text:
Harry Browne

Harry Edson Browne (17 June 1933 – 1 March 2006) was an American politician, libertarian writer and public speaker, and investment analyst. He was the Libertarian Party's presidential nominee in the U. S. elections of 1996 and 2000. He was the author of 23 books that in total have sold more than 2 million copies and of thousands of articles, co-founder and Director of Public Policy of the libertarian Downsize DC Foundation, and host of two weekly network radio shows (The Libertarian Conversation and The Money Show) and of an eTV show (This Week in Liberty with Harry Browne).

Quotes

 * The income tax is the biggest single intrusion suffered by the American people. It forces every worker to be a bookkeeper, to open his records to the government, to explain his expenses, to fear conviction for a harmless accounting error. Compliance wastes billions of dollars. The income tax penalizes savings and creates an enormous drag on the U.S. economy. It is incompatible with a free society, and we must get rid of it.
 * "Why I'm Running for President" (1996)

 * We should never define Libertarian positions in terms coined by liberals or conservatives —  nor as some variant of their positions. We are not fiscally conservative and socially liberal. We are Libertarians, who believe in individual liberty and personal responsibility on all issues at all times.
 * The Libertarian stand on abortion" (21 December 1998)

 * I say that the Second Amendment doesn't allow for exceptions —  or else it would have read that the right "to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed, unless Congress chooses otherwise." And because there are no exceptions, I disagree with my fellow panelists who say the existing gun laws should be enforced. Those laws are unconstitutional [and] wrong  —  because they put you at a disadvantage to armed criminals, to whom the laws are no inconvenience.
 * Second Amendment rally in Arkansas (8 August 2000)

 * When will we learn that we can't allow our politicians to bully the world without someone bullying back eventually?
 * "When Will We Learn?" posted one day after 9/11, "Antiwar.com" (12 September 2001)

 * Government is good at one thing: It knows how to break your legs, hand you a crutch, and say, "See, if it weren't for the government, you wouldn't be able to walk."
 * "A solution for the Middle East," WorldNetDaily (11 April 2002)

 * Given the results of the government's War on Poverty and the War on Drugs, we can assume that a War on Abortion will lead within five years to men having abortions.
 * "The Libertarian stand on abortion

 * There already are 20,000 federal gun laws and regulations on the books. If those laws haven't made America safe by now, why should we think 20,001 laws will suffice? We shouldn't. Instead, we need to recognize that those 20,000 laws are a principal cause of the current violence in society. They have made our children and all innocent adults much less safe -- by disarming innocent citizens and encouraging armed criminals to take advantage of us.
 * As quoted in Gun Control: Preventing Violence or Crushing Constitutional Rights (2011) by Matt Doeden, p. 65

How I Found Freedom in an Unfree World (1973)

 * Freedom is the opportunity to live your life as you want to live it.
 * p. 11

 * The unfree person can never fully repress his urge for freedom — whether he considers his jailer to be his family, his job, society, or the government. And so, from time to time, halfhearted attempts are made to break free from the restrictions.
 * p. 11

 * I've concentrated upon the things I control, and used that control to remove the restrictions and complications from my life.
 * p. 16

 * Freedom is the opportunity to live your life as you want to live it.
 * p. 16

 * The unselfishness trap is the belief that you must put the happiness of others ahead of your own. Unselfishness is a very popular ideal, one that's been honored throughout recorded history. Wherever you turn, you find encouragement to put the happiness of others ahead of your own — to do what's best for the world, not yourself. If the ideal is sound, there must be something unworthy in seeking to live your life as you want to live it.
 * Absolute morality is the most common type of morality, and it can be pretty intimidating. You can be made to appear 'selfish,' 'whim-worshiping,' 'egoistic,' 'hedonistic,' or 'ruthless,' if you merely assert that your own happiness is the most important thing in your life.
 * p. 54

 * If an individual is required to give up his own happiness for society, of what value is society to him?
 * p. 54

 * The unselfishness trap is the belief that you must put the happiness of others ahead of your own. Unselfishness is a very popular ideal, one that's been honored throughout recorded history. Wherever you turn, you find encouragement to put the happiness of others ahead of your own — to do what's best for the world, not yourself. If the ideal is sound, there must be something unworthy in seeking to live your life as you want to live it.
 * p. 60

 * One person devotes his life to helping the poor. Another one lies and steals. Still another person tries to create better products and services for which he hopes to be paid handsomely. One woman devotes herself to her husband and children. Another seeks a career as a singer. In every case, the basic motivation has been the same. Each person is doing what he believes will bring him happiness. What varies between them is the means each has chosen to gain his happiness.
 * pp. 60-61

 * In seeking your own freedom and happiness, you have to deal with those who tell you that you shouldn't put yourself first. That creates a situation in which you're pressured to act negatively — to put aside your plans and desires in order to avoid the condemnation of others.
 * p. 62

 * If someone says that giving is the key to happiness, isn't he saying that's the key to his happiness? To assume that his opinions are binding upon you is a common form of the Identity Trap.
 * p. 63

 * An efficiently selfish person is sensitive to the needs and desires of others. But he doesn't consider those desires to be demands upon him. Rather, he sees them as opportunities — potential exchanges that might be beneficial to him.
 * p. 66

 * He doesn't sacrifice himself for others, nor does he expect others to be sacrificed for him. He takes the third alternative — he finds relationships  that  are  mutually beneficial so that no sacrifice is required.
 * p. 66

 * When someone accuses you of being selfish, just remember that he's upset only because you aren't doing what he selfishly wants you to do.
 * p. 67

 * Groups are not living entities. They don't think or act; only individuals do. And yet any group effort is based upon the assumption of a group purpose that overrides the individual differences of its members. It's expected that the group will act as a single unit with a unified purpose.
 * p. 68

 * A free man doesn't need groups, because he's in a position to take advantage of the numerous direct alternatives that require only his decision, not the changing of others.
 * p. 78

 * There are also wide differences in tastes and desires. This, too, is fortunate. For these differences make the world orderly. If everyone wanted the same things, we would all be struggling against each other to acquire what little was available. Diversity is the source of harmony in human relationships.
 * p. 81

 * Desires are limitless; resources are limited. Those two conditions are the reasons that individuals must make choices. Individuals decide how they'll use their limited resources to satisfy their strongest desires. In doing so, they develop value scales, which we can see only by looking at the exchanges they're willing to make.
 * p. 82
 * The basic mistake is the assumption that with a government they will have more than what they would have had in the marketplace. The truth is that they wind up with less. For the government can only give you something by taking away something you want more.
 * p. 86

 * People seek government action because they don't approve of what other people choose to do with their lives. They want to overrule the decisions others have made concerning the use of their own time and money.
 * p. 86

 * Governments don't protect you. They can't. All they can do is promise to make the person who hurts you pay for his crime — if they can catch him. The criminal won't pay you back, of course, so they punish him only as a deterrent to future crime. If you think the deterrent is working, why is crime always such a public issue?
 * p. 92

 * It's just as foolish to feel that you must make everyone understand that you're right, that your desires are legitimate, that you should be able to do as you want. You don't have to. Just concentrate your attention on finding those people who are appropriate for you. You can ignore the others
 * p. 105

 * I've heard it said that the Constitution is perfect but that the politicians create problems by ignoring it. But if the Constitution can't make the politicians respect it, of what value is it? It's interesting to talk about, but not really useful to your freedom. For, in practice, the Constitution is whatever the President, the Congress, and the Supreme Court choose to think it is — and that may be considerably different from what you think it is.
 * p. 109

