Massive quote dump

[Cain]

GUNFIGHTING



"The man who wears a gun carries with it the power of life and death, and therefore the responsibility to deport himself with greater calm and wisdom than his unarmed counterpart, whose panic or misjudgement in crisis situations will have less serious consequences."

— Massad Ayoob



"A gun will not crawl out of a drawer to attack you; it will not change you into a hero or a villain; it will not drive you mad with power; and it will not make you capable of anything except expelling a lead projectile by means of expanding gases. Therefore, do not fear the handgun, and do not expect it to save you from your own weaknesses. It is only a tool."

— Fred Rexer, Jr.



"A lotta people belittle the diminutive .22 autoloading pistol, but it has always been a favorite of mine. This piece is lightweight and nearly invisible when you drop it in a vest pocket — you barely know it's there. It has almost no recoil when compared to a .38 or 9 mm, so one can easily rapidfire 10 rounds into a beer can-sized target 15 feet away in under 3 seconds. Drop the clip and snap in another, and you're good to go with 10 more rounds. Loaded up with bored out CCI Stingers, it's bad as fuck. It may not be able to defeat a Kevlar vest, crack an engine block, or drop a man with a single shot, but it will always remain my carry weapon of choice."

— Jake Bishop



"If you have to shoot a man, keep shooting until he is either unconscious, dead, disarmed, or so torn apart that he can't function. A major fallacy is that the criminal will fall with the first bullet. He may take a clipload before he goes down, and if you wait for him to fall after the first hit, you may get shot yourself. Keep firing 'til he can't shoot back."

— Massad Ayoob, from The Gravest Extreme (p. 113)



"Rapid fire comprises strings of shots usually fired at clearly definable targets at short range. Twenty aimed shots a minute is rapid fire . . . remember that your aim will suffer if you try to hold your breath and sight picture for more than seven or eight seconds. Rapid fire heats up rifles to an uncomfortable degree, so if you get a pause in the firing, lock back the action to allow air to circulate around the chamber. . . . Not only is fully automatic fire inaccurate, it eats up your ammo at an incredible rate."

— Peter McAleese, from McAleese's Fighting Manual (pp. 169-170)



"With (a) 12-gauge shotgun, you've got buckshot that does the same thing as your pistol — times nine — each time you pull the trigger."

— Bill Clede, from Police Shotgun Manual (p, 15)



"I've been seeing these fat little orange derringers stamped 'MARINE FLARE PROJECTOR' being sold from a number of sources (along with several short low-pressure capsicum rounds) for 'personal protection.' A foreign company, Aquilla, has recently made available a 12 gauge mini-shotshell which can be chambered in these pocket-sized, plastic-barreled flareguns — unfortunately, it will blow up like a grenade if you're actually stupid enough to fire it (I've seen photographs of the test results)."

— anonymous (RWT)



"I'd rather not oil the gun at all than use too much oil. For that reason, I don't like spray cans. You can easily spray too much. Use a simple squeeze bottle, so you can put on just one drop of oil."

— Don Vivenzio, Smith & Wesson's Armorers School



"Over 90 percent of gunfights occur within 21 feet. More than half of these occur within 5 feet. Most people, when put to the test, can't even get their guns out in time to defend against a person rushing them from across a large room. You also must know hand-to-hand combat."

— from Attack Proof , by John Perkins, Al Ridenhour, and Matt Kovsky (p. 199)



"A prudent man will not rely upon hip shooting at distances greater than seven yards, the practical limit of fast gunmanship. Beyond this distance the pistol should be brought up toward eye level as the range increases until at the longer ranges it is fired by looking down the barrel or actually using the sights."

— William H. Jordan, from No Second Place Winner (p. 62)



"You should neither see the sights nor be conscious of them. The weapon must be a natural extension of your arm; look at where you're going to shoot and think the bullet into the target."

— John Minnery, from How to Kill, Vol. I (p. 51)



"These experts believed that shooting was 20 percent physical and 80 percent mental. . . . Each became one with the weapon. The gun was an extension of the shooter. They let the bullet go down range — they didn't fire it. . . . Surprisingly, these experts do not need to hold their weapons perfectly still to shoot accurately. Under observation, the shooters displayed a great deal of arm movement as they were firing. They mentally controlled the trigger squeeze, and would not allow the bullet to 'go down range' until their sights were on target. This mental control was an unconscious process that allowed trigger squeeze to occur only when the sights were aligned. The expert shooters call their technique 'controlling the smallest arc of movement.' They knew they would be moving and controlled the arc."

— from The Warrior's Edge, by Col. John B. Alexander, Major Richard Groller, and Janet Morris (pp. 78-79)



"Don't always assume that by having a gun you have all of life's answers — because you don't."

— James Keating, from the COMTECH video Crossada: American Blade Concepts (1:10)



"Bring a gun (more than one, if possible); bring all your friends who have guns — preferably long guns."

— adapted from "Rules for a Gunfight" (author unknown)

[Cain]

SURVIVAL



"The fundamental principal of surviving violence is mental. Not physical, not gadgetry, but mental preparation, mind-setting. It consists of visualizing a crime scene and mentally rehearsing your response. Mind-setting gives you this crucial advantage when violence strikes: 'This is not new to me, I've thought about this before. I know what to do.' Then your instincts trained for this moment will kick in."

— Sanford Strong, from Strong on Defense (p. 35)



"Cops play what-if games in their minds, alone and with each other. Every time they read a newspaper account of something or investigate a crime, they reenact it, mentally transferring themselves into other crime situations, and plan a response. Stories, as gruesome as they may be, are an important part of survival planning. They motivate people to plan against that same crime happening against them."

— Capt. Mark Leap, LAPD



"Survival is the art of staying alive. Any equipment you have must be considered a bonus. You must know how to take everything possible from nature and use it to the full."

