Even if no one believes it...

How far can you see?

Morality vs Obedience

Intellect

«Intellect – Not because you think you know everything without questioning, but rather because you question everything you think you know».

 

                                                                                                                    (Anonymous)

A rationalist is...

«A rationalist is simply someone for whom it is more important to learn than to be proved right; someone who is willing to learn from others not by simply taking over another’s opinions, but by gladly allowing others to criticize his ideas and by gladly criticizing the ideas of others»

 (Karl Raimund Popper)

Try to see differently.

Notabilities who pass for thinkers

«…but the men, too, who are looked upon as leaders, continually fail us, when artists and men of learning show themselves as supporters of barbarism, and notabilities who pass for thinkers, and behave outwardly as such, are revealed, when crises come, as being nothing more than writers and members of academies»

 (Albert Schweitzer)

The less traveled road

Blessed are the weird people

Mitt Romney and the Vietnam War

Maschere e volti

The Genius Of The Crowd

There is enough treachery, hatred violence absurdity in the average
human being to supply any given army on any given day

and the best at murder are those who preach against it
and the best at hate are those who preach love
and the best at war finally are those who preach peace

those who preach god, need god
those who preach peace do not have peace
those who preach peace do not have love

beware the preachers
beware the knowers
beware those who are always reading books
beware those who either detest poverty
or are proud of it
beware those quick to praise
for they need praise in return
beware those who are quick to censor
they are afraid of what they do not know
beware those who seek constant crowds for
they are nothing alone
beware the average man the average woman
beware their love, their love is average
seeks average

but there is genius in their hatred
there is enough genius in their hatred to kill you
to kill anybody
not wanting solitude
not understanding solitude
they will attempt to destroy anything
that differs from their own
not being able to create art
they will not understand art
they will consider their failure as creators
only as a failure of the world
not being able to love fully
they will believe your love incomplete
and then they will hate you
and their hatred will be perfect

like a shining diamond
like a knife
like a mountain
like a tiger
like hemlock

their finest art

(Charles Bukowski)

"Who are the rich?"

Socrates’ prayer from the conclusion of Phaedrus (279).

Socrates: Shouldn't we offer a prayer?

Phaedrus: Certainly.

Socrates: O beloved Pan, and all other gods who inhabit this place, give me beauty in the inward soul, and that whatever things that are outward may be in harmony with what is inside me. May I reckon that it is only the wise who are rich, and may I have only as much gold as a temperate man can bear and carry.

Is there anything else that we can ask for, Phaedrus? The prayer, I think, is sufficient for me.

Σωκράτης:  Οὐκοῦν εὐξαμένῳ πρέπει τοῖσδε πορεύεσθαι;

Φαῖδρος:  Τί μήν;

Σωκράτης: Ὦ φίλε Πάν τε καὶ ἄλλοι ὅσοι τῇδε θεοί, δοίητέ μοι καλῷ γενέσθαι τἄνδοθεν· ἔξωθεν δὲ ὅσα ἔχω, τοῖς ἐντὸς [279c] εἶναί μοι φίλια. Πλούσιον δὲ νομίζοιμι τὸν σοφόν· τὸ δὲ χρυσοῦ πλῆθος εἴη μοι ὅσον μήτε φέρειν μήτε ἄγειν δύναιτο ἄλλος ἢ ὁ σώφρων.  Ἔτ᾽ ἄλλου του δεόμεθα, ὦ Φαῖδρε; Ἐμοὶ μὲν γὰρ μετρίως ηὖκται.
 

(Translation from the original Greek text by Sergio Caldarella)

Brucia la luna n’cielu

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d773MHigJ58&feature=related

The illusion of freedom

Scopo dell'ingiustizia

L’ingiustizia ha anche lo scopo preciso di ammaestrare i molti ai voleri dei pochi.

(Dr. Divago)

Anche un uomo solo...

Anche un solo uomo può sfidare un mondo intero.

Worship for things

To have and to be

Books

A society grows great when...

