| |
Vol. 1:
Letter from the People's Library in Madrid, Spain, to the People's Library in the OWS-NY camp:
 Read by Lindsey Carneal + another gal –
if you know who, please tell us!
Intro to the OccuLibrary Project:
Read by Dinah Waranch
With POPLAB sketch by Lizzy Wetzel + Carolyn Sortor
Text by Carolyn Sortor
Text summarizing OWS-NY library losses per its librarians:
Read by Kimberly Alexander
Text by Carolyn Sortor
Quotations, Vols. 1 + 2:
Selected and arranged by Carolyn Sortor.
Knowledge is power.
– Sir Francis Bacon, Religious Meditations, "Of Heresies," 1597.
Vol. 1, read by Lindsey Carneal
Vol. 2, read by Rachel Rogerson
The right information in the right place just changes your life.
– Stewart Brand to Steve Wozniak, at the first Hacker's Conference in 1984, per Roger Clarke.
(No reader)
An educated citizenry is a vital requisite for our survival as a free people.
– Thomas Jefferson, The Papers of Thomas Jefferson: Digital Edition, (1760-1799?), first retrieved ca. 2012-08-12 from http://rotunda.upress.virginia.edu/founders/TSJN.html.
Vol. 1, read by George Graham
Vol. 2, read by Sidnie Montgomery
A balance of power requires a balance of knowledge.
– Carolyn Sortor, "Aphorisms," c-cyte, 2000.
Vol. 1, read by Peter Ligon
Vol. 2, read by Adam Christopher Smith
Human history becomes more and more a race between education and catastrophe.
– H.G. Wells, The Outline of History, vol. 2, chapter 41, p. 594 (1921).
Vol. 1, read by Liliana Bloch
Vol. 2, read by Douglas Bewer
A modern economic system demands mass production of students who are not educated and have been rendered incapable of thinking.
– U.N.E.F. Strasbourg, On the Poverty of Student Life (1966).
Vol. 1, read by Sally Glass
Vol. 2, read by Sidnie Montgomery
What is more educational is most aesthetic and what is most aesthetic is most educational.
– Nam June Paik, Radical Software, Vol. 1, Issue 1, p. 9 (1970).
Vol. 2, read by Sean Miller
The artist poses more questions than he answers.… [T]oo often… people answer with assurance and self-satisfaction, without even knowing the questions.… Nobody can understand his neighbor, or a group or a class, or a country,… if he does not know their particular questions.
– Ernst Toller, Man and the Masses: The Problem of Peace, 1923
(No reader)
It is difficult
to get the news from poems
yet men die miserably every day
for lack
of what is found there.
– William Carlos Williams, "Asphodel, That Greeny Flower" (1883-1963).
Vol. 1, read by Cody Ross
Vol. 2, read by Diane Durant
In all history, there is no instance of a country having benefited from prolonged warfare.
– Sun Tzu, The Art of War, ca. 500 B.C.
Vol. 2, read by Rachel Rogerson
The war is not meant to be won. It is meant to be continuous.
– George Orwell, 1984 (1949).
Vol. 2, read by Joanna Kennedy
Only puny secrets need protection. Big discoveries are protected by public incredulity.
– attributed to Marshall McLuhan, http://www.marshallmcluhan.com/poster.html
Vol. 2, read by Eric Shaw
Why of course the people don't want war. Why should some poor slob on a farm want to risk his life… when the best he can get out of it is to come back to his farm in one piece?... But… it is always a simple matter [for the leaders] to drag the people along…. All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked, and denounce the peacemakers for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger.
– Hermann Goering, per Nuremberg Diary (Farrar, Straus & Co. 1947), by Gustave Gilbert.
Vol. 2, read by Naomi Schiller
Hatred never ceases by hatred;
But by love alone is healed.
This is an ancient and eternal law.
– "Dhammapada," Ch. 1, the Twin Verses 5, as quoted by Maha Ghosananda.
Vol. 1, read by David Traylor
Vol. 2, read by Megan Arzago
Non-violence is .... mightier than the mightiest weapon of destruction devised by the ingenuity of man.
– Mohandas K. Gandhi, The Mind of Mahatma Gandhi (ca. 1966), R.K. Prabhu & U.R. Rao, H, 20-7-1935, pp. 180-1.
Vol. 1, read by George Graham
[W]e forgot that the question is NOT, how do we get “good” people into power. The question is, how do we limit the damage the powerful can do to us?
– Chris Hedges, "The Failure of the Liberal Class in the United States," address to the Poverty Scholars Program, April 10, 2010.
Vol. 1, read by Michael A. Morris
Vol. 2, read by Horacio Maté
In framing a government[,]…. you must first enable the government to control the governed; and in the next place oblige it to control itself.
– James Madison, The Federalist, "Independent Journal," Wednesday, February 6, 1788.
Vol. 2, read by Cindy Patino
There’s always a tendency to look for the most charismatic person, because that, in a way, solves your leadership problem – but only in the short term…. You can’t counter institutional power with good intentions, or charisma alone…. You have to build your own institutional power.
– Mike Gecan, recorded by Studs Terkel, Hope Dies Last: keeping the Faith in Troubled Times, p. 238 (The New Press, 2003).
Vol. 2, read by Leslie Connally
I consider it completely unimportant who… will vote, or how;
but what is extraordinarily important is this: who will count the votes, and how.
– Joseph Stalin (1878-1953), per the Memoirs of Stalin's Secretary.
Vol. 2, read by Darryl Ratcliff
Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and it never will.
– Frederick Douglass, “West India Emancipation" speech, Aug. 3, 1857.
