1975 Quotes

“Reason is the first victim of strong emotion," Scytale murmured.”
― Frank Herbert, Dune Messiah

“1. Bangladesh.... In 1971 ... Kissinger overrode all advice in order to support the Pakistani generals in both their civilian massacre policy in East Bengal and their armed attack on India from West Pakistan.... This led to a moral and political catastrophe the effects of which are still sorely felt. Kissinger’s undisclosed reason for the ‘tilt’ was the supposed but never materialised ‘brokerage’ offered by the dictator Yahya Khan in the course of secret diplomacy between Nixon and China.... Of the new state of Bangladesh, Kissinger remarked coldly that it was ‘a basket case’ before turning his unsolicited expertise elsewhere.

2. Chile.... Kissinger had direct personal knowledge of the CIA’s plan to kidnap and murder General René Schneider, the head of the Chilean Armed Forces ... who refused to countenance military intervention in politics. In his hatred for the Allende Government, Kissinger even outdid Richard Helms ... who warned him that a coup in such a stable democracy would be hard to procure. The murder of Schneider nonetheless went ahead, at Kissinger’s urging and with American financing, just between Allende’s election and his confirmation.... This was one of the relatively few times that Mr Kissinger (his success in getting people to call him ‘Doctor’ is greater than that of most PhDs) involved himself in the assassination of a single named individual rather than the slaughter of anonymous thousands. His jocular remark on this occasion—‘I don’t see why we have to let a country go Marxist just because its people are irresponsible’—suggests he may have been having the best of times....

3. Cyprus.... Kissinger approved of the preparations by Greek Cypriot fascists for the murder of President Makarios, and sanctioned the coup which tried to extend the rule of the Athens junta (a favoured client of his) to the island. When despite great waste of life this coup failed in its objective, which was also Kissinger’s, of enforced partition, Kissinger promiscuously switched sides to support an even bloodier intervention by Turkey. Thomas Boyatt ... went to Kissinger in advance of the anti-Makarios putsch and warned him that it could lead to a civil war. ‘Spare me the civics lecture,’ replied Kissinger, who as you can readily see had an aphorism for all occasions.

4. Kurdistan. Having endorsed the covert policy of supporting a Kurdish revolt in northern Iraq between 1974 and 1975, with ‘deniable’ assistance also provided by Israel and the Shah of Iran, Kissinger made it plain to his subordinates that the Kurds were not to be allowed to win, but were to be employed for their nuisance value alone. They were not to be told that this was the case, but soon found out when the Shah and Saddam Hussein composed their differences, and American aid to Kurdistan was cut off. Hardened CIA hands went to Kissinger ... for an aid programme for the many thousands of Kurdish refugees who were thus abruptly created.... The apercu of the day was: ‘foreign policy should not he confused with missionary work.’ Saddam Hussein heartily concurred.

5. East Timor. The day after Kissinger left Djakarta in 1975, the Armed Forces of Indonesia employed American weapons to invade and subjugate the independent former Portuguese colony of East Timor. Isaacson gives a figure of 100,000 deaths resulting from the occupation, or one-seventh of the population, and there are good judges who put this estimate on the low side. Kissinger was furious when news of his own collusion was leaked, because as well as breaking international law the Indonesians were also violating an agreement with the United States.... Monroe Leigh ... pointed out this awkward latter fact. Kissinger snapped: ‘The Israelis when they go into Lebanon—when was the last time we protested that?’ A good question, even if it did not and does not lie especially well in his mouth.

It goes on and on and on until one cannot eat enough to vomit enough.”
― Christopher Hitchens

“Polish comes from the cities; wisdom from the desert.”
― Frank Herbert, Dune

“Behold, as a wild ass in the desert, go I forth to my work.”
― Frank Herbert, Dune

“The individual act of obedience is the cornerstone not only of the strength of authoritarian society but also of its weakness.”
― Robert Anton Wilson, The Illuminatus! Trilogy

“How many people today live in a language that is not their own? Or no longer, or not yet, even know their own and know poorly the major language that they are forced to serve? This is the problem of immigrants, and especially of their children, the problem of minorities, the problem of a minor literature but also a problem for all of us: how to tear a minor literature away from its own language, allowing it to challenge the language and making it follow a sober revolutionary path? How to become a nomad and an immigrant and a gypsy in relation to one's own language? Kafka answers: steal the baby from its crib, walk the tight rope.”
― Gilles Deleuze, Kafka: Toward a Minor Literature

“I would be quite satisfied if my novels (especially the ones I set in the past) did no more than teach my readers that their past - with all its imperfections - was not one long night of savagery from which the first Europeans acting on God's behalf delivered them”
― Chinua Achebe

“The National Security Agency’s capability at any time could be turned around on the American people, and no American would have any privacy left, such is the capability to monitor everything: telephone conversations, telegrams, it doesn’t matter. There would be no place to hide. If a dictator ever took over, the N.S.A. could enable it to impose total tyranny, and there would be no way to fight back.”
― Frank Church