 * You have so much control over your life, it would be a shame to throw it away. But you do just that if you hope to get what you want by invoking your rights or by trying to change others.
 * p. 113

 * An individual doesn't need to live in a free society in order to be free himself — and when he tries to change the world, he's in for a lot more trouble than he may have bargained for.
 * p. 115

 * Is the government getting too repressive? You could spend the rest of your life fighting it, but your actions won't change the fate of the nation. However, you can make sure the repression doesn't get in your way.
 * p. 123

 * A free person doesn't try to remake the world of his friends or his family. He merely appraises every situation by the simple standard: Is this what I want for myself? If it isn't, he looks elsewhere. If it is, he relaxes and enjoys it — without the problems most other people take for granted.
 * p. 124

 * A free person uses his tremendous power of choice to make a comfortable life for himself. The power of choice. You have it. But you forfeit it when you imagine thet you can choose for others. You can't.
 * p. 124

 * The existence of evil isn't a claim upon you. 'Evil' will always exist in the world. To accept as a principle that you must fight something because it is evil is to believe you must fight anything that's evil. There's no end to the number of evils that could command your attention. Is that all your life is for — to spend it fighting evil?
 * pp. 127-128

 * Everything you want in life has a price connected to it. There's a price to pay if you want to make things better, a price to pay just of leaving thing as they are, a price for everything.
 * p. 140

 * Taking risks is an inherent part of life; it's only dangerous when you act as though you're not taking a risk.
 * p. 155

 * If everyone in your church or neighborhood is sure he knows exactly who and what God is, how to reach him, and what his rules for human behavior are, that isn't evidence of anything — except evidence that a lot of people say they hold that opinion.
 * p. 156

 * Don't let uncertainty prevent you from enjoying what you have. But don't let overconfidence lead you to act upon what you don't have yet.
 * p. 159

 * You are the sovereign authority for your life. You are the ruler who makes the decisions regarding how you will act, what information you will accept. You do it anyway — but if you recognize that you do it, you can gain much greater control over your future.
 * p. 161

 * It's easy to believe that you came into the world with a prearranged program you must follow. After all, long before you arrived, other people figured out how you should live, what laws you should obey, what your obligations are, the whole structure for a 'proper' life… Are you willing to give up the one life you have in order to conform to the way others think you should live?
 * p. 162

 * By bending yourself to fit the institutions, you turn things inside out. The institutions must be created and utilized as they serve you — not vice versa. When they don't add anything to your well-being, you have no logical reason to support them.
 * p. 163

 * Freedom is more often lost by false assumptions than by the power of one's enemies.
 * p. 164

 * Every person is the sovereign ruler of his own life. But few people ever recognize that fact. Those who do will make it their business to find freedom. Those who don't will invariably resign themselves to whatever 'society' makes available to them.
 * p. 167

 * The gigantic myth called 'society' that rules so many lives doesn't even exist. 'Society' is merely a collection of different people, tastes, and judgements. It can't enforce its rules upon you. You don't have to uphold causes you don't believe in, go to cocktail parties that bore you, dress and act as you've been told to.
 * p. 168

 * To be free, you have only to make the decision to be free. Freedom is waiting for you — anytime you're ready for it.
 * p. 169
 * In the book 1984, George Orwell pictured a totalitarian society that has become the standard view of the total state of the future. Everyone's life was controlled by computer, and there was a TV camera in every room to monitor everyone's activities… Fortunately, such dramas overlook the fundamentals of economics. The larger the government, the less efficient and productive is the economy. Slaves don't produce with the enthusiasm, incentive, and imagination that free people do. Bureaucratic programs just don't work as intended… So while the totalitarian state may include a TV camera in every room, I doubt that the camera will work.
 * p. 176

 * I think that many people hide their identity, tolerate restrictions, and remain in bad relationships because they're afraid of being lonely. But I wonder what they mean by 'lonely.' Aren't they very lonely when they deal with people who don't understand and appreciate them? I know I'd be lonely in such a situation.
 * p. 192

 * Life is to be lived, not sacrificed.
 * p. 223

 * Security comes from your ability to deal with the world, not from a guarantee by someone else. When you know you're capable of dealing with whatever comes, you have the only security the world has to offer.
 * p. 260

 * To be self-reliant is to recognize that no one else is as concerned about your future as you are and that no one knows as much about you as you do.
 * p. 260-261

 * The desire to be love, to be understood and appreciated, is universal. Unfortunately, many people don't feel they're worthy of such benefits, and so they hope to have them guaranteed without having to earn them. They seek perpetual love and understanding by getting married, by joining groups, or by having children… If you rely upon yourself, you know that you can find the kind of people who will appreciate you. If you rely upon marriage, family, or groups, you know intuitively that you're vulnerable; you can be deserted despite the guarantees. And you know that the appreciation isn't for what you are but instead for your role in the family or the group.
 * pp. 266-267

 * If you earn whatever you want, you know that it's yours. Then life is an adventure. The uncertainty of the future is a challenge, not a source of dread.
 * p. 269

 * Freedom from exploitation is perhaps the easiest freedom to get. All you have to do is to stop participating in any relationship — of any kind — that doesn't suit you.
 * pp. 276-277

 * To be honest, you must know yourself well. And that involves integrity — which is honesty's twin asset. Integrity is knowing yourself well enough to be able to mean what you say.
 * p. 300

 * Never focus your attention on anyone's weaknesses —  his temper, sloppiness, poor logic, dishonesty, whatever. Recognize these shortcomings, take them into consideration, but don't waste your time complaining about them. Instead, pay attention to what your actions should be in order to deal with him.
 * p. 322

 * A free person has no one to blame. He has no boxes, no restrictions, no enemies to take the responsibility for his actions.
 * p. 324

 * I've always found it hard to understand why so many people live so much for the future — especially when the present is such a lovely place.
 * p. 333

 * Things will get better only when you make the changes that are necessary to make them better.
 * p. 339

 * Don't be so afraid of sudden, sharp discomfort that you willingly tolerate chronic, continual, deadening pain the rest of your life. If you refuse to undergo temporary discomfort, you're resigning yourself to a lifetime with little happiness. The chronic pain can deaden your senses, destroy your love of life, and make you bitter.
 * p. 358

 * A big philosophical breakthrough for me was the realization that my own freedom was not only possible, but far more important than the establishment of a free society.
 * pp. 372

Why Government Doesn't Work (1995)

 * If you resist, their job will be to 'take you into custody' — which is a euphemism for seizing you, handcuffing you, and taking you to jail. At this point, it will be obvious that the regulation's purpose is to force barbers to charge at least $8 — not by persuasion, but with a gun. Every government program, no matter how benign it may appear, is the same. Coercion is the reason — and the only reason — it is a government program.
 * pp. 11-12

 * So what is government? Very simply, it is an agency of coercion. Of course, there are other agencies of coercion — such as the Mafia. So to be more precise, government is the agency of coercion that has ﬂags in front of its offices. Or to put it another way, government is society's dominant producer of coercion. The Mafia and independent bandits are merely fringe competitors — seeking to take advantage of the niches and nooks neglected by the government.
 * p. 12

 * Once its considered proper to use government force to solve one person's problem, force can be justified to solve anyone's problem.
 * p. 18

 * I call this The Dictator Syndrome. You see suffering or danger, and in your imagination you see a government program eliminating it. But in the real world the program would operate as you expect only if you were an absolute dictator — having at your disposal all the government's power to compel everyone to do things your way.
 * p. 20

 * But coercion never produces harmony. How harmonious are people who are being forced to act against their will? Most likely, those who are coerced will resent those who benefit from the coercion. This sets group against group; it doesn't bring them together.
 * p. 24

