Dusty bibles lead to dirty lives. On the marquee of an empty Church down the street from a Shopping Mall.

Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world: indeed, that's the only thing that ever has. -Margaret Meade(?) Our best guide to truth is free and rational inquiry; we should therefore not be bound by the dictates of arbitrary authority, comfortable superstition, stifling tradition, or suffocating orthodoxy. We should defer to no dogma neither religious nor secular and never be afraid to ask How do you know? We should be concerned with the here and now, with solving human problems with the best resources of human minds and human hearts. -Free Inquiry Magazines Statement of Purpose There are a thousand hacking at the branches of evil to one who is striking at the root, and it may be that he who bestows the largest amount of time and money on the needy is doing the most by his mode of life to produce that misery which he strives in vain to relieve. -Henry David Thoreau, Walden but men labor under a mistake. The better part of the man is soon plowed into the soil for compost by a seeming fate, commonly called necessity, they are employed, as it says in an old book, laying up treasure which moth and rust will corrupt and thieves break through and steal. It isa fools life as they will find when they get to the end if it, if not before. -Henry David Thoreau, Walden Most men, even in this comparatively free country, through mere ignorance and mistake, are so occupied with the factitious cares and superfluously coarse labors of life that its finer fruits cannot be plucked by them. -Henry David Thoreau, Walden Public opinion is a weak tyrant compared with our own private opinion. What a man thinks of himself, that it is which determines, or rather indicates, his fate. -Henry David Thoreau, Walden The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation. What is called resignation is confirmed desperation. It is a characteristic of wisdom not to do desperate things. -Henry David Thoreau, Walden It is never too late to give up our prejudices. No way of thinking or doing, however ancient, can be trusted without proof. What everybody echoes or, in silence, passes by as true today may turn out to be falsehood tomorrow, mere smoke of opinion, which some had trusted for a cloud that would sprinkle fertilizing rain on their fields. -Henry David Thoreau, Walden I think that we may safely trust a good deal more than we do. We may waive just so much care of ourselves as we honestly bestow elsewhere. -Henry David Thoreau, Walden Most of the luxuries, and many of the so-called comforts of life, are not only not indispensable, but positive hindrances to the elevation of mankind. With respect to luxuries and comforts, the wisest have ever lived a more simple and meager life than the poor. -Henry David Thoreau, Walden None can be an impartial or wise observer of human life but from the vantage ground of what we should call voluntary poverty. Of a life of luxury the fruit is luxury, whether in agriculture, or commerce, or

