Soon silence will have passed into legend. Man has turned his back on silence. Day after day he invents machines and devices that ...increase noise and distract humanity from the essence of life, contemplation, meditation.... Tooting, howling, screeching, booming, crashing, whistling, grinding, and trilling bolster his ego. His anxiety subsides. His inhuman void spreads monstrously like a gray vegetation.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
The museum is full of interesting things. All kinds of paintings are there. And then paintings too thick to put in a frame, that t...hey call sculpture. And then there are spectators. with their scorecards, rooting for culture. And spectators of the spectators, looking for love's introduction. And art students taking notes. And old women trying to remember the past. And old men with too much to forget. And tourists, thinking that a museum represents a city. And loafers so poor, they study their soberness here.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
We should have learnt by now that laws and court decisions can only point the way. They can establish criteria of right and wrong.... And they can provide a basis for rooting out the evils of bigotry and racism. But they cannot wipe away centuries of oppression and injustice--however much we might desire it.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
While you continue to grow fatter and richer publishing your nauseating confectionery, I shall become a mole, digging here, rootin...g there, stirring up the whole rotten mess where life is hard, raw and ugly.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
The rush to California ... and the attitude, not merely of merchants, but of philosophers and prophets, so called, in relation to ...it, reflect the greatest disgrace on mankind. That so many are ready to live by luck, and so get the means of commanding the labor of others less lucky, without contributing any value to society! And that is called enterprise! I know of no more startling development of the immorality of trade, and all the common modes of getting a living. The philosophy and poetry and religion of such a mankind are not worth the dust of a puffball. The hog that gets his living by rooting, stirring up the soil so, would be ashamed of such company. If I could command the wealth of all the worlds by lifting my finger, I would not pay such a price for it.... What a comment, what a satire, on our institutions! The conclusion will be, that mankind will hang itself upon a tree.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »