Quotes

"Behind police torture rooms, the trade in military hardware, the rape of women, IMF economic blackmail, death squads, elite world pricefixing, or ICBMs, stand ideological systems that justify, sanitize, and reproduce murder in the hearts of ordinary persons. Thus the very same tools for reading the ideological discourse of Mark [the gospel of Mark] must be vigorously employed if we wish to challenge the infrastructure of empire…

"...they breed 'delusion' in their hearers, they spin illusions for them; in particular they spin a way of thinking for them which they themselves do not follow. Instead of completing their fellowman's experience and insight with the help of their own, as is required by men's common thinking and knowing, they introduce falsified material into his knowledge of the world and of life, and thus falsify the relations of his soul to being. Second, they speak with a double heart, literally with heart and heart. This expression must be grasped in all its depth…

"Niels Henry Sonne, in Liberal Kentucky, 1780—1828, points out that the Kentuckians of that time supported all the principles of religious freedom, but gave their most fervid support to that of the separation of church and state. Political power was denied to practicing clergymen by the constitutions of 1792 and 1799, and it was not until 1843 that prayers were permitted to be said on any regular basis at the sessions of the legislature. According to Sonne, one of the immediate reasons for this was “the clergy’s insistence upon attacking the institution of slavery…

It is more difficult for a man [masculine person] to be aware of his inner nature because it is the feminine nature—the most tender and sensitive parts of the inner nature—that is wounded. Virtually all of a man's feelings, sense of worth, sense of value, and moods are feminine. To wound the interior feminine in a man is to wound his whole feeling life and sense of worth. Since the feminine part of a man is usually less well developed than his masculinity, this sensitive part of his nature is often ignored and neglected…

This is the end. But there is always what will come after the end. From the gray waters of the ocean, the green earth will arise once more. The sun will have been eaten, but the sun's daughter will shine in the place of her mother, and the new sun will shine even more brightly than the old, shine with young light and new. The woman and the man, Life and Life's Yearning, will come out from inside the ash tree that holds the the worlds together…

But the unspoken, as we know, tends to strengthen, to mature and grow richer over the years, like an undrunk wine. Of course it may just go to Freudian vinegar. Some thoughts and feelings go to vinegar very quickly, and must be poured out at once. Some go on fermenting in the bottle, and burst out in an explosion of murderous glass shards. But a good, robust, well-corked feeling only gets deeper and more complicated, down in the cellar. The thing is knowing when to uncork it…

The problem with stereotypes is not that they are untrue, but that they are incomplete…

during sleep the brain is literally acting like a computer's Web browser, incorporating new experience by sorting through different memory systems to form associations and connections that help us make sense of the world…

The upside-down world rewards in reverse: it scorns honesty, punishes work, prizes lack of scruples, and feeds cannibalism. Its professors slander nature: injustice, they say, is a law of nature…

All effective descriptive writing is fueled by character and is in the essence a form of interiorization. What is seen and described is purportedly not seen and described by the author, but rather through the eyes of the point-of-view character; thus everything that character sees must mirror what he or she is feeling. If you character is angry or upset, what he sees of, say, a room will be different than what he sees when feeling calm…

If any artist tells you 'I am a camera,' or 'I am mirror,' distrust him instantly, he's fooling you, pulling a fast one. Artists are people who are not at all interested in the facts--only in the truth. You get the facts from the outside. The truth you get from the inside…

Indeed, it is never safe to classify the souls of one's neighbors; one is apt, in the long run, to be proved a fool. You should regard each meeting with a friend as a sitting he is unwittingly giving you for a portrait—a portrait that, probably, when you or he die, will still be unfinished…

God wants to save us in a people. He does not want to save us in isolation. And so today’s church more than ever is accentuating the idea of being a people. The church therefore experiences conflicts, because it does not want a mass; it wants a people. A mass is a heap of persons, the drowsier the better, the more compliant the better. The church rejects communism’s slander that it is the opium of the people…

