text:
Bill Haywood

William Dudley "Big Bill" Haywood (February 4, 1869 – May 18, 1928) was a prominent figure in American radical unionism as a leader of the Western Federation of Miners (WFM) and later as a founding member and leader of the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW).

Quotes

 * I've never read Marx's Capital, but I've got the marks of capital all over my body.
 * Humour and Social Protest, By Marjolein that & Dennis Bos, 2007, page 39.

 * If one man has a dollar he didn't work for, some other man worked for a dollar he didn't get.
 * Roughneck, The Life and Times of Big Bill Haywood, Peter Carlson, 1983, page 146.

 * The bandage will remain on the eyes of Justice as long as the Capitalist has the cut, shuffle, and deal.
 * Roughneck, The Life and Times of Big Bill Haywood, Peter Carlson, 1983, page 146.

 * Eight hours of work, eight hours of play, eight hours of sleep - eight hours a day! (From the Haymarket era eight-hour campaign)
 * (Haywood variation) Eight hours of work, eight hours of play, eight hours of sleep - and eight dollars a day!
 * Roughneck, The Life and Times of Big Bill Haywood, Peter Carlson, 1983, page 147.

 * The mine owners "did not find the gold, they did not mine the gold, they did not mill the gold, but by some weird alchemy all the gold belonged to them!"
 * Haywood, William D. The Autobiography of Big Bill Haywood. New York: International Publishers, 1929, p. 171.

 * The capitalist has no heart, but harpoon him in the pocketbook and you will draw blood.
 * Bread and Roses: Mills, Migrants, and The Struggle for the American Dream, Bruce Watson. Viking-Penguin, 2005; pg. 93.

 * Tonight I am going to speak on the class struggle and I am going to make it so plain that even a lawyer can understand it.
 * Bread and Roses: Mills, Migrants, and The Struggle for the American Dream, Bruce Watson. Viking-Penguin, 2005; pg. 95.

 * Sabotage means to push back, pull out or break off the fangs of Capitalism.
 * Rebel Voices, pp. 65

Quotes about Bill Haywood

 * Moyer and Haywood are our comrades, staunch and true, and if we do not stand by them to the shedding of the last drop of blood in our veins, we are disgraced forever and deserve the fate of cringing cowards. We are not responsible for the issue. It is not of our seeking. It has been forced upon us; and for the very reason that we deprecate violence and abhor bloodshed we cannot desert our comrades and allow them to be put to death. If they can be murdered without cause so can we, and so will we be dealt with at the pleasure of these tyrants. They have driven us to the wall and now let us rally our forces and face them and fight. If they attempt to murder Moyer, Haywood and their brothers, a million revolutionists, at least will meet them with guns. They have done their best and their worst to crush and enslave us. Their politicians have betrayed us, their courts have thrown us into jail without trial and their soldiers have shot our comrades dead in their tracks. The worm turns at last, and so does the worker.
 * Eugene Debs, "Arouse Ye Slaves!" (1906)

 * This is the agitator's work, this continual activity. And we lay awake many nights trying to think of something more we could give them to do. I remember one night in Lawrence none of us slept. The strike spirit was in danger of waning for lack of action. And I remember Bill Haywood said finally, "Let's get a picket line out in Essex street. Get every striker to put a little red ribbon on and walk up and down and show that the strike is not broken." A few days later the suggestion was carried out, and when they got out of their homes and saw this great body that they were, they had renewed strength and renewed energy which carried them along for many weeks more in the strike.
 * Elizabeth Gurley Flynn, "The Truth About the Paterson Strike" (1914)

 * "Big" Bill Haywood came out of jail a hero-a fitting symbol of the solidarity of labor. He was described by one reporter as, "big in body, in brain, and in courage." He made a triumphal tour of the United States and Canada, under the auspices of the Socialist Party and the labor organizations which had defended him. He was an intensely down-to-earth dramatic speaker. I remember hearing him say: "I'm a two-gun man from the West, you know," and while the audience waited breathlessly, he pulled his union card from one pocket and his Socialist card from the other.
 * Elizabeth Gurley Flynn, The Rebel Girl: An Autobiography, My First Life (1955)

 * Bill Haywood decided that we had to speak English so these people could understand it. And I will never forget the lesson he gave to us. I was very young at that time, I was 22, and he said, now listen here, you speak to these workers, these miners in the same kind of English that their children who are in the primary school would speak to them and they would understand that. Well, that's not easy -- to speak to them in primary school English. Well, we learned how to do it. The only trouble is with me it kind of stuck and when I go to speak to a college audience I feel at a little bit of a disadvantage because I don't know all the big words. The small words, the short words, were the ones I was drilled in by William Haywood.
 * Elizabeth Gurley Flynn, "Memories Of The Industrial Workers Of The World" (November 8, 1962)

 * At the same time that this Lawrence strike was going on, there was a great strike of timber workers in Louisiana, also under the auspices of the IWW, and I single that out, although we had strikes all over the place, we were just hopping all over from one place to another, because there for the first time the discrimination, the segregation rules were-broken down. William D. Haywood went down there to speak and he said every striker sits wherever he wants to sit. Segregation in this hall of the IWW and the Negro and white workers, I think for the first time in American labor history, broke that taboo and met together.
 * Elizabeth Gurley Flynn, "Memories Of The Industrial Workers Of The World" (November 8, 1962)

 * William "Big Bill" Haywood, the WFM's secretary-treasurer, began working in an Idaho silver mine at the age of nine; as an adult, he was one of the most fearsome and effective union organizers in America, a strapping frontier socialist with a missing eye and a booming, powerful voice that carried throughout the nation's union halls and picket lines. He went on to help cofound the IWW, lead influential strikes in the Northeast (including the 1912 Lawrence Textile Strike), fight for the eight-hour workday, and later flee the country for Russia after decades of state persecution, but his time with the WFM is what first honed his radical sensibilities and his fervent belief in industrial unionism, the necessity of organizing the entire working class into "One Big Union."
 * Kim Kelly (journalist) Fight Like Hell: The Untold History of American Labor (2022)

 * Bill Haywood, the one-eyed giant of the miners, hid out there. He talked to us and paced back and forth in the little wooden rooms. He was out on bail and he told us how you had to fight your weakness to be a fighter for the working class. He said he liked to drink and sometimes went on a spree, lurching in and out of saloons, brawling, taking on enemies, and reciting poetry. And then he would hole up and discipline himself for the working class, his class, and study Darwin and Morgan and London and Marx. Above all, he loved Shakespeare and would recite whole scenes. Sometimes, he said, he strengthened himself by fasts. Haywood said his first school was with the miners. Each one would have a book and they would pass them around, and there was always a student, a scholar, among them who went around teaching. From such a scholar he first heard the slogan "an injury to one is a injury to all." He told how he had first been impressed by the Haymarket martyrs. He felt that a great light shone from them. He seemed to me to have grown out of the mines and the gloom and terror like some giant plant, fed by the lives of the miners. He would tell about their maiming toil and about the color of the lead miners, a deathly ashen gray, for they were dying of lead poisoning. He mourned them all and fought for them all. I had never before seen a man like that.
 * Meridel Le Sueur "The Ancient People and the Newly Come" (1976)

 * In the brief span of its life, the IWW produced men who became internationally known and whose names were torches of inspiration in many lands. Most of them paid a high price for their fame, some with their lives...Bill Haywood, out of prison on bail while his war-time conviction was being appealed, was persuaded by New York Communists that world revolution was just around the corner and that he was needed in it. He skipped bail and fled to Russia, only to be relegated to the sidelines, and to die there a broken man.
 * Rose Pesotta Bread upon the Waters (1945)

 * Bill Haywood, head of the I.W.W., was on the witness stand four days; and no juror ever dozed in that time; for always the story he told, in answer to questions by Vanderveer, was moving and vital. Through those questions Big Bill, with his large one-eyed head, bulky body, and small hands which seldom gestured, sat there and traced his own life struggle-as a boy in the mines, as an organizer for the Western Federation of Miners in territory where that meant risking death from gun-men's bullets, as a defendant in the famous trial in Boise, when he was one of three accused of conspiracy to kill, and of killing, ex-Governor Steunenberg of Idaho with dynamite; of his helping to organize the Socialist Party, and later the Industrial Workers of the World; and of his part in many of the I.W.W. strikes andfree speech conflicts across the land.

 * A suffragette once asked Bill Haywood, who leaned toward the anarcho-syndicalist faith, if he thought women should have the vote, and Bill said: "Sure, and besides, they can have mine." Such was the indifference to political action held by many who could see no hope in the ballot, nor in the whole set-up of parliaments, but put their full faith in the organization of labor.
 * Art Young - His Life And Times (1939)

 * As the Socialists became more successful at the polls (Debs got 900,000 votes in 1912, double what he had in 1908), and more concerned with increasing that appeal, they became more critical of IWW tactics of "sabotage" and "violence," and in 1913 removed Bill Haywood from the Socialist Party Executive Committee, claiming he advocated violence (although some of Debs's writings were far more inflammatory).
 * Howard Zinn, A People’s History of the United States

Emma Goldman, Living My Life (1931)

 * The gap left by the arrest of Joseph Ettor and Arturo Giovannitti was immediately filled by Bill Haywood' and Elizabeth Gurley Flynn. Haywood's years of experience in the labour struggle, his determination and tact, made him a distinctive power in the Lawrence situation. On the other hand, Elizabeth's youth, charm, and eloquence easily won everybody's heart. The names of the two and their reputation gained for the strike country-wide publicity and support...Bill Haywood had but recently come to live in New York. We had met almost immediately and became very friendly. Bill also was not an anarchist, but, like Elizabeth, he was free from narrow sectarianism. He frankly admitted that he felt much more at home with the anarchists, and especially with the Mother Earth group, than with the zealots in his own ranks. The most notable characteristic of Bill was his extraordinary sensitiveness. This giant, outwardly so hard, would wince at a coarse word and tremble at the sight of pain. On one occasion, when he addressed our eleventh-of-November commemoration, he related to me the effect the crime of 1887 had had on him. He was but a youngster at the time, already working in the mines. "Since then," he told me, "our Chicago martyrs have been my greatest inspiration, their courage my guiding star." The apartment at 210 East Thirteenth Street became Bill's retreat. Frequently he spent his free evenings at our place. There he could read and rest to his heart's content, or drink coffee "black as the night, strong as the revolutionary ideal, sweet as love."

