such as the population of animals that prey on them, the availability of food, the prevalence of disease, and the weather conditions. Even forests exhibit surprising variability. Many undergo regular cycles of burning. In fact, some species of trees, such as the giant sequoias in Yosemite, require fire in order to reproduce. These cycles are simply part of the natural order of self-organizing ecosystems in a finite world.
 * Gail Tverberg, "Humans Left Sustainability Behind as Hunter-Gatherers" (December 2, 2020)

 * The biological world is constantly faced with the problem of too many animals (for example, wolves and deer) wanting to occupy a given space with specific resources, such as water, sunlight, and smaller plants and animals to eat.
 * Gail Tverberg, "The advanced economies are headed for a downfall" (June 22, 2024)

 * To halt the decline of an ecosystem, it is necessary to think like an ecosystem.
 * Douglas P. Wheeler, EPA Journal, September-October 1990

 * In recent years it has become impossible to talk about man's relation to nature without referring to "ecology"...such leading scientists in this area as Rachel Carson, Barry Commoner, Eugene Odum, Paul Ehrlich and others, have become our new delphic voices...so influential has their branch of science become that our time might well be called the "Age of Ecology".
 * Donald Worster, Nature's Economy, Cambridge University Press, 1994.

 * For some years now the activity of the artist in our society has been trending more toward the function of the ecologist: one who deals with environmental relationships. Ecology is defined as the totality or pattern of relations between organisms and their environment. Thus the act of creation for the new artist is not so much the invention of new objects as the revelation of previously unrecognized relation- ships between existing phenomena, both physical and metaphysical. So we find that ecology is art in the most fundamental and pragmatic sense, expanding our apprehension of reality.
 * Gene Youngblood, , 1970 p. 346; The Artist as Ecologist

title: Ecology


text:
Mrs Patrick Campbell

Beatrice Stella Tanner Campbell (9 February 1865 – 10 April 1940) was a British actress, the first actress to play Eliza Doolittle, in George Bernard Shaw's Pygmalion. Born Beatrice Stella Tanner she was most commonly known as Mrs. Patrick Campbell or "Mrs. Pat" in reference to her first husband, who died in the Boer War.

Quotes

 * Does it really matter what these affectionate people do — so long as they don’t do it in the streets and frighten the horses!
 * Reply to a young actress who asserted that an older actor in a production showed too much affection for the leading man (c. 1910); as reported by Alan Dent in Mrs. Patrick Campbell, p. 78 (1961).
 * Variants: "My dear, I don't care what they do, so long as they don't do it in the street and frighten the horses." "I don’t mind where people make love, so long as they don't do it in the street and frighten the horses." "It doesn't make any difference what you do in the bedroom as long as you don't do it in the street and frighten the horses." "Does it really matter what these affectionate people do, so long as they don't do it on the street and frighten the horses?"
 * On the internet, a similar comment regarding politicians has been widely attributed to Victor Hugo, but without any definite sources. It appears to be a modern satirical invention, derived from Mrs. Campbell's statements.

 * Oh dear me — it's too late to do anything but accept you and love you — but when you were quite a little boy, somebody ought to have said "hush" just once!
 * Letter to George Bernard Shaw (1 November 1912) published in Bernard Shaw and Mrs. Patrick Campbell (1952), p. 52; this was later used in the play Dear Liar : A Biography in Two Acts (1960) by Jerome Kilty, an adaptation of the correspondence between Shaw and Campbell.

 * The deep, deep peace of the double-bed after the hurly-burly of the chaise-longue.
 * Quoted in Alexander Woollcott, “The First Mrs. Tanqueray,” While Rome Burns (1934)

 * She has such pretty little eyes — And they're so close together!
 * Comment about actress Norma Shearer, quoted in They Had Faces Then: Super Stars, Stars, and Starlets Of The 1930's (1974) by John Shipman Springer and, Jack D. Hamilton, p. 54

 * That's because Tallulah's always skating on thin ice, and they want to be there when it breaks.
 * On the glut of celebrities attending the original production of Thornton Wilder's ; as quoted in "The Lyon's Den" by Jeffrey Lyons, Dayton Daily News (March 4, 1943), p. 25

Disputed

 * Success is the ability to go from failure to failure without losing your enthusiasm.
 * No definite source has been found for this statement; though most often attributed to Sir Winston Churchill, and sometimes to Abraham Lincoln, it has only rarely been attributed to Campbell.

Quotes about Campbell

 * I want my dark lady. I want my angel. I want my tempter, I want my Freia with her apples. I want the lighter of my seven lamps of beauty, honour, laughter, music, love, life and immortality. I want my inspiration, my folly, my happiness, my divinity, my madness, my selfishness, my final sanity and sanctification, my transfiguration, my purification, my light across the sea, my palm across the desert, my garden of lovely flowers, my million nameless joys, my day's wage, my night's dream, my darling and my star.
 * George Bernard Shaw in a letter to Campbell, published in George Bernard Shaw: Man of the Century (1956) by Archibald Henderson, p. 827

title: Mrs Patrick Campbell


text:
Giacomo Casanova

Giacomo Casanova (2 April 1725 – 4 June 1798) was an Italian adventurer and author; also known as Jacques Casanova de Seingalt. He was famous for his elaborate love affairs and his encounters with famous contemporary figures.

Quotes

 * I saw that everything famous and beautiful in the world, if we judge by the descriptions and drawings of writers and artists, always loses when we go to see it and examine it closely.
 * History of My Life (trans. Trask 1967), 1997 reprint, vol. 11, chap. 4, p. 112

 * Great God, and you witnesses of my death, I have lived as a philosopher, and I die as a Christian.
 * Last words, according to his friend the Prince de Ligne (Mémoires et mélanges historiques et littéraires, book IV, p. 42, translated for instance in: The Freeman, p. 224)

Memoirs of J. Casanova de Seingalt (1894)

 * This work exists in two French editions and translations: The "Laforgue edition" (1826-1838), heavily rewritten and censored: translated as Memoirs of J. Casanova de Seingalt (trans. Machen 1894) and The "Brockhaus-Plon edition" (1960-1962), the original text translated as History of My Life (trans. Trask 1967), and as the digest The Story of My Life (trans. Sartarelli/Hawkes 2001), 500pg of excerpts from the 4000pg text. These quotes are primarily from the Full text online as translated by Arthur Machen in 1894, with additional material discovered by Arthur Symons. This was translated from the heavily rewritten and censored edition established by Jean Laforgue, the only version available until the original French text was published in 1960.

 * I will begin with this confession: whatever I have done in the course of my life, whether it be good or evil, has been done freely; I am a free agent.

 * I believe in the existence of an immaterial God, the Author and Master of all beings and all things, and I feel that I never had any doubt of His existence, from the fact that I have always relied upon His providence, prayed to Him in my distress, and that He has always granted my prayers. Despair brings death, but prayer does away with despair; and when a man has prayed he feels himself supported by new confidence and endowed with power to act. As to the means employed by the Sovereign Master of human beings to avert impending dangers from those who beseech His assistance, I confess that the knowledge of them is above the intelligence of man, who can but wonder and adore.

 * Man is free, but his freedom ceases when he has no faith in it; and the greater power he ascribes to faith, the more he deprives himself of that power which God has given to him when He endowed him with the gift of reason. Reason is a particle of the Creator's divinity. When we use it with a spirit of humility and justice we are certain to please the Giver of that precious gift.

 * Man is free; yet we must not suppose that he is at liberty to do everything he pleases, for he becomes a slave the moment he allows his actions to be ruled by passion. The man who has sufficient power over himself to wait until his nature has recovered its even balance is the truly wise man, but such beings are seldom met with.

 * The reader of these Memoirs will discover that I never had any fixed aim before my eyes, and that my system, if it can be called a system, has been to glide away unconcernedly on the stream of life, trusting to the wind wherever it led. How many changes arise from such an independent mode of life!

 * My success and my misfortunes, the bright and the dark days I have gone through, everything has proved to me that in this world, either physical or moral, good comes out of evil just as well as evil comes out of good. My errors will point to thinking men the various roads, and will teach them the great art of treading on the brink of the precipice without falling into it. It is only necessary to have courage, for strength without self-confidence is useless. I have often met with happiness after some imprudent step which ought to have brought ruin upon me, and although passing a vote of censure upon myself I would thank God for his mercy. But, by way of compensation, dire misfortune has befallen me in consequence of actions prompted by the most cautious wisdom. This would humble me; yet conscious that I had acted rightly I would easily derive comfort from that conviction.

