What They Said - P

Alan P. Scott - Quotes

and might believe


P

Michael Parenti

...politicians and corporate leaders naturally work to further their own monetary and power interests, often in a conspiratorial manner. To believe otherwise is to believe in "Coincidence Theory," the truly nutty idea that the interests of the very wealthy are magically maintained by chance, year after year; or "Aberration Theory," the blind-to-historical-reality-notion that dirty CIA tricks are atypical departures from the norm; or "Stupidity Theory," the irrational idea that the very wealthy and their intelligence-agency-protectors stupidly and repeatedly bumble their way into maintaining world domination, never using forethought; or "Somnambulist Theory," the illogical view that world dominators sleepwalk through life without ever thinking of their vast wealth and how to keep it; or "Idiosyncrasy Theory," the unthinking theory that "stuff just happens" in a way that furthers the interests of oil companies and other powerful folks and that somehow it "just happens" the exact same way again and again over a long period of time.
--from Land of Idols, as seen in the archives of Cult of X

James "Kibo" Parry

The Internet is the most powerful stupidity amplifier ever invented. It's like television without the television part.
--from the Usenet newsgroup alt.religion.kibology 9/20/2001, as seen on talk.bizarre 1/17/2002

"peacethruignorance"

News is something that someone, somewhere, does not want revealed. Everything else is advertising.
--original, as far as I can tell, to a commenter identified only as "peacethruignorance," on an ABC News story online (possibly posted as early as 3/15/2009; retrieved 4/15/2009 but not found on subsequent search)

Pearl Jam

I know someday you'll have a beautiful life
I know you'll be a star
In somebody else's sky
But why
Why
Why can't it be mine?
--"Black," Ten

Walker Percy

Do you want a portrait of the New Southerner? He is Billy Graham on Sunday and Richard Nixon the rest of the week. He calls on Jesus and steals; he's in business, he's in politics.
--Lancelot, in 1977, years before Newt Gingrich's rise to prominence

Lucky is the man who does not secretly believe that every possibility is open to him.
--The Last Gentleman

Washington, the country, is down the drain. Everyone knows it. The people have lost it to the politicians, bureaucrats, drunk Congressmen, lying Presidents, White House preachers, C.I.A., F.B.I., Mafia, Pentagon, pornographers, muggers, buggers, bribers, bribe takers, rich crooked cowboys, sclerotic Southerners, rich crooked Yankees, dirty books, dirty movies, dirty plays, dirty talk shows, dirty soap operas, fags, lesbians, abortionists, Jesus shouters, anti-Jesus shouters, dying cities, dying schools, courses in how to fuck for schoolchildren.
--Lancelot

Thomas T. Perls

Women, it seems, tend to live with their dementia rather than to die from it.
--"The Oldest Old", Scientific American, January 1995, quoted way out of context

Thomas J. Peters

Not being accepted in the first place is kinda like being rejected by everybody.

Emo Philips

Ambiguity... the devil's volleyball.
--Live from the Hasty Pudding Theatre

Pink Floyd

...lost in a haze
of alcohol-soft middle age
--"Paranoid Eyes," The Final Cut

Susan Pofahl

I can't afford cosmic surgery.

Porno for Pyros

My friend says
We're like the dinosaurs
Only we are
Doing ourselves in
Much faster than they
Ever did.
--"Pets," Porno for Pyros

Psychedelic Furs

Get smart - get scared.
--"High Wire Days," Mirror Moves

Aleksander Sergeevich Pushkin

The Falsehood that exalts we cherish more
Than meaner truths that are a thousand strong.
--as quoted in William Barton & Michael Capobianco, Iris. SEE ALSO: Joyce Thompson

Thomas Pynchon

"Gentlemen," advises this ominous Shadow, "--you have fallen, willy-nilly, among a race who not only devour Astronomers as a matter of habitual Diet, but may also make of them vile miniature 'Sandwiches,' and lay them upon a mahogany Sideboard whose price they never knew, and then forget to eat them. Your only hope, in this room, is to impersonate so perfectly what they assume you to be, that instincts of Predation will be overcome by those of Boredom."
--Mason & Dixon
[For some reason I associate this with the Usenet newsgroup talk.bizarre, replacing "Astronomers" with "cavenewts."]

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Original content and arrangement © Alan P. Scott. Other content as attributed. All rights reserved.

Last updated May 4, 2009.

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ascott@pacifier.com