 * The government that's strong enough to give you what you want by taking it from someone else is strong enough to take everything you have and give it to someone else.
 * p. 27

 * When someone asks for a government program, he is saying in effect, 'Tell the police to use their guns to get me what I want.'
 * p. 28

 * Government lets people take from others without having to face the people being hurt.
 * p. 29

 * Once the door was open, once it was settled that the government should help some people at the expense of others, there was no stopping it. If the coercion of government can endow one person with property he hasn't earned, then everyone will want to use government to get something he wants. So it's not surprising that, over the past two centuries, more and more people have concluded that they deserve government's help.
 * p. 30

 * You can't limit government's coercion to just those transfers you believe are fair, because you can't give government the power to force good on the country without also giving it the power to force enormous evil on the country —  in fact, to do anything it wants.
 * p. 31
 * Gun-control laws don't inhibit criminals, who rarely buy their guns in stores. But the laws do prevent you from defending yourself.
 * p. 64
 * Gun-control laws don't reduce crime, but passing them gives politicians another soap-box opportunity to pose as crime-fighters. Conservative politicians act tough by repealing the Bill of Rights, while liberal politicians act tough by outlawing weapons. Neither action reduces the crime rate. But both allow politicians to feel self-righteous, and both undermine our freedom.
 * p. 135

But war is something quite different from that. It is your children or your grandchildren dying before they're even fully adults, or being maimed or mentally scarred for life. It is your brothers and sisters being taught to kill other people —  and to hate people who are just like themselves and who don't want to kill anyone either. It is your children seeing their buddies' limbs blown off their bodies. It is hundreds of thousands of human beings dying years before their time. It is millions of people separated forever from the ones they love. It is the destruction of homes for which people worked for decades. It is the end of careers that meant as much to others as your career means to you. It is the imposition of heavy taxes on you and on other Americans and on people in other countries —  taxes that remain long after the war is over. It is the suppression of free speech and the jailing of people who criticize the government. It is the imposition of slavery by forcing young men to serve in the military. It is goading the public to hate foreign people and races —  whether Arabs or Japanese or Cubans or Serbs. It is numbing our sensibilities to cruelties inﬂicted on foreigners. It is cheering at the news of enemy pilots killed in their planes, of young men blown to bits while trapped inside tanks, of sailors drowned at sea. Other tragedies inevitably trail in the wake of war. Politicians lie even more than usual. Secrecy and cover-ups become the rule rather than the exception. The press becomes even less reliable. War is genocide, torture, cruelty, propaganda, and slavery. War is the worst cruelty government can inﬂict upon its subjects. It makes every other political crime —  corruption, bribery, favoritism, vote-buying, graft, dishonesty  —  seem petty.
 * The politicians' stirring phrases are meant to keep our eyes averted from the reality of war —  to make us imagine heroic young men marching in parades, winning glorious battles, and bringing peace and democracy to the world.
 * p. 144; p. 147 in second edition (2003)

 * We have to understand that politicians don't want to reduce government. And it isn't because they think the spending cuts would hurt too many people. It's because they know it would hurt them. No matter what they say, neither Democrats nor Republicans want to give up the power that allows them to bestow favors and exemptions on friends.
 * p. 172

 * Reinventing government isn't the answer; we need to disinvent it. And you can't make an agency of coercion user friendly; a gun is still a gun — even if the triggerman smiles, calls you 'sir' or 'ma'am,' and lets you fill out a sheet evaluating his performance.
 * p. 195

 * Government doesn't work, and I want the federal government out of them. The answer always is smaller government. Government forces one choice on everyone. Freedom provides a hundred choices.
 * p. 218

 * To correct this, we don't need to turn back the clock. We only have to turn away from government —  from the idea that we can cure social problems with a gun, from the fairy-tale belief that government can be made to work for anyone but the politicians. Coercion will never be as effective as freedom and cooperation. Government doesn't work. It is time to stop trying to fix it, and start finding ways to live with as little of it as possible.
 * p. 219

Liberty A to Z (2004)

 * Since government supposedly can do whatever it sets out to do, the president should sign an executive order outlawing death. However, as with all other laws, Congress should be exempt.
 * p. 44

 * Conservatives are very upset at the idea of a single-mom family. But they do their best to create a lot of them by sending American men off to war to be killed.
 * p. 49

 * No one ever died from smoking marijuana, but millions of people have died by believing politicians. So why is marijuana outlawed while politicians are still legal?
 * p. 55

 * The Consumer Price Index is 15 times higher than it was when the Federal Reserve was founded in 1913. In the hundred years prior to the advent of the Federal Reserve, prices in America fell by one third.
 * p. 69

 * The free market punishes irresponsibility. Government rewards it.
 * p. 76

 * I want government small enough to fit inside the Constitution.
 * p. 83

 * When a Republican politician says he's in favor of the 2nd Amendment, it means he won't compromise on gun control until the last possible minute.
 * p. 105

 * The insurance company has a strong motivation to make no promise it can't keep, and to keep every promise it makes. The police have no such motivation, since they are usually immune from any prosecution for failing to protect you. Thus you can't reply on the police (or any other government agency) to protect you. You must depend upon your own ability to repel an attacker.
 * p. 105

 * It is a mistake to define a libertarian as someone who is fiscally conservative and socially liberal. Never define libertarians in terms of conservatives or liberals. Conservative politicians are as fiscally imprudent as liberals, and liberal politicians are as contemptuous of individual rights as conservatives.
 * p. 127

 * Whenever the government fails to prevent a plane crash, the event is cited as justification for having the government prevent plane crashes.
 * p. 147

 * Republicans campaign like Libertarians and govern like Democrats.
 * p. 151

title: Harry Browne


text:
Jean Arp

Jean/Hans Arp (16 September 1886 – 7 June 1966) was a German/French sculptor, painter, poet and a founding member of Dadaism. Later he engaged himself with the French surrealists, in Paris, but broke with them in 1931. (When Arp spoke in German he referred to himself as 'Hans' Arp; in French he referred to himself as 'Jean' Arp.)

Quotes of Jean Arp

 * chronologically arranged, after the date of Jean Arp's quotes

1910-20s

 * Structures of lines, surfaces, forms, colours. They try to approach the eternal, the inexpressible above men. They are a denial of human egotism. They are the hatred of human immodesty, the hatred of images, of paintings.. Wisdom [is] the feeling for the coming reality, the mystical, the definite indefinite, the greatest definite.
 * Arp's quote from his text in a catalogue of his exhibition, in Zürich 1915; quoted by Arp himself in his text 'Abstract Art, Concrete Art,' Hans Arp, c. 1942; as quoted in Theories of Modern Art: A Source Book by Artists and Critics, by Herschel Browning Chipp, Peter Selz, p. 390

 * I met Sophie Taeuber in Zurich in 1915. Even then she already knew how to give direct and palpable shape to her inner reality. In those days this kind of art was called 'abstract art'. Now it is known as 'concrete art,' for nothing is more concrete than the psychic reality it expresses. Like music this art is tangible inner reality she was already dividing the surface of a watercolor into squares and rectangles which she juxtaposed horizontally and perpendicularly. She constructed her painting like a work of masonry. The colors are luminous, going from rawest yellow to deep red or.. ..blue.
 * Arp's quote on his wife, in 'Sophie Taeuber-Arp', Hans Arp; in Arp on Arp: Poems, Essays, Memories, ed. Marcel Jean, transl. Joachim Neugroschel; Viking Press, New York 1972, p. 222