 * In spite of a good foundation of sound morals, the natural offspring of the Divine principles which had been early rooted in my heart, I have been throughout my life the victim of my senses; I have found delight in losing the right path, I have constantly lived in the midst of error, with no consolation but the consciousness of my being mistaken. Therefore, dear reader, I trust that, far from attaching to my history the character of impudent boasting, you will find in my Memoirs only the characteristic proper to a general confession, and that my narratory style will be the manner neither of a repenting sinner, nor of a man ashamed to acknowledge his frolics. They are the follies inherent to youth; I make sport of them, and, if you are kind, you will not yourself refuse them a good-natured smile. You will be amused when you see that I have more than once deceived without the slightest qualm of conscience, both knaves and fools. As to the deceit perpetrated upon women, let it pass, for, when love is in the way, men and women as a general rule dupe each other. But on the score of fools it is a very different matter. I always feel the greatest bliss when I recollect those I have caught in my snares, for they generally are insolent, and so self-conceited that they challenge wit. We avenge intellect when we dupe a fool, and it is a victory not to be despised for a fool is covered with steel and it is often very hard to find his vulnerable part. In fact, to gull a fool seems to me an exploit worthy of a witty man. I have felt in my very blood, ever since I was born, a most unconquerable hatred towards the whole tribe of fools, and it arises from the fact that I feel myself a blockhead whenever I am in their company. I am very far from placing them in the same class with those men whom we call stupid, for the latter are stupid only from deficient education, and I rather like them. I have met with some of them — very honest fellows, who, with all their stupidity, had a kind of intelligence and an upright good sense, which cannot be the characteristics of fools. They are like eyes veiled with the cataract, which, if the disease could be removed, would be very beautiful.

 * I have written the history of my life, and I have a perfect right to do so; but am I wise in throwing it before a public of which I know nothing but evil? No, I am aware it is sheer folly, but I want to be busy, I want to laugh, and why should I deny myself this gratification?

 * An ancient author tells us somewhere, with the tone of a pedagogue, if you have not done anything worthy of being recorded, at least write something worthy of being read. It is a precept as beautiful as a diamond of the first water cut in England, but it cannot be applied to me, because I have not written either a novel, or the life of an illustrious character. Worthy or not, my life is my subject, and my subject is my life. I have lived without dreaming that I should ever take a fancy to write the history of my life, and, for that very reason, my Memoirs may claim from the reader an interest and a sympathy which they would not have obtained, had I always entertained the design to write them in my old age, and, still more, to publish them.

 * The chief business of my life has always been to indulge my senses; I never knew anything of greater importance. I felt myself born for the fair sex, I have ever loved it dearly, and I have been loved by it as often and as much as I could.

 * The man who forgets does not forgive, he only loses the remembrance of the harm inflicted on him; forgiveness is the offspring of a feeling of heroism, of a noble heart, of a generous mind, whilst forgetfulness is only the result of a weak memory, or of an easy carelessness, and still oftener of a natural desire for calm and quietness. Hatred, in the course of time, kills the unhappy wretch who delights in nursing it in his bosom.

 * Should anyone bring against me an accusation of sensuality he would be wrong, for all the fierceness of my senses never caused me to neglect any of my duties.

 * One of the advantages of a great sorrow is that nothing else seems painful.

 * Nothing is so catching as the plague; now, fanaticism, no matter of what nature, is only the plague of the human mind.

 * Economy in pleasure is not to my taste.

 * Learn from me that a wise man who has heard a criminal accusation related with so many absurd particulars ceases to be wise when he makes himself the echo of what he has heard, for if the accusation should turn out to be a calumny, he would himself become the accomplice of the slanderer.

Referenced

 * This section needs better organization and integration onto the page

 * As for myself, I always willingly acknowledge my own self as the principal cause of every good and of every evil which may befall me; therefore I have always found myself capable of being my own pupil, and ready to love my teacher.
 * Memoirs (trans. Machen 1894), book 1, Preface

 * I have always loved truth so passionately that I have often resorted to lying as a way of first introducing it into minds which were ignorant of its charms.
 * History of My Life (trans. Trask 1967), 1997 reprint, Preface, p. 34

 * I have always had such sincere love for truth, that I have often begun by telling stories for the purpose of getting truth to enter the heads of those who could not appreciate its charms.
 * Memoirs (trans. Machen 1894), book 1, Preface

 * [ Malipiero's advice to Casanova.] If you wish your audience to cry, you must shed tears yourself, but if you wish to make them laugh you must contrive to look as serious as a judge.
 * Memoirs (trans. Machen 1894), book 1 (Venetian Years), chap. 14

 * Man is free; but not unless he believes he is[.]
 * The Story of My Life (trans. Sartarelli/Hawkes 2001), Preface, p. 1

 * Man is a free agent; but he is not free if he does not believe it[.]
 * History of My Life (trans. Trask 1967), 1997 reprint, Preface, p. 26

 * Man is free, but his freedom ceases when he has no faith in it[.]
 * Memoirs (trans. Machen 1894), book 1, Preface

 * [Marriage] is the tomb of love.
 * History of My Life (trans. Trask 1967), 1997 reprint, vol. 9, chap. 8, p. 208 ("She will not believe it, for she knows too well that marriage is a sacrament which I detest." "Why?" "Because it is the tomb of love.")

 * [Matrimony] is the grave of love.
 * Memoirs (trans. Machen 1894), book 5 (In London and Moscow), chap. 8 (“She won’t believe it, as she knows my horror for the sacrament of matrimony.” “How is that?” “I hate it because it is the grave of love.”)

 * [T]hey who do not love [life] do not deserve it.
 * History of My Life (trans. Trask 1967), 1997 reprint, Preface, p. 35

 * [T]hose who do not love [life] are unworthy of it.
 * The Story of My Life (trans. Sartarelli/Hawkes 2001), Preface, p. 10
 * Memoirs (trans. Machen 1894), book 1, Preface (I hate death; for, happy or miserable, life is the only blessing which man possesses, and those who do not love it are unworthy of it.)

 * [W]e avenge intelligence when we deceive a fool, and the victory is worth the trouble[.]
 * The Story of My Life (trans. Sartarelli/Hawkes 2001), Preface, p. 3

 * We avenge intellect when we dupe a fool, and it is a victory not to be despised[.]
 * Memoirs (trans. Machen 1894), book 1, Preface (We avenge intellect when we dupe a fool, and it is a victory not to be despised [...])

 * Whether happy or unhappy, life is the only treasure man possesses[.]
 * The Story of My Life (trans. Sartarelli/Hawkes 2001), Preface, p. 10

 * Happy or unhappy, life is the only treasure which man possesses[.]
 * History of My Life (trans. Trask 1967), 1997 reprint, Preface, p. 35

 * [H]appy or miserable, life is the only blessing which man possesses[.]
 * Memoirs (trans. Machen 1894), book 1, Preface (I hate death; for, happy or miserable, life is the only blessing which man possesses, and those who do not love it are unworthy of it.)

 * When a sonnet is mediocre it is bad, for it should be sublime.
 * History of My Life (trans. Trask 1967), 1997 reprint, v. 7, chapter 7, p. 143

 * This extremely interesting girl, after giving me a single glance from her beautiful eyes, stubbornly refused to look at me again. My vanity at once made me think that it was only so that I would be at full liberty to study her impeccable beauty.  It was on this girl that I instantly set my sights, as if all Europe were only a seraglio provided for my pleasures.
 * History of My Life (trans. Trask 1967), 1997 reprint, v. 7, chapter 2, p. 19

 * Even if astrology had been a real science, I knew nothing about it. We find countless events in real history which would never have occurred if they had not been predicted. This is because we are the authors of our so-called destiny, and all the 'antecedent necessities' of the Stoics are chimerical; the argument which proves the power of destiny seems strong only because it is sophistical. Cicero laughed at it. Someone whom he had invited to dinner, who had promised to go, and who had not appeared, wrote to him that since he had not gone it was evident that he had not been iturus ('going to go'). Cicero answers him: Veni ergo cras, et veni etiamsi venturus non sis ('Then come tomorrow, and come even if you are not going to come'). At this date, when I am conscious that I rely entirely on my common sense, I owe this explanation to my reader, despite the axiom, Fata viam inveniunt ('Destiny finds the way'). If the fatalists are obliged by their own philosophy to consider the concatenation of all events necessary, a parte ante ('a priori'), what remains of man's moral freedom is nothing; and in that case he can neither earn merit nor incur guilt. I cannot in conscience admit that I am a machine.
 * History of My Life (trans. Trask 1967), 1997 reprint, v. 7, chapter 8, p. 172

 * If I had married a woman intelligent enough to guide me, to rule me without my feeling that I was ruled, I should have taken good care of my money, I should have had children, and I should not be, as now I am, alone in the world and possessing nothing.
 * History of My Life (trans. Trask 1967), 1997 reprint, v. 8, chapter 4, p. 94

 * Since, though I do not repent my amorous exploits, I am far from wanting my example to contribute to the corruption of the fair sex, which deserves our homage for so many reasons, I hope that my observations will foster prudence in fathers and mothers and thus at least deserve their esteem.
 * History of My Life (trans. Trask 1967), 1997 reprint, v. 8, chapter 4, p. 110

