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Religion, faith
“Till men have faith in Christ, their best services are but glorious sins.”
― Thomas Brooks -
Transcendentalism
"Rather than love, than money, than fame, give me truth."
-Thoreau -
Equality
“We cordially believe in the rights of property. We think that normally and in the long run the rights of humanity, coincide with the rights of property... But we feel that if in exceptional cases there is any conflict between the rights of property and the rights of man, then we must stand for the rights of man.”
― Theodore Roosevelt -
Idealsim
“I live in a house over there on the Island, and in that house there is a man waiting for me. When he drove up at the door I drove out of the dock because he says I’m his ideal.”
― F. Scott Fitzgerald, Winter Dreams -
Allusion
“America is not so much a nightmare as a non-dream. The American non-dream is precisely a move to wipe the dream out of existence. The dream is a spontaneous happening and therefore dangerous to a control system set up by the non-dreamers.”
― William S. Burroughs -
Racsim
“I have a dream that one day little black boys and girls will be holding hands with little white boys and girls.”
― Martin Luther King Jr. -
Deception,democracy, hypocrisy, liberty, oppression
“And when I speak, I don't speak as a Democrat. Or a Republican. Nor an American. I speak as a victim of America's so-called democracy. You and I have never seen democracy - all we've seen is hypocrisy. When we open our eyes today and look around America, we see America not through the eyes of someone who has enjoyed the fruits of Americanism. We see America through the eyes of someone who has been the victim of Americanism. We don't see any American dream."
-Malcolm x -
falsity-of-the-american-dream, hard-work, indignation-of-the-poor, lies, victim-blaming
“I've always resented the smug statements of politicians, media commentators, corporate executives who talked of how, in America, if you worked hard you would become rich. The meaning of that was if you were poor it was because you hadn't worked hard enough."
-Howard Zinn, You Can't Be Neutral on a Moving Train: A Personal History of Our Times -
WEALTH AND SOCIALISM
“Socialism never took root in America because the poor see themselves not as an exploited proletariat but as temporarily embarrassed millionaires.”
― John Steinbeck -
Capitalism, consumerism, dfw, solipsism
“The assumption that you everyone else is like you. That you are the world. The disease of consumer capitalism. The complacent solipsism.”
― David Foster Wallace, The Pale King