 * We [Hans Arp and Sophie Taeuber ] painted embroidered and made collages. All these works were drawn from the simplest forms and were probably the first examples of concrete art. These works are realities pure and independent with no meaning or cerebral intention. We rejected all mimesis and description, giving free reign to the elementary and spontaneous.
 * Arp's quote, on the cooperation with his future wife Sophie Taeuber ca. 1916; as quoted in: Abstract Art, Anna Moszynska, Thames and Hudson, London, 1990, p. 65

 * the streams buck like rams in a tent whips crack and from the hills come the crookedly combed shadows of the shepherds. black eggs and fools' bells fall from the trees. thunder drums and kettledrums beat upon the ears of the donkeys. wings brush against flowers. fountains spring up in the eyes of the wild boar.
 * Dada poetry lines from his poem 'Der Vogel Selbdritt', Jean / Hans Arp - first published in 1920; as quoted in Gesammelte Gedichte I (transl. Herbert Read), p. 41

 * I hereby declare that on February 8th, 1916, Tristan Tzara discovered the word DADA. I was present with my twelve children when Tzara pronounced for the first time this word which has aroused in us such legitimate enthusiasm. This took place at the Café Terrasse in Zurich, and I wore a brioche in my left nostril. I am convinced that this word has no importance and that only imbeciles and Spanish professors can be interested in dates. What interests us is the Dada spirit and we were all Dada before the existence of Dada. The first Holy Virgins I painted date from 1886, when I was a few months old and amused myself by pissing graphic impressions. The morality of idiots and their belief in geniuses makes me shit.
 * 'Declaration', Jean (Hans) Arp, October 1921

 * Dadaism has launched an attack on the fine arts. It has declared art to be a magic opening of the bowels, administered an enema to the Venus of Milo, and finally enabled 'Laocoon and Sons' to ease themselves after a thousand-year struggle with the rattlesnake. Dadaism has reduced positive and negative to utter nonsense. It has been destructive in order to achieve indifference.
 * In: Isms in Art, (Hans Arp and El Lissitzky, The isms of art, 1924), published in 1925

1930s

 * In recent times, Surrealist painters have used descriptive illusionistic academic methods.
 * In a letter to Polish poet Jan Brzekowski, ca. 1930, co-publisher of the Franco-Polish magazine 'L'art contemporain'; from Jours effeuillés: Poèmes, essaies, souvenirs, Hans Arp, Gallimard, Paris 1966, p. 63
 * Arp's critical quote refers to the creation of art by the French Surrealists in which Jean Arp participated for a few years and then departed.

 * Concretion signifies the material process of condensation, hardening, coagulating, thickening, growing together. Concretion designates the solidification of a mass. Concretion designates curdling, the curdling of the earth and the heavenly bodies. Concretion designates solidification, the mass of the stone, the plant, the animal, the man. Concretion is something that has grown. I want my work to find it.
 * Jean Arp (1931), as quoted in: Eric Robertson (2006) Arp: Painter, Poet, Sculptor, p. 108

 * A painting or sculpture not modeled on any real object is every bit as concrete and sensuous as a leaf or a stone.. ..[but] it is an incomplete art which privileges the intellect to the detriment of the senses.. .[art must be like..] fruit that grows in man, like a fruit on a plant or a child in it's mother's womb.
 * Notes From a Dada Diary, published in 1932; as quoted by Anna Moszynska, in Abstract Art, Thames and Hudson, London, 1990, p. 113

 * art is fruit growing out of man like the fruit out of a plant like the child out of the mother. While the fruit of the plant grows independent forms and never resembles a balloon or a president in a cutaway suit the artistic fruit of man shows for the most part a ridiculous resemblance to the appearance of other things. Reason tells man to stand above nature and to be the measure of all things. thus man thinks he is able to live and to create against the laws of nature and he creates abortions. through reason man became a tragic and ugly figure. i dare say he would create even his children in the form of vases with umbilical cords if he could do so. reason has cut man off from nature.
 * Arp wrote this in lowercase letters
 * Notes From a Dada Diary; published, 1932 in 'Transition magazine'; as quoted (in lowercase letters), “Soby, James Thrall. Arp: The Museum of Modern Art. Doubleday, New York, 1958, Print. p. 17

1940s

 * Revolted by the butchery of the 1914 World War, we in Zurich devoted ourselves to the arts. While guns rumbled in the distance, we sang, painted, made collages and wrote poems with all our might. We were seeking an art based on fundamentals, to cure the madness of the age, and find a new order of things that would restore the balance between heaven and hell. We had a dim premonition that power-mad gangsters would one day use art itself as a way of deadening men's minds.
 * Dadaland (1948); Quoted in: Cosana Maria Eram (2010) The autobiographical pact: otherness and redemption in four French avant-garde artists, p. 20
 * Quote of Jean Arp, referring to Swiss Dada in Zurich after 1914.

 * As the thought comes to me to exorcise and transform this black with a white drawing, it has already become a surface.. .Now I have lost all fear, and begin to draw on the black surface.
 * Hans Arp's quote on drawing on the black surface; as quoted in Search for the Real, Hans Hofmann, Addison Gallery of modern Art, 1948

Abstract Art, Concrete Art (c. 1942)

 * Quotes from: Abstract Art, Concrete Art, Hans Arp, c. 1942; as quoted in Aesthetics and the Environment: The Appreciation of Nature, Art and Architecture, by Allen Carlson, Routledge, London & New York, 2005

 * These paintings, these sculptures – these objects – should remain anonymous, in the great workshop of nature, like the clouds, the mountains, the seas, the animals, and man himself. Yes! Man should go back to nature! Artists should work together like the artists of the Middle Ages.
 * In 1915, Otto van Rees, A.C. van Rees, Freundlich, S. Taeuber [his wife] and Arp made an attempt of this sort, as Arp mentioned himself.
 * p. 118

 * [art] urges man to identify himself with nature.
 * p. 118

 * Automatic poetry comes straight out of the poet's bowels or out of any other of his organs that has accumulated reserves.. .He crows, swears, moans, stammers, yodels, according to his mood.. .His poems are like nature; they stink, laugh, and rhyme like nature. Foolishness, or at least what men calls foolishness is as precious to him as a sublime piece of rhetoric. For in nature a broken twig is equal in beauty and importance to the clouds and the stars.
 * p. 118-119

1950s

 * Whatever became of Kurt Schwitters' novel 'Franz Müllers Drahtfrühling' [Franz Müller's Wire Spring] several chapters of which we composed together? Is it buried under the bomb ruins of his house on Waldhausenstrasse in Hannover? For hours, Schwitters and I sat together and spun dialogue, in rhapsody. He took these writings and channeled them into his novel...We sat together again, writing 'Franz Müllers Drahtfrühling':
 * H. A.: The nightingales have had enough of your hymnal Karagösen. Play violin on parrots, but avoid the women red hood ans snow widow.
 * K. Schw.: Should I pe-trify something for you? Or would you like play cry together?
 * H. A.: Should we wash our tears or drown them?
 * K. Schw.: You are a sipsnipper, Since when do your diamonds bark?
 * H. A.: The water is getting hard. A fruit cries out loud and gives birth to a fish.
 * K. Schw.: I'll p-ut it in the sea, or should I st-ab you with it?
 * Dialogue between Hans Arp and Kurt Schwitters, (1956) with introduction in: Franz Müllers Drahtfrühling-- Memories of Kurt Schwitters; as quoted in I is Style, ed. Siegfried Gohr & Gunda Luyken, commissioned by Rudi Fuchs, 2000, pp. 139-140

