Positive Changes That Are Occurring - The Quotes
By Jeff Miller, Libertyville, Illinois, September 7, 2022
I see faces and traces of home back in New York City
So you think I’m a tough kid? Is that what you heard?
Well I like to see some action and it gets into my blood
The call me the trail blazer - Rael-electric razor
I’m a pitcher in a chain gang, we don’t believe in pain
'Cos we’re only as strong, as the weakest link in the chain
Let me out of Pontiac when I was just seventeen
I had to get it out of me, if you know what I mean, what I mean
You say I must be crazy, 'cos I don’t care who I hit, who I hit
But I know it’s me that’s hitting out, and I’m not full of shit
I don’t care who I hurt, I don’t care who I do wrong
This is your mess I’m stuck in, I really don’t belong
When I take out my bottle, filled up high with gasoline
You can tell by the night fires where Rael has been, has been
From “Back in N.Y.C.”, by Peter Brian Gabriel / Anthony Banks / Phil Collins / Steve Hackett / Michael Rutherford, 1974
(That’s me, Jeff Miller, in Brooklyn, New York, Covin-19 lockdown, 2020. And that’s the 1984 Ritchey Commando I was riding when the MK-multiple agency wetworker ran the red light in Pittsburgh and T-boned me in 2016. I flew ten feet, maybe 15. It made a sound like a cannon, “boom!” There were no bent tubes or stays on my bike. The bottom bracket, which took the brunt of the impact (into my right crank), spun perfectly, and still does. Was not touched by a mechanic, then to now. Not scientifically possible. When bikes wreck in bike races, they “pretzel” - the tubes are strong longitudinally, but weak like a noodle when impacted laterally. The car was going 41 or 42 mph when it hit me. I know because I drove down that street the next day at the speed I saw her going, and looked at my speedometer to confirm it. She looked at me with wide eyes and said “you are very strong”. I put the chain back on the bike and rode home. The tires didn’t even blow.
When I got home, I walked in, held up my arms, and said to my wife “I’m totally fine…I just got hit by a car.” Without pause, she said “I thought when you said goodbye ‘he’s going to be hit by a car’…but I didn’t want to be a downer and say such a thing”.
There’s just a few scratches on the paint of the bike. I had a little cut on my shin, I think a theatrical detail thrown in to make the whole situation seem a bit less impossible. I went to the hospital the next day. No bruising. No injuries of any kind. I wasn’t even sore.
An entity I cannot name bent the laws of space/time for me, I’m guessing because such an assault was immoral, and thus refutable by an entity with such power. I don’t know who it was but I thank them for it. My guess is Athena, goddess of war and sacred quests. Or perhaps the Devil, himself, to stir the pot and keep things interesting.
At first, the Insurance company said I was guilty, had run a red light! Then they called me back, and offered to settle, because she’d admitted she’d made up everything she’d said in her statement. I bought the Cook Bros. crank arms you see here with the $500 settlement.
When I have cash later I’ll reenact the accident, with a donor bike, and one of my cars that’s correct for that challenge. And we’ll see what happens to the bike.)
Sprawling on the fringes of the city
In geometric order
An insulated border
In-between the bright lights
And the far, unlit unknown
Growing up, it all seems so one-sided
Opinions all provided
The future pre-decided
Detached and subdivided
In the mass-production zone
Nowhere is the dreamer
Or the misfit so alone
Subdivisions
In the high school halls
In the shopping malls
Conform or be cast out
Subdivisions
In the basement bars
In the backs of cars
Be cool or be cast out
Any escape might help to smooth
The unattractive truth
But the suburbs have no charms to soothe
The restless dreams of youth
From Rush’s “Subdivisions" written by Alex Zivojinovich / Gary Lee Weinrib / Neil Elwood Peart, 1982
“As my sufferings mounted, I soon realized that there were two ways in which I could respond to my situation – either to react with bitterness or seek to transform the suffering into a creative force. I decided to follow the latter course.”
― Martin Luther King Jr.
(Martin Luther King, Jr.)
I rolled on, the sky grew dark
I put the pedal down to make some time
There’s something good waitin’ down this road
I’m pickin’ up whatever’s mine
I’m runnin’ down a dream that never would come to me
Workin’ on a mystery, goin’ wherever it leads
Runnin’ down a dream
Yeah, I’m runnin’ down a dream that never would come to me
Workin’ on a mystery, goin’ wherever it leads
I’m runnin’ down a dream
From “Runnin’ Down a Dream”, by Tom Petty, 1989
My shit is real, I had to pioneer in this
Around the way, all the fake niggaz fear this
Paragraphs bust your membrane
On and on I bust through like teflon
Prodigy, from Mobb Deep’s “Me and My Crew”, 1991
Mobb Deep: Albert Johnson, aka “Prodigy” (left), Kejuan Waliek Muchita, aka “Havoc” (right)
“For there is but one essential justice which cements society, and one law which establishes this justice. This law is right reason, which is the true rule of all commandments and prohibitions. Whoever neglects this law, whether written or unwritten, is necessarily unjust and wicked.”
― Marcus Tullius Cicero, “On the Laws"
“I think Jeff is wise to include the same intro paragraphs at the beginning of each posting because the enemy established this long con by repeating the same erroneous claims and constantly reinforces them with their memes. Maybe it needs to be undone the same way in the record. I think it worked pretty well for them during the years when their weather weaponry was all working and the earth was turning into a desert at an accelerating rate, before orgonite suddenly proliferated in this century’s beginning. Carol and are are still ‘baffled’ that Jeff Miller is the only person on the planet, out of five or so billion souls, who collects and publishes solid, statistical evidence that the tide has turned forcefully against the parasitic world order and their ‘Gaia destruction’ agenda.”
Don Croft on his Etheric Warriors forum, October, 2015
“Honest pioneer work in the field of science has always been, and will continue to be, life’s pilot. On all sides, life is surrounded by hostility. This puts us under an obligation.”
- Wilhelm Reich
(Wilhelm Reich’s mug shot - 1956)
I still dream of Orgonon
I wake up crying
You’re making rain
And you’re just in reach
When you and sleep escape me
You’re like my yo-yo
That glowed in the dark
What made it special
Made it dangerous
So I bury it
And forget
But every time it rains
You’re here in my head
Like the sun coming out
Ooh, I just know that something good is gonna happen
I don’t know when
But just saying it could even make it happen
On top of the world
Looking over the edge
You could see them coming
You looked too small
In their big black car
To be a threat to the men in power
From “Cloudbusting”, by Kate Bush, from the album “The Hounds of Love”, 1985
“Due to my discovery of the cosmic orgone energy and its social implications, I am in deep trouble, emotionally and socially.”