Vol. 2, read by Joshua Miller
Civil disobedience is not our problem. Our problem is civil obedience. Our problem is that people all over the world have obeyed the dictates of leaders…. and millions have been killed because of this obedience….
– Howard Zinn, Failure to Quit (South End Press, 2002; originally published 1993).
Vol. 1, read by Noah Simblist
Vol. 2, read by Truett Roberts
All that is necessary for evil to triumph is for good men to do nothing.
– Edmund Burke (1729-1797; see here re- variants and possible misattribution).
Vol. 1, read by Danielle Georgiou
The opposite of good is not evil; it's apathy.
– Cindy Sheehan in her speech to the Veterans for Peace on August 5, 2005, just before she began her first vigil outside of Pres. G.W. Bush's ranch in Crawford, TX; see vimeo; see also HuffPo.
Vol. 1, read by Gabbe Grodin
Vol. 2, read by Michael A. Morris
Every time we witness an injustice and do not act, we train our character to be passive in its presence, and thereby eventually lose all ability to defend ourselves and those we love.
– Julian Assange, IQ.ORG, "Witnessing," Wed 03 Jan 2007 (no longer online, but copies are available in the OccuLibrary library).
Vol. 1, read by Suzanne Kelley Clark
There is a crucial difference between knowing shit and expressing it in way that will make people give a fuck.
– William Powhida, What Has the Art World Taught Me? (2012?)
Vol. 1, read by Gregory Haley
Vol. 2, read by Joshua von Ammons
We can't do it alone…. We spend our efforts getting [the information] to you…. But you've got to turn it into a story and make it moving to the population.
– Julian Assange, speech at the New Media Days 2009 conference, Denmark, originally found at http://newmediadays.dk/julian-assange (no longer online); excerpt available as of 2019--01-15 in "Living in Post-Reality," c-Blog, 2010-12-29, https://c-cyte.blogspot.com/2010/12/living-in-post-reality.html.
Vol. 1, read by Lindsey Carneal
It's class warfare, [and] my class is winning, but they shouldn't be.
– Warren Buffet, CNN Interview May 25 2005, suggesting we need to raise taxes on the rich.
Vol. 1, read by Charissa Terranova
Vol. 2, read by Angela Kallus
Who benefits?
– attributed by Marcus Tullius Cicero to Lucius Cassius Longina Ravilla, ca. 125 B.C.
Vol. 2, read by William Sarradet
When plunder becomes a way of life for a group of men…, over the course of time they create… a legal system that authorizes it and a moral code that glorifies it.
– Economic Sophisms, 2nd series (1848), ch. 1 "Physiology of Plunder."
Vol. 2, read by Gerard Bendix
Information is the new wealth, and the infowar is the new class war. It's not a war against or for any particular nation; it's a struggle between old and new power structures as to who will control information.
– Paraphrase of Robin Bloor, "Wikileaks: This Is Just The Beginning," retrieved on or before Dec. 28, 2010, from The Virtual Circle at http://www.thevirtualcircle.com/2010/12/wikileaks-this-is-just-the-beginning/ (no longer online; comparing the conflict between Wikileaks and T.P.T.B. to the conflict between Pope Leo X and Martin Luther following the invention of the Gutenberg press).
Vol. 1, read by Sally Glass
He who controls the present, controls the past. He who controls the past, controls the future.
– George Orwell, 1984 (1949)
Vol. 1, read by Sherry Owens
Vol. 2, read by Chesley Antoinette Williams
It was too late to prevent the great Fall, but it was still possible…to cut short the intermediate period of chaos.
– Isaac Asimov, Second Foundation, p. 87 (ed. Bantam June, 2004; first published 1953), regarding the efforts of the authors of the "Encyclopedia Galactica."
Vol. 1, read by Charissa Terranova
What a huge debt this nation owes to its “troublemakers.” From Thomas Paine to Martin Luther King, Jr., they have forced us to focus on problems we would prefer to downplay or ignore.
– Justice Sonia Sotomayor, writing for the Second Circuit Court of Appeals in Papineau v. Parmley, 465 F.3d 46 (2d Cir. 2006).
Vol. 2, read by Dinah Waranch
Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world. Indeed, it is the only thing that ever has.
– Commonly attributed to Margaret Mead (1901-1978); see here,
Vol. 1, read by Lydia Hollyfield
Vol. 2, read by Anne Smallwood
They always say time changes things, but you actually have to change them yourself.
– Andy Warhol, The Philosophy of Andy Warhol (1977).
Vol. 1, read by Brian Ryden, Bart Weiss, + Jeff Gibbons
Vol. 2, read by Jessica Ball
The revolution is not an apple that falls when it is ripe. You have to make it fall.
– Che Guevara, Intercontinental Press (Vol. 3 January - April 1965); also in Che Guevara Speaks: Selected Speeches and Writings (1967).
Vol. 2, read by Brian K. Scott
Let’s do something, while we have the chance! It’s not every day that we are needed.… Let us make the most of it before it is too late!
– Samuel Beckett, Waiting for Godot (1949).
Vol. 1, read by Cassandra Emswiler Burd
Nothing is inevitable, except defeat for those who give up without a fight.
– "Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea" (1961), script by Irwin Allen & Charles Bennett.
Vol. 1, read by James Godfrey
We are never tired, so long as we can see far enough.
– Ralph Waldo Emerson, Nature, Chapter III, “Beauty” (1836).
Vol. 2, read by Nicole Whittington
First they ignore you. Then they laugh at you. Then they fight you. Then you win.
– Commonly attributed to Mohandas K. Gandhi (1869-1948); see here.
Vol. 1, read by Anita Hobbs Horton, Ricky Vaughn,
David Sunshine, + Liliana Bloch
Vol. 2, read by Brian Keith Jones + Tom Riccio |