 * Then we went down to his work room, in the horrible beautiful Merz grotto [the 'Merz-Haus', built by Kurt Schwitters, where broken wheels paired with matchboxes, wire lattices with brushes without bristles, rusted wheels with curious Merz cucumbers.. .How often did we 'p-lay' in this room! Schwitters called playing, considering the sweat, working. There we glued together our paper pictures, and as I tossed away one of my glued-together works one morning, Schwitters asked, 'You don't like it? Can I have it?' – 'What do you want with this failed piece of toast?' Schwitters took a good look at it and said, 'I'll put what's on top on the bottom, I'll stick a little Merz nose in this corner and I'll sign the bottom Kurt Schwitters.' And, yes indeed, this collage became a wonderful picture by Kurt Schwitters. Schwitters was a wizard, just as Hokusai was a wizard.
 * In 'Franz Müllers Drahtfrühling – Memories of Kurt Schwitters Hans Arp 1956; as quoted in I is Style, ed. Siegfried Gohr & Gunda Luyken - commissioned by Rudi Fuchs, director of the Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam - NAI Publishers, Rotterdam 2000, pp. 140-141

 * Sculpture should walk on the tips of its toes, unostentatious, unpretentious, and light as the spoor of an animal in snow. Art should melt into and even merge with nature itself. This is obviously contrary to painting and sculpture based on nature. By so doing, art will rid itself more and more of self-centredness, virtuosity and absurdity.
 * Arp on Arp: poems, essays, memories. p. 327 (1958)

 * The man who speaks and writes about art should refrain from censuring or pontificating. He will thus avoid doing anything foolish, for in the presence of primordial depth all art is but dream and nature.
 * Arp on Arp: poems, essays, memories. p. 327 (1958)

1960s

 * A deep and serene silence filled her structures composed of colors and surfaces. The exclusive use of horizontal and vertical rectangular planes in the work of art, the extreme simplification, exerted a decisive influence on my work. Here I found, stripped down to the limit, the essential elements of all earthly constructions: the bursting, upward surge of the lines and the planes toward the sky, the verticality of pure life, and the vast equilibrium, the sheer horizontality and expansiveness of dreamlike peace. Her work was for me a symbol of a divinely built 'house' which man in his vanity has ravaged and sullied.
 * a remark on the art of Sophie Taeuber, whom he later married.
 * in Abstract Painting Michel Seuphor, Dell Publishing Co., 1964, p. 58

 * In 1915 Sophie Taeuber and I carried out our first works in the simplest forms, using painting, embroidery and pasted paper [without using oil colors to avoid any reference with usual painting]. These were probably the first manifestations of their kind, pictures that were their own reality, without meaning or cerebral intention. We rejected everything in the nature of a copy or a description, in order to give free flow to what was elemental and spontaneous.
 * on creating art without using oil colors to avoid any reference with usual painting, in The Art of Jean Arp, Herbert Read, Abrams, New York 1968, p. p. 34, 38

 * It was Sophie [Taeuber] who, by the example of her work and her life, both of them bathed in clarity, showed me the right way. In her world, the high and the low, the light and the dark, the eternal and the ephemeral, are balanced in prefect equilibrium.
 * In 'Unsern täglichen Traum', Hans Arp (1914 - 1954); p. 76; as quoted in Arp, ed. Serge Fauchereau, Ediciones Poligrafa, S. A., Barcelona 1988, p. 11

 * By the time I was 16, the everlasting copying of stuffed birds and withered flowers at the Strasbourg School of Applied Art not only poisoned drawing for me but destroyed my taste for all artistic activity. I took refuge in poetry.
 * Looking, Arp, Jean; as quoted by Soby, James Thrall. Arp: The Museum of Modern Art. Doubleday, New York, 1958, Print. p. 12

 * I tried to be natural, in other words the exact opposite of what drawing teachers call 'faithful to nature'. I made my first experiments with free form.
 * Looking, Arp, Jean; as quoted by Soby, James Thrall. Arp: The Museum of Modern Art. Doubleday, New York, 1958, Print. p. 12

Jours effeuillés: Poèmes, essaies, souvenirs (1966)
Quotes from: Jours effeuillés: Poèmes, essaies, souvenirs, Hans Arp, Gallimard, Paris 1966 (the book gathers almost all Arp's writings in prose and some important poetry)

 * Dada was given the Venus of Milo a clyster and has allowed the Laocoön and his sons to rest awhile, after thousands of years of struggle with the good sausage Python. The philosophers are of less use to Dada than an old toothbrush, and it leaves them on the scrap heap for the great leaders of the world.
 * p. 63

 * We do not wish to copy nature. We do not want to reproduce, we want to produce. We want to produce as a plant produces a fruit and does not itself reproduce. We want to produce directly and without meditation. As there is not the least trace of abstraction in this art, we will call it concrete art.
 * p. 183: Serge Fauchereau (1988) in Arp, p. 20 commented: 'Even though his work was nonrepresentational, Arp disapproved of the term 'abstract art' being applied to it, as he often explained with the above quote'.

 * I wanted to find another order, another value for man in nature. He should no longer be the measure of all things, nor should everything be compared with him, but, on the contrary, all things, and man as well, should be like nature, without measure. I wanted to create new appearances, to extract new forms from man. This is made clear in my objects from 1917.
 * p. 183

 * Already in 1915, Sophie Taeuber [his wife] divides the surface of her aquarelle into squares and rectangles which she then juxtaposes horizontally and perpendicularly [as Mondrian, Itten and Paul Klee did in the same period]. She constructs them as if they were masonry work. The colors are luminous, ranging from the raw yellow to deep red or blue.
 * p. 288, Arp refers in this quote to the structure in the early watercolor paintings by his wife Sophie Taeuber.

 * I allow myself to be guided by the work which is in the process of being born, I have confidence in it [Arp refers to 'automatic creation of art']. I do not think about it. The forms arrive pleasant, or strange, hostile, inexplicable, mute, or drowsy. They are born from themselves. It seems to me as if all I do is move my hands.
 * p. 307

 * In the good times of Dada, we detested polished works, the distracted air of spiritual struggle, the titans, and we rejected them with all out being.
 * p. 307

 * Like the disposition of planes, the proportion of these planes and their colors seemed to depend only upon chance, and I declared that these works were ordered 'according to the law of chance', just like in the order of nature.
 * p. 307

 * Since the time of the cavemen, man has glorified himself, has made himself divine, and his monstrous vanity has caused human catastrophe. Art has collaborated in this false development. I find this concept of art which has sustained man's vanity to be loathsome.
 * p. 315

 * I like nature but not its substitutes. Naturalist art, illusionism, is a substitute for nature. I remember that in arguing with Piet Mondrian [in Paris, 1920's], he opposed art to nature saying that art is artificial and nature is natural. I do not share this opinion. I do not think that nature is in natural opposition to art. Art's origins are natural.
 * p. 359

 * Each one of these bodies [art-works which Arp made] certainly signifies something, but it is only once there is nothing left for me to change that I begin to look for its meaning, that I give it a name.
 * p. 383

 * I did exhibitions with the Surrealists [in Paris, c. 1929] because their attitude revolted against 'art' and their attitude toward life itself was wise, as was Dada's.
 * p. 406

 * These collages were static symmetrical constructions, portico's with pathetic vegetation, the gateway to the realm of dreams. They were done with colored paper in black, orange or blue dye plates. Although cubist painting interested me very much, not a trace of their influence was to be found in my collages.
 * p. 420 - quote on his early collages, Hans Arp made ca. 1914.