- Wilhelm Reich
“jeff miller’s good news etheric warriors threat”
October 2018, From an Orgonite forum in another country
The author was briefly an Etheric Warriors member, but were ejected by Don, once I’d used linguistic analysis to prove to him that said member was a double agent. They’re pretending that they tried to say “thread”, but misspoke. This is a classic example of the “so sorry, English isn’t my first language!” spook writing technique.
“You’re definitely standing on your own and in your own class. It’s a good thing to be the first as long as they don’t kill us for it.”
Don Croft to Jeff Miller in an e-mail on January 17, 2018
Watcher of the skies, watcher of all
His is a world alone, no world is his own
He whom life can no longer surprise
Raising his eyes beholds a planet unknown
Tony Banks and Michael Rutherford, from “Watcher of the Skies”, from “Foxtrot”, by Genesis, 1972
Then felt I like some watcher of the skies
When a new planet swims into his ken.
From “On First Looking into Chapman’s Homer”, by John Keats, 1817
"I like the scientific spirit—the holding off, the being sure but not too sure, the willingness to surrender ideas when the evidence is against them: this is ultimately fine—it always keeps the way beyond open—always gives life, thought, affection, the whole man, a chance to try over again after a mistake—after a wrong guess.”
― Walt Whitman, Walt Whitman’s Camden Conversations, 1895
(Walt Whitman)
“The real voyage of discovery consists not in seeking new landscapes, but having new eyes.”
- Marcel Proust
As you are aware, Watson, there is no one who knows the higher criminal world of London so well as I do. For years past I have continually been conscious of some power behind the malefactor, some deep organizing power which forever stands in the way of the law, and throws its shield over the wrong-doer. Again and again in cases of the most varying sorts—forgery cases, robberies, murders—I have felt the presence of this force, and I have deduced its action in many of those undiscovered crimes in which I have not been personally consulted. For years I have endeavored to break through the veil which shrouded it, and at last the time came when I seized my thread and followed it, until it led me, after a thousand cunning windings, to ex-Professor Moriarty of mathematical celebrity.
He is the Napoleon of crime, Watson. He is the organizer of half that is evil and of nearly all that is undetected in this great city. He is a genius, a philosopher, an abstract thinker. He has a brain of the first order. He sits motionless, like a spider in the center of its web, but that web has a thousand radiations, and he knows well every quiver of each of them. He does little himself. He only plans. But his agents are numerous and splendidly organized. Is there a crime to be done, a paper to be abstracted, we will say, a house to be rifled, a man to be removed—the word is passed to the Professor, the matter is organized and carried out. The agent may be caught. In that case money is found for his bail or his defense. But the central power which uses the agent is never caught—never so much as suspected. This was the organization which I deduced, Watson, and which I devoted my whole energy to exposing and breaking up.
From “The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes - The Final Problem”, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, 1893
“Sail away from the safe harbor. Catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore. Dream. Discover."
- Mark Twain
“You must live in the present, launch yourself on every wave, find your eternity in each moment. Fools stand on their island of opportunities and look toward another land. There is no other land; there is no other life but this.”
― Henry David Thoreau
(Henry David Thoreau)
”No one surfed like Eddie. He would take off on a huge scary wave, and he’d be sliding down it with the biggest smile you ever saw. The rest of us were nervous. Eddie belonged there; it was his home."
- Eddie Aikau’s brother, Clyde
(Eddie Aikau, North Shore, Oahu)
“Eddie would go.”
- Mark Foo
(Mark Foo)
“Goldfinger could not have known that high tension was Bond’s natural way of life and that pressure and danger relaxed him.”
From “Goldfinger”, by Ian Fleming, 1959
“But tell me who you are, and what would you?”
“I am called Joan the Maid, and am sent to say that the King of Heaven wills that you be crowned and consecrated in your good city of Rheims, and be thereafter Lieutenant of the Lord of Heaven, who is King of France. And He willeth also that you set me at my appointed work and give me men-at-arms.” After a slight pause she added, her eye lighting at the sound of her words, “For then will I raise the siege of Orleans and break the English power!”
From “Personal Recollections of Joan of Arc”, by Mark Twain, 1896
“I’m not interested in preserving the status quo. I want to overthrow it.”
Niccolò Machiavelli, 1531
“ ‘You belong to the League of Nations?’
‘I belong to the world, Madame,’ said Poirot dramatically.”
― From “Murder on the Orient Express”, by Agatha Christie, 1934
“The high object of our mission, the consciousness that it was unselfish and chivalrous, the villainous character of our opponent, all added to the sporting interest of the adventure. Far from feeling guilty, I rejoiced and exulted in our dangers.”
Dr. John H. Watson, from “The Adventures of Charles August Milverton”, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, 1904
Girl in the Ferrari: Well…are you gonna go for it?
Clark Griswold: This is crazy, this is crazy, this is crazy. I’m in deep…I’m in deep.
From the film “National Lampoon’s Vacation”, written by John Hughes, 1983
(Christie Brinkley and Chevy Chase in National Lampoon’s Vacation”, 1983)
The first Quiksilver Eddie Aikau Big Wave Invitational was held in the winter of 1985/1986 at Waimea Bay. The unique contest requirement was that waves had to be 20 feet or bigger. When the waves got huge and the folks in charge were deciding whether to raise the green flag or not, Mark Foo said: “Eddie Would Go.” The expression stuck, and the contest got underway.
It took a while for Martin Potter to openly admit that he fled the North Shore of Oahu in 1981 because he was scared. There was a giant swell forecast to smash the North Shore, and Pottz, who was 16 at the time, wanted none of it. After one of the most auspicious debuts in the history of pro surfing, Martin Potter ran away.
The fear on the North Shore can become overwhelming. One year while hanging with a bunch of QS surfers all crammed into a small unit, I witnessed this kind of paralyzing fear. A massive swell was forecast, and all of the crew were still in the event at Sunset.
When the forecast came through, some were calm, but others were totally rattled. It was going to be a proper 10-foot at Sunset, with bigger sets. One young gentleman declared that he wanted fuck-all to do with it, and would not be paddling out at Sunset. Some were surprised and there was some ragging among the crew, but it was fair enough. He was overwhelmed with anxiety about Sunset at 10-foot because, quite simply, it is terrifying.
