Monthly Archives

August 2019

I have a foreboding of an America in my children’s or grandchildren’s time – when the United States is a service and information economy; when nearly all key manufacturing industries have slipped away to other countries; when awesome technological powers are in the hands of a very few, and on-one representing the public interest can even grasp the issues; when the people have lost the ability to set their own agenda or knowledgeably question those in authority; when clutching our crystals and nervously consulting our horoscopes, our critical faculties decline, unable to distinguish between what feels good and what’s true, we slide, almost without noticing, back into superstition and darkness. The dumbing down of America is most evident in the slow decay of substantive content in the enormously influential media, the 30-second sound bites (now down to 10 seconds or less), lowest common denominator programming, credulous presentations on pseudoscience and superstition, but especially a kind of celebration of ignorance.

Carl Sagan [1995]
August 11, 2019

When the truth offends, we lie and lie until we can no longer remember it is even there. But it is still there. Every lie we tell incurs a debt to the truth. Sooner or later, that debt is paid.

Valery Legasov
August 9, 2019

Not all right-wing extremist hate speech ends in violence. But all right-wing extremist violence starts with hate speech.

Bill Shorten
August 4, 2019

There’s a wages crisis, Morrison attacks unions; There is a poverty crisis, Morrison attacks the unemployed; There’s an environmental crisis, Morrison attacks environmentalists; There’s a crisis of corruption in our democracy, Morrison attacks journalists. See the pattern?

Ben Davison
August 4, 2019

Science is the most durable and nondivisive way of thinking about the human circumstance. It transcends cultural, national and political boundaries. You don’t have American science versus Canadian science versus Japanese science.

Sam Harris
August 3, 2019