There is no shore on the other side

Gabriel Garcia Marquez

I cannot help thinking that liberal civilization—the rule of laws, not men, of argument in place of force, of compromise in place of violence—runs deeply against the human grain and is achieved and sustained only by the most unremitting struggle against human nature. The liberal virtues—tolerance, compromise, reason—remain as valuable as ever, but they cannot be preached to those who are mad with fear or mad with vengeance. In any case, preaching always rings hollow. We must be prepared to defend them by force, and the failure of the sated, cosmopolitan nations to do so has left the hungry nations sick with contempt for us.

Michael Ignatieff

Life should be a fight to the death.

Tarquin Hall, The Case of the Deadly Butter Chicken

It doesn't have to be understood to be real.

Peter Lanza

When the enemy is making a false movement we must take good care not to interrupt him.


Attributed to Napoleon

Consciousness was indeed real.  It had observable energy.  That energy translated into movement, into work.  That energy ordered information, the stuff of the world, the matter, and recycled that order back into itself, lifting itself to ever higher ground.

Kathleen Ann Goonan, Light Music 

Consciousness was firmly embedded in the fabric of space and time, a material part of its vibrational energy.  Consciousness, or mind, was not split off from matter, hovering outside it.... Instead, consciousness was within matter, of matter.  It was matter looking at itself and being astonished.  It was the point seeing the wave, or the wave seeing the point.  Consciousness was quantum electrodynamism.  Time turned back upon itself.  Time splintering.  Time strutting loose among the energy levels, only slightly stilled, slightly caught, in that glance called consciousness, the observer, the energy that made it into this and not-this, live cat and dead cat.

Kathleen Ann Goonan, Light Music