— John Wiseman



"The human body has an amazing ability to cope with arduous situations and testing environments. People who have come through, after enduring terrible hardship under seemingly impossible conditions, are a living proof of this."

— John Wiseman



"Lack of food constitutes the biggest single assault upon morale . . . Apart from its purely chemical effects upon the body, it has woeful effects upon the mind. One is in the dismal condition of having nothing to look forward to."

— Brigadier Bernard Fergusson



"The standard 'safe' shelf life of canned food is 2 years from the date of manufacture. But consider this: In the 1820s, Sir William Edward Parry carried a 4-pound tin of roasted veal on two expeditions to the Northwest Passage. The can was never opened, so it was kept as an artifact. In 1938, scientists analyzed the 100-year-old contents and found them to be intact both physically and nutritionally. The veal was then fed to a cat, who had no complaints. According to the Canned Food Alliance, unless your can bulges, is dented, or squirts when opened, the contents are edible."

— David Joachim, from A Man, A Can, A Plan (p. 16)



"The Russians, he found, could march incredible distances, sleep in wet rags, live on roots from the fields. They had stomachs that would digest anything; he saw prisoners tear raw chunks from a long-dead horse and march on, refreshed. Such insensibility is a high military asset. It meant that they could drink from marshes and shell holes . . . they could even exist without supply columns."

— Charles Foley, from Commando Extraordinary (p. 21)



"On some day, in the not too distant future, Shit will Happen, and the streets will be filled with a conglomeration of sorry fucks looking to get out, get off, get paid, or get that last can of wax beans sitting way in the back of that empty supermarket shelf. The entire fucking city would turn into a gigantic parking lot as traffic stopped, and the cops would say 'fuck this' and disappear, leaving Joe Citizen to fend for himself."

— from Underground, by C. R. Jahn (p. 264)



"She had the loaded handbag of someone who camps out and seldom goes home, or one who imagines life must be full of emergencies."

— Mavis Gallant, from A Fairly Good Time



"Animal food will give you the most food value per pound. Anything that creeps, crawls, swims or flies is a possible source of food."

— excerpted from S.A.S. Combat Survival course notes



"If you are captured, someone soon will bring you a bucket of slop and, after your stomach has flipped from the sight and smell of it, you say, 'I can't (or won't) eat that stuff.' You'd better eat it because that's all you'll get and it may get progressively fouler and skimpier. . . . You must eat everything you can get — issued rations, things you can steal, things you procure from the environment. . . . You will be revolted by the food given you as a POW, but if you miss one meal as a prisoner it will take you weeks to regain your lost strength. You can't afford to miss a single bite when you're on a bare subsistence diet."

— Dr. Gene N. Lam



". . . most recruits in Western armies have come from urban backgrounds and have little or no understanding of the countryside. Theses days, almost everyone buys their meat pre-cut in packs from the supermarket; families no longer keep chickens, rabbits and the odd pig to eat. So not only do few young soldiers have the skills to hunt animals for food, they won't have a clue how to skin and butcher them either."

— Peter McAleese, from McAlees's Fighting Manual (p. 158)



"Are you willing to do everything necessary in order to live?"

— Shiguro Takada, from Contingency Cannibalism (p. 4)

[Cain]

AWARENESS



"Be a calm beholder of what is happening around you."

— Bruce Lee



"Observe things as they are and don't pay attention to other people."

— Huang Po



"You always want to know what's going on around you. Always. When you're walking or driving, you're constantly scanning, right sidewalk to the left sidewalk, left sidewalk to the right sidewalk. You just look for something out of the ordinary. Something that doesn't look right. And the best way to do it is — if it catches your eye, if it makes you take a second look, look at it a third time. Satisfy your curiosity."

— anonymous, from What Cops Know, by Connie Fletcher (p. 20)



"Modern life so celebrates intellect that we ignore instinct, but when recon men "felt" something — danger, anticipation, anxiety, hackles rising on their neck — they thought it a subconscious warning. Some hints might be too oblique to be articulated but were to be considered real nonetheless. It could be the gut feeling that someone's watching you, or an overwhelming foreboding about climbing a hill. Recon men learned to trust their instincts."

— John L. Plaster



"If as a kid, they see a dragon, they get smacked for asking about it. Once they forget that these sort of questions exist, they are given a pair of sunglasses. These sunglasses are ultraviolet and dragon-blocking. Put them on and you don't see dragons . . . These sunglasses, in reality, are various operating systems. Take this operating system and you won't see dragons. Take this one and you won't see violence. Take this one and you won't see drug/alcohol abuse. This way people can wander around happily not seeing things."

— Marc "Animal" MacYoung



"The best way to avoid violence is to always be aware of what's going on in your surroundings, and to feel secure enough in your manhood that you cannot be made to fight over insignificant things."

— C.R. Jahn



"Nurture the ability to perceive the truth in all matters. Perceive that which cannot be seen with the eye."

— Miyamoto Musahi



"Observe what is with undivided awareness."

— Bruce Lee



"Keep your eyes open when entering,

Always wary, always watchful,

You may never know if an enemy,

May sit in hiding within the hall"

— from Havamal, verse 1, Plowright translation



"There's really no such thing as an 'ex-cop' or a cop who's 'off-duty' or 'retired.' Once trained, once indoctrinated, a cop is always alert, assessing reality in terms of its potential for illegal acts."

— Sue Grafton, from "H" is for Homicide



"Never ignore a gut feeling, but never believe that it's enough."

— Robert Heller



"When you're ridin' high on the open highway, senses heighten as you absorb the sights. Initially, there's an internal dialogue; you talk to yourself. After a while, everything settles down to a cerebral level; you become still. With a 360-degree panoramic view, everything seeps in and registers. The little voice that natters and chatters in your head eventually disappears. Many riders slip into a free form of meditation, except you're much more alert."