 * Actually, it was in Paris in 1914 that I did my first collages, for an occultist friend. They were mysterious portico's which were supposed to replace mural paintings and which evoked the structure of palm branches or fish-bones. [remark on the first collages Arp made, in different materials]
 * p. 430

 * Ever since my childhood, I was haunted by the search for perfection. An imperfectly cut paper literally made me ill, I would guillotine it. My collages came undone, they became blistered. I then introduced death and decay in my compositions. I reacted by avoiding any precision from one day to another. Instead of cutting the paper, I would tear it with my hands.
 * p. 431

 * At daybreak I found on my sculptor's turntable a little mischievous form [a small plaster form of Impish Form, Arp made in 1949], alert and somewhat obese, with a stomach like a lute. It seemed to me like an imp. I called it that. And all of a sudden one day this little character, this imp, through a Venezuelan medium, found itself to be the father of a giant [Arp enlarged it]. This giant son resembles its father like an egg resembles another egg, a fig another fig, a bell another bell.
 * p. 431

 * To be full of joy when looking at an oeuvre is not a little thing.
 * p. 571 - Hans Arp's quote, made in 1962 in Galerie Denise René - this remark is also the last line in the art book Jours effeuillés: Poèmes, essaies, souvenirs, Hans Arp, Gallimard, Paris 1966

Attributed from posthumous publications

 * Soon silence will have passed into legend. Man has turned his back on silence. Day after day he invents machines and devices that increase noise and distract humanity from the essence of life, contemplation, meditation.. ..tooting, howling, screeching, booming, crashing, whistling, grinding, and trilling bolster his ego. His anxiety subsides. His inhuman void spreads monstrously like a gray vegetation.
 * quote in Arp on Arp: poems, essays, memories, Viking, 1972, p. 231

 * Dada aimed to destroy the reasonable deceptions of man and recover the natural and unreasonable order.
 * Quoted in: Anna Moszynska, Abstract Art, Thames and Hudson, London, 1990, p. 66

Quotes about Jean Arp

 * Yes, I deal with accidents, just as Arp admits it all the time. And I admit it, too. But I like to have them under my command and not sign them because they are accidents.
 * Quote of Josef Albers (1968), in 'Oral history interview with Josef Albers', conducted by Sevim Fesci, 22 June – 5 July 1968, for the 'Archives of American Art', Smithsonian Institution

 * As we liked to do as children, extracting from the soft forest floor the light chestnut trees only a few centimeters high at the base of which the chestnut continues to shine to the sun its clods of soil from the past, the chestnut conserving all of its presence and witnessing with its presence the power of green hands, of shadow, of airy white or pink pyramids of dances.. ..and of future chestnuts which, under new dust, would be discovered by the marveled sight of other children. It is in this perspective that the work of Arp, more than any other, should be situated. He found the most vital in himself in the secrets of this germinating life where the most minimal detail is of the greatest importance, where, on the other hand, the distinction between the elements becomes meaningless, adopting a peculiar under the rock humor permanently.
 * Quote of André Breton (1940), on Hans / Jean Arp, in Anthologie de l'humour noir, André Breton; as quoted in 'Arp', ed. Serge Fauchereau, Ediciones Poligrafa S. A., Barcelona, Spain, 1988

 * Arp, yes, was one of the artists that I was interested in. And that reminds me of a friend of those times, Frederick Kiesler, who was an architect and painter, a man of all trades, and who said this word about Arp: 'This is Arp, not art.' [Laughs]
 * Quote of Leo Castelli (1997), in 'Oral history interview with Leo Castelli', by Nina Sundell, 1997 May 22, 'Archives of American Art', Smithsonian Institution

 * Based on the metaphysical implications of the Dadaist dogma.. .Arp's Reliefs [carvings] between 1916 and 1922 are among the most convincing illustrations of that anti- rationalistic era...Arp showed the importance of a smile to combat the sophistic theories of the moment. His poems of the same period stripped the word of its rational connotation to attain the most unexpected meaning through alliteration or plain nonsense.
 * Quote of Marcel Duchamp (1949), in Appreciations of other artists - 'Jean (Hans) Arp (sculptor, painter, writer)' 1949, by Marcel Duchamp; as quoted in Catalog, Collection of the Societé Anonyme, eds. Michel Sanouillet / Elmer Peterson, London 1975, pp. 143- 159

 * Tzara would draw [during Dada-evenings in Zürich, Switzerland] slips of paper with words described on them from a hat, and present the resulting combination of words as a poem. Arp allowed cut-outs of free or geometric shapes to arrange themselves in a random order, then pasted them on a surface and presented the result as a picture. In the course of such experiments Arp also used 'automatic writing', i.e.: irrational, spontaneously traced forms, rising from the unconsciousness.
 * Quote of Werner Haftman, (1965), about a report of a Dada-evening in Zürich, in: Painting in the Twentieth Century, An Analysis of the Artists and their Work, New York Praeger, 1965, p. 183; as quoted in Aesthetics and the Environment: The Appreciation of Nature, Art and Architecture, by Allen Carlson, Routledge, London & New York, 2005, p 112

 * We visited Meudon [c.1938] to see Hans Arp and though, to our disappointment, he was not there and his wife, Sophie Taeuber showed us his studio. It was very quiet in the room so that one was aware of the movement in the forms.. .I thought of the poetic idea in Arp's sculptures. I had never had any first-hand knowledge of the Dadaist movement, so that seeing his work for the first time freed me of many inhibitions and this helped me to see the figure in landscape with new eyes..  .Perhaps in freeing himself from material demands his idea transcended all possible limitations. I began to imagine the earth rising and becoming human.
 * Quote of Barbara Hepworth, in A Pictorial autobiography, New York, Praeger Publishers, 1970, p. 283

 * Dada was founded in Zurich in the spring of 1916 by Hugo Ball, Tristan Tzara, Jean Arp, Marcel Janco and Richard Huelsenbeck at the Cabaret Voltaire [in Zurich, Switzerland].. .Arp was an Alsatian; he had lived through the beginning of the war and the whole nationalistic frenzy in Paris, and was pretty well disgusted with all the petty chicanery there, and in general with the sickening changes that had taken place in the city and the people on which we had all squandered our love before the war [World War 1., 1914-1918].
 * Quote of Richard Huelsenbeck (1920), in: 'En Avant Dada: A History of Dadaism', Richard Huelsenbeck – translated (completely from the German) by Ralph Manheim. First published as 'En Avant Dada: Eine Geschichte des Dadaismus', Hannover, Leipzig, Wien, Zurich, Paul Steegemann Verlag, 1920, p. 23

 * Mr. Arp hated shiny sculptures. He hated that. Because if it's shiny, you can't appreciate the form. It creates reflections.
 * Quote of Andre Munier, Arp's personal assistant from 1958–1966; as quoted in FACT-SHEET-Jean-Arp-reduced.pdf

 * I never stood under the influence of Dadaism because whereas the Dadaist created Spiegel-dadaismus (Mirror-Dada) on the Zurich Lake [the 'political Dada'], I created MERZ on the Leine-river, under the influence of Rembrandt. Time went on, and when Jean Arp made concrete Art, I stayed Abstract. Now I do concrete Art, and Marcel Duchamp went over to the Surrealists.. ..and at all I have much fun about Art.
 * Quote of Kurt Schwitters, in My art and My live, (1940-46); as quoted in I is Style, (2000) ed. Siegfried Gohr & Gunda Luyken, (commissioned by Rudi Fuchs, director of the Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam), NAI Publishers, Rotterdam 2000, p. 100
 * Later Arp and Schwitters made together many Dada-art-pieces and poems, when Arp took a distance from the political Swiss Dada

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

title: Jean Arp


text:
Lost in Space

Lost in Space (1965 – 1968) is a science-fiction television series that follows the adventures of the Robinson family, their pilot, and a troublesome stowaway as they try to find their way back to Earth after a disastrous accident.