 * Things have come to such a point in good society that, if you want to be polite, you can no longer ask a man from what country he comes, for if he is a Norman or a Calabrian he has, when he tells you so, to beg your pardon, or, if he is from the Pays de Vaud, to say he is Swiss. Nor will you ask a nobleman what his arms are, for if he does not know the jargon of heraldry you will embarrass him. You must not compliment a gentleman on his fine hair, for if it is a wig, he may think you are mocking him, nor praise a man or a woman on their fine teeth, for they may be false.
 * History of My Life (trans. Trask 1967), 1997 reprint, v. 8, chapter 9, p. 243

 * I loved, I was loved, my health was good, I had a great deal of money, and I spent it, I was happy and I confessed it to myself.
 * History of My Life (trans. Trask 1967), 1997 reprint, v. 8, chapter 10, p. 274

 * The spirit of rebellion is present in every great city, and the great task of wise government is to keep it dormant, for if it wakes it is a torrent which no dam can hold back.
 * History of My Life (trans. Trask 1967), 1997 reprint, v. 9, chapter 7, p. 174

 * The happiest man is the one who knows how to obtain the greatest sum of happiness without ever failing in the discharge of his duties, and the most unhappy is the man who has adopted a profession in which he finds himself constantly under the sad necessity of foreseeing the future.
 * "History of My Life" Chapter 17

title: Giacomo Casanova


text:
Falling Down

Falling Down is a 1993 drama film about an unemployed defense worker frustrated with the various flaws he sees in society, who begins to psychotically and violently lash out against them.
 * Directed by Joel Schumacher. Written by Ebbe Roe Smith.

A Tale Of Urban Reality.taglines

Bill Foster

 * [Before destroying merchandise in a Korean drug store] I'm rolling prices back to 1965! What do you think of that?

 * [Bill Foster approaches the gang after they crashed] You missed. [picks up the UZI and shoots, barely missing the only survivor] I missed too. [the survivor begs for mercy; Foster shoots him in the leg] You see, that's the concept. Take some shooting lessons, asshole.

 * God bless the working stiff!

 * I am not a vigilante. I am just trying to get home to my little girl's birthday. Now if everyone will just stay out of my way, then nobody will get hurt.

 * Why have you put barbed wire on a fence? Is this how you rich people amuse yourselves? You put barbed wire on the fence so innocent people like me can hurt themselves looking in?

 * I lost my job. Actually I didn't lose it. It lost me. I'm overeducated, underskilled—Maybe it's the other way around. I forget—but I'm obsolete. I'm not economically viable. I can't even support my own kid.

 * I've passed the point of no return. You know when that is? That's the point in a journey where it's longer to go back to the beginning than it is to continue to the end. It's like when those astronauts got in trouble when they were going to the moon. Somebody messed up and they had to get them back to Earth but first they had to go around the moon. They were out of contact for hours. Everybody waited breathlessly to see if a bunch of dead guys in a can would pop out the other side. I'm on the other side of the moon now and everybody will have to wait until I pop out.

Martin Prendergast

 * Is that what this is about? You're angry because you got lied to? Is that why my chicken dinner is drying out in the oven? Hey, they lie to everybody. They lie to the fish! But that doesn't give you any special right to do what you did today.

Dialogue

 * Nick: We're the same, you and me. We're the same. Don't you see?
 * Bill Foster: We are not the same. I'm an American. You're a sick asshole.
 * Nick: Just what kind of vigilante are you?
 * Bill Foster: I am not a vigilante. I am just trying to get home to my little girl's birthday party, and if you all just stay out of my way, nobody will get hurt.
 * Nick: Fuck you! Who the fuck are you? Are you fucking with me?
 * Bill Foster: I am just disagreeing with you! In America, we have the freedom of speech, the right to disagree!
 * Nick: Fuck you and your freedom!

 * Bill Foster: Hi. I'd like some breakfast.
 * Rick: We stopped serving breakfast.
 * Bill Foster: I know you stopped serving breakfast Rick, Sheila told me that you... why am I calling you by your first names? I don't even know you. I still call my boss 'Mister' even though I've been working with him for seven years, but all of a sudden I walk in here and I'm calling you Rick and Sheila like we're in some kind of AA meeting and... I don't want to be your buddy, Rick. I just want a little breakfast?
 * Sheila: You can call me Miss Folsom if you want.
 * Rick: Sheila. We stopped serving breakfast at 11:30.
 * [Foster looks at his watch to find it's 3 minutes past the deadline. He places his gym bag full of guns on the counter.]
 * Bill Foster: Rick, have you ever heard the expression "the customer is always right"?
 * Rick: [sighs] Yeah.
 * Bill Foster: Well, here I am. The customer.
 * Rick: [still smiling] That's not our policy. You'll have to order something from the lunch menu.
 * Bill Foster: I don't want lunch. I want breakfast.
 * Rick: Yeah, well hey, I'm really sorry.
 * Bill Foster: [smiles back] Yeah, well hey, I'm real sorry too. [pulls out a TEC-9]

 * Bill Foster: What kind of doctor lives here?
 * Man: Plastic surgeon.
 * Bill Foster: Plastic surgery bought this? Guess I'm in the wrong racket. Are there correspondence courses in plastic surgery?

 * Sergeant Prendergast: Now Let's go meet some nice policemen. They're good guys. Come on, let's go.
 * Bill Foster: I'm the bad guy?
 * Prendergast: Yeah.
 * Bill Foster: How did that happen? I did everything they told me to.

Taglines

 * A Tale Of Urban Reality.

 * The adventures of an ordinary man at war with the everyday world.

Cast

 * Michael Douglas - William Foster
 * Robert Duvall - Sgt. Martin Prendergast
 * Barbara Hershey - Beth Trevino
 * Rachel Ticotin - Det. Sandra Torres
 * Tuesday Weld - Amanda Prendergast
 * Frederic Forrest - Nick
 * Lois Smith - Foster's mother
 * Joey Hope Singer - Adele Foster-Trevino
 * Michael Paul Chan - Mr. Lee
 * Raymond J. Barry - Capt. William Yardley
 * D. W. Moffett - Det. Lydecker
 * Steve Park - Detective Brian
 * Karina Arroyave - Angie
 * Brent Hinkley - Rick
 * Dedee Pfeiffer - Sheila Folsom

title: Falling Down


text:
Lloyd Bentsen

Lloyd Millard Bentsen Jr. (February 11, 1921 – May 23, 2006) was a four-term United States senator (1971 until 1993) from Texas and the Democratic Party nominee for Vice President in 1988. He also served in the U.S. House of Representatives from 1949 to 1955 and as Chairman of the Senate Finance Committee and as U.S. Treasury Secretary.

Quotes

 * [A] fellow from Texas can tell the difference between grass-roots and AstroTurf.
 * Apparent 1985 coining of the term astroturfing, meaning "creating or operating fake 'grass-roots' campaigns"
 * Cited in

 * Senator, I served with Jack Kennedy. I knew Jack Kennedy. Jack Kennedy was a friend of mine. Senator, you're no Jack Kennedy.
 * 1988 Vice-Presidential debate with Dan Quayle
 * Full transcript of debate
 * YouTube video

 * As one of our colleagues recently put it, this Republican pledge of no new taxes is pure Bushlips. It's Bushlips when the president says 'No new taxes' and sends a budget requiring the Finance Committee to raise $20 billion in new revenues: $15 billion in taxes and $5 billion in user fees.
 * quoted in
 * alluding to George H. W. Bush's pledge “Read my lips: no new taxes” while accepting the presidential nomination at the 1988 Republican National Convention

title: Lloyd Bentsen


text:
Avenue Q

Avenue Q is a Tony Award-winning Broadway musical.

"Everyone's a Little Bit Racist"

 * Brian: Hey guys, what are you laughing about?
 * Gary: Racism!!
 * Brian: Cool!
 * Christmas Eve: Brian! Come back here! You take out recycrabres!
 * Princeton: What's that mean?
 * Brian: Um...recyclables.
 * All but Brian: *loud laughter*
 * Brian: Hey! Don't laugh at her! How many languages do you speak?
 * Kate : Oh, come off it, Brian! (LYRIC) Everyone's a little bit racist...
 * Brian: I'm not!
 * Princeton: Oh no?
 * Brian: Nope!
 * Princeton: Ha!
 * Brian: How many Oriental wives have you got?
 * Christmas Eve: What?! Brian!
 * Princeton: Brian, buddy, where've you been? The term is Asian-American!
 * Christmas Eve: I know you are no intending to be, but carring me "Orientar"... offensive to me!

-
 * Christmas Eve: The Jews have all the money and the Whites have all the power, and I'm arways in taxi-cab with driver who no shower!
 * Princeton: Me, too!
 * Kate: Me, too!
 * Gary: I can't even get a taxi!

-
 * Everyone's a little bit racist sometimes.
 * Doesn't mean we go around committing hate crimes!
 * Look around and you will find
 * No one's really color-blind.
 * Maybe it's a fact we all should face -
 * Everyone makes judgments... based on race!

