July 2025 Quotations (54)

"World history is nothing but an endless, dreary account of the rape of the weak by the strong . . . (It is) a race with time, a scramble for profit, for power, for treasures.."
~~ Nobel-laureate Hermann Hesse [1877-1962] - in the 1943 novel "The Glass Bead Game"

"I may be married, but I'm not a fanatic about it."
~~ entertainer Dean Martin [1917-95]

"The corporation has subverted law and honesty between individuals. It can and will, if unrestrained, subvert the basic ideal of American government, the happiness and welfare of unborn generations of American people."
~~ writer Robert R. Reed - in 1909

"Some things are worth dying for. One's country is worth dying for. And democracy is worth dying for, because it is the most deeply honorable form of government ever devised by man."
~~ Ronald Reagan [1911-2004]

"I love [trump] as much as a straight man can love another man."
~~ gazillionaire Elon Musk - in March 2025

"The fundamental weakness of Western civilization is empathy."
~~ Elon Musk - on the mega-popular Joe Rogan podcast

'Laissez les bons temps rouler' - 'Let the good times roll'
~~ the official holiday greeting for Mardi Gras

"Whenever you love anything a lot, you’re booked for grief."
~~ singer Lucy Dacus

"You are a child of the universe no less than the trees and the stars; you have a right to be here."
~~ Max Ehrmann [1872-1945]

"Television is a 21-inch parking lot for used comedians."
~~ actor George Sanders [1906-72] - circa 1956

"The reason all of this is happening is that in his second term, Trump is free of any adult supervision."
~~ Tom Nichols, staff writer The Atlantic Magazine

"Poetry should surprise by a fine excess."
~~ British poet John Keats [1795-1821]

"All lives are uncertain, but actors know it."
~~ actress Meryl Streep

"A nation that continues year after year to spend more money on military defense than on programs of social uplift is approaching spiritual doom."
~~ Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. [1929-68]

"Speak to them quietly, and they will hear you."
~~ ancient Greek philosopher Atticus [2nd Century C.E.]

"When you're dealing with a man like Trump, reason is useless and appeasement is a guarantee of more abuse."
~~ opposition lawmaker Shinji Aguma of Japan’s House of Representatives

"We shouldn’t have to wait until May 2028 to end this tyranny."
~~ Whitney Curry Wimbish - in the AM Quickie newsletter

"This happens today: if the investments in the banks fall slightly… a tragedy… what can be done? But if people die of hunger, if they have nothing eat, if they have poor health, it does not matter! This is our crisis today!"
~~ Pope Francis [1936-2025]

"A poor life this if, full of care, / We have no time to stand and stare."
~~ Welsh poet W.H. Davies [1871-1940]

"Poetry is that / conversation we could not / otherwise have."
~~ American poet Cid Corman [1924-2004]

"[I call it] 'a hundred days of ineptitude'have."
~~ David Remnick, editor at The New Yorker Magazine

"The damage caused by pseudo-President Elon Musk and his teenage hackers crew should be given the name The Dork Ages."
~~ philosopher G.E. Nordell

"Don't give up hope. There's always a chance that Trump will show up in the obituaries tomorrow."
~~ Bel Air Viv, on Facebook

"If Hitler had married Satan they would have had Donald Trump."
~~ Nikki Giovanni [1943-2024]

"Marjorie Taylor Greene is self-inflicted damage."
~~ philosopher G.E. Nordell

"These are the times that try men's souls."
~~ Thomas Paine [1737-1809]– - in the pamphlet series "The American Crisis", December 1776

"Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery that mediocrity can pay to greatness."
~~ Oscar Wilde [1854-1900]

"Donald Trump isn't a President. He's a motivational speaker for racists."
~~ John Pavlovitz, 2018

"The subjecting of men to punishment for things which, when they were done, were breaches of no law, and the practice of arbitrary imprisonments, have been, in all ages, the favorite and most formidable instruments of tyranny."
~~ Alexander Hamilton [1757-1804] - in "Federalist Paper #84", 1788

"We need a popular uprising and a general strike."
~~ TV producer-director Marshall Herskovitz in 2025

"Trump's ineptitude is matched only by his corruption."
~~ Sen. Brian Schatz [Dem-HI]

"People go to see what they already know is there. The only thing to record, the only possible source of surprise, is their own reaction."
~~ Daniel Boorstin [1914-2004] - in "The Image: A Guide To Pseudo-events In America" [1962]

"The cause of America is in a great measure the cause of all Mankind."
~~ Thomas Paine [1737-1809] in 1776

"I realized that the true tyranny was not kings, or emperors - it was poverty."
~~ Thomas Paine [1737-1809]

"He who commands the sea has command of everything."
~~ ancient Athenian general Themistocles [524?-459? B.C.E.]