 * Sasha was inclined to believe it; he had lost faith in Bill since 1914, when the latter had shown himself weak-kneed during the free-speech fights that Sasha had conducted in New York. I defended Bill hotly, pointing out that our actions are not always to be judged so easily.

 * Bill Haywood had often been under our roof, by day and by night, always our welcome guest, our comrade in many battles, though not sharing the same ideas.

 * He had jumped his bail, he said suddenly; he had run away. Not because of the twenty years of prison that faced him, though that was no small matter at his age. "Ridiculous, Bill," I interrupted; "you would never have to serve the whole sentence. Gene Debs was pardoned and Kate Richard O'Hare also." "Listen first," he interrupted; "the prison was not the deciding factor. It was Russia, Russia, which fulfilled what we had dreamed about and propagated all our lives, I as well as you. Russia, the home of the liberated proletariat, was calling me." He had also been urged by Moscow to come, he added. He was told he was needed in Russia. From here he would be able to revolutionize the American masses and to prepare them for the dictatorship of the proletariat. It had not been easy to decide to leave his comrades to face their long terms in prison alone. But the Revolution was more important and its ends justified all means.

 * Bill had always stood for a strong State and centralization. What was his One Big Union but a dictatorship?

title: Bill Haywood


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The Gulag Archipelago

The Gulag Archipelago 1918-1956 (1973) by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn is an account of the Soviet prison system, based on extensive research and Solzhenitsyn's own experiences as a prisoner in the Gulag. It is composed of 7 sections, and often divided into 3 volumes.

The Gulag Archipelago (1973)

 * I dedicate this to all those who did not live to tell it. And may they please forgive me for not having seen it all nor remembered it all, for not having divined all of it.
 * Dedication

 * For years, I have with a reluctant heart withheld from publication this already completed book: my obligation to those still living outweighed my obligation to the dead. But now that State Security has seized the book anyway, I have no alternative but to publish it immediately.
 * "Author's Note"'

Part I

 * The Universe has as many different centers as there are living beings in it. Each of us is the center of the Universe, and that Universe is shattered when they hiss at you, "You are under arrest."
 * Part I The Prison Industry, Ch. 1 "Arrest" (p3, The Gulag Archipelago, Collins 1974)

 * What would things have been like if every Security operative, when he went out at night to make an arrest, had been uncertain whether he would return alive and had to say good-bye to his family? Or if, during periods of mass arrests, as for example in Leningrad, when they arrested a quarter of the entire city, people had not simply sat there in their lairs, paling with terror at every bang of the downstairs door and at every step on the staircase, but had understood they had nothing left to lose and had boldly set up in the downstairs hall an ambush of half a dozen people with axes, hammers, polkers, or whatever else was at hand?
 * Part I The Prison Industry, Ch. 1 "Arrest" (p13, The Gulag Archipelago, Collins 1974)

 * Every man always has handy a dozen glib little reasons why he is right not to sacrifice himself.
 * Part I The Prison Industry, Ch. 1 "Arrest" (p17, The Gulag Archipelago, Collins 1974)

 * A district Party conference was under way in Moscow Province. It was presided over by a new secretary of the District Party Committee, replacing one recently arrested. At the conclusion of the conference, a tribute to Comrade Stalin was called for. Of course, everyone stood up (just as everyone had leaded to his feet during the conference at every mention of his name). The small hall echoed with "stormy applause, rising to an ovation." For three minutes, four minutes, five minutes, the "stormy applause, rising to an ovation," continued. But palms were getting sore and raised arms were already aching. And the older people were panting from exhaustion. It was becoming insufferably silly even to those who really adored Stalin. However, who would dare be the first to stop?
 * The secretary of the District Party Committee could have done it. He was standing on the platform, and it was he who had just called for the ovation. But he was a newcomer. He had taken the place of a man who'd been arrested. He was afraid! After all, NKVD men were standing in the hall applauding and watching to see who quit first! And in that obscure, small hall, unknown to the Leader, the applause went on – six, seven, eight minutes! They were done for! Their goose was cooked! They couldn't stop now till they collapsed with heat attacks! At the rear of the hall, which was crowded, they could of course cheat a bit, clap less frequently, less vigorously, not so eagerly – but up there with the presidium where everyone could see them?
 * The director of the local paper factory, an independent and strong-minded man, stood with the presidium. Aware of all the falsity and all the impossibility of the situation, he still kept on applauding! Nine minute! Ten! In anguish he watched the secretary of the District Party Committee, but the latter dared not stop. Insanity! To the last man! With make-believe enthusiasm on their faces, looking at each other with faint hope, the district leaders were just going to go on and on applauding till they fell where they stood, till they were carried out of the hall on stretchers! And even then those who were left would not falter...
 * Then, after eleven minutes, the director of the paper factory assumed a businesslike expression and sat down in his seat. And, oh, a miracle took place! Where had the universal, uninhibited, indescribable enthusiasm gone? To a man, everyone else stopped dead and sat down. They had been saved! The squirrel had been smart enough to jump off his revolving wheel.
 * That, however, was how they discovered who the independent people were. And that was how they went about eliminating them. That same night the factory director was arrested. They easily pasted ten years on him on the pretext of something quite different. But after he had signed Form 206, the final document of the interrogation, his interrogator reminded him: "Don't ever be the first to stop applauding!"

 * Part I The Prison Industry, Ch. 2 "The History of Our Sewage Disposal System" (p28, The Gulag Archipelago, Collins 1974)

 * If only there were evil people somewhere insidiously committing evil deeds, and it were necessary only to separate them from the rest of us and destroy them. But the line dividing good and evil cuts through the heart of every human being. And who is willing to destroy a piece of his own heart? During the life of any heart this line keeps changing place; sometimes it is squeezed one way by exuberant evil and sometimes it shifts to allow enough space for good to flourish. One and the same human being is, at various ages, under various circumstances, a totally different human being. At times he is close to being a devil, at times to sainthood. But his name doesn't change, and to that name we ascribe the whole lot, good and evil. Socrates taught us: "Know thyself." Confronted by the pit into which we are about to toss those who have done us harm, we halt, stricken dumb: it is after all only because of the way things worked out that they were the executioners and we weren't. From good to evil is one quaver, says the proverb. And correspondingly, from evil to good.
 * Part I The Prison Industry, Ch. 4 "The Bluecaps" (p168, The Gulag Archipelago, Collins 1974)

 * We forget everything. What we remember is not what actually happened, not history, but merely that hackneyed dotted line they have chosen to drive into our memories by incessant hammering.
 * Part I The Prison Industry, Ch. 8 The Law as a Child

 * This is surely the main problem of the twentieth century: is it permissible merely to carry out orders and commit one's conscience to someone else's keeping? Can a man do without ideas of his own about good and evil, and merely derive them from the printed instructions and verbal orders of his superiors? Oaths! Those solemn pledges pronounced with a tremor in the voice and intended to defend the people against evildoers: see how easily they can be misdirected to the service of evildoers and against the people!
 * Part V, Katorga, Ch. 9 The Kids with Tommy Guns

 * In 1944, investigator, proud of his faultless logic [...] told Babitsh: "Investigation and the process are merely juridical figuration, that can't change your destiny, which has been determined before. If it is necessary to shoot you, you'll be shot, even if you're completely innocent."

 * In 1946, a special rule by plenum of Supreme Court of the USSR (July 12, 1946, nr. 8/5/u) was necessary: "On the possibility of exercising punishment only on those persons, who have committed a certain crime." But this was freely bypassed.
 * Ch. 2

 * It would appear that during the one thousand one hundred years of Russia's existence as a state there have been, ah, how many foul and terrible deeds! But among them was there ever so multimillioned foul a deed as this: to betray one's own soldiers and proclaim them traitors?
 * Ch. 6 : That Spring

 * Governments were never moral beings.
 * Ch. 6 : That Spring (There is a dispute here : though this statement matches the tenor of much the chapter, this exact statement has not yet been located within available published translations.)