— Ralph "Sonny" Barger, from Ridin' High, Livin' Free (p. 51)



"He experienced 360 degree vision while running away from a German machine-gun nest. Not only could he see ahead as he ran, but he could see the gunners trying to draw a bead on him from behind."

— Robert Sullivan, referring to a WWII veteran, from Light by Moody & Perry (p. 129)



"Your heart is still pounding from that burst of speed and energy, but your mind has to remain calm and detached. It's like you have to observe yourself and the scene from outside your body — from a spot on the ceiling where you can take it all in with a fish-eye lens."

— Eric L. Haney, from Inside Delta Force (p. 105)



"Your greatest weapons are your awareness and the reactions that become instinctive tools of your awareness."

— Marc "Animal" MacYoung, from Cheap Shots, Ambushes, and Other Lessons (p. 5)



"One of the things that saved my ass in the bar was continually scanning everyone around me. You can and must learn to do this on a subconscious level in such a way that nobody even notices you're doing it. This is the 'see everything and see nothing' Zen concept. It means you never allow your full consciousness to settle on any one thing, but you are continually aware of everything."

— Peyton Quinn, from A Bouncer's Guide to Barroom Brawling (p.



"To stand silent and aware while the suspect is taunting, insulting, and otherwise trying to distract you gives you a distinct advantage. You can read the person's body language and sense his energy if you don't focus on the abusive and derogatory behavior. It doesn't distract you from what the suspect is actually doing. This allows you to respond quicker and use less force to control him should he become violent. Often it permits you to deal with the situation without resorting to physical means at all."

— Kerr Cuhulain, from Full Contact Magick (p. 81)



"Pay attention to what they tell you to forget."

— Muriel Rukeyser



"WAKE UP!!!"

— G. I. Gurdjieff

[Cain]

FEAR



"DON'T PANIC!!!"

— from The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Universe, by Douglas Adams



"Without mind-setting, people freeze up; they have no way to cut through the overwhelming fear that boxes them in during a crisis."

— Sanford Strong, from Strong on Defense (p. 19)



"If what you fear more than anything else is injury, you will not have the determination necessary to escape a criminal attack. Never. When frozen by fear of injury, you will believe all the criminal's promises, you'll be unable to concentrate on saving yourself, and you'll never notice any fleeting opportunities to escape. The criminal will use your fear to control everything you do."

— Sanford Strong, from Strong on Defense (p. 26)



"Truly fearless people are extremely rare — they tend to be robotic psychopaths who, having no hope of future happiness, simply do not care what happens to them. Most foolhardy idiots who appear 'fearless' are either drunk or trying to impress others."

— C. R. Jahn, from Hardcore Self-Defense (p. 7)



"To instil fear, you must appear to be without fear yourself."

— Harold S, Long



"I have no fear of an opponent in front of me."

— Bruce Lee



"It is within your power to transfigure your fear of death. If you learn not to be afraid of your death, then you realize that you do not need to fear anything else either. A glimpse at the face of your death can bring immense freedom to your life. It can make you aware of the urgency of the time you have here.

— John O'Donohue



"Man's greatest fear is death. But think of the power you have when you throw off any fear of dying."

— Forrest E. Morgan



"Die in your thoughts every morning and you will no longer fear death."

— Hagakure



"To learn to die is to be liberated from it."

— unknown



"Though warriors aspire to fearlessness, they shun bravado and taking unnecessary risks."

— Robert L. Spencer



"Fear is a good thing. It keeps you alert. It keeps you alive. You can do a lot of things when you're scared."

— Steve Hartman



"Overcoming fear? I don't look at it as fear. I look at it as an adrenaline rush."

— Dennis Chalker



"When you feel great fear, your body goes into a mild state of shock. The blood which normally flows freely throughout the body is pooled into the vital organs by the restriction of the capillaries in the extremities. . . . Adrenaline is dumped into the system. Adrenaline is super soldier serum. It's like tapping into a power generator. It supercharges your system, making you many times faster, more powerful, and more alert than you were a moment ago."

— Richard Ryan, from Master of the Blade (p. 134)



"I'd be lying between my teeth if I said I never get scared. I wouldn't want to work with a police officer who said he's never scared. That macho act — can't nothing hurt me; can't nothing touch me — that's all it is, an act."

— anonymous, from Pure Cop by Connie Fletcher (p. 253)



"My greater fear was not that I might be killed, but that I might be grievously wounded and left a victim of suffering on the field."

— Lieutenant Frederick Hitchcock



"'Fear of being a coward' was the most strongly felt sensation on the part of troops going into action for the first time. Other major fears — of being crippled, killed, captured and tortured, or painfully wounded — were markedly less common."

— John Dollard (paraphrased)



"There was great assurance in looking over, narrow-eyed and tense, your thumb easing the CAR-15 safety off, to see your partner's eyes just the same, both knowing that no matter the fury to be unleashed he would not run off and leave you, nor would you leave him. That's not cheap talk. When ten times as many NVA as anyone should reasonably fight suddenly appear, eons of evolution and every bit of common sense screams Run! Afraid? Beyond words. But you stay and fight."

— John L. Plaster



"The coward and the hero both feel the same feelings in the face of adversity. The hero controls these feelings; the coward doesn't."

— Geoff Thompson



"Scared to death, but I'd rather die than have my friends think I was chickenshit."

— Ken McMullin



"The truth is, when bullets are whacking against tree-trunks and solid shot are cracking skulls like egg-shells, the consuming passion in the breast of the average man is to get out of the way. Between the physical fear of going forward and the moral fear of turning back, there is a predicament of exceptional awkwardness."