Anti-intellectualism and democracy

Books & Culture

La vie intérieure

«La vie intérieure n'est donc pas passivité mais action d'un sujet qui s'abstrait du monde»

(Jean-Jacques Rousseau, 1712 – 1778)

I signori del mondo

Questi signorotti in livrea e appena sbarbati
pretendono di piegare e spiegare il mondo
costringendo
ognuno
nella loro amara tuba da becchini

insegnando ad amare solo cose morte
e imponendo
in cambio di biada
una brutale disciplina senza pianto

Sono barbari dalle facce affilate
con ipotalami di fiele
capaci di appaiare
solo tappi di bottiglia
cocci di vetro
e bottoni rotti

Stanno tra le cose morte
e per questo
sanno soltanto offrire
cecità e pugnali
al posto di tulipani e rose

(Dr. Divago)

A politician is...

«A politician is a fellow who will lay down your life for his country».

Un politico è un tale che darà la tua vita per il suo Paese

(Mary Louise Cecilia "Texas" Guinan)

Others

Concessions

«Even great men are only truly recognized and honored once they are dead. Why? Because those who praise them need to feel themselves somehow superior to the person praised, they need to feel they are making some concession».

(Clarice Lispector, Near to the Wild Heart)

The most beautiful people

If you think you're too small

Ingenuity, not bravery

L’ingenuità, non il coraggio, è forse la più grande virtù degli eroi.

Ingenuity, not bravery, is perhaps the greatest virtue of heroes.

(Dr. Divago)

A world of ignoramuses

«Doesn't it scare you, a world of ignoramuses with no memory other than that of their computers?»

Non vi fa paura un mondo di analfabeti senza memoria che non sia quella dei loro computer?

(Harold Bloom)

What do you call it?

«Master Shouzan held up his staff, and showing it to the assembled disciples said: “if you call this a staff, I’ll beat you 30 times. If you call it not-a-staff, I’ll beat you 30 times. Tell me, what do you call it?”»

Most men

«Die meisten Menschen wollen nicht eher schwimmen, als bis sie es können»
Most men will not swim before they are able to.

(Hermann Hesse)

To be nowhere

«Each time he took a walk, he felt as though he were leaving himself behind, and by giving himself up to the movement of the streets, by reducing himself to a seeing eye, he was able to escape the obligation to think, and this, more than anything else, brought him a measure of peace, a salutary emptiness within... By wandering aimlessly, all places became equal and it no longer mattered where he was. On his best walks he was able to feel that he was nowhere. And this, finally was all he ever asked of things: to be nowhere».

(Paul Auster, City of Glass)

Träume, Seele und Realität

«Wirklich reich ist, wer mehr Träume in seiner Seele hat, als die Realität zerstören kann!»

(Hans Kruppa)

L’apparition des esprits

«Il est du véritable amour comme de l’apparition des esprits: tout le monde en parle, mais peu de gens en ont vu».

(François de La Rochefoucauld)

Lottare solo per ciò che vale

Nella vita bisogna imparare a lottare solo per ciò per cui vale la pena lottare. Come dice un detto: «Non dare mai il tuo mille a chi sa contare solo fino a cento».

(Dr. Divago)

Vento, pioggia e gelo

«Vento, pioggia, gelo e rugiada ti insegnano solo ad essere un uomo migliore»

Risposta di un nobile dignitario fatto imprigionare dal terribile imperatore Yongle (1360-1424)

L'homme

«l'homme est la seule créature qui refuse d'être ce qu'elle est».
(man is the only creature that refuses to be what he is)

(Albert Camus)

One word is enough

Sometimes a single word is enough to make an entire house of cards fall.

(Dr. Divago)

Comunicare

«La morte non è nel non poter comunicare ma nel non poter più essere compresi».

(Pier Paolo Pasolini)

A majority of one

Desiderio di cultura

«La questione, è che oggi non esiste desiderio di cultura. Non si concepisce la cultura come un’attività vera e propria dell’uomo, ma come un mezzo d’attività, come una rotella che serva a mettere in moto altre rotelle. Così ci si limita a conseguirne il minimo indispensabile e specifico per quella data attività pratica che si intende esercitare»

(Elio Vittorini a firma Abulfeda, 1937)