“The flaw in rationalism is the belief that human beings can live by applying a theory. But theory – a term that comes from the Greek theorein, meaning ‘to look at’ – cannot replace practical knowledge of how to live.

Plato misled western philosophy when he represented knowing the good in terms of visual experience.

We can look at something without touching it; but the good life is not like that. We know it only by living it. If we think about it too much and turn it into a theory, it may dissolve and disappear.

Contrary to Socrates, an examined life may not be worth living.”

— John Gray

“There is much that a man should not see, should not know, and if he should see it, it is better for him to die.”

—Varlam Shalamov

"As a people we have become obsessed with Health. There is something fundamentally, radically unhealthy about all this. We do not seem to be seeking more exuberance in living as much as staving off failure, putting off dying. We have lost all confidence in the human body."

~ Lewis Thomas

The whole world
is a sack of shit
ripping open.
I can´t save
it.

—Charles Bukowski

“The real cause of alcoholism is the complete baffling sterility of existence as sold to you.”

— Malcolm Lowry

“Green was the silence, wet was the light,
the month of June trembled like a butterfly.”

― Pablo Neruda

“A slave is one who waits
for someone to come
and free him.”

― Ezra Pound

"Exceptional men do not hold their experiences to be out of the ordinary or of interest to anyone else. Unlike the trodden fungus-men, they are not so ignorantly and presumptuously self-absorbed.

They are nobody and they know it. They shun notice. They are exceedingly rare."

-- Nick Tosches

“Most of the young men of talent whom I have met in this country give one the impression of being somewhat demented. Why shouldn't they? They are living amidst spiritual gorillas, living with food and drink maniacs, success-mongers, gadget innovators, publicity hounds.

God, if I were a young man today, if I were faced with a world such as we have created, I would blow my brains out.”

― Henry Miller

“Narcissism appears realistically to represent the best way of coping with the tensions and anxieties of modern life, and the prevailing social conditions therefore tend to bring out narcissistic traits that are present, in varying degrees, in everyone. These conditions have also transformed the family, which in turn shapes the underlying structure of personality. A society that fears it has no future is not likely to give much attention to the needs of the next generation…”

— Christopher Lasch

"Before civilization, disease was generally nonexistent. How could it have been otherwise? Where else do degenerative and infectious diseases, emotional maladies, and all the rest issue if not from work, toxicity, cities, estrangement, fear, unfilled lives--the whole canvas of damaged, alienated reality?"

--John Zerzan

“The self with which humans identify is a construction of society and memory. Forming an image of themselves in infancy and childhood, they seek happiness by preserving and strengthening that self-image. But the image they have of themselves is not the reality of their bodies or their lives, and chasing after it can lead not to fulfilment but to self-frustration.”

— John Gray

“One of the last great realizations is that life will not be what you dreamed.”

—James Salter ...

"You don't paddle against the current, you paddle with it. And if you get good at it, you throw away the oars."

~ Kris Kristofferson ...

“A man who lives never asks what is living and he has no theories about living. It is only the half-alive who talk about the purpose of life.”

—Krishnamurti

People always like things
that seem exotic.

-- Jane Birkin ...

“We are a society awash in skillfully manufactured lies. Solitude that makes thought possible—a removal from the electronic cacophony that besieges us—is harder and harder to find. We have severed ourselves from a print-based culture.

We are unable to grapple with the nuances and complexity of ideas. We have traded ideas for fabricated clichés. We speak in the hollow language we are given by our corporate masters.

Reality, presented to us as image, is unexamined and therefore false. We are culturally illiterate. And because of our cultural illiteracy we are easily manipulated and controlled.”

— Chris Hedges

“The crisis of the modern world is not a crisis of technology or politics or greenhouse gases. It is a spiritual war. What the Machine represents is our ultimate rebellion against nature: against reality itself. We have seen this rebellion before. Now our culture’s rejection of its spiritual core has opened us up to powers and principalities that we have no idea how to manage.”

—Paul Kingsnorth ...

“As the creators of sophisticated technologies, we have made ourselves increasingly machine-like; robotic servants of institutional systems we have been conditioned to revere, whose purposes we neither understand nor control, and of which we are afraid to ask questions.

Our corporate-state world plunders, enslaves, controls and destroys us, all in the name of advancing our liberty and material well-being. Most of us are dominated by an unfocused fear of uncertainty, a longing for the security of emptiness.”

― Butler Shaffer