 * In his instructions on the use of Red Terror, the Chekist M. I. Latsis wrote: "In the interrogation do not seek evidence and proof that the person accused acted in word or deed against Soviet power. The first questions should be: What is his class, what is his origin, what is his education and upbringing? [There is your Sapropelite Committee for you!] These are the questions which must determine the fate of the accused."
 * Ch 2

 * Six geologists got §58-7, everyone ten years, for "deliberate hiding (!-for not discovering!) of a lead deposit for the sake of German arrival"
 * Ch 2

 * In the winter of 1934, the agronomists of Pskovsk oblast sowed flax on the snow — exactly as Lysenko had ordered. The seeds expanded, grew mouldy and died. The vast fields stayed empty throughout the year. Lysenko of course couldn't call the snow a kulak or himself an idiot. He accused the agronomists of being kulaks and distorting his technology. And the agronomists were sent to Siberia.
 * Ch 2

 * However, our political courts — the special collegia of provincial courts, the military tribunals (and why, actually, should there be military tribunals in peacetime anyway?), and all the supreme courts too — unanimously followed the path of the OSO [Special Boards attached to the GPU-NKVD]. They, too, did not get stuck in the mud of public trials or in arguments between sides. Their primary and principal distinguishing feature was closed doors. They were first of all closed courts — for their own convenience. And by now we have become so accustomed to the fact that millions and millions of people were tried in closed sessions and have become used to this for so long that now and then some mixed-up son, brother, or nephew of a prisoner will even snort at you with convinction: "And what would you have wanted? ... There's information here. Our enemies will find out! You can't do it!" Thus the fear that our "enemies will find out" makes us clamp our head between our own knees. Who in our Fatherland, except some bookworms, remembers now that Karakozov, who fired at the Tsar, was provided with a defense lawyer? Or that Zhelyabov and all the Narodnaya Volga group were tried in public, without any fear that the "Turks would find out?" Or that Vera Zasulich, who attempted to kill the official who was, translated into Soviet terms, the Chief of the Moscow Administration of the MVD — although she missed, and the bullet went past his head — not only was not destroyed in a torture chamber but was acquitted in open court by a jury — no Troika — and then went off in triumph in a carriage?
 * Ch. 7

 * In every lesson, whether speaking of the anatomy of earthworms or the conjunctions in a complex sentence, you inevitably had to give a blow to God (even if you believed in him), you had not to forget glorifying our boundless freedom (even if you hadn't slept in the night, waiting for knocking on the door), by reading Turgenev, or pointing Dnepr at the map, you inevitably had to damn the misery of the previous regime and glorify affluence of the present time (while you and the children had seen whole villages dying of starvation and the bread was 300 g for children in cities).
 * Part I

Part II

 * "Russian pens are too busy to write about it, and Russian eyes don't have time to read about it. Only doctors can tell us how months in such a [prison] cell will ruin a human being's health for his entire life" Ch.2

Part III

 * "The camp as a distributor of progress light" — such is the level of our source. The editor-in-chief took the floor as well. By giving a speech during the last gathering of the canal labourers in Dmitrov (they had already been transferred to Volga canal) on August 25, 1933, Gorky said: "I have been observing from 1928 on, how GPU is re-educating men." […] The authors don't see anything more encouraging than camp labour. According to them, hard labour is one of the highest forms of the passionate conscious creation. […] Because this "processing of the human raw material is naturally more complicated than processing of lumber," — what a language! what depth! who has said that? — this has been said by Gorky in his book, discarding the "verbal tinsel of humanism".
 * Ch.3, On the book by M.Gorky and other Soviet writers regarding the building of White Sea-Baltic Sea canal.

 * There were many prisoners […] who, during the first days of the war, wrote petitions: they asked to be sent to the front. They had tasted the thickest, the most stinking camp swill — and then pleaded to be sent in the front line to defend the same camp system, to die for it in the penalty company! […] This bout was not ideological, it came from the bottom of heart — it expressed the Russian character: better to die in a wide field than to decay in a narrow shanty!
 * Ch.4

 * The whole raison d'etre of serfdom and the Archipelago is one and the same: these are the social structures for the ruthlessly enforced utilization of the free-of-cost work of millions of slaves.
 * Ch.5

 * And how they then storm and scramble, looking for fish heads, bones, the waste of vegetables. And how one expiring person is being killed in the scuffle. […] (The inquiring cameramen might continue filming and show, how the Bessarabian peasant wives brought from freedom rush with the same intention to the trash already searched through by the expiring persons.)
 * Ch.7

 * Philosophers, psychologists, doctors, writers could have observed in our camps more than in anywhere else in all the versatility and in full details the specific process of narrowing of man's mental and intellectual horizon, decline of a man to the level of an animal and his process of dying alive.
 * Ch.7

 * Their commune, more precisely: their world is a separate world inside ours and the harsh rules which have existed there for centuries, to have this world remained firm, do not depend to the slightest degree on our "prayer" legislation, nor even on party congresses. And what does their word "prayer" mean? Frayer means all human, something that every normal human being has. This very human world, our world with its moral, living habits and mutual communications is in thieves' view the most hateful, the most ridiculous, it is the biggest opponent to their antisocial thief world hostile to society.
 * Ch. 16

 * Nay, as you can expect no corn grow on a rocky ground, likewise you can't expect any goodness from a thief.
 * Ch. 16

 * Do you know which were the laws for 30 years (until 1947): stealing official property, from the state? a box from a storehouse? three potatoes from a Kolkhoz? Ten years! (But after '47, twenty years as well!) Ordinary theft? A flat was despoiled, everything that a family had saved throughout the life time was taken away with a truck? If there was no murder, then up to ten years, sometimes — 6 months... With its laws, Stalin's authorities made the bandits clear: don't steal from me! steal from private persons! Private property is a survival from the reactionary past.
 * Ch. 16

 * And on July 7, 1941, four days after Stalin's panic speech, as German tanks were nearing Leningrad, Smolensk and Kiev, another decree by the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet was issued. [...] The problem was that the Prosecutor of the USSR (Vyshinksky?) had complained the Supreme Soviet [...] that the courts were misusing the decree of 1935: children are judged only in case they have committed the crime deliberately. But this is really unjustified mildness! And the Presidium clarifies in the course of war flames: such an interpretation is not in accordance with the text of the law, it adds restrictions not determined by the law!... And in concord with the prosecutor, the Supreme Court is being clarified: the children must be judged by using all the penal rates (i.e with full severity) even if the crime is not committed deliberately but out of carelessness. That's something indeed! Maybe no one else during the world history has reached so close to the final solution of the children's question. From the twelfth year on, out of carelessness — and up to the sentence to death!
 * Ch.17

 * The paragraph 58 had no minimum of age! So was it even told at the lectures on law held for the people — Tallinn, 1945. Dr Uusmaa had known a six year old boy, who was in the colony on the ground of paragraph 58 — this is obviously a record!
 * Ch.17

 * In March, 1972 Britain was shocked when a 14 year old English boy was sentenced to 6 years of prison in Turkey for having done business with large quantities of drugs […]. But where were the eyes and hearts of your left wing leaders and lawyers, when you read about Stalin's laws on juveniles?
 * Ch.17

 * In the district centre of Chingirlau, Kustanai oblast, a hungry 14 year old girl picked up a narrow line of grain fallen into the dust from a truck. She was penalized only 3 years with the extenuating circumstances of not having plundered the socialist property directly from field or cornloft.
 * Ch.17

 * When after the war a foreman of Inta lumber plant was buried in coffin, the culture and re-education department received instructions to agitate: Work fine and you shall be buried in coffin as well!

Part IV
Chapters The Ascent & Our Muzzled Freedom:

 * Chapter 1. Looking back, I saw that for my whole conscious life I had not understood either myself or my strivings. What had seemed for so long beneficial now turned out in actuality to be fatal, and I had been striving to go in the opposite direction to that which was truly necessary to me. But just as the waves of the sea knock the inexperienced swimmer off his feet and keep tossing him back on to the shore, so also was I painfully tossed back on dry land by the blows of misfortune. And it was only because of this that I was able to travel the path which I had always really wanted to travel. It was granted me to carry away from my prison years on my bent back, which nearly broke beneath its load, this essential experience: how a human being becomes evil and how good. In the intoxication of youthful successes I had felt myself to be infallible, and I was therefore cruel. In the surfeit of power I was a murderer and an oppressor. In my most evil moments I was convinced that I was doing good, and I was well supplied with systematic arguments. And it was only when I lay there rotting on prison straw that I sensed within myself the first stirrings of good. Gradually it was disclosed to me that the line separating good and evil passes not through states, nor between classes, nor between political parties either - but right through every human heart - and through all human hearts. This line shifts. Inside us it oscillates with the years. And even within the hearts overwhelmed with evil, one small bridgehead of good is retained. And even in the best of all hearts, there remains…an un-uprooted small corner of evil. Since then I have come to understand the truth of all the religions on the world. They struggle with the evil inside a human being (inside every human being). It is impossible to expel evil from the world in its entirety, but it is possible to constrict it within each person. And since that time I have come to understand the falsehood of all the revolutions of history: they destroy only those carriers of evil contemporary with them (and also fail, out of haste, to discriminate the carriers of good as well). And they take to themselves as their heritage the actual evil itself, magnified still more.

 * Prison causes the profound rebirth of a human being... profound pondering over his own ‘I’... Here all the trivia and fuss have decreased. I have experienced a turning point. Here you harken to that voice deep inside you, which amid the surfeit and vanity used to be stifled by the roar from outside... Your soul, which formerly was dry, now ripens from suffering...

 * Remember everything you did that was bad and shameful and take thought —can you possible correct it now? Yes, you have been imprisoned for nothing.

 * And the only solution to this would be that the meaning of earthly existence lies not, as we have grown used to thinking, in prospering, but in the development of the soul...

 * In the surfeit of power I was a murderer, and an oppressor. I was convinced that I was doing good. And it was only when I lay there on rotting prison straw that I sensed within myself the first stirrings of good...

 * "Know thyself!" There is nothing that so aids and assists the awakening of omniscience within us as insistent thoughts about one’s own transgressions, errors, mistakes. After the difficult cycles of such ponderings over many years, whenever I mentioned the heartlessness of our highest-ranking bureaucrats, the cruelty of our executioners, I remember myself in my captain’s shoulders boards and the forward march of my battery through East Prussia, enshrouded in fire, and I say: "So were we any better?"

 * And that is why I turn back to the years of my imprisonment and say, sometimes to the astonishment of those about me: "Bless you, prison!"...

 * Lev Tolstoi was right when he dreamed of being put in prison. At certain moment the giant began to dry up. He actually needed prison as a drought needs a shower of rain... And I say without hesitation: "Bless you, prison, for having been in my life!"...

 * In prison, both in solitary confinement and outside solitary too, a human being confronts his grief face to face. This grief is a mountain, but he has to find space inside himself for it, to familiarize himself with it, to digest it, and it him. This is the highest form of moral effort, which has always ennobled every human being. A duel with years and with walls constitutes moral work and a path upward (if you can climb it).

