Sunday, July 28, 2013 – Obstruction, Refusal and Sabotage
All obstructions to the execution of the laws, all combinations and associations, under whatever plausible character, with the real design to direct, control, counteract, or awe the regular deliberation and action of the constituted authorities, are destructive of this fundamental principle, and of fatal tendency. They serve to organize faction, to give it an artificial and extraordinary force; to put, in the place of the delegated will of the nation the will of a party, often a small but artful and enterprising minority of the community; and, according to the alternate triumphs of different parties, to make the public administration the mirror of the ill-concerted and incongruous projects of faction, rather than the organ of consistent and wholesome plans digested by common counsels and modified by mutual interests. ~ George Washington
He that finds his knowledge narrow, and his arguments weak, and by consequence his suffrage not much regarded, is sometimes in hope of gaining that attention by his clamours which he cannot otherwise obtain, and is pleased with remembering that at last he made himself heard, that he had the power to interrupt those whom he could not confute, and suspend the decision which he could not guide. ~ Samuel Johnson: Rambler #11 (April 24, 1750)
Elegance is refusal. ~ Coco Chanel
Stand firm in your refusal to remain conscious during algebra. In real life, I assure you, there is no such thing as algebra. ~ Fran Lebowitz
Refusal to believe until proof is given is a rational position; denial of all outside of our own limited experience is absurd. ~ Annie Besant
In some circumstances, the refusal to be defeated is a refusal to be educated. ~ Margaret Halsey
In the relations of a weak Government and a rebellious people there comes a time when every act of the authorities exasperates the masses, and every refusal to act excites their contempt. ~ John Reed
Those who enjoy their own emotionally bad health and who habitually fill their own minds with the rank poisons of suspicion, jealousy and hatred, as a rule take umbrage at those who refuse to do likewise, and they find a perverted relief in trying to denigrate them. ~ Johannes Brahms
The race of mankind would perish did they cease to aid each other. We cannot exist without mutual help. All therefore that need aid have a right to ask it from their fellow-men; and no one who has the power of granting can refuse it without guilt. ~ Walter Scott
Only a fool would refuse to enter a fool’s paradise when that’s the only paradise he’ll ever have a chance to enter. ~ Jessamyn West
This is the very worst wickedness – that we refuse to acknowledge the passionate evil that is in us. This makes us secret and rotten. ~ David Herbert Lawrence
I cannot help fearing that men may reach a point where they look on every new theory as a danger, every innovation as a toilsome trouble, every social advance as a first step toward revolution, and that they may absolutely refuse to move at all. ~ Alexis de Tocqueville
I do not deny that I planned sabotage. I did not plan it in a spirit of recklessness nor because I have any love of violence. I planned it as a result of a calm and sober assessment of the political situation that had arisen after many years of tyranny, exploitation and oppression of my people by the whites. ~ Nelson Mandela
All business sagacity reduces itself in the last analysis to judicious use of sabotage.~ Thorstein Veblen
Demoralize the enemy from within by surprise, terror, sabotage, assassination. This is the war of the future. ~ Adolf Hitler
Let’s have some precision in language here: terrorism means deadly violence — for a political and/or economical purpose — carried out against people and other living things, and is usually conducted by governments against their own citizens (as at Kent State, or in Vietnam, or in Poland, or in most of Latin America right now), or by corporate entities such as J. Paul Getty, Exxon, Mobil Oil, etc etc., against the land and all creatures that depend upon the land for life and livelihood. A bulldozer ripping up a hillside to strip mine for coal is committing terrorism; the damnation of a flowing river followed by the drowning of Cherokee graves, of forest and farmland, is an act of terrorism. Sabotage, on the other hand, means the use of force against inanimate property, such as machinery, which is being used (e.g.) to deprive human beings of their rightful work (as in the case of Ned Ludd and his mates); sabotage (le sabot dropped in a spinning jenny) – for whatever purpose – has never meant and has never implied the use of violence against living creatures. ~ Edward Abbey
People who bite the hand that feeds them usually lick the boot that kicks them. ~ Eric Hoffer
Society honors its living conformists and its dead troublemakers. ~ Mignon McLaughlin
Christianity is the story of how the rightful King has landed, you might say in disguise, and is calling us all to take part in His great campaign of sabotage. ~ C S. Lewis
Man has gone long enough, or even too long, without being man enough to face the simple truth that the trouble with man is man. ~ James Thurber
Words signify man’s refusal to accept the world as it is. ~ Herbert Kaufman
Just Above Sunset 