-
 * Ethnic jokes may be uncouth,
 * But you laugh because they're based on truth!
 * Don't take them as personal attacks.
 * Everyone enjoys them... so relax!

-
 * Everyone's a little bit racist, it's true.
 * But everyone is just about as racist as you!
 * If we all could just admit
 * That we are racist a little bit,
 * And everyone stopped being so PC,
 * Maybe we could live in ... harmony!
 * Christmas Eve: Everyone's a rittre bit racist!

-
 * Gary: You were telling a black joke!
 * Princeton: Well, sure, Gary, but lots of people tell black jokes.
 * Gary: I don't.
 * Princeton: Well, of course, you don't. You're black! But I bet you tell Polack jokes, right?
 * Gary: Well, of course, I do. Ha-ha! Those stupid Polacks!

-

"What Do You Do With A B.A. In English? / It Sucks To Be Me"

 * Princeton: What do you do with a B.A. in English? What is my life going to be? Four years of college and plenty of knowledge, Have earned me this useless degree. I can't pay the bills yet, because I have no skills yet; The world is a big scary place, But somehow I can't shake the feeling I might make A difference to the human race...

-
 * Christmas Eve: Why you all so happy?
 * Nicky: Because our lives suck!
 * Christmas Eve: Your rives suck? I healing you correctry? Ha! I coming to this country for opportunities. Try to work in Korean deri, but I am Japanese. But with hard work I earn two masters degrees in sociar work and now I a therapist but I have no crients and I have an unemproyed fiancé and we have rots of birrs to pay! It suck to be me. It suck to be me. I say it suck-a-suck-a-suck-a-suck-a-suck-a-suck-a-suck-a-suck-a-suck-a-suck-a-suck-a-suck-a-suck, it suck to be me!

 * Kate Monster: I'm kind of pretty, and pretty damn smart.
 * Brian:You are.
 * Kate Monster: (to Brian) Thanks! I like romantic things like music and art, and as you know I have a gigantic heart! So why don't I have a boyfriend? Fuck! It sucks to be me!

-
 * Gary: I'm Gary Coleman, from T.V.'s Different Strokes. I made a lot of money that got stolen by my folks! Now I'm broke and I'm the butt of everyone's jokes but I'm here, the superintendent on Avenue Q!
 * Everyone: It sucks to be you!
 * Kate: You win.
 * Everyone: It sucks to be you!
 * Brian: I feel better now.
 * Gary: Try having people stopping you to ask you, "What're you talking about, Willis?" It gets old.

"If You Were Gay"

 * Nicky: Well, okay, but just so you know
 * if you were gay
 * that'd be okay.
 * I mean because, hey! Ha!
 * I like you anyway!
 * Because you see,
 * if it were me,
 * I would feel free to say
 * that I was gay.
 * (But I'm not gay.)
 * Rod:Nicky,please!I am trying to read!
 * (sigh)What?!
 * Nicky:If you were queer,
 * I'd still be here,
 * Year after year,
 * Because you're dear
 * To me.
 * And I know that you,
 * Would accept me too,
 * If I told you today,
 * "Hey!Guess what,I'm gay"
 * But I'm not gay.
 * I'happy,
 * Just being with you.
 * Rod:High button shoes,pal Joey...
 * Nicky:So what should it,
 * Matter to me,
 * What you to do in
 * With guys?
 * Rod:Nicky,that's Gross!
 * Nicky:No,it's not!
 * If you were gay,
 * Rod:Awwh!
 * Nicky:I'd shout hooray!
 * Rod:I not listening!
 * Nicky:And here I'd stay,
 * Rod:La la la la la!!
 * Nicky:But I wouldn't get
 * In your way.
 * Rod:Aaaah!
 * Nicky: You can count on me
 * to always be
 * beside you every day,
 * to tell you "It's okay,
 * you were just born that way,
 * and, as they say,
 * it's in your DNA!"
 * You're GAY!
 * Rod: I am NOT gay!
 * Nicky: If you WERE gay.
 * Rod: Argh!

"Schadenfreude"

 * Nicky: "Schadenfreude", huh? What's that? Some kind of Nazi word?
 * Gary Coleman: Yup! It's German for "happiness at the misfortune of others".
 * Nicky: "Happiness at the misfortune of others" ... That is German!

-
 * Gary: Right now you are down and out, and feeling really crappy.
 * Nicky: I'll say.
 * Gary: And when I see how sad you are, it sort of makes me... happy!
 * Nicky: "Happy?!"
 * Gary: Sorry, Nicky, human nature, nothing I can do! It's Schadenfreude, making me feel glad that I'm not you!

-
 * Nicky: How about straight A students getting B's?
 * Gary: Exes getting STDs!
 * Nicky: Waking doormen from their naps!
 * Gary: Watching tourist reading maps!
 * Nicky: Football players getting tackled!
 * Gary: CEOs getting shackled!
 * Nicky: Watching actors never reach
 * Both: The ending of their Oscar speech!

-
 * Nicky: Being on an elevator when somebody shouts HOLD THE DOOR!!!
 * Gary: Oh yeah..
 * Both: NO! Schadenfreude!
 * Gary: Fuck you, lady! That's what stairs are for!

"The Internet is for Porn"

 * Kate Monster: Finally! I get to teach a whole lesson all by myself!  And I'm going to teach something relevant, something modern: the internet! (singing) Oh! The Internet is really, really great!
 * Trekkie Monster: For porn!
 * Kate Monster: I've got a fast connection so I don't have to wait!
 * Trekkie Monster: For porn!
 * Kate Monster: There's always some new site-
 * Trekkie Monster: For porn!
 * Kate Monster: I browse all day and night-
 * Trekkie Monster: For porn!
 * Kate Monster: It's like I'm surfing at the speed of light!
 * Trekkie Monster: FOR PORN!

-
 * Trekkie Monster: The Internet is for porn!
 * Kate Monster: Trekkie!
 * Trekkie Monster: The Internet is for porn!
 * Kate Monster: What are you doing?
 * Trekkie Monster: Why you think the net was born? Porn, porn, porn!

-
 * Trekkie Monster: Me up all night, honking me horn to porn, porn, porn!

 * Kate Monster: That's gross! You're a pervert!
 * Trekkie Monster: Ah, sticks and stones, Kate Monster!
 * Kate Monster: No, really! You're a pervert! Normal people don't sit at home and look at porn on the Internet.
 * Trekkie Monster: Ohhhh?
 * Kate Monster: What?
 * Trekkie Monster: You have NO idea! Ready, normal people?
 * Brian: Ready!
 * Princeton: Ready!
 * Rod: Ready!
 * Gary: Ready!
 * Trekkie Monster: Let me hear it!
 * Trekkie Monster, Brian, Princeton, Rod, Gary: The Internet is for porn!
 * Princeton: Sorry, Kate.
 * Trekkie Monster, Brian, Princeton, Rod, Gary: The Internet is for porn!
 * Princeton: I masturbate!
 * Trekkie Monster: All these guys unzip their flies for porn, porn, porn!

-
 * Kate Monster: The Internet is NOT for porn!
 * Trekkie, Brian, Princeton, Rod, Gary: Porn, porn-!
 * Kate Monster: HOLD ON A SECOND!
 * Trekkie Monster: What?
 * Kate Monster: Now, I happen to know for a fact that you, Rod, check your portfolio and trade stocks online.
 * Rod: That's correct.
 * Kate Monster: And, Brian, you buy things on Amazon.com!
 * Brian: Sure!
 * Kate Monster: And, Gary, you keep selling your possessions on eBay.
 * Gary: Yes, I do!
 * Kate Monster: And, Princeton, you sent me that sweet on-line birthday card.
 * Princeton: True.
 * Trekkie Monster: Oh, but Kate, what you think he do after, hmmmm?
 * Brian, Rod, Gary: [chuckling]
 * Princeton: Yeah...
 * Kate: EEEEEW!!

-
 * Trekkie Monster: Grab your dick and double-click for porn, porn, porn!

The More You Rove Someone

 * Christmas Eve: Rove...
 * Kate Monster: Love...
 * Christmas Eve: And hate...
 * Kate Monster: Hate...
 * Christmas Eve: They rike two brothers...
 * Kate Monster: Brothers...
 * Christmas Eve: Who go on a date.
 * Kate Monster: Who... what!?

"Fantasies Come True"

 * Nicky: I know, put my earmuffs on the cookie.

-
 * Nicky:No, I'll wear the purple shoes, a- who painted the kitten?

-
 * Nicky:: You look like David Hasselhoff.

 * Nicky: Hey, Rod, buddy, you're talking in your sleep!
 * Rod: I thought you were talking in your sleep!!
 * Nicky: No, I just came to bed. You're dreaming, it's all.
 * Rod: Oh...
 * Nicky: Sounded like a nice dream, though.
 * Rod: Yes, it was a nice dream...
 * Nicky: Goodnight.
 * Rod: Goodnight, Nicky.