Part V

 * And all those changes in the newspaper headlines with regards to Nazis — once the meetings of our friendly sentries in this shabby Poland, and waves of sympathy for those brave soldiers, who fight against the Anglo-French bankers, and Hitler's uncut speeches over whole pages of Pravda; and then suddenly one morning the explosion of headlines, claiming the whole Europe is moaning heart-breakingly under their heel.
 * Ch.1
 * Variant : "Hitler's uncurtailed speeches over whole pages of Pravda...

 * And if those who came had not been so hopelessly asinine and arrogant, had not kept the Kolkhoz administration comfortable for the Greater Germany, had not invented such a disgust as turning Russia into a colony, then the national idea would not have concentrated there where it was being strangled all the time, and hardly would it have been possible to celebrate the 25th anniversary of Russian Communism.
 * Ch.1

 * Having justifiably learnt to distrust Soviet propaganda in everything, we naturally couldn't believe those fairy tales, as if the Nazis wanted to make Russia their colony and us the German slaves, it was impossible to presume such an idiocy in XXth century heads, one couldn't believe it, unless one had experienced it itself, with one's own flesh.
 * Ch.1

 * The coming church trials were internal. They didn't interest progressive Europe. And they could be conducted without a code. We have already had an opportunity to observe that the separation of church and state was so construed by the state that the churches themselves and everything that hung in them, was installed in them and painted in them, belonged to the state, and the only church remaining was that church which, in accordance with the Scriptures, lay within the heart. And in 1918, when political victory seemed to have been attained faster and more easily than had been expected, they had pressed right on to confiscate church property. However, this leap had aroused too fierce a wave of popular indignation. In the heat of the Civil War, it was not very intelligent to create, in addition, an internal front against the believers. And it proved necessary to postpone for the time being the dialogue between the Communists and the Christians.

 * For twenty years, the religion was being persecuted and the churches closed. The Germans came and began re-opening churches […] In Rostov-on-Don the inauguration became a huge jubilation, that attracted lots of people. But of course they should have damned the Germans for that, eh?
 * Ch.1

 * The first fruits of the popular victory in Stalingrad were the decree on the militarisation of railroads (boys and women to tribunal) and one day later (April 17) the decree on introduction of hard labour and gallows.
 * Ch.1

 * In May 1943, during the German occupation, in a garden at Podlesnaya street in Vinnica, incidentally was started the excavation of graves already unnoticeable and overgrown with grass — and 39 mass graves were found […]. In June, excavation started near orthodox cemetery, and another 42 graves were found. […] Altogether, 95 graves with 9439 bodies. And that only in Vinnica, where these were incidentally discovered. But how many might have been hidden in other towns? And the population should have rushed to become Soviet partisans, having seen those graves?
 * Ch.1

 * There in Rostov, Aleksandr Petrovich M.-V., an engineer was arrested in one the first days of war, he died in the preliminary inquiry chamber, his wife shuddered for months, waiting when she would be arrested, — and only after the German arrival could she go to sleep calmly: Now I can have a rest at last! Nay, she should have prayed for her butchers to return.
 * Ch.1

 * Who remembers the great flight of people from Northern Caucasus in January 1943 — and who can show a counterpart from the world history? The population, especially rural, massively going with the defeated enemy, the foreigners — in order not to remain under the victorious own — carts, carts, carts in the severe windy January frost!
 * Ch.1

 * And all that was written about the foreign countries, — in 1930s about the inevitable collapse of the West, the treacherousness of the Socialists, the unanimousity of all Spain against Franco (in 1942 the treacherous freedom fight of Nehru — it weakened the British empire, Soviet wartime ally) — proved to be lies.
 * Ch.1

Part VII

 * Oh, Western freedom-loving left-wing thinkers! Oh, left-wing labourists! Oh, American, German and French progressive students! All of this is still not enough for you. The whole book has been useless for you. You will understand everything immediately, when you yourself — "hands behind the back" — toddle into our Archipelago.
 * Ch.3

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

title: The Gulag Archipelago


text:
Talk:The Gulag Archipelago

Quotations
I'll add new quotations soon.

This Article Needs Cleaning
This article needs to be cleaned...the quotes are not clear at all, nor are their contexts or sources clearly defined.

Poor translation
I have trouble believing these quotations are from the official translation of the book. They seem to have been translated (poorly) by someone with a copy in another language. For example, this gem:
 * With its laws, Stalin's authorities made the bandits clear: don't steal me! steal private persons! Private property is a survival from the reactionary past.

What? Made the bandits clear? Don't steal me? or this:
 * ... and then suddenly one morning the explosion of headlines, claiming the whole Europe is moaning heart-breakingly under their heel.

Repressive headlines?
 * The inquiring cameramen might continue filming and show, how the Bessarabian peasant wives brought from freedom rush with the same intention to the trash already searched through by the expiring persons.

I have no idea what this sentence is supposed to convey.

So, can someone with a good translation of the book please correct this article? -- 138.227.189.10 13:02, 20 December 2006 (UTC)

I just finished up some work I started on weeks ago. I re-organized the article, added images and added a few quotes, and did a little grammar correction in some of the poor translations that were posted, but I did not remove anything other than some duplication that had occured. I might eventually work on this using a standard translation, but it will probably be weeks or months before I gradually accomplish this, and it is not one of my top priorities. ~ Kalki 12:40, 2 February 2007 (UTC)

distracting bold
I have added a section on Part IV and quotations.

Bold-type distracts a lot throughout the article. I suggest to remove it.

Cesar Tort 01:07, 29 June 2007 (UTC)

 * One of my previous discussions on why I have always supported the use of bolding for emphasis is at User_talk:Kalki/2006. ~ Kalki 01:55, 29 June 2007 (UTC)

 * What about italics? Too much bold-type is considered visually aggresive. —Cesar Tort 03:51, 29 June 2007 (UTC)

 * Beautiful image you inserted today, Kalki! —Cesar Tort 03:52, 29 June 2007 (UTC)

Unsourced quote
''Governments were never moral beings. '' – it can be found from vol. 1, chapter 6. It is two paragraphs down from where Germans say "Ivan plen nicht". --Kanakukk 15:38, 14 April 2010 (UTC).

title: Talk:The Gulag Archipelago


text:
Look Around You

Look Around You is a comedic BBC parody of British science television shows, devised and written by Robert Popper and Peter Serafinowicz, and narrated in the first series by Nigel Lambert.

Calcium

 * Narrator: Here is a model of a calcium molecule. Do you recognise the triple helix?  If you do, write it down.
 * Narrator: The protons feed electrical information to the core of the molecule, where we find the central atom, or 'Queen Atom'. Were the Queen Atom to leave the molecule, or nest, the effects would be disastrous, as the entire structure would come tumbling down.  This is known as the Helvetica Scenario. Shows a black and white German horror film of a scientist observing a man with no face trapped behind a window
 * Narrator: The calcium has reacted with the sodium chloride to produce calcium chloride. Because calcium chloride is a conductor, the little lamp lights. (black liquid oozes from lamp) Small quantities of Thomason's oil segnomin are also produced.

Maths

 * Narrator: The largest number is about 45,000,000,000 although mathematicians suspect that there may be even larger numbers.
 * Text on screen reads: 45,000,000,001?

 * Narrator: Maths stands for Mathematical Anti-Telharsic Harfatum Septomin.

 * Narrator: We use maths at almost every point of the day, whether we're working out how to thread our shoelaces, calculating the optimal moment on which to embark upon a conversation, or, if you can fly, planning your trajectory for the journey to work.

 * Narrator: Look at this formula: $$n^2 + 9 + 9$$. It's called cDonald's Theorem. If we plot its graph, we arrive at this unusual shape, a uniformly curved line which somehow joins up with itself that science has yet to find a name for. Can you think of a name for it? If you can, the Royal Mathematics Society would like to hear from you. Because they hold a competition each year to find a name for this figure. The final takes place in Nottingham on April the 4th of September. And you could win your school this computerized toast system. So, good luck!

 * Narrator: Jean is shorter than Brutus but taller than Imhotep. Imhotep is taller than Jean, but shorter than Lord Scotland. Lord Scotland is twice the height of Jean and Brutus combined but only one-tenth of the height of Millsy. Millsy is at a constant height of $$x - y$$. If Jean stands exactly one nautical mile away from Lord Scotland, how tall is Imhotep?

 * Narrator: Eight ladies go to eight shops at eight o'clock in the morning. Each lady wants to buy eight spiders. For each spider, eight spider shoes must also be bought. But they only have eight pounds between them. With each spider costing eight pence and each spider shoe costing an eighth pence each, will the ladies have enough change for the bus home? A journey costing eight pence per stop and made up of eight stops.

 * Narrator: It's the future and Queen Elizabeth III and Queen Elizabeth IV are going to a party held by Queen Elizabeth V. They're keen to make the right impression so it's important that they choose their outfits carefully. Queen Elizabeth III has forty dresses to choose from, where as Queen Elizabeth IV has four thousand. Queen Elizabeth V has just one dress, but it has the ability to transform itself into the shape of any dress. The night before the party Queen Elizabeth IV’s handmaiden steals the patterns to Queen Elizabeth III's dresses and working through till dawn makes forty exact replicas. Can you calculate the probability that all three queens will be wearing the same dress at the party and how many times can Queen Elizabeth V's dress change before it overheats?

 * Narrator: Here are the answers to all your problems: Imhotep is invisible. The ladies were eight pence short. And the party was cancelled.

Water

 * Narrator: But what is water? It's a difficult question, because water is impossible to describe. One might ask the same about birds. What are birds? We just don't know.

 * Narrator: (cutting into a boiled egg) Make sure you look out for the release of the new albumen... (the egg cracks open) It's out now.

 * Narrator: Thanks, ants. Thants.

 * Narrator: The gas mafipulates gently through the Jane Grey and into the water, causing bubbling. The mafipulation is allowed to continue for 5 minutes.

 * Narrator: If you look carefully, you'll notice that the water has changed colour from invisible to brown.

 * Narrator: Bless you, ants. Blants.

Germs

 * Narrator: Germs originated in Germany, before rapidly spreading throughout the rest of the world.

