underXposed

Below is a collection of some of my favorite quotations, lyrics, and poetry, which will continue to grow as I collide with them in the dark.

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“History doesn’t repeat itself, but it does rhyme.” –Mark Twain

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“The man who reads nothing at all is better educated than the man who reads nothing butnewspapers.”–Thomas Jefferson

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“Humankind has not woven the web of life.
We are but one thread in it.
Whatever we do to the web,
we do to ourselves.
All things are bound together.
All things connect.”–Chief Seattle

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Pearls
by Dido

There is a woman in Somalia
Scraping for pearls on the road side
There’s a force stronger than nature
Keeps her will alive
This is how she is dying
She is dying to survive
Don’t know what she is made of
I would like to be so brave

She cries to the heaven above
There is a storm in my heart
She lives a live she didn’t choose
And it hurts like brand new shoes
Hurts like brand new shoes

There is a woman in Somalia
The sun gives her no mercy
The same sky we lay under
Burns her to the bone
Long as after the shadows
Is gonna take her to come home
Each grain carefully raped (?) up
Pear(l)s for her little girl

Hallelujah
Hallelujah

She cries to the heaven above
There is a storm in my heart
She lives in a world she didn’t choose
And it hurts like brand new shoes
Hurts like brand new shoes

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“Will you ever begin to understand
the meaning of the very soil
beneath your feet?
From a grain of sand to a great
mountain, all is sacred.
Yesterday and tomorrow exist
eternally upon this continent.
We natives are guardians of
this sacred place.” –Peter Blue Cloud, Mohawk

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This is Your Life

And you open the door and you step inside
We’re inside our hearts
Now imagine your pain as a white ball of healing light
Thats right
Your pain, the pain of self is a white ball of healing light
I don’t think so

This is your life
Good to the last drop
It doesn’t get any better than this
This is your life and its ending one minute at a time

This isn’t a seminar
This isn’t a weekend retreat
Where you are now you can’t even imagine what the bottom will be like
Only after disaster can we be resurrected
It’s only after you’ve lost everything you are free to do anything

Nothing is static
Everything is evolving
Everything is falling apart

You are not a beautiful and unique snowflake
You are the same decaying organic matter as everything else
We are all part of the same compost heap
We are the all singing all dancing crap of the world

You are not your bank account
You are not the clothes you wear
You are not the contents of your wallet
You are not your bowel cancer
You are not your grande latte
You are not the car you drive
You are not your fucking khakis
You have to give up
You have to realize that someday you will die
Until you know that
You are useless

I say, let me never be complete
I say, may I never be content
I say, deliver me from Swedish furniture
I say, deliver me from clever art
I say deliver me from clear skin and perfect teeth
I say you have to give up
I say evolve, and let the chips fall as they may

I want you to hit me as hard as you can
Welcome to fight club
If this is your first night – You have to fight–Tyler Durden

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From childhood’s hour I have not been
As others were — I have not seen
As others saw — I could not bring
My passions from a common spring
–from Poe’s “Alone”

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I believe in myself slowly
It takes all of the doubt I’ve got
It takes my wonder.
–Primus St. John

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“Insanity is a safeguard (Swedenborg thinks); when by circumstances or even by the will, the pressure upon the soul is too great, the soul protects itself by insanity, which is a shield against undue pressure.”

“It would be dangerous for us to say, ” All souls are immortal.” The soul may commit suicide, evil doing is death, and souls that do evil are dead.”

–Emerson

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I am afraid of nature.
It is because of nature
That I am mortal. –Grace Paley

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“We are so accustomed to the apparently rational nature of our world that we can scarcely imagine anything happening that cannot be explained by common sense.” –Carl G. Jung, Man and His Symbols

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“Almost every desire a poor man has is a punishable offense.”–Louis Ferdinand Celine

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[On global catastrophe and climate change:] “We are not serious about things that may actually happen. We only get silly about things that excite celebrities.” –Someone Named Andy

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“Of all your troubles great or small, the greatest are those that don’t happen at all.”–unknown

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one seed… can start a garden
one drop… can start a sea
one doubt… can stop a hating
one dream… can set us free… –Anglund

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“Maybe the hokey pokey really is what it’s all about.” –unknown

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“Every society on earth that has survived, overcome difficulties, and flourished, has been animated by a vision of greatness.“–unknown

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“Before our white brothers came to civilize us we had no jails. Therefore we had no criminials. You can’t have criminals without a jail. We had no locks or keys. And so we had no thieves. If a person was so poor that he had no horse, tipi or blanket, someone gave him these things. We were too uncivilized to set much value on personal belongings. We wanted to have things only in order to give away. We had no money, and therefore a man’s worth couldn’t be measured by it. We had no written law, no attorneys or politicians, therefore we couldn’t cheat. But now visible “progress” is everywhere–jails all over the place, and we know these jails are for us Indians. What a pity that so many of us don’t appreciate them!” –Lame Deer-Seeker of Visions

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“Religion is for people who are afraid of hell. Spirituality is for people who have already been there.”–Running Hawk, Lakota Nation (Pine Ridge)

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Silence Screams

Silence, they say, is the voice of complicity.
But silence is impossible.
Silence screams.
Silence is a message,
just as doing nothing is an act.
Let who you are ring out and resonate
in every word and deed.
Yes, become who you are.
There’s no sidestepping your own being
or your own responsibility.
What you do is who you are.
You are your own comeuppance.
You become your own message.
You are the message.
—In the spirit of Crazy Horse, Leonard Peltier

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Ah, not to be cut off,
not through the slightest partition
shut out from the law of the stars.
The inner — what is it?
if not the intensified sky,
hurled through with birds and deep
with the winds of homecoming.–Rainer Maria Rilke

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2 Responses

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1. especially liked the tyler durden quote, though all were thought provoking…please add more.

   instilling hatred, even of bush, is ineffective as an means of education/enlightenment…

   worshipping leaders, or being part of that great -though not good – religion, nationalism is also a pitfall to freethinking.

   Dr. Johnson’s famous dictionary, patriotism is defined as the last refuge of a scoundrel. With all due respect to an enlightened but inferior lexicographer, I beg to submit that it is the first.
   Author: Ambrose Bierce

   A healthy nation is as unconscious of its nationality as a healthy man of his bones. But if you break a nation’s nationality it will think of nothing else but getting it set again. – George Bernard Shaw

   You’ll never have a quiet world till you knock the patriotism out of the human race. – George Bernard Shaw

   

   chris

   July 14, 2009 at 10:01 pm

   Reply
2. and thanks for reminding me of dido…

   

   chris

   July 14, 2009 at 10:07 pm

   Reply