"I Wish I Could Go Back to College"

 * Kate: I wish I could go back to college, life was so simple back then.
 * Nicky: What would I give, to go back and live, in a dorm with a meal plan again?
 * Princeton: I wish I could go back to college, in college you know who you are. You sit in the quad and think, Oh my God, I am totally going to go far!
 * All: How do I go back to college? I don't know who I am anymore!
 * Princeton: I want to go back to my room and find a message in dry erase pen on the door...whoa whoa whoa...I wish I could just drop a class.
 * Nicky: Or get into a play.
 * Kate: Or change my major.
 * Princeton: Or fuck my T.A.!
 * All: I need an academic advisor to point the way! We could be sitting in the computer lab, four a.m. before the final paper is due, cursing the world because I didn't start sooner, and seeing the rest of the class there too! I wish I could go back to college! How do I go back to college?
 * Princeton: I wish I had taken more pictures.
 * Nicky: But if I were to go back to college, think what a loser I'd be. I'd walk through the quad and think, "Oh, my God!"
 * All: "These kids are so much younger than me!"

"From Christmas Eve and Brian's wedding"

 * Nicky: So, yes, definitely, I would say that my buddy Rod is, indeed, a closeted homosexual!
 * Rod: Nicky! How could you say that about me?!
 * Nicky: Uhhh, hi Rod! No, all I said was 'Yes, definitely, I would say that my buddy Rod has... an undescended testicle!'
 * Rod: AH! No! I heard you!
 * Nicky: Oh, gee, I'm sorry Rod...
 * Rod: Uh..! Uh..! Well, I am not a closeted... homo-whatever!

-
 * Kate: So you're saying that you don't want to spend time with me anymore?
 * Princeton: No, no, I love being with you.
 * Kate: Good, because for a moment I thought--
 * Princeton: But I don't want a girlfriend before I find my purpose in life.
 * Kate: But Princeto--
 * Princeton: It's already settled, Kate! If we stay like this, I promise you we won't even be friends in the end.
 * Kate: But I'm not looking for friends. I have plenty of friends.
 * Princeton: You like me, don't you?
 * Kate: Yes... which is why I think you should get out of here.
 * Princeton: You want me to leave?
 * Kate: Unless you've got another definition for get out of here.

"My Girlfriend Who Lives in Canada"

 * Rod: Oh, I wish you could meet my girlfriend. My girlfriend who lives in Canada. She couldn't be sweeter, I wish you could meet her! My girlfriend who lives in Canada! Her name is Alberta, she lives in Vancouver. She cooks like my mother and sucks like a hoover! Ha-ha! I e-mail her every single day just to make sure that everything's okay! It's a pity she lives so far away in Canada! Last week she was here, but she had the flu. Too bad because I wanted to introduce her to you. It's so sad but there wasn't a thing that she could do but stay in bed- with her legs up over her head! Oh! I wish you could meet my girlfriend, but you can't 'cause she is in Canada! I love her, I miss her, I can't wait to kiss her, so soon I'll be off to Alberta! (pause) I mean Vancouver! Shit. Her name is Alberta, she lives in Vancouv-- She's my girlfriend! My wonderful girlfriend! Yes, I have a girlfriend who lives in Canada! And I can't wait to eat her pussy again!

"School For Monsters"

 * Trekkie Monster: Me give you ten million dollars!
 * Princeton: Trekkie! Where did you get all that money?!
 * Trekkie Monster: In volatile market, only stable investment is porn!

"There Is Life Outside Your Apartment"

 * Lady on a building: I'm going to jump!
 * All: Don't do it!
 * Lady on a building: OK!

In Between Songs

 * Bad Idea Bear: Buy a whole case!
 * Princeton: A case of beers? No, I can't get a whole case.
 * Bad Idea Bear: But you're on a budget! You're wasting money in the long run if you don't buy in bulk!

-
 * Kate: Hello?
 * Mrs. Thistletwat: Good afternoon, Katherine. If you may recall that you were supposed to teach my class this morning while I got my heart replaced. You left the children unattended for three hours! They created their own tribal society and were about to sacrifice poor little Brittany! Where were you?
 * Kate: I overslept! I'm so sorry!
 * Mrs. Thistletwat: I should never have hired a Monster.
 * Kate: What?
 * Mrs. Thistletwat: Your race is notoriously lazy!
 * Kate: Well, better a Monster than a crabby old bitch!
 * Mrs. Thistletwat: Crabby old bitches are the backbone of this nation! I regret the day I hired you!
 * Kate: Well, you don't have to worry, because I quit!
 * Mrs. Thistletwat: No, I'm going to fire you!
 * Kate: Too late, because I quit!
 * Mrs. Thistletwat: You're going to Hell, Katherine!
 * Kate: SEE YOU THERE, BITCH!

-
 * Lucy the Slut: You're going to show me upstairs, kid?
 * Princeton: In a minute, okay, Lucy?
 * Lucy the Slut: Okay... Just don't leave my motor running too long.
 * Kate: She a friend of yours?
 * Princeton: Sort of.
 * Kate: Is her name purpose?

At The Around the Clock Cafe
Lucy: I still haven't figured out where I'm going to crash tonight. Bear: Feel her boob!

Lucy: I dated a monster once, but got sick of picking the fur out of my teeth. Kate: If your teeth are the problem, I can arrange that you have LESS!

Bear: Why don't you play a drinking game? They are a recipe for fun. Kate: I don't know any, do you, Princeton? Bear: I do! It's called "I Bet I Can Drink This Faster Than You Can." GO!

Lucy: (after she finishes singing) Thank you gentlemen and...(short pause) obstacles to those gentlemen.

"For Now"
All: SEX is only for now! YOUR HAIR is only for now! GEORGE BUSH is only for now!

All: Don't stress! Relax! Let life roll off your backs! Except for death and paying taxes, everything in life is only for now!

title: Avenue Q


text:
Scott Ritter

William Scott Ritter Jr. (born July 15, 1961) is a former Marine Corps intelligence officer who served with the United Nations implementing arms control treaties, with General Norman Schwarzkopf in the Persian Gulf during Operation Desert Storm, and in Iraq, overseeing the disarmament of weapons of mass destruction (WMD), and as a United Nations weapons inspector, from 1991 to 1998. He later became a critic of United States foreign policy in the Middle East. Prior to the invasion of Iraq in March 2003, Ritter stated that Iraq possessed no significant weapons of mass destruction (WMD) capabilities, becoming according to The New York Times "the loudest and most credible skeptic of the Bush administration’s contention that Hussein was hiding weapons of mass destruction." A registered sex offender, Ritter was arrested in 2001 in connection with police stings in which officers posed as under-aged girls to arrange meetings of a sexual nature and later convicted of sex offenses in 2011. He served 30 months of his prison sentence. He has defended Russia during the 2022 invasion of Ukraine and writing opinion pieces for various state media outlets.

1998

 * Iraq is not disarmed, the commission can not verify that all weapons and capability to produce weapons are indeed disposed of, destroyed, removed, or rendered harmless in accordance with provisions of the Security Council resolution.
 * Weapons inspector: Stop catering to Baghdad. CNN August 27, 1998

2000

 * While we were never able to provide 100 percent certainty regarding the disposition of Iraq's proscribed weaponry, we did ascertain a 90-95 percent level of verified disarmament. This figure takes into account the destruction or dismantling of every major factory associated with prohibited weapons manufacture, all significant items of production equipment, and the majority of the weapons and agent produced by Iraq.
 * Is Iraq a True Threat to the US?, Boston Globe, July 2002

 * The UN stopped using Chalabi's information as a basis for conducting inspections once the tenuous nature of his sources and his dubious motivations became clear. Unfortunately, the same cannot be said for the mainstream US media, which give prominent coverage to sources of information that, had they not been related to Hussein's Iraq, would normally be immediately dismissed.
 * The Christian Science Monitor, 28 January 2002

 * This is not about the security of the United States. This is about domestic American politics. The national security of the United States of America has been hijacked by a handful of neo-conservatives who are using their position of authority to pursue their own ideologically-driven political ambitions. The day we go to war for that reason is the day we have failed collectively as a nation.
 * Truth Out, 24 July 2002

 * Our guys working this area for a living all believe Chalabi and all those guys in their Bond Street suits are charlatans. To take them for a source of anything except a fantasy trip would be a real stretch. But it's an article of faith among those with no military experience that the Iraqi military is low-hanging fruit.
 * Knight Ridder, 1 November 2002