(Short story – he didn’t paddle out, he flew home chagrined, and gave up a professional surfing career a little later.)
Pottz was on a plane home before the swell hit in 1981, but he had made his debut with some massive wins that year and had a taste of the heady world of professional surfing. He liked it. He wanted to own it, and he was determined to come back stronger and braver.
The following year was déjà vu for so, many including Pottz. He now wanted to prove himself to the world, and that opportunity came to him in the semi-finals of the 1982 Pipe Masters. Up against Michael Ho, Pottz was confronted by a wave that struck the fear of death in him. It was a huge peak that broke on second reef, and Michael knew that it was the wave that was going to be the heat winner. Ho glanced at Pottz like he wasn’t even there, and that little bit of indifference was the spark that ignited Martin’s desire to charge.
There was a chip shot, but when a massive 12-foot wall of water moves over second reef and sets to implode over the inside reef, chip shots are not game-changers. As a 17-year-old, Pottz was still skinny and kind of small. For him to paddle into that wave was a biblical ask. No one thought he would go, and no one knew at that stage, that he had it in him.
Unbelievably, Pottz went. He made the drop and stood up in a heaving cathedral of a tube. He navigated the barrel, did a half-claim, and attempted a cutback, as the beach erupted. It was a defining moment for our sport and a pivotal moment for Pottz. A single wave slingshot him into another sphere of surfing.
The wave won him the respect of the Hawaiian people, and the rest of the surfers on tour. There were many of his peers who probably wouldn’t have gone on that wave. It was a beast.
In his biopic ‘Strange Desires’, Pottz spells out that moment. “There comes a time in everyone’s life when you’ve got to put all your feelings and emotions aside, and just go, and if you can’t do that, then it’s going to take you a long time to get respect,” he said. “If I had let that wave go, it would have taken me another two or three years to get that level of respect on tour.”
(Martin Potter, Pipe Masters, Ehukai Beach, North Shore, Oahu, 1982)
“Since it is so likely that children will meet cruel enemies, let them at least have heard of brave knights and heroic courage. Otherwise you are making their destiny not brighter but darker.”
― C.S. Lewis
At the 2010 Masters, Phil Mickelson famously saw a shot few, if any, would have.
From the pine straw right of the par-5 13th fairway, Lefty had 187 yards to carry the creek for his second shot. That he also had to weave that attempt through a pair of pine trees only added to the degree of difficulty.
History shows that Mickelson hit that shot to 3 feet and went on to win his third green jacket, but on Wednesday at Augusta National Jim “Bones” Mackay, Mickelson’s former caddie, who is now an NBC Sports/Golf Channel analyst, shed some light on those intriguing few moments.
“Phil let me know almost right away, ‘I’m going [for the green] here. When the green clears in front of us I’m going,’” Mackay said. “The gap between the trees, TV didn’t do it justice. It was about the width of a box of a dozen balls I would say.”
Mickelson and Mackay settled on a 6-iron, but as they waited Bones discovered that K.J. Choi, who was playing in the group ahead, had just bogeyed the 13th hole to fall two strokes behind Lefty.
This changed things, at least in Mackay’s mind.
“I went back in to Phil and said to him, ‘Hey, let me throw this at you. You’re the boss, but does this change the way you’re going to approach this shot given the fact that you are tied for the lead now?’” Mackay said.
Mickelson’s response was quintessential Lefty.
“He looked at me and said, ‘Let me tell you something. If I am going to win this tournament today, I am going to have to hit a really good shot under a lot of pressure at some point. I am going to do it right now,’” Mackay recalled. “That was my entrée to get out of the way and watch him do his thing. And he hit arguably the greatest shot of his career.”
From “Mackay: Phil’s shot in '10 more epic than you know”, by Rex Hoggard, 2018
“As long as I breathe, I attack”
– Bernard Hinault
(Bernard Hinault, 1985, 2018)
“In my inmost heart I believed that I could succeed where others failed, and now I had the opportunity to test myself.”
From “The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes”, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, 1893
“Several of them would have protested if they could have found the right arguments.”
From “Animal Farm”, by George Orwell, 1945
“O ye that love mankind! Ye that dare oppose, not only the tyranny, but the tyrant, stand forth!”
- Thomas Paine
(This is the very first quote I ever used, in July of 2013, right when I got started with the thread. It opened up every post, at that time)
“There are a thousand hacking at the branches of evil to one who is striking at the root.”
- Henry David Thoreau
“Of more worth is one honest man to society and in the sight of God, than all the crowned ruffians that ever lived.”
From “Common Sense”, by Thomas Paine, 1776
“There are thousands who are in opinion opposed to slavery and to the war, who yet in effect do nothing to put an end to them; who, esteeming themselves children of Washington and Franklin, sit down with their hands in their pockets, and say that they know not what to do, and do nothing…”
― From “Civil Disobedience and Other Essays”, by Henry David Thoreau, 1849
You can blow out a candle
But you can’t blow out a fire
Once the flames begin to catch
The wind will blow it higher
From “Biko”, by Peter Gabriel, 1980
“In May, 2002, Carol and I had determined some simple parameters for using orgonite to turn these weapons into life force generators. Anywhere people have committed to ‘flipping’ all of these weapons the atmosphere has gotten dramatically brighter, the crime rate evidently has dropped significantly and people seem generally less fearful and hopeless. Ethericwarriors.com has field reports from around the world and it hosts Jeff Miller’s very long-running ‘Positive Changes That Are Occurring’ documentation. When you see major cities around the world where films are made you may have noticed that since 2003 or so none of them are smoggy, any more (outside of China, where information about orgonite has been actively suppressed until this year). This includes Los Angeles, Tokyo and Mexico City, which may have had the world’s worst smog, before. This illustrates the grassroots nature of this unorganized orgonite movement better than anything, in my opinion.”
Don Croft on his Etheric Warriors forum, September 28, 2017
“It has always been my habit to hide none of my methods, either from my friend Watson or from anyone who might take an intelligent interest in them.”
Sherlock Holmes, from “The Reigate Puzzle”, 1893
“I have already explained to you that what is out of the common is usually a guide rather than a hindrance. In solving a problem of this sort, the grand thing is to be able to reason backwards. That is a very useful accomplishment, and a very easy one, but people do not practise it much. In the every-day affairs of life it is more useful to reason forwards, and so the other comes to be neglected. There are fifty who can reason synthetically for one who can reason analytically.”