— unknown Union veteran of Antietam



"A kung fu man who was really good was not proud at all. Pride emphasizes the superiority of one's status. There has to be fear and insecurity in pride, because when you aim at being highly esteemed and achieve such status, you automatically start to worry about losing status."

— Bruce Lee



"What else is there in life to be feared more than fear itself? Fear paralyzes the very being of a person. Fear destroys the whole capacity for rebellion. Fear makes any change impossible. Fear binds one to the known, and the journey to the unknown is completely stopped — although whatever is worth knowing and achieving in life is all unknown."

— Osho



"As we are liberated from our own fear, our presence automatically liberates others."

— Nelson Mandela



"Do the thing we fear, and death of fear is certain."

— Ralph Waldo Emerson



"Fears are educated into us, and can, if we wish, be educated out."

— Karl A. Menniger



"Fear is only natural. Don't be ashamed of it. It has probably saved your life before and will do so again."

— Edward Lewis, from Hostile Ground (p. 2)



"A man may destroy everything within himself, love and hate and belief, and even doubt; but as long as he clings to life he cannot destroy fear; the fear, subtle, indestructible, and terrible, that pervades his being; that tinges his thoughts; that lurks in his heart; that watches on his lips the struggle of his last breath."

— Joseph Conrad, from An Outpost of Progress



"If you are possessed of fear, do not waste time trying to 'kill out' fear, but instead cultivate the quality of courage and the fear will disappear."

— The Kybalion



"Succeed in not fearing the lion, and the lion will fear you."

— Eliphas Levi



"When someone goes white (or just pales, depending on his pigment), it means that the blood is rushing away from the skin and into the muscles, readying him for action. People in this state can take blows that would ordinarily drop them and not even feel it — as in, 'keep coming at you.' Pain sensors get turned off. Adrenaline is pumped. The arms and legs go anaerobic. The pupils contract. Jaw and back muscles constrict. Trembling sometimes occurs. Basically, physiology aside, all hell breaks loose."

— Marc "Animal" MacYoung, from Cheap Shots, Ambushes, and Other Lessons (p. 115)



"Unless you're a fool you're going to be scared. Your hands are going to sweat — dry them. Your knees are going to knock — brace them. Your stomach is going to be queasy — this is caused by your diaphragm falling on it, making you want to vomit and have butterflies. It can be controlled by thrusting both hands under your rib cage and lifting it off your stomach. Take a deep breath and still clutch the diaphragm and bend over. Straighten up and the diaphragm should be back in place and a lot of your fear will have left you. If it comes back, repeat. One of the biggest problems is holding your breath upon approaching the subject. You must make every effort to breathe deeply and naturally."

— John Minnery, from How to Kill, Vol. I (p. 57)



"Fear is nothing but idleness of the will."

— Eliphas Levi



"Knowledge is the antidote to fear."

— Ralph Waldo Emerson, from Courage



"We have won against the most dangerous of our foes. We have conquered fear."

— Franklin Delano Roosevelt



"Where there's fear, there's power."

— olde witchy sayin'

[Cain]

GLORY



"The nearest way to glory is to strive to be what you wish to be thought to be."

— Socrates



"The paths of glory lead but to the grave."

— Gray



"Glory is largely a theatrical concept. There is no striving for glory without a vivid awareness of an audience — the knowledge that our mighty deeds will come to the ears of our contemporaries or 'of those who are to be.'"

— Eric Hoffer, from The True Believer (#47)



"At the end of the course, all students should go through a rites-of-passage ceremony to bond them to their unit and each other. They should be given something to wear as a symbol that they have paid their dues and are now one of the guys."

— Robert K. Spear, from Survival on the Battlefield (p. 166)



"Glory was incompatible with retreat."

— Hershman & Lieb, from A Brotherhood of Tyrants (p. 78)



"Our greatest glory is not in never failing, but in rising every time we fail."

— Confucius



"The greater the difficulty, the greater the glory."

— Cicero



"Surely a king who loves pleasure is less dangerous than one who loves glory."

— Nancy Mitford, from The Water Beetle



". . . (his) training was psychological as well as physical, and he was drilled in a sort of camouflage calculated to conceal the miseries and terrors of war and to exaggerate its glory and glamour. The stoicism of the Spartan is proverbial — it was not in his code to admit that sorrow was sorrowful, that misfortune was misfortunate, or that life was preferable to death."

— Stanton A, Coblentz, from From Arrow to Atom Bomb (p. 104)



"He had, of course, dreamed of battles all his life — of vague and bloody conflicts that had thrilled him with their sweep and fire. In visions he had seen himself in many struggles. He had imagined peoples secure in the shadow of his eagle-eyed prowess."

— Stephen Crane, from The Red Badge of Courage (p. 3)



"At times he regarded the wounded soldiers in an envious way. He conceived persons with torn bodies to be particularly happy. He wished that he, too, had a wound, a red badge of courage."

— Stephen Crane, from The Red Badge of Courage (p. 62)



"Their minds are full of romanticized, Hollywood versions of their future activity in combat, colored with vague ideas of being a hero and winning ribbons and decorations."

— from Men Under Stress, by Roy R. Grinker and John P. Spiegel



"Showing off is the fool's idea of glory."

— Bruce Lee



"Without showing himself, he shines forth

Without promoting himself, he is distinguished

Without claiming reward, he gains endless merit

Without seeking glory, his glory endures"

— Lao Tzu, from Tao Te Ching, The Definitive Edition (Star translation), Verse 22

[Cain]

MURDER



"There is no excuse for taking a man's life for life is precious. Any man can take a life but no man can give back a life. Killing is then a matter between a man and his own personal conviction and conscience. It is a matter of your own personal belief of right or wrong."

— Dan Inosanto, from The Filipino Martial Arts (p. 168)



"Self-defense is not murder!"