There’s a neural unity of virtue and vice—pleasure is our compass, no matter the path we take…

Religion has a history, and what counts as religion and what does not in any given context depends on different configurations of power and authority…

I am here. Those three words contain all that can be said--you begin with those words and you return to them…

Does fiction, in fact, have anything whatever to do with truth? Is it possible that this complicated instrument, fiction, studies nothing but itself—its own processes…

Constant rubbed his hands together. The only company he had left on Titan was whatever company his right hand could be for his left. "I miss her," he said. "You finally fell in love, I see," said Salo. "Only an Earthling year ago," said Constant. "It took us that long to realize that a purpose of human life, no matter who is controlling it, is to love whoever is around to be loved…

“To love at all is to be vulnerable. Love anything and your heart will be wrung and possibly broken. If you want to make sure of keeping it intact you must give it to no one, not even an animal. Wrap it carefully round with hobbies and little luxuries; avoid all entanglements. Lock it up safe in the casket or coffin of your selfishness. But in that casket, safe, dark, motionless, airless, it will change. It will not be broken; it will become unbreakable, impenetrable, irredeemable…

"And housework of all kinds is increasingly relegated to the fringes of lives filled with other things. In her book The Time Bind, the sociologist Arlie Hochschild documents the increasing prevalence of homes in which every adult member of the household works full time for pay outside the home and no one bears explicit, dedicated responsibility—even part time—for tasks inside the home.The result, she says, is homes so chaotic and unstructured that all the adults in the household would rather be at work than at home. After all, at work people know what their jobs are and can take a break when they’re done; at home all anyone knows is that it is a mess waiting for someone to clean it up. […

"Some would scoff at primitive cave-dwellers who imagined that their representations of animals on cave walls could magically affect the hunt. Yet today we produce our own talismans, our own systems of magic symbology, and indeed affect physical reality through them. A few numbers change here and there, and thousands of workers erect a skyscraper. Some other numbers change, and a venerable business shuts its doors. The foreign debt of a Third World country, again mere numbers in a computer, consigns its people to endless enslavement producing commodity goods that are shipped abroad…

"The results of reflection are both dangerous and unforeseeable because one can never tell whether the decision which saves a man from evil is reached after thorough consideration, or whether it is simply the exhaustion resulting from reflection which prevents him from doing wrong…

"In our politically correct times, it is always advisable to start with the set of unwritten prohibitions that define the positions one is allowed to adopt.The first thing to note with regard to religious matters is that reference to “deep spirituality” is in again: direct materialism is out; one is, rather, enjoined to harbor openness toward a radical Otherness beyond the ontotheological God. Consequently, when, today, one directly asks an intellectual: “OK, let’s cut the crap and get down to basics: do you believe in some form of the divine or not?,” the first answer is an embarrassed withdrawal, as if the question is too intimate, too probing; this withdrawal is then usually explained in more “theoretical” terms: “That is the wrong question…

"Science treats a young man's mind as though it were really important. A scientist says to a young man, “Here is the universe challenging our investigation. Here are the truths which we have seen, so far. Come, study with us! See what we already have seen and then look further to see more, for science is an intellectual adventure for the truth.” Can you imagine any man who is worthwhile turning from that call to the church if the church seems to him to say, “Come, and we will feed you opinions from a spoon.”……

Let’s sum up what we’ve learned about trends in political participation. On the positive side of the ledger, Americans today score about as well on a civics test as our parents and grandparents did, though our self-congratulation should be restrained, since we have on average four more years of formal schooling than they had.33 Moreover, at election time we are no less likely than they were to talk politics or express interest in the campaign…

"To a radical, perpetually unnecessary world; to the restoration of astonishment to the heart and mystery to the mind; to wine, because it is a gift we never expected; to mushroom and artichoke; for they are incredible legacies; to improbable acids and high alcohols, since we would hardly have thought of them ourselves; and to all being, because it is superfluous... We are free: nothing is needful, everything is for joy. Let the bookkeepers struggle with the balance sheets; it is the tippler who sees the untipped Hand. God is eccentric; He has loves, not reasons. Salute…

