Tuesday, January 02, 2001

Quotes

Here's an archive of quotes I've had up on the blog over the years.

Trees are the earth's endless effort to speak to the listening heaven.
--Rabindranath Tagore, "Fireflies" (4/30/09)
I have the audacity to believe that peoples everywhere can have three meals a day for their bodies, education and culture for their minds, and dignity, equality and freedom for their spirits. I believe that what self-centered men have torn down, other-centered men can build up.
-- Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. (1/19/09)
You gotta feel it
Yes, you gotta feel it
To get it right, even one time
You gotta feel it
Don't take notes
Just clear out your mind
Let go your pride
Feel it inside
-- Spoon (10/19/08)
I'm knocking on the doors of ya hummer hummer.
I'm knocking on the doors of ya hummer hummer.
-- M.I.A. (6/15/08)
We cannot measure national spirit by the Dow Jones Average, nor national achievement by the Gross National Product. For the Gross National Product includes air pollution, and ambulances to clear our highways from carnage. ... It grows with the production of napalm and missles and nuclear warheads.... And if the Gross National Product includes all this, there is much that it does not comprehend. It does not allow for the health of our families, the quality of their education, or the joy of their play. ... It measures everything, in short, except that which makes life worthwhile, and it can tell us everything about America -- except whether we are proud to be Americans.
-- Robert F. Kennedy
Now the green blade rises from the buried grain,
Wheat that in the dark earth many years has lain;
Love lives again, that with the dead has been:
Love is come again, like wheat that springs up green.
-- John Crum
Ring the bells that still can ring
Forget your perfect offering
There is a crack in everything
That's how the light gets in
-- Leonard Cohen, 'Anthem'
You know you're my cookie baby and you're too smart
I can see it in the lines of your school art
True heart, I mean courage, expressed with care
Go on draw them superheroes with the curly hair

You're my daughter, my love, more than kin to me
This for you and the woman that you finna be
Tell that boy he's wrong Girls are strong
Next time at show-and-tell play him our song
-- The Coup, 'Wear Clean Draws'
Please, please, kids, stop fighting. Maybe Lisa's right about America being the land of opportunity, and maybe Adil's got a point about the machinery of capitalism being oiled with the blood of the workers.
-- Homer Simpson
Oh-oh-oh come take my hand,
We're riding out tonight to case the promised land
-- Bruce Springsteen, Thunder Road
Starvation
is the creation of the devil.
a rebel, I'm bringin' food to the people like a widow
bringin' flowers to a grave in the middle
of the city. Isolation is a riddle
to be surrounded by a million other people
but to feel alone like a tree in a desert
dried up like the skin of a lizard
but full of colour like the spots of a leopard
drum and bass pull me in like a shepherd
scratch my itch like a needle on a record
full of life like a man gone to Mecca
sky high like an eagle up soaring
I speak low but I'm like a lion roaring
baritone like a Robeson recordin'
I'm givin' thanks for bein' human every morning.
-- Michael Franti, Stay Human
And it's so sad to see the world agree
That they'd rather see their faces fill with flies
All when I'd want to keep white roses in their eyes
-- Neutral Milk Hotel, Holland 1945
They hang the man and flog the woman
Who steals the goose from off the Common,
But let the greater criminal loose
Who steals the Common from the goose.
-- Traditional (English)
A long time ago, I left my home, For a job in the fruit trees
But I missed those hills with the windy pines, For their song seemed to suit me.
-- Gillian Welch, "One More Dollar"
It's all about strikes now, so here's what's striking me
That some punk could argue some moral ABCs
When people are catching what bombers release.
Well I'm on a mission to never agree...
...here comes the argument.
-- Fugazi, "The Argument"
Facts are simple and facts are straight. Facts are lazy and facts are late
Facts all come with points of view. Facts don't do what I want them to
-- Talkingheads, "Crosseyed and Painless"
An inter-stellar burst! I am back to save the universe! -- Radiohead, "Airbag"
Godspeed to all the bakers at dawn, May they all cut their thumbs
and bleed into their buns, 'til they melt away. -- the Shins, "New Slang"
On the margins, in revisions,
where we both first learned forgiveness
By the moonlight, in the forest,
where our laughs spread out before us
It was always ever gonna go too far,
til someone turned the lights out at the bar
Accept no imitations, baby,
catch a collapsing star,
but it's our limitations that make us what we are
-- The Mendoza Line
When I heard the learn'd astronomer,
When the proofs, the figures, were ranged in columns before me
When I was shown the charts and diagrams, to add, divide, and measure them
When I sitting heard the astronomer
where he lectured with much applause in the lecture room
How soon unaccountable I became tired and sick,
Till rising and gliding out I wander'd off by myself
In the mystical moist night-air,
and from time to time Look'd up in perfect silence at the stars
-- Walt Whitman
If the children don't grow up, Our bodies get bigger, but our hearts get torn up.
We're just a million little gods causin rain storms turnin every good thing to rust.
I guess we'll just have to adjust.
-- Wake Up, The Arcade Fire

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