"Stay up and sleep late"
~~ New Zealand singer-songwriter Lorde (song lyrics on her 2025 single)

"The present state of America is truly alarming to every man who is capable of reflexion.” ~~~ Thomas Paine [1737-1809] - in "Common Sense" [1776]

"Nothing's a better cure for writer's block than to eat ice cream right out of the carton."
~~ writer Don Roff

"Half the lies they tell about me aren’t true."
~~ baseball great Yogi Berra [1925-2015]

"Menopause starts at the altar."
~~ comedian Jonathan Winters [1925-2013]

"We don’t rise to the level of our hopes. We fall to the level of our preparation."
~~ Ancient Greek lyric poet Archilochus [680?-645? B.C.E,]

"A great leader's courage to fulfill his visions comes from passion, not position."
~~ John C. Maxwell

"The greatest danger to American freedom is a government that ignores the Constitution."
~~ Thomas Jefferson [1743-1826]

"If you want others to be happy, practice compassion. If you want to be happy, practice compassion."
~~ Tenzin Gyatso, 14th Dalai Lama

"If a tree falls in the forest, and there's no one there to hear it, does it make a sound?"
~~ philosopher Bishop George Berkeley [1685-1753]

"If a man speaks in the forest, and no woman is present, is he still wrong?"
~~ t-shirt quoted by L.A. Times columnist Al Martinez [1929-2015]

"It's only because of their stupidity that they're able to be so sure of themselves."
~~ Franz Kafka [1883-1924]

"A Prince, whose character is thus marked by every act which may define a Tyrant, is unfit to be the ruler of a free people."
~~ Declaration of Independence, 4 July 1776]

"In America, you can get any law you want passed, as long as you promise [that] it will lower taxes."
~~ musician Frank Zappa [1940-93]

"The wicked become even worse when they are tolerated."
~~ Count Leo Tolstoy [1828-1910] of Russia

"Life changes in the instant. The ordinary instant."
~~ writer Joan Didion [1934-2021] - in "The Year of Magical Thinking" [2005]

"Women are a lot like bacon, because they smell amazing, they taste fantastic, and they will kill you slowly."
~~ J. Chris Newberg, in 2011

"Anyone who cannot form a community with others, or who does not need to because he is self-sufficient, is no part of a city-state; he is either a beast or a god."
~~ Ancient Greek Aristotle [384-322 B.C.E.]

"If 'Star Wars' has taught us anything, it is that space is full of Nazis."
~~ Alexandra Petri, staff writer at The Atlantic Magazine

{each set of posted quotations are then posted at the Working Minds website, alphabetical by author}

News Factoids for First & Second Quarter 2025

Life expectancy in the U.S. rose to its highest level since the pandemic last year.

The world’s 500 richest people gained $1.5 trillion in wealth last year, per Bloomberg. Collectively, their net worth reached $10 trillion for the first time.

7,300 US retail stores closed last year, up 57% from 2023, according to Coresight Research.

More than 80 school shootings took place in 2024, surpassing 2023 for the most school shootings in a single year since CNN began tracking such incidents in 2008.

Amid a minefield of glitchy A.I. search and social media littered with misinformation, Wikipedia has become one of the most trusted places on the internet. It’s now the seventh most popular website worldwide.

May 2024 The US economy has seen 38 consecutive months of job growth through February (the fifth-longest period of employment expansion on record), and the nation’s unemployment rate has been below 4% for 25 straight months — the longest stretch in more than 50 years.

85.9 million eligible voters skipped the 2024 general election, far surpassing the 76.8 million ballots cast for Donald Trump or the 74.3 million for Kamala Harris.
trump 32.4% / dem 31.4% / not voting 36.2%

the national debt is 121% of the US GDP, up from 104% in 2019

feb 2025 A second wave of influenza is hitting doctors' offices and urgent care clinics nationwide, according to the latest national flu data. An estimated 13,000 people, including 57 children, have died from influenza so far this season.