 * [War] isn't a Nintendo game… There's no hitting reset and coming back to life. If you turn your head around the corner in the streets of Baghdad and take one between the eyes, your brain is gone. Maybe you turn around the corner and you take one in your chest and it'll sever your spinal cord and you can spend the rest of your life in a wheelchair. That's war! Maybe you step on a landmine and there goes your leg, you lose an arm, you lose eyesight. That's war! And we're talking about going to war. There better be a hell of a good reason for this. There better be a reason worthy of the sacrifice we're asking Americans to make. And you know, it's not just going to be Americans dying in this war; we're going to be killing Iraqis, by the thousands. I have to tell you, as a former Marine, I was involved with the worlds most efficient killing machine. We were the best led, best trained, best equipped warriors anybody's ever seen, and we are today. When we go to war we will slaughter those who oppose us, because that's what we do, and we do it better than anyone else. If you get in my way, I will kill you. You try hurt one of my marines, I'm taking you down. And I will continue to go until my government tells me to stop. We are the dogs of war and when we are unleashed there is nothing but hell. That's the reality of war. For God's sake, don't unleash the dogs of war unless there's an absolute necessary to do so.
 * Keynote address, California Institute of Technology November 13, 2002

2003

 * [Operation] Rockingham was spinning reports and emphasizing reports that showed non-compliance (by Iraq with UN inspections) and quashing those which showed compliance. It was cherry-picking intelligence.
 * Sunday Herald, 8 June 2003

 * This is a book about a lie and the liars who told it to the American people. It is also about citizenship and the responsibility of all Americans to hold themselves to the highest standards of citizenship, including holding accountable those we elect to represent us in higher office. It is about truth, justice and the rule of law and the danger imposed on us all by those who lie, pervert justice, and absolve themselves from the rule of law.
 * Frontier Justice: Weapons of Mass Destruction and the Bushwhacking of America, ISBN 1-893956-47-4    2003

2006

 * One of the big problems is — and here goes the grenade — Israel. The second you mention the word "Israel," the nation Israel, the concept Israel, many in the American press become very defensive. We’re not allowed to be highly critical of the state of Israel. And the other thing we’re not allowed to do is discuss the notion that Israel and the notion of Israeli interests may in fact be dictating what America is doing, that what we’re doing in the Middle East may not be to the benefit of America’s national security, but to Israel’s national security. But, see, we don’t want to talk about that, because one of the great success stories out there is the pro-Israeli lobby that has successfully enabled themselves to blend the two together, so that when we speak of Israeli interests, they say, "No, we’re speaking of American interests." It’s interesting that AIPAC and other elements of the Israeli Lobby don’t have to register as agents of a foreign government. It would be nice if they did, because then we’d know when they’re advocating on behalf of Israel or they’re advocating on behalf of the United States of America. I would challenge The New York Times to sit down and do a critical story on Israel, on the role of Israel’s influence, the role that Israel plays in influencing American foreign policy. There’s nothing wrong with Israel trying to influence American foreign policy. Let me make that clear. The British seek to influence our foreign policy. The French seek to influence our foreign policy. The Saudis seek to influence our foreign policy. The difference is, when they do this and they bring American citizens into play, these Americans, once they take the money of a foreign government and they advocate on behalf of that foreign government, they register themselves as an agent of that government, so we know where they’re coming from. That’s all I ask the Israelis to do. Let us know where you’re coming from, because stop confusing the American public that Israel’s interests are necessarily America’s interests.  I have to tell you right now, Israel has a viable, valid concern about Hezbollah in southern Lebanon. If I were an Israeli, I would be extremely concerned about Hezbollah, and I would want to do everything possible to nullify that organization. As an American, I will tell you, Hezbollah does not threaten the national security of the United States of America one iota. So we should not be talking about using American military forces to deal with the Hezbollah issue. That is an Israeli problem. And yet, you’ll see The New York Times, The Washington Post and other media outlets confusing the issue. They want us to believe that Hezbollah is an American problem. It isn’t, ladies and gentleman. Hezbollah was created three years after Israel invaded Lebanon, not three years after the United States invaded Lebanon. And Hezbollah’s sole purpose was to liberate southern Lebanon from Israeli occupation. I’m not here to condone or sing high praises in virtue for Hezbollah. But I’m here to tell you right now, Hezbollah is not a terrorist organization that threatens the security of the United States of America.
 * October 16, 2006

 * I'll say this about nuclear weapons. You know I'm not sitting on the Joint Chiefs of Staff, I'm not in on the planning. I'll take it at face value that the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff successfully eliminated nuclear weapons in the first phase of the operation. But keep in mind this. That the Bush Administration has built a new generation of nuclear weapons that we call 'usable nukes.' And they have a nuclear posture now, which permits the pre-emptive use of nuclear weapons in a non-nuclear environment, if the Commander in Chief deems U.S. forces to be in significant risk. If we start bombing Iran, I'm telling you right now, it's not going to work. We're not going to achieve decapitation, regime change, all that. What will happen is the Iranians will respond, and we will feel the pain instantaneously, which will prompt the Bush administration to phase two, which will have to be boots on the ground. And we will put boots on the ground, we will surge a couple of divisions in, probably through Azerbaijan, down the Caspian Sea coast, in an effort to push the regime over. And when they don't push over, we now have 40,000 troops trapped. We have now reached the definition of significant numbers of U.S. troops in harm's way, and there is no reserve to pull them out! There's no more cavalry to come riding to the rescue. And at that point in time, my concern is that we will use nuclear weapons to break the backbone of Iranian resistance, and it may not work.  But what it will do is this: it will unleash the nuclear genie. And so for all those Americans out there tonight who say, 'You know what - taking on Iran is a good thing.' I just told you if we take on Iran, we're gonna use nuclear weapons. And if we use nuclear weapons, the genie ain't going back in the bottle, until an American city is taken out by an Islamic weapon in retaliation. So, tell me, you want to go to war with Iran. Pick your city. Pick your city. Tell me which one you want gone. Seattle? L.A.? Boston? New York? Miami. Pick one. Cause at least one's going.  And that's something we should all think about before we march down this path of insanity that George Bush has us headed on.
 * October 16, 2006

 * I consider myself to be a true friend of the Israeli people. But I define friendship as someone who takes care of a friend, who just doesn't use or exploit a friend. And, you know, there's that old adage: 'Friends don't let friends drive drunk'.
 * Speech at New York Ethical Culture Society, 2006

2008

 * What they (Fox News) didn't want was a nuanced argument based on fact. I wasn't willing to take one piece of information, blow it way out of proportion and run with it. They wanted to turn every little thing into a proof that Saddam Hussein was the personification of evil, and after 9/11 we could no longer tolerate it... And I'm there saying, "but that's not really what's happening."... George Herbert Walker Bush invented regime change in Iraq and Bill Clinton inherited it, and ran with it. The CIA made four concerted efforts to assassinate Saddam Hussein under Clinton's leadership. So it's not like this was a passive program; it was an active program....
 * Scott Ritter Says Controversial Things About Clinton, Bush, Fox News, the Surge, etc., Interview with the Memphis Flyer, (8 May 2008)

 * I really am tired of all the Clinton Democrats running around getting all-sanctimonious over Iraq. It was them who killed 1.5 to 2.2 million Iraqis through sanctions. Sanctions that Madeline Albright, their illustrious Secretary of State, when confronted with the fact of 500,000 dead Iraqi children, said it was a price she was willing to pay.
 * Scott Ritter Says Controversial Things About Clinton, Bush, Fox News, the Surge, etc., Interview with the Memphis Flyer, (8 May 2008)

 * A lot of people talk about the Israeli lobby, and think that Israel is behind a lot of this. But I've studied it up close... Rather than Israel dictating policy to the United States, a cabal of neoconservatives have used the Israeli lobby as a facilitator. If this was all about Israel dictating policy, we'd have skipped Iraq and gone straight to Iran... The big picture in the Middle East is China... It's about leveraging control over Middle-Eastern and central-Asian oil, in order to dictate the pace of China's economic growth over the next 30 years. Because China's the biggest threat in the eyes of the neoconservatives... that’s going to threaten American global economic hegemony... You deal with China indirectly at this point in time because you don't want direct confrontation.
 * Scott Ritter Says Controversial Things About Clinton, Bush, Fox News, the Surge, etc., Interview with the Memphis Flyer, (8 May 2008)

2020

 * What separates these sites from the others is that Iran claims the allegations about them are a product of Israeli intelligence, and as such are deemed to be fabrications designed to provoke Iran. “No country,” Kazem Gharibabadi, Iran’s ambassador told the Board of Governors before its vote on the June 19 resolution, “opens its territory to the inspections only based on continuous allegations provided by its own enemy, even if it is evident that the result of which will prove those allegations to be false.” Iran’s position... does not appear to be out of fear over what would be discovered—indeed Iranian President Hassan Rouhani told the United Nations in September 2019 that, “If the U.S. Congress ratifies the JCPOA and lifts all sanctions permanently, Iran is ready to pursue the immediate ratification of the Additional Protocol in the Iranian parliament as a permanent law.”...  Indeed, Foreign Minister Zarif noted in a tweet that “an agreeable solution is possible” for the IAEA’s request for access to the two nuclear sites in the country—but not if Iran was subjected to pressure in the form of a Board of Governor’s resolution predicated on Israeli intelligence.   “We’ve nothing to hide,” Zarif tweeted. “More inspections in Iran over last 5 yrs than in IAEA history. An agreeable solution is possible, but Res will ruin it.” Zarif’s warning was of no avail.
 * By Scott Ritter, Questionable Israeli intelligence sparks dangerous crisis with Iran, If Americans Knew: Israel-Palestine News (30 June 2020)