 * Narrator: Germs are basically a malevolent form of bacteria, with one purpose: to spread germs.

 * Narrator: You can pick up germs from a variety of sources, and because they're invisible they're almost impossible to see.

 * Narrator: Moth apples are smaller than crab apples, sweeter too. Don't be tempted to eat them, as they are highly explosive.

Ghosts

 * Narrator: But there's no need to be scared of ghosts, it's a very childish attitude as the majority of them are quite harmless. This spirit is helping a girl with her homework, while this one is mending its master's caravan.

 * Narrator: Ghosts. You may know them as ghouls or demons or spirits or spirims or spictrims.

 * Narrator: One way in which ghosts are different from man is that they can't whistle. Try as they might, the most they can muster is a rather feeble hiss.  Perhaps it's because their lips are transparent and their tongues are see-through?

Sulphur

 * Narrator: We will be using a household object famous for its iron content. Can you guess what it is? Correct. Champagne.

 * Narrator: (Talking about heat vision) You've probably seen this in action at your local dump, where it is used by the waste disposal industry.

 * Peter Jackmond: In an average year we get through roughly forty tonnes of sulphur. This translates into approximately two and a half million individual matches. Since the company was formed we've produced 156,280,000 matches, and if we continue at the current rate of production, by the year 3500 we will have manufactured 900,000 billion billion billion billion billion billion matches. Narrator: That's a lot of matches!

Music

 * Narrator: There are those that actually believe that this is music. They call it 'birdsong', but it's hardly a song.  There's no real tune to speak of, just a cacophony of squawks and chirrups.  What a racket!

 * Narrator: One can only imagine a world without music, though we'd probably get used to it after a while.

 * Narrator: Here's a state of the art, song-writing computer, the 'Harrington 1200.' You've probably never seen one yourself because it costs almost a thousand pounds.  Price tag reads £999.99½p

 * Narrator: But it's at the heart of the Harrington that we find the real musical motors that power this machine. DNA samples taken from the composers Gilbert and Sullivan.

 * Narrator: An ordinary piano. And if we go to the top of the scale we find this, the Boîte Diabolique, which houses the 19 forbidden notes. It's kept locked, and for good reason.

Iron

 * Narrator: We have a DC current, provided by the battery, and an AC current, provided by the mains. We're working with AC/DC because it is heavy metal.

 * Narrator: An enormous pair of scissors has appeared in the sky directly above the laboratory, and after a few moments, it's gone. It's an old experiment that you've probably seen before, but well worth trying nonetheless.

 * Narrator: Here is a model of an iron molecule. And here is a model of a model, modeled in iron.

 * Narrator: Man has been using iron since the stone age.

The Brain

 * Narrator: What is the brain? If you don't know that, you've forgotten how to think.

 * Narrator: The brain is basically a wrinkled bag of skin, filled with warm water, veins and thought muscles. Think of it as a kind of modified heart, only with a mind or brain.

 * Narrator: The opposite of the brain is probably the bum. It's nowhere near as intelligent as the brain.  It doesn't have to be as it only needs to make very basic calculations.

Man enters toilet, and locks door

 * Narrator: You don't have to be a brain surgeon to operate on the brain.

 * (phone rings)
 * Scientist: Hello?
 * Narrator: It's the BRAIN.

Music

 * Pam: Who could forget when the Post Office Tower spent 7 weeks at number one [due to a clerical error]?
 * Leonard Hatred: (on Psilence spray) Well, my parents were both heavy snorers and I was a light sleeper...We lived at Heathrow at first. Later we moved. But it was to Gatwick (laughs nervously). Then I moved to the countryside but they built an abattoir next to my house. And my wife has this condition where she screams constantly. And her sister moved in and she has the same condition...
 * Peter: Well, you've certainly given the ghost of Tchaikovsky something to think about.
 * Peter: Thanks, Tchaikovsky, Thaikovsky.

Health

 * Morgan: (after an unusual face-lift) Wow! I love it!
 * Packard: Yes, the tusk really sets it off!
 * Dr Franklin Fu: Medibot!
 * Medibot: MEDIBOT!

Sport

 * Pealy: When you think of Pennsylvania, you probably think of pencils.
 * Peter: Thanks, ants. Thants.

Food

 * Continuity Announcer: Look Around You follows in a minute, but first we have the line up for St. Frankenstein's day.
 * Continuity Announcer: At 10:40 we have The Honey Programme, hosted by David Bumblebee.
 * Continuity Announcer: Imagine That is at 11:00, and this week the businessmen are trying to imagine The Two Ronnies having sex with each other.

Peter: When you hear the words "fast food", you automatically think of one thing: casserole.
 * Peter: Well, unfortunately, there never was an opening night. Only hours after that piece was filmed, Clive Pounds sadly died from complications following a wasp sting to his anus. And so, as a mark of respect, we will now observe a one-second silence.
 * Peter: And now for your special birthday surprise. It's you, Pam Bachelor, at age 90!
 * Continuity Announcer: Viewers may be pleased to know that Clive Pounds, who died during production of this program, has since come back to life.

Computers

 * Continuity Announcer: Look Around You follows in a minute, but first we have the line up for Antmas Eve.
 * Peter: Thanks, Eddie. Theddie.

Sleep (From Health Episode)

 * Woman in dream: Stop eating that jam you little shit!
 * Teacher in dream: Idiot! Pidiot! Pridiot! Peroxamidiot! CABBAGE HALL IDIOT INVESTMENT FUND!!!!

Inventor of the Year Live Final

 * Pam: Well, this trophy is made entirely from solid gold, plated with tin.
 * Birds of Britain narrator: (shows a picture of an arm) These are hand birds. That one is eating a worm.
 * Peter: Thanks, Hanks. Thanks.

title: Look Around You


text:
Colleen Fitzpatrick

Colleen Ann Fitzpatrick (born July 20, 1972 in Old Bridge, New Jersey) is an American pop music artist, dancer and actress, better known by her stage name, Vitamin C.

Attributed

 * I don't think the music is all that different, actually. It is produced and presented in a different way. I don't favour one type of music over another. I like music that is melodic, so I like what I am doing now. I haven't abandoned guitars, I am just a little less angry than I was then. I am still proud of Eve's Plum, and I think they could be Vitamin C songs, and some Vitamin C songs could be Eve's Plum songs. I really like this one, it is the best one of all.

 * It was great, I love onions!

 * It's not as if I went from hardcore punk to four-on-the-floor dance music. I always considered the songs I've written to be intelligent pop songs and perhaps just the production that varies but it's still very much the same voice.
 * Comparing Eve's Plum to Vitamin C

 * I'm better suited to doing this because I enjoy dancing and performing, so I can incorporate a whole bunch of different elements of my personality into the performance component of Vitamin C and it turns out, without trying, there was a certain positive spirit and strong point of view [in the songs] that fairly well represented my personality. So it all came together quite nicely.
 * About the Vitamin C project

 * I decided that instead of replacing members of Eve's Plum and keeping it going against some internal and external odds, I would continue doing music, but do it by myself," explains Fitzpatrick. "But it took me a little while because I wasn't sure I was really ready emotionally and mentally to jump back into the fire immediately.
 * About the Vitamin C project

 * You get treated better [laugh], Being a girl about town is different from being a girl with five guys about town.
 * Comparing Eve's Plum to Vitamin C

 * "The Itch" was an accident. I responded to [co-writer] Billy Steinberg's lyric because I thought even though we set it in this particular story of a girl in a relationship who isn't getting what she needs, it's really a metaphor for desire. Everything just coincided without my realizing it. I was playing Lucy in Dracula 2000, and she's a character who is totally open, sexual and curious and definitely has "The Itch" on many different levels. And it was just coincidence that all this stuff kind of like came together for me. Because I get the itch all the time. And to me that really means something.

 * You know that weird cat dance that cats do late at night where they go completely stir-crazy and they run around the apartment and you don't know what the hell they're doing? I often feel like that. I dye my hair constantly because I can't sit still with one hair color. That's a perfect example of trying to satisfy some hunger. I want change; I want constant stimuli. I love to fly because I love the high. All of these are like itch kind of things. Sometimes I need to completely get away. I'll get in the car and I'll drive for as long as I can drive. Sometimes it's a sexual urge. I don't need to explain that; it's pretty self-explanatory. It's a craving, a desire. Sometimes it's food. I'm just a giant, big ol' consumer. I want, I need, I crave, I can't say no. I have no control and I'm a complete control freak. It's just crazy [laughs].
 * Asked where her "itches" come from

 * I'm not quite sure that I know how they complement each other, because I use them for the opposite reason. I find music to be an intensely personal kind of thing, perhaps it's because I write a lot of the stuff. I use acting to escape from being me, and I use music to explore being me. I think that's the best way to put it.
 * Asked how dancing & music complement each other

 * I haven't found it difficult because I find this very enjoyable. It's really challenging. And I'm really proud of the record because it's a really good record. There's nothing harder than to write a pop record with meaning. I think it's much easier to be alternative. It's much easier to be different and take a different path outside of a commercial context. To try and write a pop song that is not cliché, to try and write a pop song that has meaning and fits in under three minutes and five seconds and has a hook that people want to listen to is the most difficult thing in the world to do. So in lieu of that you have to write what you know and what you like, what you're feeling. That's all I can basically do. I don't begrudge the other people that don't write their songs. And I don't judge them. I'd like to see more people writing their own songs, because that's just personally what I like. Just for me, as an artist, so many people only care about being popular right now. Whatever happened to trying to write a song that means something? When I was growing up, artists meant something. They had opinions, they looked different than the person working at the store on your street. They opened your eyes and taught you something about life. And I would like to aspire to be that kind of artist.
 * When asked about writing her own music

 * I learned I'm not the kind of artist that can just sing someone else's songs, for a lot of reasons. I have to have some sort of understanding of the song, or some sort of attachment to it.
 * When asked what she learned from writing to her album

 * The genius of Jamie is NOT that she wrote the lyrics on her hands, but that she didn't think we'd notice
 * Discussing Jamie, a contestant on The Wb's Superstar USA

 * Like any great performer, Rosa pulls you in, and I found myself leaning forward, and really paying attention...but most of all, trying to figure out what the HELL she was saying
 * Discussing Rosa, a contestant on The Wb's Superstar USA

title: Colleen Fitzpatrick


text:
Schoolhouse Rock!