"We have real difficulty here because everyone thinks of changing the world, but where, oh where, are those who think of changing themselves? People may genuinely want to be good, but seldom are they prepared to do what it takes to produce the inward life of goodness that can form the soul. Personal formation into the likeness of Christ is arduous and lifelong…

"On my street, every family possesses a lawnmower that is used perhaps ten hours per summer. Each kitchen has a blender that is used at most fifteen minutes per week. At any given moment, about half the cars are parked on the street, doing nothing. Most families have their own hedge clippers, their own power tools, their own exercise equipment. Because they are unused most of the time, most of these things are superfluous…

"The whole congregation of the Israelites set out from Elim; and Israel came to the wilderness of Sin, which is between Elim and Sinai, on the fifteenth day of the second month after they had departed from the land of Egypt. The whole congregation of the Israelites complained against Moses and Aaron in the wilderness. The Israelites said to them, ‘If only we had died by the hand of the Lord in the land of Egypt, when we sat by the fleshpots and ate our fill of bread; for you have brought us out into this wilderness to kill this whole assembly with hunger…

"What to me is the multitude of your sacrifices? says the Lord, I have had enough of burnt offerings of rams and the fat of fed beasts; I do not delight in the blood of bulls, or of lambs, or of goats. When you come to appear before me, who asked this from your hand? Trample my courts no more; bringing offerings is futile; incense is an abomination to me. New moon and sabbath and calling of convocation--- I cannot endure solemn assemblies with iniquity. Your new moons and your appointed festivals, my soul hates; they have become a burden to me, I am wearing of bearing them. When you stretch out your hands I will hide my eyes from you; even though you make many prayers, I will not listen; your hands are full of blood. Wash yourselves; make yourselves clean…

"The ultimate problem in Nebraska was the absence of the kind of statewide cooperative infrastructure that elsewhere provided the agrarian movement with its vehicle of organization, it schoolroom of ideology, and its culture of self-respect. Cooperation, sometimes merely the promise of cooperation, could attract farmers to the Alliance and, under other additional influences, could propel them towards an insurgent political stance; but only the cooperative experience provided the kind of education that imparted to the political movement the form and substance of the greenback heritage…

"The ultimate victory is nailed into place, therefore, only when the population has been persuaded to define all conceivable political activity within the limits of existing custom…

"The first man who, having fenced in a piece of land, said "This is mine," and found people naïve enough to believe him, that man was the true founder of civil society. From how many crimes, wars, and murders, from how many horrors and misfortunes might not any one have saved mankind, by pulling up the stakes, or filling up the ditch, and crying to his fellows: Beware of listening to this impostor; you are undone if you once forget that the fruits of the earth belong to us all, and the earth itself to nobody." For us, this means that while corporations act like they own the commons like air or water, and can pollute it as they choose, they do not…

"The bourgeoisie of the whole world which looks complacently upon the wholesale massacre after the battle is convulsed by horror at the desecration of brick and mortar." What is nonviolence? Does nonviolence protect property as well as people? What about the destruction of property that erodes the foundations of a violent system…

"The early church began from the pole of steadfastness in prayer and the refusal of idolatry, manifesting that hypomone which the Book of Revelation regards as the highest Christian virtue. It is usually somewhat limply rendered "patient endurance," but it is in fact closer to "absolute intransigence," "unbending determination," "an iron will," "the capacity to endure persecution, torture, and death without yielding one's faith." It is one of the fundamental attributes of nonviolent resistance…

"Nothing commends Satan to the modern mind. It is bad enough that Satan is spirit, when our worldview has banned spirit from discourse and belief. But worse, he is evil, and our culture resolutely refuses to believe in the real existence of evil, preferring to regard it as a kind of systems breakdown that can be fixed with enough tinkering…