— from the script for "Enough"



"Murder weapons — they use whatever's handy. Murder is, in most cases, a spontaneous act, and whatever is the first thing they can pick up is what they're going to use. Bricks and rocks and bottles, electric fans, frying pans, gasoline, table legs. We get a lot of barbecue-fork murders in the summertime."

— anonymous, from Connie Fletcher's What Cops Know (p. 71)



"There are a lot of people in prison, and a lot more in graveyards, because a barroom brawl or streetfight got "out of hand." I don't think those people in prison wanted to go there, and I don't think those people in the graveyard wanted to die. They went to prison or were killed because they did not think beyond some machismo bullshit they were sold at some point in their lives."

— Peyton Quinn



"If somebody pointed a gun in here, sure these people would be nervous, but do they know what a gun could do? Only veterans of combat and cops know what high-velocity gunfire does to a body. You'll see heads completely exploded, limbs torn off. The people sitting here — if somebody pulled out a large hunting knife and went to attack someone else, nobody here knows what would happen. They haven't seen somebody's eye carved out of the head. Do these people in here know how much blood there is with a stabbing — that the heart keeps pumping and there'd be a geyser shooting to the ceiling with every pump? When you've seen this and somebody draws a knife on you, you know you've got just one chance."

— anonymous, from Pure Cop by Connie Fletcher (pp. 246-247)



"One thing that must be considered at this point is the issue of blood — there is a terrific amount gushed about in any throat cutting operation. It can squirt back into your mouth — keep it closed; into your eyes — try to avoid it because it will temporarily blind and disconcert you. . . . Be prepared for the bowels and bladder to let go while you're holding him. . . . blood will fall onto your pantleg and shoes. . . . An added precaution could be an overcoat or reversible jacket."

— John Minnery, from How to Kill, Vol. I (p. 21)



"The straight razor is the weapon most likely to be used to inflict a pressure cut (slice). It is the blade preferred by black women . . . The aptly named screwdriver, the Darth Vader of shanks, is the preferred weapon of the impoverished male sociopath . . . The butcher knife is the weapon of choice of the white working-class woman."

— James LaFond, from The Logic of Steel (p. 6)



"Murder? Let me tell you about murder . . .

It's fun . . .

It's easy . . .

And you're gonna learn all about it . . ."

— "Tin Tin," from The Crow



"Let us, then, be practical, let us call ourselves murderers as our enemies do, let us take the moral horror out of this great historical tool and just examine closely whether perchance our enemies may claim a special privilege in the matter of murder. If to kill is always a crime, then it is forbidden equally to all; if it is not crime, then it is permitted equally to all. Once one has overcome the objection that murder per se is a crime, all that remains is to believe one is in the right against one's enemy and to possess the power to obliterate him."

— Karl Heinzen (1849)



"God, if people knew what murder is. So silly, so stupid, so — ugly."

— Ray Bradbury, from "A Touch of Petulance"



"It is an awful thing to handle the still-warm body of a man you've just killed. It feels like God has you under a powerful microscope, and is minutely examining the wrinkles and hidden recesses of your soul. It is a moment that is sad, solemn, and utterly lonely."

— Eric L. Haney, from Inside Delta Force (p. 313)

[Cain]

BAD MUTHAFUKAH



"Until a man is twenty-five, he still thinks, ever so often, that under the right circumstances he could be the baddest motherfucker in the world. If I moved to a martial arts monastery in China and studied real hard for ten years. If my family was wiped out by Columbian drug dealers and I swore myself to revenge. If I got a fatal disease, had one year to live, devoted it to wiping out street crime. If I just dropped out and devoted my life to being bad."

— Neal Stephenson, from Snow Crash (p. 271)



"Rene' Alleau relates that in each of these schools, men, stripped to the waist and without any defensive weapons, were taught to become hard by such ordeals as fighting off for twelve minutes attack dogs that were unleashed and incited to kill. If the candidates took flight, they were shot. . . . Officer candidates were often told to pull a pin out of a grenade, balance it on their helmets, and stand at attention until it exploded."

— Dusty Sklar, from Gods and Men (p. 100)



"Here's to you, as good as you are,

And here's to me, as bad as I am;

But as good as you are, and as bad as I am,

I am as good as you are, as bad as I am."

— old Scotch toast



"In Texas a cop asked me, "Excuse me, partner, but . . . why do you and your friends carry those big knives?"

I told him, "Because we're all felons and we can't carry a big gun like you.""

— Ralph "Sonny" Barger, HAMC



""There is a story told of a karate master in Japan who was challenged to a fight by a belligerent sailor in a bar. The karate master reluctantly agreed to the contest, but first walked over to a nearby table and picked up a large bread knife. He dropped it on the floor and kicked it over to the astonished sailor. 'Pick it up,' said the martial artist quietly. 'You are going to need it.'"

— recounted by N. Mashiro in Black Medicine IV, Equalizers (p. 83)



"I shot two people in December, but neither died . . . Both I sprayed with buckshot. I liked to see the buckshot eat away their clothing, almost like piranha fish."

— Monster Kody Scott



"After I kill you, I'm gonna cut off yer head and take it home to my dog."

— an unknown biker, after being "threatened" by a punk with a set of nunchaku (he ran away when the Bowie knife came out).



"The way of revenge lies in simply forcing one's way into a place and being cut down. . . . No matter if the enemy has thousands of men, there is fulfillment in simply standing them off and being determined to cut them all down, starting from one end."

— from Hagakure, by Yamamoto Tsunetomo (Wilson translation)



"I showered and shaved, put on a chambray shirt with a plain black knit tie under a cream-colored leather jacket. Looked at myself in the mirror and realized it was all for nothing — dressing me up was like tying a red ribbon around the handle of an ice pick."