Schoolhouse Rock! (1973-2009) is an American interstitial programming series of animated musical educational short films (and later, videos) that aired during the Saturday morning children's programming block on the U.S. television network ABC. The themes covered included grammar, science, economics, history, mathematics, and civics. The series' original run lasted from 1973 to 1984; it was later revived from 1993 to 1996. Additional episodes were produced in 2009 for direct-to-video release.

Three is a Magic Number

 * Three is a magic number, Yes it is, it's a magic number. Somewhere in the ancient, mystic trinity You get three can't you see it's the magic number.

 * The past and the present and the future. Faith and Hope and Charity, The heart and the brain and the body Give you three as a magic number.
 * A man and a woman had a little baby. Yes they did, there were three in the family, And that's a magic number.

My Hero, Zero

 * My hero, Zero, such a funny little hero, But till you came along, We counted on our fingers and toes. Now you're here to stay And nobody really knows How wonderful you are. Why we could never reach a star, Without you, Zero, my hero, How wonderful you are.

 * What's so wonderful about a zero? It's nothing, isn't it? Sure, it represents nothing alone.  But place a zero after 1 And you've got yourself a 10. See how important that is? When you run out of digits, You can start all over again. See how convenient that is?

Elementary, My Dear

 * Elementary, my dear, two times two is four. Elementary, my dear, two times three is six. Elementary, my dear, two times four is eight. Elementary, my dear, two times five is ten. Two times one is two, of course. And it must occur to you, You get an even number Every time you multiply by two.

 * Two times ten is twenty, eleven twice is twenty-two, Double twelve that's twenty-four, thirteen twice is twenty-six, Fourteen twice is twenty-eight, fifteen twice is thirty, now you're buildin' up on thirty: Sixteen twice is thirty-two, elementary. Seventeen twice is thirty-four, elementary. Eighteen twice is thirty-six, elementary. Nineteen twice is thirty-eight, elementary. Twenty twice is forty, and it must occur to you, You can double any number, all you do is multiply by two...

 * Forty days and forty nights, Didn't it rain, children? Not a speck of land in sight, Didn't it, didn't it rain. But Noah built the ark so tight, They sailed on, children. And when at last the waters receded, And the dove brought back the olive tree leaf, He landed that ship near Mount Ararat, And one of his children grabbed Noah's robe and said "Hey Dad, how many animals on this old ark anyway, huh?"

The Four-Legged Zoo

 * Now Miss Simpson said... She teaches school, you know - Yeah, she took us there. Well, Miss Simpson said - If we counted every head on these quadrupeds, Then multiplied that number by four, We'd know how many feet went through the door, If we turned 'em all loose. Oh no, don't do that! It's really a groovy zoo. But, anyway, what Miss Simpson said, It was a good chance to work on our fours in our head. One, two, three, four!

Ready or not, Here I Come!

 * Multiplying by five is a little like countin' by five. In fact, if you counted along on your fingers as you counted out loud by fives, your fingers would tell you how many fives, you've got.

I Got Six

 * I got six. That's all there is. Six times one is six, one times six. He got six. I put mine with his and we got twelve. Six times two is twelve, two times six.

Lucky Seven Sampson

 * Now you can call me Lucky, 'cause Lucky's my name. Singin' and dancin', that's my game. I never did a whole day's work in my life, Still everything seems to turn out right. Like a grasshopper on a summer's day, I just love to play, And pass the time away, 'Cause I was born 'neath a lucky star. They said I'd go far.

 * Remember Lucky Seven Samson, that's my natural born name. If you should ask me again, I'd have to tell you the same. You'll wake up tomorrow, you'll be glad that I came 'Cause you'll be singin one of the songs that I sang. So keep a happy outlook and be good to your friend, And maybe I'll pass this way again. Maybe!

Figure Eight

 * Figure eight as double four, Figure four as half of eight. If you skate, you would be great If you could make a figure eight. That's a circle that turns 'round upon itself.

Naughty Number Nine

 * Number nine will put you on the spot. Number nine will tie you up, oh, in a knot. When you're tryin', Multiplyin' by nine, You might give it everything you've got And still be stopped. If you don't know some secret way you can check on, You'll break your neck on Naughty number nine.

 * Now the first thing to keep in mind, When you're multiplyin' by nine Is that it's one less than ten. You see, nine is the same as ten minus one. So you could multiply your number by ten, And then subtract the number from the result, And you'd get the same product As if you'd multiplied by nine And you knew it.

The Good Eleven

 * Good, good, good, good, the good eleven, yeah It's almost as easy as multiplyin' by one. Good, good, good, good eleven. (Mmmm) Yes, eleven almost makes multiplication fun.

 * Some people get up at a quarter till seven, Other people lie abed till 8:45 or nine. But I'm happy just to hang in there till eleven, 'Cause eleven has always been a friend of mine.

Little Twelvetoes

 * Now if man had been born with 6 fingers on each hand, he'd also have 12 toes or so the theory goes. Well, with twelve digits, I mean fingers, he probably would have invented two more digits when he invented his number system. Then, if he saved the zero for the end, he could count and multiply by twelve just as easily as you and I do by ten.

A Noun is a Person, Place, or Thing

 * Well every person you can know, And every place that you can go, And anything that you can show, You know they're nouns. A noun's a special kind of word, It's any name you ever heard, I find it quite interesting, A noun's a person, place, or thing.

Verb: That's What's Happenin'

 * I get my thing in action (Verb!) To be, to sing, to feel, to live (Verb!) That's what's happenin' I put my heart in action (Verb!) To run, to go, to get, to give (Verb!) (You're what's happenin')

Conjunction Junction

 * Conjunction Junction, what's your function? Hooking up words and phrases and clauses. Conjunction Junction, how's that function? I got three favorite cars That get most of my job done. Conjunction Junction, what's their function? I got "and", "but", and "or", They'll get you pretty far.

Interjections!

 * When Reginald was home with flu, uh-huh-huh, The doctor knew just what to do-hoo. He cured the infection With one small injection While Reginald uttered some interjections.. Hey! That smarts! Ouch! That hurts! Yow! That's not fair givin' a guy a shot down there!

 * Interjections (Hey!) show excitement (Yow!) or emotion (Ouch!). They're generally set apart from a sentence by an exclamation point, Or by a comma when the feeling's not as strong.

 * So when you're happy (Hurray!), or sad (Awww!), or frightened (EEK!), or mad (Rats!), or excited (Wow!), or glad (HEY!), an interjection stops the sentence right!

 * So when you're happy (Hurray!), or sad (Awww!), or frightened (EEK!), or mad (Rats!), or excited (Wow!), or glad (HEY!), an interjection stops the sentence right!

Unpack Your Adjectives

 * Got home from camping last spring. Saw people, places and things. We barely had arrived, Friends asked us to describe The people, places and every last thing. So we unpacked our adjectives.

 * Adjectives are often used to help us compare things, To say how thin, how fat, how short, how tall. Girls who are tall can get taller, Boys who are small can get smaller, Till one is the tallest And the other's the smallest of all.

 * We hiked along without care. Then we ran into a bear He was a hairy bear, He was a scary bear. We made a hasty retreat from his lair, and described him with adjectives.

Lolly, Lolly, Lolly, Get Your Adverbs Here!

 * Lolly, Lolly, Lolly, get your adverbs here. Lolly, Lolly, Lolly, got some adverbs here. Come on down to Lolly's, get the adverbs here! You're going to need If you write or read, Or even think about it.

 * Lolly, Lolly, Lolly, get your adverbs here. Got a lot of lolly, jolly adverbs here.

 * An adverb is a word that modifies a verb (sometimes a verb, sometimes) it modifies an adjective, or else another adverb

Rufus Xavier Sarsaparilla

 * Now, I have a friend named Rufus Xavier Sarsaparilla, And I could say that Rufus found a kangaroo That followed Rufus home And now that kangaroo belongs To Rufus Xavier Sarsaparilla. Whew! I could say that, but I don't have to, 'Cause I got pronouns, I can say, "HE found a kangaroo that followed HIM home and now IT is HIS"

 * You see, (uh) HE, HIM, and HIS are pronouns, Replacing the noun Rufus Xavier Sarsaparilla, A very proper noun. And IT is a pronoun, replacing the noun, kangaroo! (How common!)

 * If she found a kangaroo I would say SHE found a kangaroo that followed HER home and now it is HERS, but I can't say that... 'cause she found an aardvark.

 * Now I could say that Rafaela Gabriella and Rufus Xavier Sarsaparilla and Albert Andreas Armadillo found an aardvark, a kangaroo and a rhinoceros. And now that aardvark and that kangaroo and that rhinoceros belong respectfully to: Rafaela Gabriella Sarsaparilla and Rufus Xavier Sasparilla and Albert Andreas Armadillo. *whew!* Because of pronouns I can say, in this way: WE found THEM and THEY found US and now THEY are OURS and WE're so happy! Thank you Pronouns!

The Tale of Mr. Morton

 * This is the tale of Mister Morton. (Mister Morton is who?) He is the subject of our tale. And the predicate tells what Mister Morton must do.
 * Mr. Morton walked down the street. (Mr. Morton walked.) Mr. Morton talked to his cat. Mr. Morton talked. ("Hello, cat; you look good.") Mr. Morton was lonely. Mr. Morton was. Mr. Morton... (is the subject of the sentence) ...and what the predicate says, he does.

