Critical Thinking Quotes:

At present, roughly 5,1000 languages are spoken around the globe…. Yet many indicators suggest that within a generation or two, not more than 100 of these languages will survive. Languages are dying out every bit as quickly as species. While in the latter case, plants and animals disappear from the history of nature never to be seen again, with the demise of languages, entire cultures are vanishing from the history of civilization never to be lived again.--Wolfgang Sachs, Development Dictionary.

Everybody is talking about crime, crime, crime/Well, tell me, who are the criminals?--Peter Tosh, Equal Rights

Crime: Jury convicts small-time criminal of felony petty theft for stealing a slice [of pepperoni pizza] from children. He could get a 25-years-to-life sentence. --Los Angeles Times, subhead, 1-21-95, B1.

A un activista chicano le llaman buscapleitos/a un director racista, administrador competente/un palestino con un rifle es un terrorista/un israelita con un rifle es un soldado/una madre en welfare tomando de los ricos para engordar a sus pobres es una estafadora/un presidente tomando de los pobres para engordar a sus ricos es un buen economista/cuando una conservadora levanta la voz está expresando sus opiniones/cuando una profresista levanta la voz está difundiendo propoganda/un ciudadano ahorcando a alguien es un asesino/un policía ahorcando a alguien es un oficial de la paz/lo rusos con la bomba son traficantes de guerra/los americanos con la bomba son hacedores de paz/paz paz paz/por todas partes/muertos de paz --Gina Valdez, "Muerto de Paz."

The violence with which the supremacy of white values is affirmed and the aggressiveness which has permeated the victory of these values over the ways of life and of thought of the native mean that, in revenge, the native laughs in mockery when Western values are mentioned in front of him. --Frantz Fanon, The Wretched of the Earth, 33.

Calling someone a racist individualizes the behavior and veils the fact that racism can occur only where it is culturally, socially, and legally supported. It lays the blame on the individuals rather than the systemic forces that have shaped that individual and his or her society. Whites know they do not want to be labeled racist; they become concerned with how to avoid that label, rather than worrying about systemic racism and how to change it. --Stephanie Wildman with Adrienne Davis, "Making Systems of Privilege Visible."

One of the central themes of American historiography is that there is no American Empire. Most historians will admit, if pressed, that the United States once had an empire. Then then promptly insist that it was given away. But they also speak persistently of America as a World Power.--William Appleman Williams, quoted in Amy Kaplan, Cultures of U.S. Imperialism, 3.

I sit because the Dadaists screamed on Mirror Street/I sit because the Surrealists ate angry pillows/I sit because the Imagists breathed calmly in Rutherford and Manhattan/I sit because 2400 years/I sit in America because Buddha saw a Corpse in Lumbini/I sit because the Yippies whooped up Chicago's teargas skies once/I sit because No because/I sit because I was unable to trace the Unborn back to the womb/I sit because it's easy/I sit because I get angry if I don't/I sit because they told me to/I sit because I read about it in the Funny Papers/I sit because I had a vision also dropped LSD/I sit because I don't know what else todo like Peter Orlovsky/I sit because after Lunacharsky got fired and Stalin gave Zhdanov a special tennis court I became a rootless cosmopolitan/I sit inside the shell of the old Me/I sit for world revolution--Allen Ginsburg, "Why I Meditate," July 19, 1981.
 

Never ever speculate haphazardly. Understanding and not understanding are both wrong. I say this straight out. Anyone in the world is free to denounce me as [s]he will. You have been standing a long time. Take care of yourselves.—Lin-chi I-hsuan, The Record of Lin-chi, Discourse VI.

Out of the darkness comes the change we cannot shun. --Moon Birch Grove Coven, Pitzer College, 10-94.

If the ground of gender identity is the stylized repetition of acts through time, and not a seemingly seamless identity, then the possibilities of gender transformation are to be found in the arbitrary relation between such acts, in the possibility of a different sort of repeating, in the breaking or subversive repetition of that style.--Judith Butler, "Performance Acts and Gender Constitution," 520.

The most successful ideological effects are those which have no need of works, and ask no more than complicitous silence.--Pierre Bourdieu, Outline of a Theory of Practice, 188.

When [the Royal Society] was founded [in 1660], members had to agree to take no part in matters outside the terms of reference given it by the King [of England], especially to take no part in political or religious strife. One is tempted to conclude that the modern scientific ideal of "objectivity" was born here, which would suggest that its origin is political and not scientific.--Hannah Arendt, The Human Condition, 271.

With this technology, there is no reason why we can't grow any part of the [human] body. --Gail Naughton, Advanced Tissue Sciences chief operating officer, 1997.

I want to point out that water in the [Prince William] Sound replaces itself every 20 days…. Mother Nature cleans up and does quite a cleaning job. --Charles Sitter, senior vice-president of Exxon, May 19, 1989, defending his company's cleanup operations in Alaska after the Valdez oil spill.

Sometimes I think the problem boils down to this:…most men have had women clean up after them. In fact, it wouldn't surprise me one bit to find out that science has been covertly operating under the Mom-Will-Pick-Up-After-Me Assumption…. Men are the ones who imagine that clean laundry gets into their drawers as if by magic, that muddy footprints evaporate into thin air, that toilet bowls are self-cleaning. It's these over-indulged and over-aged boys who operate on the assumption that disorder--spilled oil, radioactive wastes, plastic debris--is someone else's worry, whether that someone else is their mother, their wife, or Mother Earth herself. --Linda Weltner, Boston Globe columnist, 4-28-89.
 

Earth as a village of 100: There would be 57 Asians, 21 Europeans, 14 from North and South America, and 8 Africans; 70 would be non-white, 30 white; 50% of the world's wealth would be in the hands of only 6 people, and all 6 would be citizens of the United States; 80 would live in substandard housing; 70 would be unable to read; 50 would suffer from malnutrition; only 1 would have a college education; no one would own a computer.