— Burke, from Pain Management by Andrew Vachss



"From what I understand and from how I've seen it used, Drano will cause internal bleeding. It used to be one of the oldest methods, a lot of the pimps would use it on their prostitutes. They would hold them down on the floor and then pour Drano down the person's throat. This would cause convulsions, and the person's insides start bleeding. It eats up the entire body. That is one method commonly used in the Agency."

— Robert J. Hunt (fmr CIA / SEAL Team 6)



"I see a car following me — I got all kindsa enemies that wanna kill me — so I try to check it out. I sneak up behind it, see two bad-looking dudes. I bang hard on the car with the butt of my gun. They turn quick — it looks to me like they're reaching for guns. I empty my two guns, 26 fucking rounds, into their heads. Then I say, 'Gee, I'm sorry . . . I made a mistake.' Prove me a murderer!"

— an anonymous street narcotics agent, relating how he plotted to kill two inspectors who were dogging him day and night.



"I like to look them in the eyes. I want to see their eyes. At the moment of death — I mean the exact moment — you can see the eyes change, like the eyes of a fish. That's why I love the knife. It's personal. You know what I'm saying? You can feel it; you're part of it. You know what I mean?"

— Roberto Torrez, fmr CIA "asset"



"The guy was a seasoned pro, there's no doubt about that. His fast draw, lack of hesitation or nervousness, and choice of the kneecap as a target all indicate that I was just one more nick in a very notched grip. . . . Amateurs panic, and amateurs waste shots. My guy was cool and calm with his pistol, loose and relaxed. The two-bit street corner version of Al Pacino's Tony Montana in Scarface."

— Chris Pfouts, referring to the piece of shit that shot him, from his book, Lead Poisoning (p. 13)



"There have been incidences where people with tattoos — phoney Hell's Angels tattoos — have had them cut off their arms, had the whole tattoo just removed by knife. . . . A lot of people just more or less canned it and showed it around, showed it off. I know one guy, he kept one for a couple of years. It was considered quite a trophy."

— Addie Crouch, HAMC



"Dismemberment is probably the most efficient method of disposal. You'll have to detach yourself from what you're doing, or it could really screw you up emotionally — even some of the toughest criminals I've known would have difficulty cutting a warm human body into pieces. After several hours have passed, the blood will begin to thicken, and the task will be considerably less messy."

— C. R. Jahn, from Hardcore Self-Defense (p. 161)



"What can I do? The man isn't being reasonable."

— "Don Corleone" from The Godfather (paraphrased).



"But — I never killed anyone who didn't deserve it!"

— Christopher Walken's character in King of New York



"Look carefully at what is in front of you, and listen. I am going to ask you questions, many questions. If you don't answer fully and truthfully, I will untape your left hand, lay it on the table, and hammer a spike through it. Then I'll take that knife and cut your fingers off — one by one. You won't bleed to death. That's an electric soldering-iron. I'll use it to cauterize the stubs."

— from Man on Fire, by A. J. Quinnell (p. 225)



"They have an air of coiled tenseness about them. Motion is something that is done deliberately and with great control, usually very slowly. Something about these people makes you just want to step out of their way when they approach. . . . When they look at you, it's like having a scope dropped on you; a little target is projected on you. . . . The average tough will look at you and try to guess if they could take you out or not. These people look at you and know how they would take you out if they had to."

— Marc "Animal" MacYoung, from Cheap Shots, Ambushes, and Other Lessons (pp. 134-135)



"You want to avoid any physical hassles with these 'most dangerous' people. Recognize when you are molesting such an individual. If you force him to it and leave him no way out (or he's given reason to believe he is in, or directly headed for, such a situation), then you will die. Do not make the fatal mistake of confusing this with an expression of machismo. It is not. Machismo is a false thing; this is a very real thing. Attacking such a person or his family or even posing to do so is an express ticket to the morgue."

— Peyton Quinn, from A Bouncer's Guide to Barroom Brawling (p. 18)



"The bad guys kill the bad guys. The bad guys kill the good guys. If you want to survive the bad guys, you have to have some bad in you — a lot actually. You have to know what they know."

— Henry Rollins, from The Portable Henry Rollins (p. 230)

[Cain]

THE DEMON



"This is the aspect of the Warrior we fear so much within ourselves and others. Whether or not we act out the sociopathic rage that takes us over as the barrier is crossed, we are left afterward with a feeling that we were not 'ourselves.' Indeed, we were not. This is the 'battle frenzy' and 'blood lust' celebrated by the epics of patriarchal societies and guarded against by its laws."

— Robert Moore & Douglas Gillette, from The Warrior Within (pp. 133-134)



"Once they see you don't mind dying, they're in serious trouble and know it."

— Marc "Animal" MacYoung



"There was no soul in the eyes, no emotion — They were just eyes."

— Captain Bill O'Rourke



"He had this way of looking at you with his eyes half open. If he looked at me like that, I'd just about freeze."

— Frank Burkhart



"Aiki is the art of defeating your opponent with a single glance."

— Forrest E. Morgan



"Thugs are greatly unsettled by confident opponents. The mugger threatens you and you don't look scared. In fact, you start to grin and circle closer to him. He decides he has made a mistake. Sometimes this will end the situation with no further action."

— N. Mashiro, Ph.D., from Black Medicine IV (p. 84)



"My temper represented a grave threat to me; it signified a loss of control by the reason and will and a surrender to ungovernable emotion. I felt as if there were a terrible creature within me whom I must never let escape or he'd destroy blindly — friend, foe, and innocent bystander alike."

— G. Gordon Liddy, from Will (p. 51)



"Everyone . . . bears within him a colossal charge of malice, just as a thundercloud bears its charge of electricity. It is not surprising that for a spetsnaz (soldier) war is just a beautiful dream, the time when he is at last allowed to release his full charge of malice."

— Viktor Suvorov



"The men are loading and firing with demonaical fury and shouting and laughing hysterically."

