Tag: Evil

“Crime, once exposed, has no refuge but in audacity.”

Tacitus

“At times God will be the only witness to your righteous behavior. Sometimes God is the only one who will understand your motives. At such times all you can do is maintain your integrity, trusting that God always keeps His eyes on you. God looks favorably upon those who walk with integrity, doing what they know is right, regardless of how others perceive their actions. The most important thing is that you are a person of integrity before God.”

Henry Blackaby, Integrity Upheld

“Evil, when we are in its power, is not felt as evil but as a necessity, or even a duty. Power is as pitiless to the man who possesses it, or thinks he does, as it is to its victims; the latter it crushes, the former it intoxicates. The truth is, no one really possesses it.”

Simone Weil

“In sorrow we must go, but not in despair. Behold! we are not bound for ever to the circles of the world, and beyond them is more than memory.”

J.R.R. Tolkien

“We were promised sufferings. They were part of the program. We were even told, ‘Blessed are they that mourn,’ and I accept it. I’ve got nothing that I hadn’t bargained for. Of course it is different when the thing happens to oneself, not to others, and in reality, not imagination.”

C.S. Lewis

“If the devil tells you something is too fearful to look at, look at it. If he says something is too terrible to hear, hear it. If you think some truth unbearable, bear it.”

G.K. Chesterton

“The barbarian hopes — and that is the mark of him, that he can have his cake and eat it too. He will consume what civilization has slowly produced after generations of selection and effort, but he will not be at pains to replace such goods, nor indeed has he a comprehension of the virtue that has brought them into being.

We sit by and watch the barbarian. We tolerate him in the long stretches of peace, we are not afraid. We are tickled by his irreverence; his comic inversion of our old certitudes; we laugh. But as we laugh we are watched by large and awful faces from beyond, and on these faces there are no smiles.”

Hilaire Belloc

“In an ever-changing, incomprehensible world the masses had reached the point where they would, at the same time, believe everything and nothing, think that everything was possible and that nothing was true. The ideal subject of totalitarian rule is not the convinced Nazi or the dedicated communist, but people for whom the distinction between fact and fiction, true and false, no longer exists.”

Hannah Arendt

“The more power a government has the more it can act arbitrarily according to the whims and desires of the elite, and the more it will make war on others and murder its foreign and domestic subjects.”

R. J. Rummel, Death by Government: A History of Mass Murder and Genocide Since 1900

“This is as old as Babylon, and evil as sin. It is the power of the darkness of the world, and of spiritual wickedness in high places. The only difference is that it is not happening in the past, or in a book, or in some vaguely frightening prophecy— it is happening here and now.”

Jesse

“The wealth of another region excites their greed; and if it is weak, their lust for power as well. Nothing from the rising to the setting of the sun is enough for them. Among all others only they are compelled to attack the poor as well as the rich. Plunder, rape, and murder they falsely call empire; and where they make a desert, they call it peace.”

Tacitus

“It is no exaggeration to say that since the 1980s, much of the global financial sector has become criminalised, creating an industry culture that tolerates or even encourages systematic fraud. The behaviour that caused the mortgage bubble and financial crisis of 2008 was a natural outcome and continuation of this pattern, rather than some kind of economic accident.

This behaviour is criminal. We are talking about deliberate concealment of financial transactions that aided terrorism, nuclear weapons proliferation and large-scale tax evasion; assisting in major financial frauds and in concealment of criminal assets; and committing frauds that substantially worsened the worst financial bubbles and crises since the Depression.

And yet none of this conduct has been punished in any significant way.”

Charles H. Ferguson, Heist of the century: Wall Street’s role in the financial crisis

“Gold is a trust anchor. With shares, bonds and other securities: there is a risk to everything. If things go wrong, prices may fall. But, crisis or not, a gold bar always holds value. Central banks such as DNB have traditionally had a lot of gold in their house. Gold is the ultimate ‘nest egg’: the trust anchor for the financial system. If the entire system collapses, the gold stock provides a collateral to start over. Gold gives confidence in the power of the central bank’s balance sheet. That gives a safe feeling.”

Dutch Central Bank Statement

“Being in a position to know and nevertheless shunning knowledge creates direct responsibility for the consequences.”

Albert Speer

“Evil, I think, is the absence of empathy.”

