Art Official/Rebel Alliance/Music Buffs

He who joyfully marches to music in rank and file has already earned my contempt. He has been given a large brain by mistake, since for him, the spinal cord would fully suffice.

the world is big. some people are unable to comprehend that simple fact. they want the world on their own terms, its peoples just like them and their friends, its places like the manicured patch on which they live. but this is a foolish and blind wish. diversity is not an abnormality, but the very reality of our planet. the human world manifests the same reality and will not seek our permission to celebrate itself in the magnificance of its endless varieties. civility is a sensible attribute in this kind of world we have; narrowness of heart and mind is not.

"Being an activist means being aware of what's happening around you as well as being in touch with your feelings about it -- your rage, your sadness, your excitement, your curiosity, your feeling of helplessnes, and your refusal to surrender. Being an activist means owning your desire."

We are all conduits for something. Whatever we are in contact with, whatever we surround ourselves with, passes through us whether we like it or not. A driver zooming through traffic because he's listening to speed metal is a conduit for the music. Likewise, we are conduits for the enterprises in which we participate. Ideas pass through us, spirituality and certainly the desire for money passes through us as surely as the cord through the wooden hands of a marionette. When large corporations are the ultimate purveyors of what we make, it has to affect our work. We become conduits for corporate ideology. We take the check and wonder why we're miserable.

Precious few are those who see with their own eyes and feel with their own hearts.

Few people are capable of expressing with equanimity opinions which differ from the prejudices of their social environment. Most people are even incapable of forming such opinions.

The individual is able to think, feel, strive, and work by himself; but he depends so much upon society--in his physical, intellectual, and emotional existence--that it is impossible to think of him, or to understand him, outside the framework of society. It is 'society' which provides man with food, clothing, a home, the tools of work, language, the forms of thought, and most of the content of thought; his life is made possible through the labor and the accomplishments of the many millions past and present who are all hidden behind the small word 'society'.

A poet is one who can call forth the good latent in the human breast

I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed by madness...

The triumph of advertising in the culture industry is that consumers feel compelled to buy and use its products even though they see through them

American consumerism is about buying things we don't need, with money we don't have, to impress friends we don't have time for.

A society that will trade a little order for a little freedom will lose both, and deserve neither.

Today the tyrant rules not by club or fist, but disguised as a market researcher, he shepherds his flocks in the ways of utility and comfort.

The mouth is the exit wound of ego.

art is the lie that helps us understand the truth

There is something feeble and contemptible about a man who cannot face the perils of life without the help of comfortable myths. Almost inevitably some part of him is aware that they are myths and that he believes them only because they are comforting. But he dare not face this thought! Moreover, since he is aware, however dimly, that his opinions are not rational, he becomes furious when they are disputed.

It is impossible to live outside of politics, without politics, anymore than one can live without air.

Have fun!