Sherlock Holmes, from “A Study in Scarlet”, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, 1887
“I believe in the equality of man; and I believe that religious duties consist in doing justice, loving mercy, and endeavoring to make our fellow-creatures happy.”
- Thomas Paine
(Thomas Paine)
“Where justice is denied, where poverty is enforced, where ignorance prevails, and where any one class is made to feel that society is an organized conspiracy to oppress, rob and degrade them, neither persons nor property will be safe.”
― Frederick Douglass
(Frederick Douglass)
“If you tremble with indignation at every injustice then you are a comrade of mine.”
― Ernesto Che Guevara
(Ernesto Che Guevara)
“Justice will not be served until those who are unaffected are as outraged as those who are.”
― Benjamin Franklin
“There exists in man a mass of sense lying in a dormant state, and which, unless something excites it to action, will descend with him, in that condition, to the grave.”
― From “The Rights of Man”, by Thomas Paine, 1791
“To be good is noble; but to show others how to be good is nobler, and no trouble.
- Mark Twain
“I love the man that can smile in trouble, that can gather strength from distress, and grow brave by reflection. 'Tis the business of little minds to shrink; but he whose heart is firm, and whose conscience approves his conduct, will pursue his principles unto death.”
― Thomas Paine
"O for a man who is a man, and, as my neighbor says, has a bone in his back which you cannot pass your hand through!”
From “Civil Disobedience”, by Henry David Thoreau, 1849
“On evil’s cushion poised, His Majesty,
Satan Thrice-Great, lulls our charmed soul, until
He turns to vapor what was once our will:
Rich ore, transmuted by his alchemy.”
― Baudelaire
“Open confession of dictatorship is far less dangerous than sham democracy. One can defend oneself against the former; the latter is like a creeper attached to the body of a drowning man.”
From “The Mass Psychology of Fascism”, by Wilhelm Reich, 1933
(Boris Johnson, Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump all featuring Satanic purple, and all making identical purportedly-secret Illuminist “gestures of recognition” with their hands)
“Princes and governments are far more dangerous than other elements within society.”
- Niccolo Machiavelli
"A people that elect corrupt politicians, imposters, thieves and traitors are not victims… but accomplices.”
― George Orwell
“It was one of the greatest errors in evaluating dictatorship to say that the dictator forces himself on society against its own will. In reality, every dictator in history was nothing but the accentuation of already existing state ideas which he had only to exaggerate in order to gain power.”
― From “The Mass Pyschology of Fascism”, by Wilhelm Reich, 1933
“Unless a man becomes the enemy of an evil, he will not even become its slave but rather its champion.”
― G.K. Chesterton
“France will rise again. You shall see.”
“Rise?—with this burden of English armies on her back!”
“She will cast it off; she will trample it under foot!” This with spirit.
“Without soldiers to fight with?”
“The drums will summon them. They will answer, and they will march.”
“March to the rear, as usual?”
“No; to the front—ever to the front—always to the front! You shall see.”
“And the pauper King?”
“He will mount his throne—he will wear his crown.”
“Well, of a truth this makes one’s head dizzy. Why, if I could believe that in thirty years from now the English domination would be broken and the French monarch’s head find itself hooped with a real crown of sovereignty—”
“Both will have happened before two years are sped.”
“Indeed? and who is going to perform all these sublime impossibilities?”
“God.”
It was a reverent low note, but it rang clear.
What could have put those strange ideas in her head? This question kept running in my mind during two or three days. It was inevitable that I should think of madness. What other way was there to account for such things? Grieving and brooding over the woes of France had weakened that strong mind, and filled it with fantastic phantoms—yes, that must be it.
But I watched her, and tested her, and it was not so. Her eye was clear and sane, her ways were natural, her speech direct and to the point. No, there was nothing the matter with her mind; it was still the soundest in the village and the best. She went on thinking for others, planning for others, sacrificing herself for others, just as always before. She went on ministering to her sick and to her poor, and still stood ready to give the wayfarer her bed and content herself with the floor. There was a secret somewhere, but madness was not the key to it. This was plain."
From “Personal Recollections of Joan of Arc”, by Mark Twain, 1896
“Here you go, Larry. See what happens? You see what happens, Larry?! See what happens?! This is what happens when you fuck a stranger in the ass, Larry! [Proceeds to smash up what he wrongly believes is Larry’s new Corvette] This is what happens, Larry! See what happens, Larry?! Do you see what happens when you fuck a stranger in the ass, this is what happens! See what happens, Larry?! You see what happens, Larry?! Do you see what happens, Larry, when you fuck a stranger in the ass?! This is what happens, Larry! This is what happens, Larry!”
Walter Sobchak, from “The Big Lebowski”, by Joel and Ethan Coen, 1998
(John Goodman and Jeff Bridges in “The Big Lebowski”, 1998 - note Bridges’ Satanic purple shirt, as well as the purportedly-secret Illuminist “gestures of recognition” that he’s making with his hands)
“On glancing over my notes of the seventy odd cases in which I have during the last eight years studied the methods of my friend Sherlock Holmes, I find many tragic, some comic, a large number merely strange, but none commonplace; for, working as he did rather for the love of his art than for the acquirement of wealth, he refused to associate himself with any investigation which did not tend towards the unusual, and even the fantastic.”
― From “The Adventure of the Speckled Band”, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, 1892
“I am not the law, but I represent justice so far as my feeble powers go.”
― Sherlock Holmes, from “The Adventure of the Three Gables”, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, 1926
“And don’t get hurt,’ [Dexter] added. 'There’s no one to help you up there. And don’t go stirring up a lot of trouble for us. This case isn’t ripe yet. Until it is, our policy with Mr. Big is ‘live and let live’.”
Bond looked quizzically at Captain Dexter.
“In my job,’ he said, 'when I come up against a man like this one, I have another motto. It’s ‘live and let die’.”
From “Live and Let Die”, by Ian Fleming, 1954
“You have probably never heard of Professor Moriarty?” said he.
“Never.”
“Aye, there’s the genius and the wonder of the thing!” he cried. “The man pervades London, and no one has heard of him. That’s what puts him on a pinnacle in the records of crime. I tell you, Watson, in all seriousness, that if I could beat that man, if I could free society of him, I should feel that my own career had reached its summit, and I should be prepared to turn to some more placid line in life. Between ourselves, the recent cases in which I have been of assistance to the royal family of Scandinavia, and to the French republic, have left me in such a position that I could continue to live in the quiet fashion which is most congenial to me, and to concentrate my attention upon my chemical researches. But I could not rest, Watson, I could not sit quiet in my chair, if I thought that such a man as Professor Moriarty were walking the streets of London unchallenged.”
