“They want us to be afraid.
They want us to be afraid of leaving our homes.
They want us to barricade our doors
and hide our children.
Their aim is to make us fear life itself!
They want us to hate.
They want us to hate 'the other'.
They want us to practice aggression
and perfect antagonism.
Their aim is to divide us all!
They want us to be inhuman.
They want us to throw out our kindness.
They want us to bury our love
and burn our hope.
Their aim is to take all our light!
They think their bricked walls
will separate us.
They think their damned bombs
will defeat us.
They are so ignorant they don’t understand
that my soul and your soul are old friends.
They are so ignorant they don’t understand
that when they cut you I bleed.
They are so ignorant they don’t understand
that we will never be afraid,
we will never hate
and we will never be silent
for life is ours!”
― Kamand Kojouri

“No matter how valuable you are and your ideas, fools will certainly play both of you down, so exclude yourselves from the inflammatory environs of fools.”
― Michael Bassey Johnson

“There can be no greater stretch of arbitrary power than to seize children from their parents, teach them whatever the authorities decree they shall be taught, and expropriate from the parents the funds to pay for the procedure.”
― Isabel Paterson

“Using coercion to drive charity is like using kidnapping to create love.”
― Stefan Molyneux

“Rights" are something made up by governments to make you feel like you're buying something with your taxes.”
― Stefan Molyneux

“Inevitably came the time when he angrily repudiated his former paladin Yasser Arafat. In fact, he described him to me as 'the Palestinian blend of Marshal Petaín and Papa Doc.' But the main problem, alas, remained the same. In Edward's moral universe, Arafat could at last be named as a thug and a practitioner of corruption and extortion. But he could only be identified as such to the extent that he was now and at last aligned with an American design. Thus the only truly unpardonable thing about 'The Chairman' was his readiness to appear on the White House lawn with Yitzhak Rabin and Bill Clinton in 1993. I have real knowledge and memory of this, because George Stephanopoulos—whose father's Orthodox church in Ohio and New York had kept him in touch with what was still a predominantly Christian Arab-American opinion—called me more than once from the White House to help beseech Edward to show up at the event. 'The feedback we get from Arab-American voters is this: If it's such a great idea, why isn't Said signing off on it?' When I called him, Edward was grudging and crabby. 'The old man [Arafat] has no right to sign away land.' Really? Then what had the Algiers deal been all about? How could two states come into being without mutual concessions on territory?”
― Christopher Hitchens, Hitch 22: A Memoir

“Of course, men often 'use their economic superiority to gain sexual advantages,' but women often use their sexual superiority to gain economic advantages. So who is the extortionist?”
― David P. Bryden

“The equation of taxation and theft is as old as extortion”
― James Suzman, Work: A History of How we spend our Time

“Blackmail threats are e-mails from madmen.”
― Michael Bassey Johnson, The Book of Maxims, Poems and Anecdotes

“No protection for the small-business owner. Only taxes and extortion.”
― Pierce Brown, Iron Gold

“Sales is a hard way to make money, trying to convince people to willingly pay you for a product or service. I prefer making money the old-fashioned way, by extortion, like the government does.”
― Jarod Kintz, There are Two Typos of People in This World: Those Who Can Edit and Those Who Can't

“As I pointed out, feudalism is essentially a redistributive system. Peasants and craftsmen produce things to a large extent autonomously; lords siphon off a share of what they produce, usually by dint of some complex set of legal rights and traditions ("direct-juro-political extraction" is the technical phrase I learned in college), and then go about portioning out shares of the loot to their own staff, flunkies, warriors, retainers - and to a lesser extent, by sponsoring feasts and festivals and by occasional gifts and favours, giving some of it back to the craftsmen and peasants once again. In such an arrangement, it makes little sense to speak of separate spheres of "politics" and "the economy" because the goods are extracted through political means and distributed for political purposes.”
― David Graeber, Bullshit Jobs: A Theory

“Sweets or the beats was a bullying problem when I went to school.”
― Steven Magee

“President Trump, you are bad news.”
― Steven Magee

“President Trump, what a scallywag you are.”
― Steven Magee

“The best time to fight corruption was ages ago, the next best time is now.”
― Amit Kalantri, Wealth of Words

“Accuracy of economics can be improved if economists consider the contribution of corruption to inflation.”
― Amit Kalantri, Wealth of Words

“To curb corruption one must be courageous to confront and complain against the corrupt.”
― Amit Kalantri, Wealth of Words

“Sweets or the beats!”
― Steven Magee

“Nothing too bad could happen around children drinking milkshakes.”
― Hernan Diaz, Trust

“As I pointed out, feudalism is essentially a redistributive system. Peasants and craftsmen produce things to a large extent autonomously; lords siphon off a share of what they produce, usually by dint of some complex set of legal rights and traditions ("direct-juro-political extraction" is the technical phrase I learned in college), and then go about portioning out shared of the loot to their own staff, flunkies, warriors, retainers - and to a lesser extent, by sponsoring feasts and festivals and by occasional gifts and favours, giving some of it back to the craftsmen and peasants once again. In such an arrangement, it makes little sense to speak of separate spheres of "politics" and "the economy" because the goods are extracted through political means and distributed for political purposes.”
― David Graeber, Bullshit Jobs: A Theory

“Scavenge not for fruits where you planted no trees. Dig not for gold where you buried no treasures.”
― Michael Bassey Johnson, These Words Pour Like Rain