— unknown Union officer, speaking of Antietam



"Everyone is a moon, and has a dark side which he never shows to anybody."

— Mark Twain



"Kill without joy."

— John Minnery



"The only thing I feel when I kill is the recoil of my weapon."

— seen on an obnoxious T-shirt at a recent S.O.F. convention



"Get down with your bad self!"

— African American colloquialism



"Look through your subject's face and not at it. This will make you appear spiritless and empty hearted, sending no vibration for your subject to read. It will also cast an "empty" emotion over you. When you experience this empty emotion you will have no fear of being attacked."

— Edward Lewis, from Hostile Ground (p. 5)



"(His) eyes gave him away — they told you what he was. If you studied his pupils you saw that they were as dead and lusterless as tiny brown tombstones; the eyes of someone who kills often and without conscience . . . a CIA agent I knew once called them 'executioner's eyes.'"

— Michael Levine, from The Big White Lie (p. 31)



"For over ten years, my primary function was to kill — but I don't consider myself a 'bad guy' seeing as these skills were never misused; however, the indoctrination I received combined with all the shit I've been through really fucked up my programming — they call it PTSD, although I don't exhibit a lot of the symptoms of this disgusting weakness. What happens sometimes, if someone is attempting to physically intimidate me or if some truck starts tailgating me, or if I feel threatened in any significant way, It seems like my entire personality is shoved aside and something else suddenly appears in its place. This demonic self is either cold as ice or really pissed off, and it deals with hostile persons in a socially unacceptable manner. I try to keep the demon on a very short leash, but it's hard sometimes."

— anonymous (RWT)



"In violence, we forget who we are."

— Mary McCarthy, from On the Contrary



"The youth had been taught that a man became another thing in a battle. He saw his salvation in such a change."

— Stephen Crane, from The Red Badge of Courage (p. 28)



"Think of the situation like a computer would, in cold rational terms. Erase the opponent's face, his clothing, and his words . . . become ruthlessly calm and viciously calculating and turn off your emotions. You can deal with them later, after you've dealt with the attacker."

— Richard Ryan, from Master of the Blade (p. 80)



"As your targeting mechanism locks onto your opponent's killzones, you tense ready to spring and fix him with a steady unwavering glare. Your face is flat and emotionless, as is your voice. You temporarily become a psychopath capable of killing another human being as if he were simply an annoying fly to be swatted. There is no need to shout, go into a fancy stance, or puff yourself up — that simply shows that you are afraid of him. Simply fix him with your stare and slowly declare your intentions in a low monotone: 'If you do not go away, I am going to kill you.' If you mean what you say, and truly intend to kill him, then something very unusual happens to your eyes. Your opponent looks into them and sees no warmth or fear there — only coldness and death. He sees that he is fucking with some inhuman thing that will neither retreat nor show any mercy."

— Jake Bishop



"The epitome of skill among the most proficient navajeros in the gitano style is the ability to reach the state known as duende (DWEN-deh). The word duende literally means 'demon' or spirit.' Achieving this state — whether in dance or in knife combat — implies the presence of something magical or supernatural; that one is moving as if possessed. The state is more difficult to explain than to understand. . . . With his knife drawn, he does not follow any strict rules of steps or techniques; instead, his movements surge up as instinctive and spontaneous expressions of the moment. In essence then, achieving duende signifies a kind of possession by some mysterious force, driving the navajero to a lethally artistic display of ability that far exceeds the bounds of mere technique."

— James Loriega, from Sevillian Steel (p. 59)



"There was a buzzing in his head and a red veil slid over his eyes as he turned, robot-like."

— from Underground, by C. R. Jahn (p. 240)



"It takes a certain something (or lack of something) to be able to look a man in the eyes as you're twisting a blade deep in his guts, or to methodically pump round after round into his center of mass without flinching. This is a valid, crucial, and widely misunderstood aspect of the Warrior's persona. You see, it is imperative that a Warrior be psychologically capable of performing such an act, however, it is equally imperative that these negative thoughts be suppressed if one is to be part of a civilized society. Only immature freaks and psychotic goblins fixate upon such negativity. Certain psychologists have dubbed this state of mind 'the demonic self.' Indicators that the demonic self is online are: expressionless face, unblinking eyes, color drains from skin, body temperature drops, and a surreal calmness permeates. For the duration of this state, an individual can no longer be considered a fellow human being. In a combat scenario, such an individual will be transformed into an unstoppable killing machine, totally focused on a single destructive goal. After a time, it will be possible to enter this state instantly and at will — much like the act of flipping a switch.

— anonymous (RWT)



"Andrew Vachss speaks of the 'Ice God' in many of his Burke novels. This is a state of sociopathic transcendence in which fear of death — and indeed, all vestiges of human emotion — ceases to exist. Once communion with the Ice God has been achieved, he becomes a part of you forever; and although he abstains from interfering with your daily activities, he is always present, and can be accessed in a heartbeat if the need ever arises."

— Scribe 27 (RWT)



"Once a confrontation turns physical, the warrior's body, mind, and spirit fuse into an unthinking, unfeeling weapon. At this point, there are no considerations of honor, no thought of consequences. In this mode, the warrior will only think of destroying his enemy."

— Forrest E. Morgan, from Living the Martial Way (p. 165)



"Release the fiend that lies dormant within you, for he is strong and ruthless and his power is far beyond the bounds of human frailty."

— Robert DeGrimston

[Cain]

OUTLAWS



"They branded us as outlaws. We know, as you, only outlaws can be free."

— excerpted from the introduction of Hell's Angels Forever



"You only carried a gun when you wanted to do business with it. That's a very disrespectful thing to do, carry a weapon into a meeting. Among criminals, they have their own code of ethics. If you and I are going to sit down and do a deal of stolen merchandise or dope and we're just in the talking stages of it, why do I need to have a gun at the table? I am either a cop or extremely paranoid about my own survival or I'm out to do something to you. Then nobody will deal with me and how am I going to make any money? So that's the reason you don't carry that weapon."