Deadliest of the Species

 * The Robot: Danger, Will Robinson!
 * Despite its fame, this phrase only occurs once (in exactly this form) in the series, in the third-season episode "Deadliest of the Species" and it is not in the context of an urgent warning. Throughout the series however the Robot does frequently say "Danger, danger!" and "Warning, warning!", and he often refers to Will by his full name.

 * The Robot: Warning! Warning! Alien spacecraft approaching!

 * Dr. Smith: We're doomed!

 * Dr. Smith: Crepes suzette!

title: Lost in Space


text:
User:Ardonik

Articles I've added
I'll try to make each article that I add conform to the house standards.

 * Muqtada al-Sadr

Articles to edit

 * God and Atheism -- need to conform to aforesaid house standards.

title: User:Ardonik


text:
User talk:Ardonik

Leave a message and I'll return your call at the sound of the beep. --Ardonik 20:31, 14 Sep 2004 (UTC)

title: User talk:Ardonik


text:
Nicole Kidman

Nicole Mary Kidman (born June 20, 1967) is an Academy Award-winning American-Australian actress, producer and singer.

Quotes

 * It wasn't about, 'Oh I want to make a film where I get to kiss a 10-year-old boy'. To me it was I wanted to make a film where you're trying to understand love.
 * During a Press Conference at the Venice Film Festival 2004, on the polemic scene from her movie, "Birth"; quoted in Jamaica Gleaner

 * I telephoned Lauren and thanked her for saying that. She always calls it like it is and that's a reality check I adore.
 * At the Venice Film Festival 2004, after co-star Lauren Bacall had said that Kidman was not an acting legend, but rather a beginner; quoted by Pocklington Arts Centre

 * It would be far easier to go, 'Oh, I wish I loved women,' but I don't. I love the way a man thinks. I love the way a man smells. I love the way men look. And I'm hooked on the male physique--hooked on it.
 * Playboy magazine, Playboy interview, February 2005.

Dame Magazine

 * I'm trying to find a man to share my life with, but it's not been easy. I'm a 35-year-old woman with two small children!
 * In an interview in early 2004

 * I have a little bit of a belly, a tiny bit of pooch. It's the one thing I don't want to lose. I just like having some softness. If I lose that, then Tom might leave me.

 * Now I can wear heels.
 * On divorcing Tom Cruise

 * I love acting, but it's much more fun taking the kids to the zoo.

Quotes about

 * The important thing with a child is that you love them, you protect them and you help them to grow and find out who they are. And as a parent, it's my responsibility to help them to become independent and get all the knowledge and a broad view of the world and life. I know that Nic [former wife Nicole Kidman] absolutely agrees with that. And that's what's important: being there.
 * Tom Cruise, Quoted in Neil Strauss, "The Passion of the Cruise", Rolling Stone (August 2004).

 * I love Nicole. Nicole and I happen to be very great friends. Besides that, the press never get it straight. They do not print what you say... We were in Venice for Birth at the Venice Film Festival. And you know when you have a day when you go from one room to another with the roundtables with about five journalists sitting around at each table throwing questions at you all the time. So in one of these rooms, I'm sitting there. And one of the journalists said, you're an icon and Nicole Kidman's an icon and what do you think about that? And I said, why do you have to burden her with the category? She's a young woman. She's got her whole career ahead of her. Why does she have to be pegged as an icon or as anything? Let her enjoy her time. Don't, you know, suddenly put her in a slot. And that was all I said. The word "legend" never came up. It was "icon."
 * Lauren Bacall, Interview with Larry King on CNN (May 6, 2005)

title: Nicole Kidman


text:
Calvin Thomas (critical theorist)

Calvin Thomas is an American academic who works in the fields of critical theory, modern and postmodern literature and culture.

Straight with a Twist (2000)
Thomas, Calvin, ed. (2000). "Straight with a Twist", Straight with a Twist: Queer Theory and the Subject of Heterosexuality, University of Illinois Press. ISBN 0252068130.

 * The terror of being mistaken for a queer dominates the straight mind because this terror constitutes the straight mind. It is precisely that culturally produced and reinforced horror of/fascination with abjected homosexuality that produces and maintains 'the straight mind' as such, governing not so much specific sexual practices between men and women (after all, these things happen) as the institution (arguably antisexual) of heteronormativity itself.
 * p. 27.

 * To quote D.A. Miller, the 'only necessary content of male heterosexuality is 'not a desire for women, but the negation of the desire for men.' As Miller continues, this necessary negation is such that 'straight men unabashedly need gay men, whome they forcibly recruit (as the object of their blows or, in better circles, their jokes) to enter into a polarization that exorcises the 'woman' in man through assigning it to a clas of man who may be considered to be no 'man' at all.
 * p. 27.

 * Homophobia entails not only the fear of those who are abjectly identified (and depended on) but also the fear of being abjectly identifiable onself: the fear, as the word most literally means, of being 'the same as'. This latter fear is arguably a much stronger component of homophobia than of, say, sexism or racism (despite the mechanisms of projection and abjection doubtless at work in those forms of hatred), because the sexist male or the racist white is in much less 'danger' of being 'mistaken' for a woman or a nonwhite than the straight is of being 'mistaken' for a queer.
 * p. 27.

 * It is possible, after all, to 'fake' the 'realest' possible 'evidence' of heterosexuality: man or woman, one can participate in heterosexual marriage and even help produce a brood of spawn and still 'turn out' to have been 'living a lie,' to have been 'really' gay or lesbian all along. Precisely because there is no final 'proof' of heterosexuality, heterosexuality must constantly set about trying to prove itself, assert itself, insist on itself. Indeed, as Butler argues, heterosexuality as hegemonic institution is finally nothing more than its own repetitive self-insistence, nothing other than 'a constant and repeated effort to imitate its own idealizations' (Bodies 125). Or, as Janet E. Halley puts it in regard to legalistic constructions of heterosexuality, normative heterosexuality 'is a highly unstable, default characterization for people who have not marked themselves or been marked by other as homosexual.' As Halley continues: 'The resulting class of heterosexuals is a default class, home to those who have not fallen out of it.'
 * p. 28.

title: Calvin Thomas (critical theorist)


text:
Savitri Devi

Savitri Devi Mukherji (born Maximiani Julia Portas; 30 September 1905 – 22 October 1982) was a French-born Greek fascist, Nazi sympathizer, and spy who served the Axis powers by committing espionage on the forces of the Allies of World War II in India. Devi was an Esoteric Hitlerist author who was later a leading member of the Neo-Nazi underground during the 1960s.