 * Mr. Morton knew just one girl. (Mr. Morton knew). Mr. Morton grew flowers for Pearl. (Mr. Morton grew.) Mr. Morton was very shy. Mr. Morton was. Mr. Morton... (is the subject of the sentence) ...and what the predicate says, he does.

No More Kings

 * We're gonna elect a president! (No more kings) He's gonna do what the people want! (No more kings) We're gonna run things our way! (No more kings) Nobody's gonna tell us what to do!

 * Rockin' and a-rollin', splishin' and a-splashin', Over the horizon, what can it be? Looks like it's going to be a free country.

The Shot Heard 'Round the World

 * Now, the ride of Paul Revere Set the nation on its ear, And the shot at Lexington heard 'round the world, When the British fired in the early dawn The War of Independence had begun, The die was cast, the rebel flag unfurled.

 * And on to Concord marched the foe to seize the arsenal there you know Waking folks and searching all around 'till our militia stopped them in their tracks At the old North Bridge we turned them back AND chased them back to Boston town.

 * And the shot heard round the world Was the start of the revolution The minutemen were ready, on the move take your powder take your gun Report to General Washington hurry men there's not an hour to lose.

 * From the shot heard 'round the world To the end of the Revolution The continental rabble took the day And the father of our country Beat the British there at Yorktown And brought freedom to you and me and the U.S.A.!

The Preamble

 * In 1787 I'm told Our founding fathers did agree To write a list of principles For keepin' people free.

 * The U.S.A. was just startin' out. A whole brand-new country. And so our people spelled it out The things that we should be.

 * In 1781 I'm Told Our founding fathers all sat down And wrote a list of principles That's known the world around.

 * The U.S.A was just startin' out. A whole brand-new country. And so our people spelled it out They wanted a land of liberty.

Sufferin' 'til Suffrage

 * Now you have heard of Women's Rights, And how we've tried to reach new heights. If we're "all created equal"... That's us too!

I'm Just a Bill

 * I'm just a bill. Yes, I'm only a bill. And I'm sitting here on Capitol Hill. Well, it's a long, long journey To the capital city. It's a long, long wait While I'm sitting in committee, But I know I'll be a law someday At least I hope and pray that I will, But today I am still just a bill.

The Great American Melting Pot

 * Lovely Lady Liberty With her book of recipes And the finest one she's got Is the great American melting pot. The great American melting pot.

 * You simply melt right in, It doesn't matter what your skin. It doesn't matter where you're from, Or your religion, you jump right in To the great American melting pot. The great American melting pot. Ooh, what a stew, red, white, and blue.

Elbow Room

 * One thing you will discover When you get next to one another Is everybody needs some elbow room, elbow room.

 * It's nice when your kinda cozy, but Not when your tangled nose to nosey, oh, Everybody needs some elbow, needs a little elbow room.

 * That's how it was in the early days of the U.S.A. The people kept a comin' to settle though The east was the only place there was to go.

 * The president was Thomas Jefferson. He made a deal with Napoleon. How'd you like to sell a mile or two, (or three or a hundred or a thousand?)

 * Oh, elbow room, elbow room, Got to, got to get us some elbow room. It's the west or bust, In God we trust. There's a new land out there... Louis and Clark volunteered to go, Good bye, good luck, wear your overcoat! They prepared for good times and for bad (and for bad), They hired Sacajawea to be their guide. She led them all across the countryside.

Fireworks

 * Ooh, there's gonna be fireworks (Fireworks!) On the Fourth of July (red, white, and blue!) Red, white, and blue fireworks Like diamonds in the sky. (diamonds in the sky!) We're gonna shoot the entire works on fireworks That really show, oh yeah, We declared our liberty two hundred years ago. Yeah!

 * In 1776 (fireworks!) There were fireworks too(red, white, and blue!) The original colonists, You know their tempers blew (They really blew!) Like Thomas Paine once wrote: It's only common sense(only common sense) That if a government don't give you your basic rights You'd better get another government.

 * And though some people tried to fight it, Well, a committee was formed to write it: Benjamin Franklin, Philip Livingston, John Adams, Roger Sherman, Thomas Jefferson, They got it done (Oh yes they did!) The Declaration, uh-huh-huh, The Declaration of Independence (Oh yeah!) In seventeen hundred seventy six (Right on!) The Continental Congress said that we were free (We're free!) Said we had the right of life and liberty, ...And the pursuit of happiness!

Mother Necessity

 * Mother Necessity With her good intentions, Where would this country be Without her inventions?

 * Orville, Wilbur, go outside this minute, and there continue with your silly playin'. Take those plans and take those blueprints! Take that funny lookin' thing Take that wheel, take that wing! I can't hear a thing that Mrs. Johnson's sayin'!

 * When Robert Fulton made the steamboat go, When Marconi gave us wireless radio, When Henry Ford cranked up his first automo, When Samuel Slater showed us how the factories go, And all the iron and oil and coal and steel and Yankee don't you know, They made this country really grow, grow, grow, grow, With Mother Necessity and where would we be Without the inventions of your progeny?

Three Ring Government

 * Guess I got the idea right here at school. Felt like a fool when they called my name, Talkin' about the government and how it's arranged, Divided in three like a circus. Ring one, Executive, Two is Legislative, that's Congress. Ring three, Judiciary. See it's kind of like my circus, circus.

A Victim of Gravity

 * Helpin' wash the dishes And I drop a cup. Why does everything fall down Instead of up? Ridin' up a hill I spill And hit the ground. Wish I could fall up instead of always falling down.

 * I'm a victim of gravity. Everything keeps fallin' down on me. No matter where I go That forces that I know, Just a pullin' me down, down, down, down, down. It's all around town now, It's like a magnet deep inside the ground. When I lift something up, I can feel it pulling down.

Interplanet Janet

 * They say our solar system is centered 'round the sun, Nine planets, large and small, parading by. But somewhere out in space, There's another shining face That you might see some night up in the sky. Interplanet Janet, she's a galaxy girl, A solar system Ms. from a future world, She travels like a rocket with her comet team And there's never been a planet Janet hasn't seen, No, there's never been a planet Janet hasn't seen.

 * She's been to the Sun, it's a lot of fun, It's a hot-spot, It's a gas. Hydrogen and helium in a big, bright, glowing mass. It's a star, it's a star! So Janet got an autograph!

 * Mercury was near the Sun so Janet stopped by, But the mercury on Mercury was much too high, So Janet split for Venus, but on Venus, she found She couldn't see a thing for all the clouds around. Earth looked exciting, kind of green and inviting, So Janet thought she'd give it a go. But the creatures on that planet looked so very weird to Janet, She didn't even dare to say hello.

 * "It's a bird!" "It's a plane!" "Why, it must be a UFO!" But it was Interplanet Janet. She's a galaxy girl, A solar system Ms. from a future world She travels like a rocket with her comet team And there's never been a planet Janet hasn't seen No, there's never been a planet Janet hasn't seen.

 * Mars is red and Jupiter's big And Saturn shows off its rings. Uranus is built on a funny tilt And Neptune is its twin, And Pluto, little Pluto, is the farthest planet from the Sun.

 * They say our solar system is not alone in space. The Universe has endless mysteries. Some future astronaut May find out that what he'd thought Was a shooting star instead turned out to be... Interplanet Janet, she's a galaxy girl, A solar system Ms. from a future world, She travels like a rocket with her comet team. And there's never been a planet Janet hasn't seen, No, there's never been a planet Janet hasn't seen!

The Body Machine

 * I'm a machine, you're a machine Everybody that you know You know, they are machines. To keep your engine running you need energy For your high-powered, revved-up body machine. Your high-powered, revved-up body machine.

Do the Circulation

 * There's a great new craze that's sweeping the nation Come on, do the Circulation! It starts with your heart, what a great sensation, Yeah, come do it, circulate! Out through your arteries, in through your veins, Your heart pumps your blood then it does it again. Come on, everybody, get it on, everybody. Circulation! So come on, everybody, get it on, everybody. Circulation!

The Energy Blues

 * Energy... Sometimes I think I'm runnin' out of energy Seems like we use an awful lot for Heatin' and lightin' and drivin' Readin' and writin' and jivin' Energy ... You'd think we'd be savin' it up.

 * Energy ... We're looking to try and find some new kinds. Energy ... Exploring to try and make a new find. Nuclear and thermal and solar, If we miss we'll get colder and colder. Energy ... We've gotta stop usin' you up.

Them Not-So-Dry Bones

 * Minus bones you're just a blob, Being framework's their main job. All your organs, muscles, too, They need your bones to hold them safe and sound inside for you. Your heart and lungs are tucked away, In there behind your ribs. Those bones have been protecting them Since we were little kids.

Electricity, Electricity

 * When you're in the dark and you want to see, You need uh... Electricity, Electricity Flip that switch and what do you get? You get uh... Electricity, Electricity Every room can now be lit With just uh... Electricity, Electricity

Telegraph Line

 * Hey, there's a telegraph line, You got yours and I got mine. It's called the nervous system, And everybody understands Those telegram commands And you know that everybody better listen!

 * The central nervous system Is the brain and the spine. The brain controls the system And the spine is the line. Telegrams come in To tell what's happening to you, Then telegrams go out To tell your body what to do

Dollars and Sense

 * Gotta get me some dollars and sense, Dollars and sense; Them green-back bills with the pictures of the Presidents.

Tax Man Max

 * Here's the song I'm doing, gonna fill in you all about tax. Tax is that familiar melody, sinful and true. Hum it if you've earned a dollar or two. Bucks in billions for the government for whatever they do. Anyone who earns a living gives more than a few. So schools can be their best, so our roads will have no cracks; Someone fix those train tracks! I hear you callin' Uncle and I'm payin' my tax.

Where the Money Goes

 * We can stop buying groceries, But that might be a mistake; 'Cause eating is a habit I'd be loath to try and break.

 * We can stop paying income tax, But they might send me to jail. And if we don't pay the mortgage, Then they'll take our house; Then where would we get our mail?

