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“Those who can bring themselves to renounce wealth, position and power accruing from a social system based on violence and putting a premium on acquisitiveness, and to identify themselves in some real fashion with the struggle of the masses toward the light, may help in a measure - more, doubtless, by life than by words - to devise a more excellent way, a technique of social progress less crude, brutal, costly and slow than mankind has yet evolved.”
Source : "American Power and the New Mandarins". Book by Noam Chomsky, 1969.
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“My paramount object in this struggle is to save the Union, and is not either to save or to destroy slavery. If I could save the Union without freeing any slave I would do it, and if I could save it by freeing all the slaves I would do it; and if I could save it by freeing some and leaving others alone I would also do that. What I do about slavery, and the colored race, I do because I believe it helps to save the Union; and what I forbear, I forbear because I do not believe it would help to save the Union.”
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“This human struggle and scramble for office, for a way to live without work, will finally test the strength of our institutions.”
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“Get up now and go and find Robert Kilroy-Silk. Smile in a warm, friendly sort of way, then punch him on the nose. Now go and find Robert on television, despite my best endeavours, this is still relatively easy to do. Wait for a close-up, same smile, and punch him on the nose. If you followed the instructions carefully, you will have noticed a distinct difference. On the one hand, you were suffused with a sense of public-spirited righteousness; on the other, you're probably dribbling blood. That's the difference between reality in life and reality on television.”
Source : "'My discoveries weren't any more extensive or alarming than most people's. I just chose to look'". Interview with Antonia Crane, logger.believermag.com. November 5, 2013. 
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“Reality is like a fruitcake; pretty enough to look at but with all sorts of nasty things lurking just beneath the surface.”
Source : A. Lee Martinez (2006). “Gil's All Fright Diner”, p.184, Macmillan
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“The language itself is what gets me interested in writing. It's weird to me that words exist. Never a dull moment with words. They're a layer between our minds and the physical reality around us, obviously, but the layer seems like it's always in flux, like an asteroid belt, constantly moving.”
Source : "Cartographer of Word Galaxies". The Believer interview, logger.believermag.com. September 24, 2013.
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“Reality is painful -- it's so much easier to keep doing stuff you know you're good at or else to pick something so hard there's no point at which it's obvious you're failing -- but it's impossible to get better without confronting it.”
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“A good roast of sun, it slows you, lets you relax–and out here if there's anything wrong, you can see it coming with bags of time to do what's next. This is the place and the weather for peace, for the cultivation of a friendly mind.”
Source : A. L. Kennedy (2007). “Day”, Random House
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“Hurricane Sandy is a disturbing sign of things to come. We must heed this warning and act quickly to solve the climate crisis. Dirty energy makes dirty weather.”
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“In friendship's fragrant garden, There are flowers of every hue. Each with its own fair beauty And its gift of joy for you. Friendship's Garden If love were what the rose is, And I were like the leaf, Our lives would grow together In sad or singing weather.”