Quotes

 * Europe is only powerful; India is beautiful.
 * Savitri Devi, L'Etang au Lotus, p. 222, quoted in Koenraad Elst: The Saffron Swastika, p. 562

 * Europe is organized, marvellously organized; but India is cultivated.
 * Savitri Devi, L'Etang au Lotus, p. 240, quoted in Koenraad Elst: The Saffron Swastika, p. 562

 * The Hindu religion in its popular expression, as one can see it, is in sum the pre-Byzantine Greek religion, and all the ancient Aryan religions of Europe, minus the tribal spirit and, generally, plus the goodness and the respect for all beings.
 * Savitri Devi, L'Etang au Lotus, p. 239, quoted in Koenraad Elst: The Saffron Swastika, p. 562

 * The Hindu Aryas are, among the modern peoples of similar race and language, the only great people to have conserved a living Aryan religion. That is their most beautiful entitlement to glory, the secret of their strength and pride, even in the midst of all their misery the secret of their freedom under all the past and future phases of foreign domination.
 * Savitri Devi, L'Etang au Lotus, p. 205, quoted in Koenraad Elst: The Saffron Swastika, p. 563

 * The day when the whole of India will break its idols and worship God after his fashion, that day he will be Indian, like the Afghan across the mountains is an Afghan... but until then, he will remain in India a conqueror who remembers his old victories, the master of India cheated of his prey by the late-coming British, whom he accuses, in spite of the benefits they heap upon him, of favouring the Hindus.... The Indian Christian is a Hindu unaware of himself.
 * Savitri Devi, L'Etang au Lotus, p. 50ff, quoted in Koenraad Elst: The Saffron Swastika, p. 565

 * Hinduism is really superior to other religions, not for its spirituality, but for that still more precious thing it gives to its followers: a scientific outlook on religion and on life. Hindu spirituality is a consequence of that very outlook. We consider it useless to oppose: India to the “West,” as “spiritualistic” opposed to “materialistic.” Hindu superiority lies elsewhere; not in the opposition of Hindu thought to European thought, but in the fact of its greater consistency than that of European thought, of its greater faithfulness to life, of greater harmony between life and it; in the universality of the Hindu’s scientific outlook, compared to that of the Europeans.
 * Warning to the Hindus, quoted in Koenraad Elst: The Saffron Swastika

 * Long centuries before any foreigner had settled in India, the unity of the country was materialised in symbols. What more suggestive story than that, for instance, of Sati, Siva’s wife, whose body, divided, after her death, in fifty-one pieces, is lying still in fifty-one different places, therefore revered as “tirthasthans,” throughout the Indian Peninsula? One lies near Peshawar, one in Kamakhya, not far from India’s eastern boundaries; one in Benares, one in the very extreme South, others here and there. Fifty-one pieces, but one body; fifty-one “tirthasthans” in the name of the same Goddess, scattered over the same territory. Indeed, among the different interpretations that can be given of the legend of Sati, one can take it in this light: Sati is India herself, personified; India’s soil, sacred from end to end, is, with all its variety, the actual body of one great Goddess... And Indian nationalism means: devotion to this great Goddess.
 * Warning to the Hindus, quoted in Koenraad Elst: The Saffron Swastika

 * I worship impersonal Nature, which is neither "good" or "bad", and who knows neither love nor hatred. I worship Life; the Sun, Sustainer of life.  I believe in the Law of everlasting struggle, which is the law of life, and in the duty of the best specimens of our race — the natural élite of mankind — to rule the earth, and evolve out of themselves a caste of supermen, a people 'like unto the Gods'.
 * Pilgrimage (Calcutta: Savitri Devi Mukherji, 1958, p. 327, http://www.savitridevi.org/pilgrimage-09.html)

 * To those privileged ones -- among whom we count ourselves -- the high-resounding "isms" to which their contemporaries ask them to give their allegiance are all equally futile: bound to be betrayed, defeated, and finally rejected by men at large, if containing anything really noble; bound to enjoy, for the time being, some sort of noisy success, if sufficiently vulgar, pretentious, and soul-killing to appeal to the growing number of mechanically conditioned slaves that crawl about our planet, posing as free men; all destined to prove, ultimately, of no avail.
 * The Lightning and the Sun (Calcutta: Temple Press, 1958, p. 3, http://www.vaidilute.com/books/savitri/savitri-01.html)

 * A 'civilization' that makes such a ridiculous fuss about alleged 'war crimes' -- acts of violence against the actual or potential enemies of one's cause -- and tolerates slaughterhouses and vivisection laboratories, and circuses and the fur industry (infliction of pain upon creatures that can never be for or against any cause), does not deserve to live. Out with it!  Blessed the day it will destroy itself, so that a healthy, hard, frank and brave, nature-loving and truth-loving élite of supermen with a life-centered faith,-- a natural human aristocracy, as beautiful, on its own higher level, as the four-legged kings of the jungle -- might again rise, and rule upon its ruins, for ever!
 * Impeachment of Man (Calcutta: Savitri Devi Mukherji, 1959, p. x, http://www.savitridevi.org/impeachment-preface.html)

 * In the Third Reich, even schoolchildren knew from their textbooks that this [= the Aryan] race had spread from the north to the south and east, and not the other way around.
 * Savitri Devi, Souvernirs et Réflexions d'une Aryenne, p 273, quoted in Koenraad Elst: The Saffron Swastika, p. 561

 * I asked Savitri ... how she would have received her mother. Without batting an eyelid, she said: 'I would have shot her.'
 * Savitri Devi about her mother who joined the Resistance movement. Quoted by Sumanta Banerjee, quoted from Koenraad Elst: The Saffron Swastika, p.581

Quotes about Savitri Devi

 * Savitri Devi's paganism was a very modern philosophy of submersion in the purely physical, a biological materialism exalted to the status of a religion. Obviously, genuine Pagan philosophers with their own views of the transcendent dimension would hardly have recognized their own worldview in this reductionist quasi-Darwinism.
 * Koenraad Elst : The Saffron Swastika, p.558, vol II

 * The Aryan Invasion Theory, along with the concomitant racialist understanding of the caste system as a kind of Apartheid system to preserve the Aryan's racial purity, was the alpha and omega of Savitri Devi's own worldview.
 * Koenraad Elst : The Saffron Swastika, p. 561, vol II

 * As for the Nazi connection, let us at any rate be clear about an easily verifiable fact: in so far as the Nazis cared about Indian history, they favoured the AIT. ... In fact, after reading her autobiography, “Memories and Reflexions of an Aryan Lady”, there is not the slightest doubt left that for her and her husband, their belief in the AIT, along with their distortive reinterpretation of Hindu tradition in terms of the AIT, was the direct cause of their enthusiasm for Hitler.
 * Elst, Koenraad (1999). Update on the Aryan invasion debate New Delhi: Aditya Prakashan.

 * Christian Bouchet dismisses Goodrick-Clarke as a "pseudo-historian":... "Goodrick-Clarke has dispensed with all research work and has merely relayed Savitri Devi's own sayings without analysing or criticizing them." The problem is that this single source, her autobiography, is not supported by any independent evidence, and that she can easily have refashioned her past: "For the period from her birth until after World War 2, we have to trust Savitri Devi Mukherji for her life story. However, it is obvious that she herself has arranged her biography a posteriori in order to harmonize it with the themes defended in her books." ... At this point, one explanation becomes inescapable: "It is evident and very clear that Savitri Devi Mukherji has 'arranged' her biography in order to construct herself a persona apt to shine in the tiny circle of neo-Nazism"
 * Christian Bouchet about Savitri Devi's autobiography. Quoted from Elst, Koenraad. Return of the Swastika: Hate and Hysteria versus Hindu Sanity (2007), ch. 4.

 * [Perhaps] she developed her crassly racist views of inter-caste relations only later, projecting them back onto her Hindu activist period when she wrote her autobiography thirty-five years after the fact. My impression is that in the 1930s, she was much more moderate in this respect.
 * Koenraad Elst (2010). The saffron swastika: The notion of "Hindu fascism". Chapter 5.

 * The greatest fighter after Adolf Hitler, Rudolf Hess and Joseph Goebbels. Moreover she was the first to discover the secret and spiritual power behind Hitlerism.
 * Miguel Serrano, author and diplomat, (interview in The Flaming Sword, No. 3, August 1994, http://web.archive.org/web/19990508175302re_/www.satanism.net/iss/wot/Miguel_Serrano2.html)

title: Savitri Devi