From “The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes - The Final Problem”, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, 1894
“There is nothing noble in being superior to your fellow man; true nobility is being superior to your former self.”
- Ernest Hemingway
“We have now sunk to a depth at which the restatement of the obvious is the first duty of intelligent men.”
- George Orwell
"Good is always getting better and bad is always getting worse: the possibilities of even apparent neutrality are always diminishing. The whole thing is sorting itself out all the time, coming to a point, getting sharper and harder.”
From “That Hideous Strength”, by C.S. Lewis, 1945
Wikipedia – “Don’t be evil” is the motto of Google’s corporate code of conduct, first introduced around 2000.
October 4, 2015 – Google Parent Company Drops ‘Don’t Be Evil’ Motto
October 5, 2015 – Why Google Was Smart To Drop Its “Don’t Be Evil” Motto
March 8, 2018 – How Google Is Part of the Government and Can Censor Anyone
“In keeping silent about evil, in burying it so deep within us that no sign of it appears on the surface, we are implanting it, and it will rise up a thousand fold in the future. When we neither punish nor reproach evildoers, we are not simply protecting their trivial old age, we are thereby ripping the foundations of justice from beneath new generations.”
― From “The Gulag Archipeligo”, by Aleksandr I. Solzhenitsyn, 1973
“I became convinced that noncooperation with evil is as much a moral obligation as is cooperation with good.”
― From “The Autobiography of Martin Luther King, Jr.”, by Clayborne Carson, 1998
“The common people, on the whole, are still living in the world of absolute good and evil from which the intellectuals have long since escaped.”
– George Orwell
“I need not pause to explain that crime is not a disease. It is criminology that is a disease.”
― From “Eugenics and Other Evils: An Argument Against the Scientifically Organized State”, by G.K. Chesterton, 1922
"A totalitarian state is in effect a theocracy, and its ruling caste, in order to keep its position, has to be thought of as infallible. But since, in practice, no one is infallible, it is frequently necessary to rearrange past events in order to show that this or that mistake was not made, or that this or that imaginary triumph actually happened.
A totalitarian society which succeeded in perpetuating itself would probably set up a schizophrenic system of thought, in which the laws of common sense held good in everyday life and in certain exact sciences, but could be disregarded by the politician, the historian, and the sociologist.”
― From “The Prevention of Literature”, by George Orwell, 1946
"It is in refusing to recognize that we worship something that we move from the worship ‘of’ that thing to slavery ‘to’ that thing.”
― Craig D. Lounsbrough
“I am a skeptic…Global warming has become a new religion.”
Ivar Giaever, Nobel Prize Winner for Physics
“Since I am no longer affiliated with any organization nor receiving any funding, I can speak quite frankly…As a scientist I remain skeptical…The main basis of the claim that man’s release of greenhouse gases is the cause of the warming is based almost entirely upon climate models. We all know the frailty of models concerning the air-surface system.”
Atmospheric Scientist Dr. Joanne Simpson, the first woman in the world to receive a PhD in meteorology, and formerly of NASA, who has authored more than 190 studies and has been called “among the most preeminent scientists of the last 100 years
“The emotional qualities are antagonistic to clear reasoning.”
Sherlock Holmes, from “The Sign of the Four”, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, 1890
“Data! data! data!" he cried impatiently. "I can’t make bricks without clay.”
― Sherlock Holmes, from “The Adventure of the Copper Beeches”, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, 1892
“I offer nothing more than simple facts, plain arguments, and common sense.”
- Thomas Paine
“Eh? Two views? There are a dozen views about everything until you know the answer. Then there’s never more than one.”
From “That Hideous Strength”, by C.S. Lewis, 1945
“The real man smiles in trouble, gathers strength from distress, and grows brave by reflection.”
― Thomas Paine
“Nature that framed us of four elements, warring within our breasts for regiment, doth teach us all to have aspiring minds.”
- Niccolo Machiavelli
“It is necessary to the happiness of man that he be mentally faithful to himself. Infidelity does not consist in believing, or in disbelieving, it consists in professing to believe what he does not believe.”
From “The Age of Reason”, by Thomas Paine, 1794
“The most formidable weapon against errors of every kind is reason. I have never used any other, and I trust I never shall.”
― Thomas Paine
“It is error only, and not truth, that shrinks from inquiry.”
― Thomas Paine
“Never tell the truth to people who are not worthy of it.”
― Mark Twain
“If you look for truth, you may find comfort in the end; if you look for comfort you will not get either comfort or truth only soft soap and wishful thinking to begin, and in the end, despair.”
― C.S. Lewis
“The truth must be quite plain, if one could just clear away the litter.”
From “A Caribbean Mystery”, by Agatha Christie, 1964
“And the truth must finally lie in that which every oppressed individual feels within himself but hasn’t the courage to express.”
From “Beyond Psychology: Letters and Journals”, by Wilhelm Reich, 1934-1939
(Wilhelm Reich)
“But such is the irresistible nature of truth, that all it asks, and all it wants, is the liberty of appearing.”
From “The Rights of Man”, by Thomas Paine, 1791
“You should not honor men more than truth.”
― Plato
“Thirst was made for water; inquiry for truth.”
From “The Great Divorce”, by C.S. Lewis, 1945
“However much you deny the truth, the truth goes on existing.”
- George Orwell
“Facts do not cease to exist because they are ignored.”
― Aldous Huxley, from “Complete Essays, Vol. II”, 1926-1929
“How often have I said to you that when you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth?”
Sherlock Holmes, from “The Sign of the Four”, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, 1890
“When men yield up the privilege of thinking, the last shadow of liberty quits the horizon.”
― Thomas Paine
“When the mob and the press and the whole world tell you to move. Your job is to plant yourself like a tree beside the river of truth and tell the whole world: “No, you move.”
― Mark Twain
“It takes two to speak the truth - one to speak and another to hear.”
― Henry David Thoreau
“In wartime, truth is so precious that she should always be attended by a bodyguard of lies.”
― Winston S. Churchill
“The whole secret lies in confusing the enemy, so that he cannot fathom our real intent.”
― From “The Art of War”, by Sun Tzu, 5th Century B.C.
“History is a set of lies agreed upon.”
― Napoleon Bonaparte
“Power, no matter what kind of power it is, without a foundation in truth, is a dictatorship, more or less and in one way or another, for it is always based on man’s fear of the social responsibility and personal burden that “freedom” entails.”
From “The Mass Psychology of Fascism”, by Wilhelm Reich, 1933
“Thinking is man’s only basic virtue, from which all the others proceed. And his basic vice, the source of all his evils, is that nameless act which all of you practice, but struggle never to admit: the act of blanking out, the willful suspension of one’s consciousness, the refusal to think - not blindness, but the refusal to see; not ignorance, but the refusal to know. It is the act of unfocusing your mind and inducing an inner fog to escape the responsibility of judgment - on the unstated premise that a thing will not exist if only you refuse to identify it, that A will not be A so long as you do not pronounce the verdict ‘It is.”
― From “Atlas Shrugged”, by Ayn Rand, 1957
“Fables should be taught as fables, myths as myths, and miracles as poetic fancies. To teach superstitions as truths is a most terrible thing. The child mind accepts and believes them, and only through great pain and perhaps tragedy can he be in after years relieved of them. In fact, men will fight for a superstition quite as quickly as for a living truth — often more so, since a superstition is so intangible you cannot get at it to refute it, but truth is a point of view, and so is changeable.”
― Hypathia of Alexandria
“When one with honeyed words but evil mind persuades the mob, great woes befall the state.”
― From “Orestes”, by Euripides, 408 B.C.
“What you see and what you hear depends a great deal on where you are standing. It also depends on what sort of person you are.”
C.S. Lewis, from “The Magician’s Nephew“, 1955
“It is impossible to calculate the moral mischief, if I may so express it, that mental lying has produced in society. When a man has so far corrupted and prostituted the chastity of his mind as to subscribe his professional belief to things he does not believe he has prepared himself for the commission of every other crime.”
- Thomas Paine
"Not merely the validity of experience, but the very existence of external reality was tacitly denied by their philosophy. The heresy of heresies was common sense.”
From “1984”, by George Orwell, 1949
“The Party told you to reject the evidence of your eyes and ears. It was their final, most essential command.”
― From “1984”, by George Orwell, 1949
“A long habit of not thinking a thing wrong gives it a superficial appearance of being right.”
- Thomas Paine
"The keyword here is BLACKWHITE. Like so many Newspeak words, this word has two mutually contradictory meanings. Applied to an opponent, it means the habit of impudently claiming that black is white, in contradiction of the plain facts. Applied to a Party member, it means a loyal willingness to say that black is white when Party discipline demands this. But it means also the ability to BELIEVE that black is white, and more, to KNOW that black is white, and to forget that one has ever believed the contrary.”
― From “1984”, by George Orwell, 1949
“Doublethink lies at the very heart of Ingsoc, since the essential act of the Party is to use conscious deception while retaining the firmness of purpose that goes with complete honesty.”
From “1984”, by George Orwell, 1949
“Doublethink means the power of holding two contradictory beliefs in one’s mind simultaneously, and accepting both of them.”
From “1984”, by George Orwell, 1949
“The Ministry of Peace concerns itself with war, the Ministry of Truth with lies, the Ministry of Love with torture and the Ministry of Plenty with starvation. These contradictions are not accidental, nor do they result from from ordinary hypocrisy: they are deliberate exercises in doublethink.”
- From “1984”, by George Orwell, 1949
Between 2005 and 2014, California’s South Coast Air Quality Management District did not perform any extensive checks of air quality.
“That was the ultimate subtlety: consciously to induce unconsciousness, and then, once again, to become unconscious of the act of hypnosis you had just performed. Even to understand the word ‘doublethink’ involved the use of doublethink.”
George Orwell, from “1984”, 1949
“The lesson of George Orwell’s ‘1984’ is to trust leaders, the press, and experts.”
Hillary Clinton, September 2017
“If you are untrustworthy, people will not trust you.”
― Lao Tzu
“I trust no one, not even myself.”
- Joseph Stalin
“It’s good to trust others but, not to do so is much better.”
- Benito Mussolini
“It is the duty of every man, as far as his ability extends, to detect and expose delusion and error.”
– Thomas Paine
“Doublethink is the act of simultaneously accepting two mutually contradictory beliefs as correct, often in distinct social contexts.”
- Wikipedia
“We control matter because we control the mind. Reality is inside the skull.”
O’Brien, from “1984” by George Orwell, 1949
“To see what is in front of one’s nose needs a constant struggle.”
― George Orwell
“The world is full of obvious things which nobody by any chance ever observes.”
― From “The Hound of the Baskervilles”, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, 1902
“Reason obeys itself; and ignorance submits to whatever is dictated to it.”
― Thomas Paine
“In the period of 2010-2014, twelve new fish species have been recorded in the Adriatic Sea. Certain fish species were probably related to recent processes in the Adriatic Sea, such as bioinvasion and tropicalisation.”
- Frontiers in Marine Science, 2015
(“But Brawndo’s got what plants crave. It’s got Electrolytes.” From “Idiocracy”, by Mike Judge, 2006)
“Orthodoxy means not thinking–not needing to think. Orthodoxy is unconsciousness.”
― From “1984”, by George Orwell, 1949
“His education had had the curious effect of making things that he read and wrote more real to him than things he saw.”
From “That Hideous Strength“, by C.S. Lewis, 1945
“The truest way to be deceived is to think oneself more knowing than others.”
― From “Maxims” by Francois de La Rochefoucauld, 1678
“There are some ideas so absurd that only an intellectual could believe them.”
- George Orwell
“Why you fool, it’s the educated reader who CAN be gulled. All our difficulty comes with the others. When did you meet a workman who believes the papers? He takes it for granted that they’re all propaganda and skips the leading articles. He buys his paper for the football results and the little paragraphs about girls falling out of windows and corpses found in Mayfair flats. He is our problem. We have to recondition him. But the educated public, the people who read the high-brow weeklies, don’t need reconditioning. They’re all right already. They’ll believe anything.”
From “That Hideous Strength”, by C.S. Lewis, 1945
“What one man can invent, another can discover.”
Sherlock Holmes, from “The Adventure of the Dancing Men”, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, 1903
“My name is Sherlock Holmes. It is my business to know what other people do not know.”
