"History is not what happened but what is written down"

-- Kathleen McGowan

“Diseases can rarely be eliminated through early diagnosis or good treatment, but prevention can eliminate disease.”
“All those [events in history] were such dramas as we see now, only with different actors.”
“It is this language of values which I hope to bring to my books. . . . I want to bring values to those who have not been valued, and I want to etch those values in terms of the ideal. Young people need ideals which identify them, and their lives, as central . . . guideposts which tell them what they can be, should be, and indeed are.”
“It is unfortunately none too well understood that, just as the State has no money of its own, so it has no power of its own. All the power it has is what society gives it, plus what it confiscates from time to time on one pretext or another, there is no other source from which State power can be drawn. Therefore every assumption of State power, whether by gift or seizure leaves society with so much less power; there is never, nor can be, any strengthening of State power without a corresponding and roughly equivalent depletion of social power.”
“The finest words in the world are only vain sounds if you can't understand them. The best sentence? The shortest.”
“Do you remember the time we met? The wind blew the snow about on the outside, the train moved, stopped, and then moved some more. It took us five hours to reach Tokyo, but I wasn't bored one bit. I didn't really get to hear so much about Nana. But I knew I would have loved... To hear what Nana had to say about herself. - Nana Komatsu”
“We are tempted to believe that certain achievements and possessions will give us enduring satisfaction. We are invited to imagine ourselves scaling the steep cliff face of happiness in order to reach a wide, high plateau on which we will live out the rest of our lives; we are not reminded that soon after gaining the summit, we will be called down again into fresh lowlands of anxiety and desire.”
“I think people who lack humility are really annoying.”

Source : Interview with Ryan Porter, www.flare.com. January 31, 2012.

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