Dissent And Loyalty Quotes & Sayings

The American system is the most ingenious system of control in world history. With a country so rich in natural resources, talent, and labor power the system can afford to distribute just enough wealth to just enough people to limit discontent to a troublesome minority. It is a country so powerful, so big, so pleasing to so many of its citizens that it can afford to give freedom of dissent to the small number who are not pleased. There is no system of control with more openings, apertures, leeways, flexibilities, rewards for the chosen, winning tickets in lotteries. There is none that disperses its controls more complexly through the voting system, the work situation, the church, the family, the school, the mass media
none more successful in mollifying opposition with reforms, isolating people from one another, creating patriotic loyalty. — Howard Zinn

Ancestor worship must be an appealing idea to those who are about to become ancestors. - Steven Pinker, How the Mind Works — Daniel C. Dennett

Our economy isn't going to recover until the housing market finds its footing. — Mark Zandi

Opened Christmas cards hum to me the hymn of love and teach me the sacrament of correspondence. — Edward M Hays

Smile with face, smile with mind, and good energy will come to you and clean away dirty energy. — Elizabeth Gilbert

It's common to go from 'crashing the gate' to guarding it. — Glenn Greenwald

Life is a vast, unknowable movement of wholeness with no one separate from it and nothing outside of it. — Toni Packer

In an average day, you may well be confronted with some species of bullying or bigotry, or some ill-phrased appeal to the general will, or some petty abuse of authority. If you have a political loyalty, you may be offered a shady reason for agreeing to a lie or a half-truth that serves some short-term purpose. Everybody devises tactics for getting through such moments; try behaving "as if" they need not be tolerated and are not inevitable. — Christopher Hitchens

It's like my old Aunt Joan always used to say: if you're going to end up fighting monsters, Pirate Captain, try to stick to ventriloquist's dummies who have gone alive. — Gideon Defoe

The handless clock trying to hold
the hour of death, salt
in the last mouthful of water.
The windows opaque with silence,
silence stagnating in the wineglass. — Warren Heiti

We could build entire cities out of the stories of loneliness. — Hannah Brencher

If you are on time you are a slave, if you are late you are free — SK

Quitting: easy. Daring to triumph: hard. — Laird Hamilton

Never had he kissed lips so soft. He had not known that there were lips so soft in the whole world. Her tongue, though, was sandpaper-rough as it slipped against his. - Who are you? he asked. — Neil Gaiman

I hope you never understand, because I like you. I like you, I like you. — Sarah Kane

This massive ascendancy of corporate power over democratic process is probably the most ominous development since the end of World War II, and for the most part "the free world" seems to be regarding it as merely normal. — Wendell Berry

Preparing and serving food had always been a joy, for it made her appreciate the abundance of the world. — Elizabeth Camden

We must not confuse dissent with disloyalty. When the loyal opposition dies, I think the soul of America dies with it. — Edward R. Murrow