literature, or art. To be a philosopher is not merely to have subtle thoughts, nor even to found a school, but so to love wisdom as to live according to its dictates, a life of simplicity, independence, magnanimity, and trust. It is to solve some of the problems of life, not only theoretically, but practically. The success of great scholars and thinkers is commonly a courtier-like success, not kingly, not manly. They make shift to live merely by conformity, practically as their fathers did, and are in no sense the progenitors of a nobler race of men. But why do men degenerate ever? What makes families run out? -Henry David Thoreau, Walden where there was nature and earth, life and water, I saw a desert landscape that was unending, resembling some sort of crater, so devoid of reason and light and spirit that the mind could not grasp it on any sort of conscious level and if you came close the mind would reel backward, unable to take it in. it was a vision so clear and real and vital to me that in its purity it was almost abstract. This was what I could understand, this was how I lived my life, what I constructed my movement around, how I dealt with the tangible. This was the geography around which my reality revolved: it did not occur to me, ever, that people were good or that a man was capable of change or that the world could be a better place through ones taking pleasure in a feeling or a kindness. Nothing was affirmative, the term generosity of spirit applied to nothing, was a clich, was some kind of bad joke. Sex is mathematics. Individuality no longer an issue. What does intelligence signify? Define reason. Desire meaningless. Intellect is not a cure. Justice is dead. Fear, recrimination, innocence, sympathy, guilt, waste, failure, grief, were things, emotions, that no one really felt anymore. Reflection is useless, the world is senseless. Evil is its only permanence. God is not alive. Love cannot be trusted. Surface, surface, surface was all that anyone found meaning in this was civilization as I saw it, colossal and jagged -Bret Easton Ellis, American Psycho We become the slaves of anything that breathes the moment we forget ourselves to the point of becoming a thrall to our passions. -Marquis de Sade, The 120 Days of Sodom Nor did I realize that honor, this sentiment so highly respected amongst men, was so empty and ineffective with regard to [women], and that our weakness could justify an insult which men would never dare subject one another to except at the risk of their lives. -Marquis de Sade, Florville and Courval Mother is the name for God on the lips and hearts of all children. -William Makepeace Thackery, Vanity Fair Mes chers frres, n'oubliez jamais, quand vous entendrez vanter le progrs des lumires, que la plus belle des ruses du diable est de vous persuader qu'il n'existe pas! (My dear brothers, never forget, when you hear praise of the progress of knowledge, that the devils greatest trick is to convince you that he does not exist!) - Charles Baudelaire, Le Joueur Gnreux (The Generous Player) Now I understand one of the important reasons for going to college and getting an education is to learn that the things youve believed in all your life arent true, and that nothing is as it appears to be. - Daniel Keyes, Flowers for Algernon But whats wrong with a person wanting to be more intelligent, to acquire knowledge, and understand himself and the world? If youd read your Bible, Charlie, youd know that its not meant for man to know more than was given to him to know by the Lord in the first place. The fruit of that tree was forbidden to man. - Daniel Keyes, Flowers for Algernon Somehow Ive become separated emotionally form everyone and everything. And what I was really searching for out there in the dark streets the last damned place I could ever find it was a way to make myself a part of people again emotionally, while still retaining my freedom intellectually. - Daniel Keyes, Flowers for Algernon

Although we know the end of the maze holds death (and it is something I have not always known not long ago the adolescent in me thought death could happen only to other people), I see now thast the path I choose through the maze makes me what I am. I am not only a thing, but also a way of being one of many ways and knowing the paths I have followed and the ones left to take will help me understand what I am becoming. - Daniel Keyes, Flowers for Algernon

A small instance of purity, in a world sick on its own feces. -me I do not understand why so many of my brothers seem to feel the need to debase that which they so desperately wish to possess. (with regards to women) -me Whether or not someone is trying to sway my opinions makes no difference to me. For, I have no fear of such a thing happening. This, of course, does not mean I will continue to interact with someone who repulses me. -me Yes, in the opinion of many, I may take things to seriously, but in my opinion, they are not serious enough. -me Yet I do not feel the need to take part in the Human Evasion. I do not avoid subjects of contention simply because approaching them may lead to discomfort. I do not run away from my problems and I will not continue to associate with that which I detest simply because it is expected of me, or easier than cutting said thing out of my life. -me Sometimes, I would like to cut out my tongue, so that I would not speak so much, and say such regrettable things. -me I am ashamed of my own reactionary brutality. -me I am tired of having the attention of all eyes. I am tired of feeling like an exhibit. I am tired of being sought out simply so that I may be interrogated and chastised. But, above all, I am tired. Tired of this life and its transgressions, and I have been tired for a long time. -me I know I am not always the most polite person, but polite is far too often a synonym for false. -me Everyday I despise this flesh a little more. Despise it for its weaknesses and petty desires. It is so terribly limited a cage from which the only escape is to cease. Yet, who can say we escape even then? -me Sometimes, I can not help but to hate it. Can not help but hate how base and derivative it can be. This senseless life, lacking purpose or direction. I feel like a fish out of water, flopping around in vain as the life is slowly drained from me with each gasping breath. -me The root of the problem is that I do not know what the problem is. -me

Perhaps the cause of my lack of direction is that I am pulled in so many at once. -me And so, the question becomes, Now what? Where do I go? What do I do? What is to become of me now that the last vestiges of hope have been torn away. How do you continue to exist, to push on, when you no longer have the will to survive, because you are already dead inside? All I have now is this aching pit in my chest and the condolences of those who gave up on me. -me There is a difference between knowing the path and walking upon it. -unknown