“Piter spoke to Jessica. "I'd thought of binding you by a threat held over your son, but I begin to see that would not have worked. I let emotion cloud reason. Bad policy for a Mentat.”
― Frank Herbert, Dune

“On the great Belomor Canal even an automobile was a rarity. Everything was created, as they say in camp, with 'fart power'.”
― Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, The Gulag Archipelago, 1918-1956: An Experiment in Literary Investigation, Books III-IV

“A wise friend told me that we all could use more than one set of parents—our relations with the original set are too intense, and need dissipating.”
― Alice Adams, Beautiful Girl: Stories

“« Il y aurait hypocrisie ou naïveté à croire que la loi est faite pour tout le monde au nom de tout le monde ; qu'il est plus prudent de reconnaître qu'elle est faite pour quelques-uns et qu'elle porte sur d'autres; qu'en principe elle oblige tous les citoyens, mais qu'elle s'adresse principalement aux classes les plus nombreuses et les moins éclairées »”
― FOUCAULT MICHEL

“Il y aurait hypocrisie ou naïveté à croire que la loi est faite pour tout le monde au nom de tout le monde ; qu'il est plus prudent de reconnaître qu'elle est faite pour quelques-uns et qu'elle porte sur d'autres; qu'en principe elle oblige tous les citoyens, mais qu'elle s'adresse principalement aux classes les plus nombreuses et les moins éclairées”
― FOUCAULT MICHEL

“Il y aurait hypocrisie ou naïveté à croire que la loi est faite pour tout le monde au nom de tout le monde ; [...] il est plus prudent de reconnaître qu'elle est faite pour quelques-uns et qu'elle porte sur d'autres; qu'en principe elle oblige tous les citoyens, mais qu'elle s'adresse principalement aux classes les plus nombreuses et les moins éclairées”
― FOUCAULT MICHEL

“And the conclusion is: Survive to reach it! Survive! At any price!
This is simply a turn of phrase, a sort of habit of speech: "at any price."
But then the words swell up with their full meaning, and an awesome vow takes shape: to survive at any price.
And whoever takes that vow, whoever does not blink before its crimson burst—allows his own misfortune to overshadow both the entire common misfortune and the whole world.
This is the great fork of camp life. From this point the roads go to the right and to the left. One of them will rise and the other will descend. If you go to the right—you lose your life, and if you go to the left—you lose your conscience.”
― Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, The Gulag Archipelago, 1918-1956: An Experiment in Literary Investigation, Books III-IV

“For centuries it was considered that a criminal was given a sentence for precisely this purpose, to think about his crime for the whole period of his sentence, be conscience-stricken, repent, and gradually reform.

But the Gulag Archipelago knows no pangs of conscience! Out of one hundred natives—five are thieves, and their transgressions are no reproach in their own eyes, but a mark of valor. They dream of carrying out such feats in the future even more brazenly and cleverly. They have nothing to repent. Another five… stole on a big scale, but not from people; in our times, the only place where one can steal on a big scale is from the state, which itself squanders the people's money without pity or sense—so what was there for such types to repent of? Maybe that they had not stolen more and divvied up—and thus remained free? And, so far as another 85 percent of the natives were concerned—they had never committed any crimes whatever. What were they supposed to repent of? That they has thought what they thought? (Nonetheless, they managed to pound and muddle some of them to such an extent that they did repent—of being so depraved….) Or that a man had surrendered and become a POW in a hopeless situation? Or that he had taken employment under the Germans instead of dying of starvation? (Nonetheless, the managed so to confuse what was permitted and what was forbidden that there were some such who were tormented greatly: I would have done better to die than to have earned that bread.) Or that while working for nothing in the collective-farm fields, he had taken a mite to feed his children? Or that he had taken something from a factory for the same reason?

No, not only do you not repent, but your clean conscience, like a clear mountain lake, shines in your eyes.”
― Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, The Gulag Archipelago, 1918-1956: An Experiment in Literary Investigation, Books III-IV

“Despotism may be the only organizational alternative to the political structure that we observe.”
― James M. Buchanan, The Limits of Liberty: Between Anarchy and Leviathan

“we know what Dawn will be like
for we have known and named the kreatures
of the night”
― Etienne Boisjoli

“It is the twenty-third of June nineteen seventy-five, and it is eight o'clock in the evening. Seated at his jigsaw puzzle, Bartlebooth has just died.”
― Georges Perec, Life: A User's Manual

“One's most essential attributes cannot be defined by math, but instead, by opinion; and those that can be measured by a number, are less significant.”
― R.J. Intindola

“We should always be braced to defend justice against injustice at all costs. For once injustice becomes tolerable, then our liberties shall be dismantled.”
― R.J. Intindola

“Give yourself a try”
― Matt Healy