 * Having forced a showdown with Iran over the issue of access to sites based upon intelligence of questionable provenance, the IAEA has once again opted to take the world to the brink of a crisis with Iran which could ultimately see that nation withdraw not only from the JCPOA, but also the Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT).
 * By Scott Ritter, Questionable Israeli intelligence sparks dangerous crisis with Iran, If Americans Knew: Israel-Palestine News (30 June 2020)

2022

 * '''We should stop pretending that the US is a functioning democracy; Citizens United proves we are not—when the courts grant citizenship powers to corporations, money and greed become the nation’s lifeblood, not the will of the people.
 * As quoted in What Are The Prospects For Peace? by John Rachel, Dissident Voice / February 24th, 2022

 * The American people have allowed themselves to be dumbed down to the point that their opinions are easily manipulated by corporate-owned and controlled mainstream media. The inability to function as a viable component of government has resulted in the “people” fracturing into competing ideological and socio-economic fiefdoms. American democracy is little more than feudalistic plutocracy. It’s an unsustainable model doomed to collapse in on itself.
 * Quoted in What Are The Prospects For Peace? by John Rachel, Dissident Voice / February 24th, 2022

 * We had a moment in history, between 1988 and 1991, where we could have worked with Mikhail Gorbachev to make his vision of perestroika succeed. Instead, we allowed him to fail, without any real plan on how we would live with what emerged from the ruins of the Soviet Union. Save for a short period of time during the Second World War where we needed the Soviet Union to defeat Germany and Japan, we have been in a continual state of political conflict with the Soviet Union. Even after the Soviet Union collapsed, we viewed the Russian Federation more as a defeated enemy that we needed to keep down, than a friend in need of a helping hand up. Yeltsin’s Russia was useful to the US and NATO only to the extent that we could exploit it economically while controlling its domestic politics in a manner that kept Russia in a perpetual state of weakness. The Obama “reset” was simply a ploy to remove Vladimir Putin, who rejected the vision of Russia projected by the west, and replace him with Dmitri Medvedev, whom Obama believed could be remade in the figure of Yeltsin. The fact that Putin believes in a strong Russia has upset the plans of the US, NATO, and Europe for post-Cold War hegemony, predicated as they were on a weak, compliant Russian state.
 * As quoted in What Are The Prospects For Peace? by John Rachel, Dissident Voice / February 24th, 2022

 * After decades of ignoring Russia’s national security concerns, the West is confronted with a military invasion of Ukraine which serves as a precursor for a new Cold War that will define Russia’s relationship with the West for years to come.  Let there be no mistake, on Feb. 24, the world awoke to a new reality. Prior to this date, Russia was treated by the West as an annoyance, belittled by economic and even military elites as little more than a “giant gas station masquerading as a nation,” to quote John McCain... Russian President Vladimir Putin had been subjected to a series of sophomoric psychological profiles that trivialized Russian national concerns as little more than the psychotic whim of a troubled individual. The caricatures that emerged of the Russian state and its leadership colored the analysis of Russia’s oft-stated concerns over what it viewed as its legitimate national security.  This blinded the West to the reality of what was transpiring. Because no one took Russia seriously, no one could imagine a large-scale ground war in Europe....
 * Russia’s Invasion of Ukraine in Perspective, by Scott Ritter, Energy Intelligence Group, Feb 25, 2022

 * William Burns, the former US Ambassador to Russia and now director of the CIA, captured the Russian sentiment in a February 2009 memorandum: “Nyet means nyet: Russia’s Nato enlargement red lines.” Russia, Burns noted, viewed “farther eastward expansion as a potential military threat,” giving rise to Russian fears that “the issue could potentially split the country [Ukraine] in two, leading to violence or even, some claim, civil war, which would force Russia to decide whether to intervene.” One need only to look at what has transpired in Donetsk and Luhansk, and Russia’s current military operation in Ukraine, to understand how prescient Burns’ cable was.  Burns, however, was ignored. So, too, was Putin, who had been lecturing the West ever since his landmark speech at the 2007 Munich Security Conference, where he famously called out the US for having “overstepped its national borders in every way.” Putin declared, “This is visible in the economic, political, cultural and educational policies it imposes on other nations. Well, who likes this? Who is happy about this?” He was greeted by silence....The major takeaway from this unfolding situation should be that Russia’s president does not bluff, and that the West would do well to listen closely to what he has to say.
 * "Russia’s Invasion of Ukraine in Perspective", by Scott Ritter, Energy Intelligence Group, Feb 25, 2022

 * From Xi’s perspective, the US is saying one thing, and doing another. According to Xinhua, Xi informed Biden that, in his view, the “direct cause” of the current strain on China-US relations is that “some people on the US side have not followed through on the important common understanding reached by us, neither have they acted on President Biden’s positive statements. The US has misperceived and miscalculated China’s strategic intention.” America, Xi added, has failed to deliver on virtually all of its promises to China regarding the avoidance of conflict, while simultaneously promulgating deep-seated notions of China as an “imagined enemy.”  The US, Xi added, is sending the wrong signal to “Taiwan independence” forces, which is “very dangerous.” Continuation of this would “exert a disruptive impact on China-US relations.” Xi’s remarks, made in the context of a Russian invasion of Ukraine, should not be seen as anything less than a clear warning that the US needs to start taking China’s security concerns seriously and exercise greater caution over its words and actions — lest it find that it has, again, tied a bell onto a tiger.
 * "The Post-Ukraine Reality of US-China Relations", by Scott Ritter, Energy Intelligence Group, March 25, 2022

 * The bottom line is that Russia has set forth a cognizable claim under the doctrine of anticipatory collective self defense, devised originally by the U.S. and NATO, as it applies to  (Charter of the United Nations) Article 51 which is predicated on fact, not fiction.  While it might be in vogue for people, organizations, and governments in the West to embrace the knee-jerk conclusion that Russia’s military intervention constitutes a wanton violation of the United Nations Charter and, as such, constitutes an illegal war of aggressionthe uncomfortable truth is that, of all the claims made regarding the legality of pre-emption under Article 51 of the United Nations Charter, Russia’s justification for invading Ukraine is on solid legal ground.
 * "Russia, Ukraine & the Law of War: Crime of Aggression, Part I", by Scott Ritter, Consortium News, March 29, 2022

 * If Russia has intelligence that Ukraine is using an otherwise protected civilian target for military purposes, and if a decision is made to attack the target using force deemed proportional to the threat, then no war crime has been committed. Indeed, given what The Washington Post has documented, it appears that it is Ukraine, not Russia, which is committing war crimes. According to Richard Weir, a researcher in Human Rights Watch’s crisis and conflict division quoted in the Post article, the Ukrainian military has “a responsibility under international law” to either remove their forces and equipment from civilian areas, or to move the civilian population from the areas where military personnel and equipment are being stored.  “If they don’t do that,” Weir said, “that is a violation of the laws of war. Because what they are doing is they are putting civilians at risk. Because all that military equipment are legitimate targets.”... While the Ukrainian government, American politicians, and human rights groups can make allegations of war crimes by Russia in Ukraine, proving these allegations is a much more difficult task.  Moreover, it appears that, upon closer examination, the accuser (at least when it comes to the Ukrainian government) might become the accused should any thorough investigation of the alleged events occur.
 * "Russia, Ukraine & the Law of War: Crime of Aggression, Part II"], Consortium News, April 1, 2022

 * The Ukrainian National Police committed numerous crimes against humanity in Bucha. Biden, in seeking to shift blame for the Bucha murders onto Russia, is guilty of aiding and abetting these crimes. Congratulations America... we've created yet another Presidential war criminal!
 * Tweet by Ritter, April 6, 2022

 * Intent, motive and means: People serving life sentences in U.S. prisons have been convicted on weaker grounds than the circumstantial evidence against Washington for the attack on the Nord Stream pipelines. Circumstantial evidence, just like direct proof, can be used to prove the elements of a crime, the existence or completion of certain acts and the intent or mental state of a defendant. Generally speaking, a prosecutor, to obtain a conviction, needs to show beyond a reasonable doubt that a defendant committed a certain act and that the defendant acted with specific intent... The burden that exists to prove guilt beyond a reasonable doubt “is fully satisfied and entirely convinced to a moral certainty that the evidence presented proves the guilt of the defendant.” In the matter of the Nord Stream 1 and 2 attacks, this burden has been met when it comes to assigning blame to the United States.
 * Scott Ritter: Pipelines v. USA, Consortium News, October 12, 2022