 * If not for all these bills and taxes, Our income would more than suffice. I feel like a real big cheese Until everybody takes a slice!

$7.50 Once a Week

 * Well there goes my allowance. I didn't plan ahead. I made some bad choices, and I compared prices too late. I guess I'll have to find a way to earn some more. But that shouldn't be too hard. Maybe I can do an extra household chore; Like wash the car, Or mop the floor, Or maybe help clean up the back yard.

 * I still get seven-fifty once a week. But now I learned some money management technique. And I can save enough To buy some real cool stuff. And I made my little fortune so to speak, On only seven-fifty, once a week. That's my allowance. Seven-fifty once a week.

Tyrannosaurus Debt

 * There's something huge Red, white, and blue That's grazing in D.C. It's gobbling up the taxes That are paid by you and me It doesn't seem to notice We really can't afford The billions that it's costing us To pay its room and board

 * It doesn't roam But seems content To dwell on Capitol Hill As long as trucks keep pulling up With tons of green-back bills We've got to feed the big guy We really can't forget It has an awesome appetite Tyrannosaurus Debt.

This For That

 * I'll give you this for that That for this We'll make a trade called "barter" I'll give you this for that That for this We'll have it made with barter.

 * Today we use cash and spend with ardor But that doesn't mean we don't still barter When a football team needs a pulling guard Or a kid like you is into trading cards.

 * Take this for that That for this Bills and coins are smarter But when you pay for that Remember this It all started out with barter.

Walkin' on the Wall Street

 * You gotta be cool When you're walkin' on Wall Street Like goin' to school You learn a lot every day And this is the rule When you're walkin' on Wall Street Buy low, sell high Take a piece of the pie That's the Wall Street way.

The Check's in the Mail

 * The check's in the mail The check is in the mail And it ought to be there Tuesday without fail If you have got a bill to pay Or something you need to buy Just write the check and send it off in the mail

title: Schoolhouse Rock!


text:
User talk:64.118.122.117

~ UDScott 16:48, 21 January 2006 (UTC)

title: User talk:64.118.122.117


text: User talk:J C Phillips

title: User talk:J C Phillips


text:
User talk:82.31.98.130

~ UDScott 19:05, 21 January 2006 (UTC)

title: User talk:82.31.98.130


text:
User:82.31.98.130

HEY HEY CONTACT ME AT :MACKRORY@HOTMAIL.COM LOL EMMA PLZ TELL ME THAT UR FIT LOL U ALREADY ARE HEY! (THATS A FUNNY JOKE)

title: User:82.31.98.130


text:
Greg Egan

Greg Egan (born August 20, 1961) is an Australian (Perth-based) computer programmer and science fiction author.

Fiction

 * There are moments when my mind misses a beat. I find myself, in mid-step or mid-breath, feeling as if delivered abruptly into my body after a long absence (spent where, I could not say), or a long, dreamless sleep. I lose not my memory, merely my thread. My attention has inexplicably wandered, but a little calm introspection restores my context and brings me peace. Almost peace.
 * Mind Vampires, published in Interzone (Winter 1986)

 * Every night, at exactly a quarter past three, something dreadful happens on the street outside our bedroom window. We peek through the curtains, yawning and shivering in the life-draining chill, and then we clamber back beneath the blankets without exchanging a word, to hug each other tightly and hope for sound sleep before it's time to rise.

Usually what we witness verges on the mundane. Drunken young men fighting, swaying about with outstretched knives, cursing incoherently. Robbery, bashings, rape. We wince to see such violence, but we can hardly be shocked or surprised any more, and we're never tempted to intervene: it's always far too cold, for a start! A single warm exhalation can coat the window pane with mist, transforming the most stomach-wrenching assault into a safely cryptic ballet for abstract blobs of light.

On some nights, though, when the shadows in the room are subtly wrong, when the familiar street looks like an abandoned film set, or a painting of itself perversely come to life, we are confronted by truly disturbing sights, oppressive apparitions which almost make us doubt we're awake, or, if awake, sane. I can't catalogue these visions, for most, mercifully, are blurred by morning, leaving only a vague uneasiness and a reluctance to be alone even in the brightest sunshine.
 * Scatter My Ashes, published in Interzone (Spring 1988)

 * The Extras were as clean as they'd ever been in their lives, and their hair - and beards in the case of the older ones - had been laboriously trimmed, in styles that amusingly parodied the latest fashions. Gray had almost gone so far as to have them clothed - but after much experimentation he'd decided against it; even the slightest scrap of clothing made them look too human, and he was acutely aware of the boundary between impressing his guests with his daring, and causing them real discomfort. Of course, naked, the Extras looked exactly like naked humans, but in Gray's cultural milieu, stark naked humans en masse were not a common sight, and so the paradoxical effect of revealing the creatures' totally human appearance was to make it easier to think of them as less than human.
 * The Extra, published in Eidolon (Winter 1990)

 * Somebody out there, show your compassion, come and kill me. Cut me free and watch me slowly shrivel, or slice me up and flush me down a toilet. Any way you like, I don't mind. Come on! You do it for your youngest children, you do it for your sick old parents. Come and do it for me. I can tell you'd like it. Don't be nervous, lovers! You'll never be found out, if that's what's holding you back: I'll stay silent to the end, be it swift or slow. Come on, people! I'm totally defenceless. Hurry up! Don't be shy. You have the right. You made me, you created me, so you know you have the right.
 * The Demon's Passage, published in Eidolon (Winter 1991)

 * Everyone here would die for the sake of truth. Everyone here lies constantly for the tiniest chance of personal gain. This is what it means to be a scientist.
 * The Demon's Passage

That a flame-thrower can't fix And there's nothing wrong with the salt of the Earth That couldn't be cured with a well-aimed BRICK."
 * Yes, I'm complacent now, with my well enough paid job, with a wife I can almost talk to, with a three-year-old son all dark eyes and tousled hair and endearing clumsiness. We go driving on Sunday afternoons, through suburbs just like our own, past houses just like our own, an endlessly recurring, mesmerising daydream under the flawless blue sky. And I whistle an old song of yours, even if I never dare let the words past my lips:"There's nothing wrong with The Family
 * Worthless, published in the anthology In Dreams (1992)

 * On his eighteenth day in the tiger cage, Robert Stoney began to lose hope of emerging unscathed.
 * Oracle, published in Asimov's (July 2000)

 * My retainers keep me on ice. Dry ice. It slows my metabolism, takes the edge off my appetite, slightly. I lie, bound with heavy chains, between two great slabs of it, naked and sweating, trying to sleep through the torment of a summer's day.

They've given me the local fall-out shelter, the very deepest room they could find, as I requested. Yet my senses move easily through the earth and to the surface, out across the lazy, warm suburbs, restless emissaries skimming the sun-soaked streets. If I could rein them in I would, but the instinct that drives them is a force unto itself, a necessary consequence of what I am and the reason I was brought into being.

Being, I have discovered, has certain disadvantages. I intend seeking compensation, just as soon as the time is right.
 * Neighbourhood Watch

Permutation City (1993)
"That depends." "On what?" "On how I want to feel."
 * "How does it feel to be seven thousand years old?"

Axiomatic (1995)

 * I want to end my life like a human being: in Intensive Care, high on morphine, surrounded by cripplingly expensive doctors and brutal, relentless life-support machines. Then the corpse can go into orbit -- preferably around the sun. I don't care how much it costs, just so long as I don't end up part of any fucking natural cycle: carbon, phosphorus, nitrogen. Gaia, I divorce thee. Go suck the nutrients out of someone else, you grasping bitch.
 * The Walk

 * Gambling is a kind of tax: a tax on stupidity. A tax on greed. Some money changes hands at random, but the net cash flow always goes one way - to the Government, to the casino operators, to the bookies, to the crime syndicates. If you ever do win, you won't have won against them. They'll still be getting their share. You'll have won against all the penniless losers, that's all.
 * Eugene

 * Nobody wants to spend eternity alone.
 * Closer (also published in Eidolon, Winter 1992)

 * Still, for the first time in our lives, we would have been through exactly the same experience, from exactly the same point of view -- even if the experience was only spending eight hours locked in separate rooms, and the point of view was that of a genderless robot with an identity crisis.
 * Closer

Distress (1995)
"No, that’s journalism. The truth is whatever you can’t escape."
 * Screw every known human culture.
 * Would I have been happier? Maybe. But then, happiness was overrated.
 * No one grows up. That’s one of the sickest lies they ever tell you. People change. People compromise. People get stranded in situations they don’t want to be in… and they make the best of it. But don’t try to tell me it’s some kind of… glorious preordained ascent into emotional maturity. It’s not.
 * "The truth is whatever you can get away with."
 * "All right. He's dead. Go ahead and talk to him."

Oceanic and Other Stories (2000)

 * The swell was gently lifting and lowering the boat. My breathing grew slower, falling into step with the creaking of the hull, until I could no longer tell the difference between the faint rhythmic motion of the cabin and the sensation of filling and emptying my lungs. It was like floating in darkness: every inhalation buoyed me up, slightly; every exhalation made me sink back down again.
 * Oceanic, ch. 1

Zendegi (2010)

 * If we spend all our time gazing at the wonders ahead without remembering where we're standing right now, we're going to trip and fall flat on our face, over and over again.
 * Ch. 1

Other

 * [T]hat most beings would prefer to continue to exist once they exist is not in itself a good reason for bringing them into existence, it’s merely a good argument against murder.
 * Comment on Scott Aaronson's "Does it come with a 14-Gyr warranty?"

 * There are times when it’s worth putting aside the endless myopic navel-gazing that occupies so much literature, in order to look out at the universe itself and value it for what it is.
 * Interview with Renai LeMay

Reviews

 * The Universe may be stranger than we can imagine, but it's going to have a tough time outdoing Egan.
 * New Scientist

title: Greg Egan