Dissident Veteran For Peace: Quotable: Ideas, the State, & Revolution in The Dispossessed

Dissident Veteran For Peace

"I know of no country in which there is so little independence of mind and real freedom of discussion as in America." —Alexis de Tocquevile. Democracy in America, Book I, Chapter XV.

With a nod to the Most Rev. Dom Helder Camara: When I support Palestinians some call me an 'anti-Semite', when I try to explain why I stand in solidarity with Palestinians they call me a Nazi.

"WAR is a racket. It always has been. It is possibly the oldest, easily the most profitable, surely the most vicious. It is the only one international in scope. It is the only one in which the profits are reckoned in dollars and the losses in lives." —Major General Smedley Butler, USMC (ret.)

"... no one ever seizes power with the intention of relinquishing it. Power is not a means; it is an end." —character of O'Brien in 1984, part 3, ch. 3 by George Orwell.

"Every prophet has realized that nobody loves you for being the enemy of their illusions. Every prophet has realized that most of us want peace at any price as long as the peace is ours and somebody else pays the price. That is why the prophet Jeremiah said, ' "Peace, peace," they say, when there is no peace,' ..." —The Rev. William Sloane Coffin. "Not to Bring Peace, But a Sword."

Monday, March 29, 2010

Quotable: Ideas, the State, & Revolution in The Dispossessed

... ideas never were controlled by laws and governments ... You can't crush ideas by suppressing them. You can only crush ideas by ignoring them. By refusing to think, refusing to change ... the innate cowardice of the average human mind. Public opinion! That's the power structure ... The unadmitted, inadmissible government that rules the ... society by stifling the individual mind. --Character of Bedap, p. 165.

To say that a good end will follow from a bad means is just like saying that if I pull a rope on this pulley it will lift the weight on that one. --Character of Shevek, p. 225.

The individual cannot bargain with the State. The State recognizes no coinage but power: and it issues the coins itself. --Character of Shevek, p. 272.

We are not seeking power. We are seeking the end of power! ... The means are the end. ... Only peace brings peace, only just acts bring justice! --Character of Maedda, p. 296.

You cannot buy the Revolution. You cannot make the Revolution. You can only be the Revolution. It is in your spirit or, it is nowhere. --Character of Shevek, p. 301.

... revolution begins in the thinking mind. --Character of Shevek, p. 333.

Revolution is our obligation: our hope of evolution. 'The Revolution is in the individual spirit, or it is nowhere. It is for all, or it is nothing. If it is seen as having any end, it will never truly begin.' --Character of Shevek quoting character of Odo, p. 359.

Source: The Dispossessed by Ursula K. Le Guin (New York: Eos, 2001).

Labels: anarchism, art and literature, politics, quotations, Ursula K. Le Guin