From “The Adventure of the Blue Carbuncle“, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, 1892
“And if you don’t know, now you know, nigga”
From “Juicy”, by Christopher George Latore Wallace, aka Biggie Smalls, aka Notorious B.I.G., 1994
“Never trust to general impressions, my boy, but concentrate yourself upon details.”
Sherlock Holmes, from “The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes”, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, 1892
“One can fool some men, or fool all men in some places and times, but one cannot fool all men in all places and ages.”
Jacques Abbadie, 1684
“One may outwit another, but not all the others.”
― François de La Rochefoucauld
“My hate is general, I detest all men;
Some because they are wicked and do evil,
Others because they tolerate the wicked,
Refusing them the active vigorous scorn
Which vice should stimulate in virtuous minds.”
― From “The Misanthrope”, by Moliere, 1666
(Coincidence theorists refuse to believe that Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton both read teleprompters, and that their facial expressions are not accidental. You need to understand Kabuki theater)
(Japanese Kabuki Theater “Demon” mask)
“Almost all people are hypnotics. The proper authority saw to it that the proper belief should be induced, and the people believed properly.”
― Charles Fort
“Madness is something rare in individuals — but in groups, parties, peoples, and ages, it is the rule.”
― From “Beyond Good and Evil”, by Friedrich Nietzsche, 1886
"I know your race. It is made up of sheep. It is governed by minorities. Seldom or never by majorities. It suppresses its feelings and beliefs and follows the handful that makes the most noise. Sometimes the noisy handful is right. Sometimes wrong. But no matter, the crowd follows it. The vast majority of the race, whether savage or civilized are secretly kindhearted, and shrink from inflicting pain. But in the presence of the aggressive and pitiless minority they don’t dare to assert themselves.”
From “The Mysterious Stranger”, by Mark Twain, 1916
“The mob is the most ruthless of tyrants;”
― From “The Anti-Christ”, by Friedrich Nietzsche, 1895
“Society can and does execute its own mandates: and if it issues wrong mandates instead of right, or any mandates at all in things with it ought not to meddle, it practices a social tyranny more formidable than many kinds of political oppression, since, though not usually upheld by such extreme penalties, it leaves fewer means of escape, penetrating much more deeply into the details of life, and enslaving the soul itself.”
― From “On Liberty”, by John Stuart Mill, 1859
(Crowd wearing surgical masks; group of young women on their smartphones)
“To argue with a man who has renounced the use and authority of reason, and whose philosophy consists in holding humanity in contempt, is like administering medicine to the dead, or endeavoring to convert an atheist by scripture.”
― From “The American Crisis”, by Thomas Paine, 1777
“That there are men in all countries who get their living by war, and by keeping up the quarrels of Nations is as shocking as it is true…”
― Thomas Paine
"We laugh at honor and are shocked to find traitors in our midst.”
From “The Abolition of Man”, by C.S. Lewis, 1943
“If everyone fought for their own convictions there would be no war.”
― From “War and Peace”, by Leo Tolstoy, 1865
“There are thousands who are in opinion opposed to slavery and to the war, who yet in effect do nothing to put an end to them; who, esteeming themselves children of Washington and Franklin, sit down with their hands in their pockets, and say that they know not what to do, and do nothing…”
― From “Civil Disobedience and Other Essays”, by Henry David Thoreau, 1849
"Common sense will tell us, that the power which hath endeavoured to subdue us, is of all others, the most improper to defend us.”
― From “Common Sense”, by Thomas Paine, 1776
“A body of men holding themselves accountable to nobody ought not to be trusted by anybody.”
― Thomas Paine
“The masses never revolt of their own accord, and they never revolt merely because they are oppressed. Indeed, so long as they are not permitted to have standards of comparison, they never even become aware that they are oppressed.”
― From “1984”, by George Orwell, 1949
“He was a fattish but active man of paralyzing stupidity, a mass of imbecile enthusiasm—one of those completely unquestioning, devoted drudges on whom, more even than on the Thought Police, the stability of the Party depended.”
From “1984”, by George Orwell, 1949
Narrator: The number one movie was called: Ass. And that’s all it was for 90 minutes. It won eight Oscars that year including best screenplay.
From “Idiocracy”, by Mike Judge, 2006
(“The number one movie in the country was called Ass. And that’s all it was for 90 minutes.” From “Idiocracy”, by Mike Judge, 2006)
"In a way, the world−view of the Party imposed itself most successfully on people incapable of understanding it. They could be made to accept the most flagrant violations of reality, because they never fully grasped the enormity of what was demanded of them, and were not sufficiently interested in public events to notice what was happening. By lack of understanding they remained sane. They simply swallowed everything, and what they swallowed did them no harm, because it left no residue behind, just as a grain of corn will pass undigested through the body of a bird.”
From “1984”, by George Orwell, 1949
“The hardest thing to explain is the glaringly evident which everybody has decided not to see.”
From “The Fountainhead”, by Ayn Rand, 1943
“The world is full of obvious things which nobody by any chance ever observes.”
― From “The Hound of the Baskervilles”, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, 1902
“They are pleased to deceive themselves, as if they deceived Fate at the same time.”
― Seneca, On the Shortness of Life
“Men are so simple and so much inclined to obey immediate needs that a deceiver will never lack victims for his deceptions.”
- Niccolo Machiavelli
“Mundus vult decipi’—the world wants to be deceived. To live without deception presupposes standards beyond the reach of most people whose existence is largely shaped by compromise, evasion and mutual accommodation. Could they face their weakness, their vanity and selfishness, without a mask?”
― Abraham Joshua Heschel
“When a person cannot deceive himself the chances are against his being able to deceive other people.”
- Mark Twain
“No evil dooms us hopelessly except the evil we love, and desire to continue in, and make no effort to escape from. ”
― From “Daniel Deronda”, by George Eliot, 1876
“There will be, in the next generation or so, a pharmacological method of making people love their servitude, and producing dictatorship without tears, so to speak, producing a kind of painless concentration camp for entire societies, so that people will in fact have their liberties taken away from them, but will rather enjoy it, because they will be distracted from any desire to rebel by propaganda or brainwashing, or brainwashing enhanced by pharmacological methods. And this seems to be the final revolution.”
― Aldous Huxley
(Zombie Apocalypse: what we think it looks like (mob of zombies), what it really looks like (smiling young people on smartphones)
Roughly one in five smart phone users will become addicted and have serious behavioral problems.
The suicide rate in the ten highest smart phone penetration nations is 50% higher than that in ten lowest smart phone penetration nations.