Captain G. M. Gilbert, Army Psychologist, Nuremberg Trials

“Those who corrupt the public mind are just as evil as those who steal from the public purse.”

Adlai Stevenson

“And he causes all, the small and the great, the rich and the poor, the free man and the slave, to be given a mark on their right hand or on their forehead. And no one will be permitted to buy or to sell, except those who have the mark, either the name of the beast or the number of his name. This calls for wisdom— let him who has understanding calculate the number of the beast, for the number is that of a man; and his number is six hundred and sixty-six.”

Revelation 13:16-18

“But when the devil intends any evil against man, he first viciously corrupts their mind.”

Euripides

“He appears mad indeed but only to a few, because many are infected with the same disease.”

Horace

“Though this be madness, yet there is a method in it.”

Shakespeare, Hamlet, Act 2, Scene 2.

“The problem with movies and books is they make evil look glamorous, exciting, when it’s no such thing. It’s boring and it’s depressing and it’s stupid. Criminals are all after cheap thrills and easy money, and when they get them, all they want is more of the same, over and over.”

Dean Koontz

“That is, of course, the kind of perspective we expect from mobsters, dictators, and others whose primary regard is for unflinching support, not for allegiance to truth or facts.”

David Cay Johnston

“Wisdom breathes life into her children
and admonishes those who seek her.
He who loves her loves life;
those who seek her will be embraced by the Lord.
But if he fails her, Wisdom will abandon him
and deliver him into the hands of despoilers.”

Sirach 4:11,19

“Those who corrupt the public mind are just as evil as those who steal from the public purse.”

Adlai Stevenson

“A sociopath is one who sees others as impersonal objects to be manipulated to fulfill their own narcissistic needs without any regard for the hurtful consequences of their selfish actions.”

R. Alan Woods

“You have no souls to be influenced. You are spineless, flaccid things. You pompously call yourselves Republicans and Democrats. There are no Republicans nor Democrats in this House. You are lick-spittles and panderers, the creatures of the Plutocracy.”

Jack London

“I told you once that I was searching for the nature of evil. I think I’ve come close to defining it: a lack of empathy. It’s the one characteristic that connects all the defendants. A genuine incapacity to feel with their fellow man. Evil, I think, is the absence of empathy.”

G. M. Gilbert

Continue reading “QUOTES OF THE DAY”

Guest Post by Jesse

Stocks were able to enjoy another lackadaisical summer day, with an upwards drift.

What is risk? Something that can easily be ignored for the day, until it rises up and smacks us in the face. But while the music plays, the dancing must go on.

Gold and silver caught a little lift on the slightly weaker dollar. I am not so sure about silver, but gold is going to some day express its determined resistance to being treated like just another fiat currency.

Politics continues to distract and divert the public conversation. And much of it is somewhat artificial and even arbitrary, and unrelated to the most pressing topic of the day, which is political and economic reform.

The ‘lesser of two evils’ is a political strategy, an engaging diversion, but not a real choice.

Continue reading “THE UNSPEAKABLE”

“Evil when we are in its power is not felt as evil, but as a necessity, or even a duty. Sin is not a distance, it is a turning of our gaze in the wrong direction.

Human beings are so made that the ones who do the crushing feel nothing; it is the person crushed who feels what is happening. Unless one has placed oneself on the side of the oppressed, to feel with them, one cannot understand.

Power is as pitiless to the man who possesses it, or thinks he does, as it is to its victims; the latter it crushes, the former it intoxicates. The truth is, no one really possesses it.”

Simone Weil

“As everything in what used to be called creation becomes a commodity, human beings begin to look at one another, and at themselves, in a funny way, and they see price tags. There was a time when people spoke, at least occasionally, of ‘inherent worth’— if not of things, then at least of persons.

It is sometimes said that since everything is for sale under the rule of The Market, nothing is sacred. Does anyone doubt that if the True Cross were ever really discovered, it would eventually find its way to Sotheby’s? The Market is not omnipotent— yet. But the process is under way and it is gaining momentum.”

Harvey Cox, The Market as God

“Those who are at present so eager to be reconciled with the world at any price must take care not to be reconciled with it under this particular aspect: as the nest of The Unspeakable. This is what too few are willing to see.”

Thomas Merton

Continue reading “QUOTES OF THE DAY”