Quotes

We are the witchcraft. We are the oldest organisation in the world. When man was first born, we were. We sang the first cradle song. We healed the first wound, we comforted the first terror. We were the Guardians against the Darkness, the Helpers on the Left Hand Side.

We are on the side of man, of life and of the individual. Therefore we are against religion, morality and government.
Therefore our name is Lucifer.

We are on the side of freedom, of love, of joy and laughter and divine drunkenness.
Therefore our name is Babalon.

Jack Parsons (via moretothisthan)

Myth must be kept alive. The people who can keep it alive are artists of one kind or another. The function of the artist is the mythologization of the environment and the world.

Joseph Campbell (via louddetective)

It is a mistake to consider any belief more liberated than another. It is the possibility of change which is important. Every new form of liberation is destined to eventually become another form of enslavement for most of its adherents. There is no freedom from duality on this plane of existence, but one may at least aspire to the choice of duality.

Peter Carroll (via lazyyogi)

Anarchism covers lots of different things— If there’s one leading principle which unifies them, it’s a simple one. It’s based on the assumption that any structure of authority and domination has to justify itself – none of them are self-justifying. Whether they’re in individual relations, or international affairs, or the workplace, or whatever- they have a burden of proof to bear, and if they can’t bear that burden (which they usually can’t), they’re illegitimate and should be dismantled and replaced by alternative structures which are free and participatory and are not based on authoritarian systems.

Sometimes they can be justified, so it’s not that it’s always impossible. Like if I’m walking down the street with my 3-year old granddaughter and she races into traffic, and I grab her arm and pull her back that’s an authoritarian relationship. But if challenged, I don’t think it would be hard to give a justification for that relation of authority.

Noam Chomsky (via cultureofresistance)

In parallel, the cost of elections skyrocketed, driving both parties even deeper into corporate pockets. What remains of political democracy has been undermined further as both parties have turned to auctioning congressional leadership positions. Political economist Thomas Ferguson observes that “uniquely among legislatures in the developed world, U.S. congressional parties now post prices for key slots in the lawmaking process.” The legislators who fund the party get the posts, virtually compelling them to become servants of private capital even beyond the norm. The result, Ferguson continues, is that debates “rely heavily on the endless repetition of a handful of slogans that have been battle tested for their appeal to national investor blocs and interest groups that the leadership relies on for resources.

Noam Chomsky, American Decline: Causes and Consequences (via rooftopsedge)

If someone told me to write a book on morality, it would have a hundred pages and ninety-nine of them would be blank. On the last page I would write, “I recognize only one duty and that is to love.” And as far as everything else is concerned, I say no.

Albert Camus  (via fuckyeahexistentialism)

Howard’s dedicated activism continued, literally without a break, until the very end, even in his last years, when he was suffering from severe infirmity and personal loss, though one would hardly know it when meeting him or watching him speaking tirelessly to captivated audiences all over the country. Whenever there was a struggle for peace and justice, Howard was there, on the front lines, unflagging in his enthusiasm, and inspiring in his integrity, engagement, eloquence and insight, light touch of humor in the face of adversity, dedication to non-violence, and sheer decency. It is hard even to imagine how many young people’s lives were touched, and how deeply, by his achievements, both in his work and his life.

Noam Chomsky, Remembering Howard Zinn

I would like to be that badass when I am old/ever…

(via rooftopsedge)

Government has a flaw that General Electric doesn’t have. The government is potentially democratic. There’s a way of influencing the government and participating in it. I’m not joking, just think about it. When you’re saying that the government is doing this and that and the other thing to us, yes, the government is reflecting the interests of the people in it, but they could be representing us – there is no way for private tyrannies to be representing us. So yes, they would like you to hate the government. There is a lot wrong with the government, there is a lot to be hated about it, there is a lot to be changed about it. But the main thing about it is you can participate in it. And there are ways of changing what it does, and therefore, for at least people who believe in democracy, gives us advantages that other systems of powers don’t have. It is potentially our system of power, and the private corporations aren’t.

Noam Chomsky (via noam-chomsky)

‘Sigil’ as a word is out of date. All this magic stuff needs new terminology because it’s not what people are being told it is at all. It’s not all this wearying symbolic misdirection that’s being dragged up from the Victorian Age, when no-one was allowed to talk plainly and everything was in coy poetic code. The world’s at a crisis point and it’s time to stop bullshitting around with Qabalah and Thelema and Chaos and Information and all the rest of the metaphoric smoke and mirrors designed to make the rubes think magicians are ‘special’ people with special powers. It’s not like that. Everyone does magic all the time in different ways. ‘Life’ plus ‘significance’ = magic. (2004)

Grant Morrison (via thenewabnormal)

Let me just put the whole thing in a kind of mundane level. Like, suppose you walk out in the street, this evening, and you see a crime being committed, you know, somebody is robbing someone else. Well, you have three choices. One choice is to try to stop it, maybe you call 911 or something. Another choice is to do nothing. A third choice is to pick up an assault rifle and kill ‘em both, and kill a bystander at the same time. Well, suppose you do that, and somebody says, “Well, you know, why did you do that?” And you say, “Look, I couldn’t stand by and do nothing.” I mean, is that a response? If you can think of nothing that wouldn’t do harm, then do nothing. And the same is true, magnified, in international affairs. Apart from the fact that there were things that could have been done.

About bombing of Yugoslavia – Noam Chomsky (via noam-chomsky)