 * Biden all but confessed the crime beforehand, and his secretary of state, Blinken, crowed about the “tremendous opportunity” that was created by the attack. Not only did the U.S. Navy actively rehearse the crime in June 2022, using the same weapon that had been previously discovered next to the pipeline, but employed the very means needed to use this weapon on the day of the attack, at the location of the attack. The problem is, outside of Russia, no one is charging the United States... There is no doubt in any thinking person’s brain as to who is responsible for the attacks on the Nord Stream 1 and 2 pipelines. The circumstantial case is overwhelming and fully capable of winning a conviction in any U.S. court of law. But no one will bring the case, at least not at this moment. Shame on American journalism for ignoring this flagrant attack on Europe. Shame on Europe for not having the courage to publicly name their attacker.
 * Scott Ritter: Pipelines v. USA, Consortium News, October 12, 2022

 * Most geopolitical analysts can agree that the Russian invasion of Ukraine has detrimentally impacted the global economy. This is especially true when it comes to food security, with supplies disrupted, prices skyrocketing, and shortages created that run the risk of causing famine. The US and European Union have accused Russia of “weaponizing food” by cutting off Ukrainian grain and Russian fertilizer from global markets. Russia, in turn, blames the food supply crisis totally on Western sanctions. The truth may lie somewhere in the middle. The ongoing crisis has disrupted the economies of both Ukraine and Russia, denying them access to income-generating global markets. It has also contributed to the high level of inflation in both the US and EU. But one thing is certain: The populations of the countries that need Ukrainian wheat and Russian potash the most are paying the highest price, with millions facing the prospect of hunger and starvation...
 * The Geopolitics of Famine, by Scott Ritter, Energy Intelligence Group(14 November 2022)
 * A report prepared by the Global Network Against Food Crises, an international alliance working to address the root causes of extreme hunger, which acts under the auspices of the World Food Program, shows that in 2021 global levels of hunger surpassed all previous records — with close to 193 million people acutely food insecure and in need of urgent assistance across 53 countries and territories. This represents an increase of nearly 40 million people compared with 2020. According to the report, the outlook for 2022 is for further deterioration of global hunger levels, exacerbated by the ongoing conflict in Ukraine, which is having severe repercussions on global food, energy and fertilizer prices... he geopolitics of famine is such that millions of lives are held hostage to conflicts far from the nations most in need. Hopefully, the US, Russia and the UN will be able to reach an equitable balance before it is too late.
 * The Geopolitics of Famine, by Scott Ritter, Energy Intelligence Group(14 November 2022)
 * Let’s look at the Russian strategic objectives first... Russia is seeking to get Europe and the United States to buy into the notion of a negotiated new European security framework. It’s something that Russia put on the table prior to invading Ukraine. If people remember back to Dec. 17, I believe, of last year, Russia submitted two draft treaties, one to NATO, one to the United States, which articulated Russia’s stance on what its vision of a new European security framework could look like. They invited the West to read it and have a serious discussion about it, and they were ignored.Then Russia invaded Ukraine, and Russia has two objectives. One is the demilitarization of Ukraine, the other is the deNazification of Ukraine. Demilitarization means the elimination of all NATO influence on the Ukrainian military, and deNazification means just that, getting rid of everything that Russia considers to be related to the ultra nationalistic ideology of Stepan Bandera and the white supremacist manifestations of that.
 * Scott Ritter: Don't Believe the Hype. Ukraine Can't Win This War; subheading: Former US Marine Corps intelligence officer Scott Ritter explains why a Russian victory is inevitable, and what it costs the West to refuse to accept this, The Real News Network; (15 November 2022)

 * NATO doesn’t respect anything about Russia. NATO knows no limits. NATO’s been expanding nonstop. They lied about it, about not wanting to do it back in 1990 to Gorbachev, they’ve lied about it ever since, they’ve been expanding. But one of the whole reasons we’re at war in Ukraine right now is because of NATO wanting to expand and bring Ukraine into its umbrella.
 * Scott Ritter: Don't Believe the Hype. Ukraine Can't Win This War; subheading: Former US Marine Corps intelligence officer Scott Ritter explains why a Russian victory is inevitable, and what it costs the West to refuse to accept this, The Real News Network; (15 November 2022)

 * Here we are, 2022, and we have a bunch of people running around as if they’ve invented the concept of nuclear security and nuclear-based muscle flexing. No, we’ve tried it before in the 1960s, we did the whole arms race thing. And we realized at that point in time that we’ll quickly bankrupt ourselves and get nothing from it if we continue to try to build bigger and better missiles, more warheads, all this stuff. One of the first things we had to teach ourselves back then is that you can’t win a nuclear war. You can’t win it. It should never be fought. And that’s when we embraced something that one would normally say shouldn’t be embraced: the notion of mutually assured destruction. That is, if I use a nuclear weapon against you, not only will I kill you, but you’re going to use a nuclear weapon against me and you’re going to kill me.
 * Scott Ritter: Don't Believe the Hype. Ukraine Can't Win This War; subheading: Former US Marine Corps intelligence officer Scott Ritter explains why a Russian victory is inevitable, and what it costs the West to refuse to accept this, The Real News Network; (15 November 2022)

 * The administration of President Joe Biden has promulgated its vision of the US role in the world today in a new document, the 2022 National Security Strategy (NSS). This outlines a leadership posture built on the premise of US diplomatic, economic and military superiority on the global stage. The critical notion underpinning this strategy is that US democracy serves as a center of gravity around which a rules-based international order rotates. But the partisan political divide in the US, combined with the growing global multipolar challenge led by Russia and China, makes the promise of US global dominance little more than an empty narrative.
 * US Security Strategy’s Empty Narrative, by Scott Ritter, Washington, Energy Intelligence Group (8 Dec 8, 2022)
 * The US and Russia have stopped all substantive cooperation in the field of arms control, in terms of both implementing existing treaties and negotiating future agreements. There is little likelihood that this cooperation will resume any time soon, leaving both nations locked in a potential nuclear arms race unconstrained by the limits of arms control treaties. The potential for nuclear conflict is greater, as a result, than at any time since the Cuban missile crisis of 1962.
 * The Death of Arms Control, by Scott Ritter, Subtitle: The breakdown of cooperation between the US and Russian in the field of arms control raises the potential for nuclear conflict. Energy Intelligence Group,    (20 December 2022)

About Ritter
"Age?" delmarm4fun asked. "15." "Aha," came the response. "New York or Pa.?" A graphic flirtation ensued. At one point, delmarm4fun asked “Emily” again if she was 18. "No, I’m 15," Venneman replied. "Aha," delmarm4fun said again. "My bad." "What’s wrong?" Venneman asked. "Didn’t realize you were 15. . . ."
 * [T]he police in Colonie, N.Y., encountered Ritter twice in 2001 — and quietly arrested him once — after he contacted cops posing as under-age girls in chat rooms. (Ritter was caught using the unsubtle screen name OnExhibit.) In both cases, Ritter agreed to meet the fictional teenagers in the parking lots of fast-food joints, with the intent of masturbating in front of them, only to be confronted by cops when he got there. For reasons that still aren’t entirely clear, the prosecutor dismissed the charges, on the condition that Ritter enter intensive counseling, and a local judge sealed the records.
 * [Opening passage in the article presented chronologically.] On a February afternoon in 2009, Ryan Venneman, one of only five full-time police officers in tiny Barrett Township, Pa., decided to spend some time hunting for sexual predators online. Venneman entered a Yahoo chat room, where the minimum legal age is supposed be 18, and passed himself off as a teenager named Emily. Before long, he was contacted by a man who said he was 44 and called himself delmarm4fun — a reference to Delmar, N.Y., an Albany suburb about three hours from where Venneman was sitting in the Poconos.
 * From Matt Bai "Scott Ritter’s Other War" The New York Times Magazine (February 22, 2012).

 * Scott is a former US Marine and Core Intelligence Officer whose service over a 20-plus year career includes tours of duty in the former Soviet Union, implementing arms control agreement, serving on the staff of US General Norman Schwarzkopf during the Gulf War, and later as a Chief Weapons Inspector with the UN in Iraq from 1991 to 1998. He’s also the author of several books, including his latest work Disarmament in the Time of Perestroika.
 * Scott Ritter: Don't Believe the Hype. Ukraine Can't Win This War, by Dimitri Lascaris, The Real News Network; (15 November 2022)

title: Scott Ritter


text:
Talk:Abbie Hoffman

God quote
I am restoring a quotation that was deleted with the remark: "totally irrelevant to Abbie Hoffman character"

 * "If this guy is God, then this is the God that the United States of America deserves."
 * Comment about "Maharaji Ji" (Maharaji/Prem Rawat) in 1973.

I do not accept the claim that anything anyone says or does is "totally irrelevant" to their character. This was a statement of Hoffman's opinion about someone he seems to have thought ridiculous and contemptible. People who think otherwise may not like it, but Abbie Hoffman insulted a lot of people and their notions, and if he said this, it is entirely appropriate for Wikiquote to have the quote. Achilles 05:56, 5 Oct 2004 (UTC)

Sacred cows quote
It's not by Hoffman, he only made it more populare. Here's some historical research and sources:  --Jim

title: Talk:Abbie Hoffman