Nearly 447,000 US kids under 3 were unhoused at last count. Trump’s Big Ugly Budget Bill threatens to make that number skyrocket.

July 1st 147,000 jobs were added in June 2025, and the unemployment rate fell to 4.1%. But this job growth is only within a few industries. The real problem here is skewed reporting: the U.S. needs 250k new jobs each month to keep even with population growth, so that means that the country LOST 80,000 jobs in June.

Copyright 2025 by G.E. Nordell, all rights reserved

February 2025 Quotations (53)

"The battle against ignorance and apathy and magical thinking is a full time job."
~~ philosopher G.E. Nordell

"Loneliness does not come from having no people around you, but from being unable to communicate the things that you think are important to you."
~~ Carl Jung [1875-1961]

"Every time I'm in the woods I feel like I'm in church."
~~ American folk singer Pete Seeger [1919-2014]

funny t-shirt: available for limited time only

"Everything begins in mysticism and ends in politics."
~~ Charles Péguy [1873-1914] of France

"Always bear in mind that your own resolution to succeed is more important than any one thing."
~~ Abraham Lincoln [1809-65]

"They talk of the dignity of work. The dignity is in leisure."
~~ Herman Melville [1819-91] Page

"I get over a hundred letters a day from all over the world, from children and parents, and it's a wonder
[that] I ever have time to write books, let alone speak!"
~~ British children's author Enid Blyton [1897-1968]

"Books are really, really hard to write. They represent a kind of summit of grappling with what one really has to say."
~~ visionary Jaron Lanier

"If you want to assert a truth, first make sure [that] it's not just an opinion that you desparately want to be true."
~~ astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson

"Nobody who says 'I told you so' has ever been, or ever will be, a hero."
~~ Ursula K. Le Guin [1929-2018]

"Let us remember that the automatic machine is the precise economic equivalent of slave labor. Any labor which competes
with slave labor must accept the economic consequences of slave labor."
~~ mathematician & philosopher Norbert Wiener [1894-1964]

"Human nature is above all things lazy."
~~ Harriet Beecher Stowe [1811-96]

"A Universal Good should reflect the reality of the individual benefits that are collected under its name, not the other way around."
~~ Paul K. Feyerabend [1924-94]

"I think being funny is not anyone's first choice."
~~ cinema master Woody Allen

"Writing is like traveling. It's wonderful to go somewhere, but you get tired of staying."
~~ writer & activist (James Mercer) Langston Hughes [1901-67]

"Try not to become a man of success. Rather become a man of value."
~~ Albert Einstein [1879-1955]

"There is no more thrilling experience for a man than to be able to state that he has learned something that no other person in the world has known before him." (as quoted by Kenneth Franklin)
~~ engineer Vannevar Bush [1890-1974]

"In a country well governed, poverty is something to be ashamed of."
~~ Chinese philosopher Confucius / Kong Qiu [551-479 BCE]

"Funny/not funny: Fascist MAGAts getting so triggered by objective facts. Any objective fact."
~~ philosopher G.E. Nordell

"I’ve increasingly come to feel that one’s curiosity is a kind of sacred thing, not to be trifled with. It’s almost like a magic power that helps you find your way to what’s most worth thinking about."
~~ theoretical physicist Latham Boyle

"The most obvious, important realities are often the ones that are hardest to see and talk about.”
~~ David Foster Wallace [1962-2008] - from his 2005 Kenyon College in Ohio commencement speech “This Is Water"

"Dust doesn't get any thicker after eight years."
~~ Quentin Crisp [1908-99]

"Jimmy Carter honors the Nobel Peace Prize as surely as it honors him."
~~ journalist Hendrik Hertzberg

"Inelegantly, and without my consent, time passed."
~~ Miranda July, in "No One Belongs Here More Than You"

"Life is not an annuity, but a mandate, and the mandate is that there is no end to what one human being owes to another, can mean to another."
~~ Abraham Joshua Heschel [1907-72]

"Nothing tastes as good as skinny feels."
~~ model Kate Moss

"[Humans are] smart enough to invent A.I., dumb enough to need it, and so stupid we can't figure out if we did the right thing."
~~ Jerry Seinfeld, on "The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon" in 2024