"love is like a bowl so when you break it glue it together if it won't hold water fill it with apples" This is one of my favorite quotes. My favorite song about love in marriage is "Funny Valentine." Perfection, for me, is the enemy of love. But once we break our perfect image, we find another use for the thing we have. So much of love is being willing to glue it back together when we break it. I often say that love is loyalty. So much of love is waking up every day and deciding to love…

"Now, the more we are told about poverty and violence, the less effect they have on us…

"Dialogue cannot exist, however, in the absence of a profound love for the world and for people. The naming of the world, which is an act of creation and re-creation, is not possible if it is not infused with love. Love is at the same time the foundation of dialogue and dialogue itself. It is thus necessarily the task of responsible Subjects and cannot exist in a relation of domination. Domination reveals the pathology of love: sadism in the dominator and masochism in the dominated. Because love is an act of courage, not of fear, love is commitment to others…

"Prayer is made of attention. It is the direction towards God of all the attention that the soul is capable of. The quality of the attention makes for much of the quality of the prayer. It cannot be replaced by the heart's warmth." I am struck by the fact that so many people feel that simply the heart's warmth is what makes for love. For Weil, love is also comprised of the intellects willed focus, the careful study. The scratching of the scholar's pen. In order to love, one must reflect deeply, thinking, praying, and, yes, reasoning. Is this true…

"If your kinsman, being in straits, comes under your authority, and you hold him as though a resident alien, do not exact from him advance or accruted interest, but fear your God. Let him live by your side as a kinsman. Do not lend him money at advance interest, or give him your food at accrued interest. I the Lord am your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, to give you the land of Canaan, to be your God. If your kinsman under you continues in straits and must give himself over to you, do not subject him to the treatment of a slave. He shall remain with you as a hired or bound laborer; he shall serve with you only until the Jubilee year." Leviticus 25:35-40 The interesting thing here, obviously, is the way that interest is regarded as something to be avoided…

Ars Poetica? (Czeslaw Milosz) "I have always aspired to a more spacious form that would be free from the claims of poetry or prose and would let us understand each other with exposing the author or reader to sublime agonies. In the very essence of poetry there is something indecent: a thing that is brought forth which we didn't know we had in us, so we blink our eyes, as if a tiger had sprung out and stood in the light, lashing his tail.……

Lord Irwin had to declare that his government could not impose “the peace of the grave” on India, even though they had the capacity…

Walter Benjamin talks of the sorrows of knowing what will happen but being unable to prevent it: "My wind is ready for flight, I would like to turn back. If I stayed timeless time, I would have little luck…

"That is why we must not engage the Powers without rigorous examination of our own inner evil, which we often project onto our opponents. We must ask how we are like the very Power we oppose, and attempt to open these parts of ourselves to divine transformation. We must attempt to stop the spiral of violence both within ourselves and in our tactics vis-a-vis the Powers…

"Your norm of compassion is with the way you have lived in the past. Against that background, seek signs of growth…

"Noisy contemplation is for crabgrass Christians. Crabgrass grows anywhere. Its roots dig deep and bind the earth. It needs little care, is resistant to drought, wind, and sun. People can walk all over it and try to kill it. It will grow where there is even a crack in the sidewalk, but can burst forth in powerful growth when conditions are favorable. ... Instead of seeking blocks of time to be alone, we can convert many small moments of our day into cumulative habits of prayer…

"We forget to look for rainbows when the rain clouds part near sunset. We get up too late to watch the dawn. We forget to gaze at the stars and to recall the vast light's journey to reach our eyes. We take the water for granted and wish the rain would go away. We stop bending low enough to witness the toiling ant. We lose our wonder for growing plants and the mysteries by which the seed falls to the earth and brings forth grain a hundredfold. ... In the beginning, if we are rusty and out of practice, we shall have to remind ourselves constantly to open our eyes, our ears, and our hearts to what we see. .. A quick glance at sunset or sunrise on a busy day can bond us with nature, even if no extended moments are available, just as a parent can bond with a child in a swift glance…

Fidelity to the gospel lies not in repeating its slogans but in plunging the prevailing idolatries into its corrosive acids…