From 1999 to 2018, the increase in suicide has been twice as large among women as it has been among men.
The number of women who use their phones more than 6 hours a day is twice that of men who did the same.
“Demons are like obedient dogs; they come when they are called.”
Remy de Gourmont
“Now the Elves made many rings; but secretly Sauron made One Ring to rule all the others, and their power was bound up with it, to be subject wholly to it and to last only so long as it too should last. And much of the strength and will of Sauron passed into that One Ring; for the power of the Elven-rings was very great, and that which should govern them must be a thing of surpassing potency; and Sauron forged it in the Mountain of Fire in the Land of Shadow. And while he wore the One Ring he could perceive all the things that were done by means of the lesser rings, and he could see and govern the very thoughts of those that wore them.”
From “The Silmarillion”, by J.R.R. Tolkien, published posthumously in 1977
(Jim Carrey as the Riddler in “Batman Forever”, 1995 - he’s taking in the brain waves his purpose-built set-top box has stolen from unwitting television viewers. They’re kidding, kidding!)
(The Internet in 1995)
“The shadow of that hyddeous strength, sax myle and more it is of length”
From “Ane Dialog”, by Sir David Lyndsay, describing the Tower of Babel, 1555 (The quote introduces C.S. Lewis’ “That Hideous Strength”, from 1945)
Three Rings for the Elven-kings under the sky,
Seven for the Dwarf-lords in their halls of stone,
Nine for Mortal Men doomed to die,
One for the Dark Lord on his dark throne
In the Land of Mordor where the Shadows lie.
One Ring to rule them all, One Ring to find them,
One Ring to bring them all, and in the darkness bind them,
In the Land of Mordor where the Shadows lie.
J.R.R. Tolkien, from “The Fellowship of the Ring”, 1954
But suddenly the mirror went altogether dark, as dark as if a hole had opened in the world of sight, and Frodo looked into emptiness. In the black abyss there appeared a single Eye that slowly grew, until it filled nearly all the Mirror. So terrible was it that Frodo stood rooted, unable to cry out or to withdraw his gaze. The Eye was rimmed with fire, but was itself glazed, yellow as a cat’s, watchful and intent, and the black slit of its pupil opened on a pit, a window into nothing.
Then the Eye began to rove, searching this way and that; and Frodo knew with certainty and horror that among the many things that it sought he himself was one. But he also knew that it could not see him - not yet, not unless he willed it. The Ring that hung upon its chain about his neck grew heavy, heavier than a great stone, and his head was dragged downwards. The Mirror seemed to be growing hot and curls of steam were rising from the water. He was slipping forward…
‘I know what it is you last saw,’ she said; ‘for that is also in my mind. do not be afraid! But do not think that only by singing amid the trees, nor even by the slender arrows of elvenbows, is this land of Lothlórien maintained and defended against the Enemy. I say to you, Frodo, that even as I speak to you, I perceive the Dark Lord and know his mind, or all his mind that concerns the Elves. And he gropes ever to see me and my thought. But still the door is closed!’
From “The Fellowship of the Ring”, by J.R.R. Tolkien, 1954
(Happy young girls with smartphones)
A Canadian Medical Association study from February 2020 found that excess smartphone and social media use were linked to mental distress and suicide risk, and that 54% of US teens were addicted to their smartphones.
From 2000 to 2018, the US suicide for women of all ages in the United States increased by 50%.
In 2020, a study in 2020 showed that living in cities is associated with a doubling of schizophrenia, an almost 40% higher risk of depression, and over 20% more anxiety. That same month, a study of Chinese adults ages 65 and older showed that living in urban areas later in life is associated with better initial cognitive status but a faster rate of cognitive decline.
It’s the higher level of Death energy in the ether in urban areas that drives those numbers. Moral and mental health vary directly with that of the subject’s etheric environment.
‘You say the ring is dangerous, far more dangerous than I guess. In what way?’
‘In many ways,’ answered the wizard. 'It is far more powerful than I ever dared to think at first, so powerful that in the end it would utterly overcome anyone of mortal race who possessed it. It would possess him.’
From “The Fellowship of the Ring”, by J.R.R. Tolkien, 1954
All I see turns to brown
As the sun burns the ground
And my eyes fill with sand
As I scan this wasted land
Try to find, try to find what I feel
Oh, pilot of the storm who leaves no trace
Like thoughts inside a dream
Heed the path that led me to that place, yellow desert stream
My Shangri-La beneath the summer moon, I will return again
Sure as the dust that floats high in June, when movin’ through Kashmir
Oh, father of the four winds, fill my sails, across the sea of years
With no provision but an open face, along the straits of fear
From “Kashmir”, by Led Zeppelin, 1973
Cold be hand and heart and bone
and cold be sleep under stone
never more to wake on stony bed
never, till the Sun fails and the Moon is dead
In the black wind the stars shall die
and still be gold here let them lie
till the Dark Lord lifts his hand over dead sea and withered land
The Barrow-wight, from “The Fellowship of the Ring”, by J.R.R. Tolkien, 1954
The history of civilization is record of struggles against the progressive desiccation of civilized lands. The more ancient the civilization, the drier and more wasted, usually, is the supporting country. In fact, so devastating seems the occupation of man that, with a few striking exceptions, a desert or near-desert condition is often associated with his long habitation of a region . Two major factors are believed to account for the growth of man-made deserts. In the first place, semi-arid to semi-humid regions proved the most favorable sites for the development of human culture. Such areas, however, stand in a condition of delicate ecological balance between humid and true desert climates. Comparatively slight disturbances of the cover of vegetation and soils, such as are brought about by human occupation for grazing and cultivation, are sufficient to extend the borders of the desert far beyond the natural true desert into more humid climates.
From “Man-Made Deserts”, by W.C. Lowdermilk, 1935
“Why does reversing deserts and curing deadly diseases seem to enrage these hiding human tapeworms and liver flukes so much? That’s something to ponder but it might be that unless we’re parasites, ourselves, we won’t be able to answer it.”
- Don Croft, February 5, 2014
Inside the flat a fruity voice was reading out a list of figures which had something to do with the production of pig-iron. The voice came from an oblong metal plaque like a dulled mirror which formed part of the surface of the right-hand wall. Winston turned a switch and the voice sank somewhat, though the words were still distinguishable. The instrument (the telescreen, it was called) could be dimmed, but there was no way of shutting it off completely.
From “1984”, by George Orwell, 1949
(Man with smartphone attached to his head)