"Cats are like baptists - you know [that] they raise hell, you just can't catch'em at it."
~~ entertainr Jim Stafford

"The true administration of justice is the firmest pillar of good government."
~~ inscription above the entrance to the New York State Supreme Court building

"When all is said and done, more is said than done."
~~ Lou Holtz

found text for t-shirt: CONTROL / UNIT   {even better: on the back of a dark blue poplin jacket - for Hallowe'en only, of course}

"The press takes [Trump] literally, but not seriously; his supporters take him seriously, but not literally."
~~ reporter Salena Zito

"It is only when the people become ignorant and corrupt, when they degenerate into a populace, that they are incapable of exercising the sovereignty. Usurpation is then an easy attainment, and a usurper soon found. The people themselves become the willing instruments of their own debasement and ruin."
~~ inaugural address by President James Monroe [1758-1831] on 4 March 1817

"With malice toward none, with charity for all, with firmness in the right as God gives us to see the right, let us strive on to finish the work we are in, to bind up the nation’s wounds…"
~~ inaugural address by President Abraham Lincoln [1809-65]

"The only thing we have to fear is fear itself."
~~ inaugural address by President Franklin Delano Roosevelt [1882-1945]

"Ask not what your country can do for you, but what you can do for your country."
~~ inaugural address by President John F. Kennedy [1917-63]

"In this present crisis, government is not the solution to our problem; government is the problem."
~~ inaugural address by President Ronald Reagan [1911-2004]

"There is nothing wrong with America that cannot be cured by what is right with America."
~~ inaugural address by President Bill Clinton

"It is only because of their stupidity that they can be so sure of themselves."
~~ Franz Kafka [1883-1924]

"The subtle and deadly change of heart that might occur in you would be involved with the realization that a civilization is not destroyed by wicked people; it is not necessary that people be wicked but only that they be spineless."
~~ James Baldwin [1924-87], in "The Fire Next Time" [1963]

"Scumbag dictator Adolph Trump is now effectively in charge of the U.S. government - it's all downhill from here."
~~ philosopher G.E. Nordell

"In the final analysis, all issues are economic issues."
~~ Chris Kruger

"I'm writing a book. I have the page numbers done, now I just have to fill in the rest."
~~ comedian Steven Wright

"I have an inner child but I don't think it's mine."
~~ senior comedian Andy Huggins [b. ]

"Our public schools are not Sunday schools."
~~ The American Civil Liberties Union [est. 1920]

"We live in newsy times. Things seem to get crazier from day to day, and the headlines, like magnets, can attract and repel with equal force."
~~ Joshua Rothman, in The New Yorker Magazine

"For my friends, everything; for my enemies, the law."
~~ early-XXth Century Peruvian strongman Óscar R. Benavides [1876-1945]

"Trump is American gangsterism crystallized, honest about itself, unashamed, and bold."
~~ Cornel West

"Societal privilege is not a right, except under aristocracy - which was ended in the U.S.A. in 1776. However, our democratic republic was declared to be a fascist state in January 2010 and became a full fascist dictatorship in January 2025."
~~ philosopher G.E. Nordell

"Photography is truth. But cinema is truth 24 times per second."
~~ French director Jean-Luc Godard [1930-2022]

"Pessimism leads to weakness, optimism to power."
~~ American philosopher & psychologist William James [1842-1910]

{each set of posted quotations are then posted at the Working Minds website, alphabetical by author}

WHAT EXACTLY IS FASCISM ?

"FASCISM is when the corporations and the military take the government away from the people." ~~ Benito Mussolini [1883-1945], in 1926

WARNING • WARNING • WARNING (objective facts for the uninformed)
-- educate yourself
Ideology of Fascism Page at Working Minds Philosophy website
fascist 'think tank' Heritage Foundation's Project 2025

“[Donald Trump] is a total fascist. He is now the most dangerous person to this country . . . A fascist to the core.”
~~~ former Army General Mark Milley (appointed by Trump as chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff)

. . . and for all the brainwashed MAGAts out there:
maybe you should try using facts, dear - it will make your life much easier

Copyright 2025 by G.E. Nordell, all rights reserved