— anonymous, from Mark Baker's Cops (p. 136)



"The question of how you will respond to a confrontation with police at the scene of a crime, or in the immediate area, is one that must be examined carefully and thoroughly. Most often, this very real possibility isn't even considered, yet such a confrontation could create life threatening circumstances."

— Harold S. Long



"When the wind kicked up, I could smell the plants and it seemed unreal to me that this idyllic, starry night could at any moment be raided by a bunch of pissed-off, caffeine-wired, wife-beating federal agents, and we'd all spend the next ten or twenty years behind bars."

— Chris Simunek, from Paradise Burning (p. 20)



"You should always strive to steer clear of any form of intoxicant. Booze and drugs can really fuck up your life . . . except for reefer . . . marijuana really gives you a mellower perspective of things . . . it really helped me to curb my violent impulses and self-destructive tendencies."

— Tony Miles



I'm one with my gun,

I love it like my first son,

It protects me,

And makes sure that the jakes respect me."

— Talib Kweli, from "Sharp Shooters"



"We do a job together. I don't know your real name. The only people that know the real names are the president and the treasury, for bail purposes. We do something together. They can put a polygraph on me, I still don't know your name. . . . They could ask me your real name . . . and I wouldn't know it."

— Edward Jackson, Pagans Motorcycle Club



"You fucked with Death, and now she's your wife . . ."

— overheard being spoken to the deceased at an open casket "one-percenter" funeral



"I got no love for a brother who comes to the party with no bud."

— "B-Real" of Cypress Hill



"There are a few good cops out there — most of the best cops, however, never intended to go into law-enforcement as a career — they might've originally been social workers, teachers, or graduate students before going through some sort of existential crisis (or something) which made them suddenly decide to enroll in the police academy -- and then they discovered that they really liked it. These individuals tend to reflect well upon their new profession, and usually do quite well at it. Conversely, those individuals who have 'always wanted to be a cop' often get involved with police work due to some deep rooted inadequacy which they hope to compensate for by acquiring the symbols of authority. Law-enforcement has always held a great attraction for bullies and other control freaks."

— anonymous (RWT)



"Let's say that you happen to find yourself in a situation where you might be considered a 'material witness' to a crime. Maybe someone who really fuckin' deserved it got whapped upside the head with a ballpeen hammer, or sumpthin. Anyway, the cops come around and ask you what happened, since (possibly due to the splatter marks) you were obviously in close proximity to the incident. What do you say? If you say, 'I ain't tellin' you shit,' then you can be jailed for obstruction of justice; if you exercise your 'right to remain silent,' you can be jailed as an accessory; if you say 'That guy with the bloody hammer didn't do it,' you'd be lying (which is dishonorable); and if you fucking rat someone out (especially if they were justified in their actions), then you are lower than dogshit and oughta be hammered on yourself! No, in a situation like this, it's usually best just ta calm down and say, 'Officer, my back was turned when this occurred, so unfortunately I didn't see nuthin."

— anonymous (RWT)



"He told me that if I was ever stranded on the side of the road, broke down or in trouble, and if a (Hell's Angel) came by, accept their help. Trust them. Nothing bad would come of it. They'd do me right. He even went on to say that if the politicians ran the country like the Club ran its chapters, we'd all be much freer. I think he admired their honor system and the fact that with bike riders, a handshake was a handshake and a deal was a deal."

— Barbara McQueen, speaking of her departed husband, Steve.



"The outlaw trail is like the path of the wolf: it teaches you much about life and gives you an understanding of how things work. It can also be an insane, lonely, and vicious path."

— Marc "Animal" MacYoung, from Pool Cues, Beer Bottles, & Baseball Bats (pp. ix-x)



"It's good to be known as a thief when you go Inside. It's even better to be known as a killer, but only a certain kind. Like if you killed someone in a fight, that would be good. Or if someone paid you to do it. . . . But not every killing got you respect. The sick-in-the-head kids, they were nothings. Nobody was afraid of them. Like the one who chopped up his mother with an ax. Or the one who went to school with a rifle, and shot a bunch of other kids who were bullying him. After that kid got locked up, he still got bullied, only much worse. The kind of bullying they do in here."

— Andrew Vachss, from The Getaway Man (p. 4)



"No-one knows what it's like,

To be the bad man. . .

To be the sad man. . .

Behind blue eyes."

— from "Behind Blue Eyes" by The Who



"I suppose that in any well-ordered society people like us would be locked up or shot. But then you would have to get people like us to do the locking up and the shooting."

— Jim Morris, from War Story (p. 158)

[Cain]

PEACE



"You dumbasses need to know that the alleged 'peace sign' is, in actuality, the depiction of a cursed amulet!!! Do you realize that, when it was officially adopted as the symbol of the peace movement its origin and true significance was completely unknown? The Fundies like to call it the 'cross of Nero,' but they are a bunch of ignoramuses. Do you want to know what this evil symbol really means? It is an ancient symbol known as 'the dead man's rune.' When you invert the protection rune, it becomes a curse, drawing to the bearer strife, harm, injury, illness, and persecution. Binding it within a circle increases its power. The leaders of this country belong to secret societies which practice ceremonial Teutonic magick, and, along with the neurological agent LSD, they used highly-placed infiltrators to thrust this cursed thing upon the peaceniks — the better to wipe them out!!!"

— Scribe 27 (RWT)



"Go placidly amid the noise & haste; and remember what peace there may be in silence."

— Desdirada (line one)



"To be prepared for war is one of the most effectual means of preserving peace."

— General George Washington



"If this endeavor of ours to arrive at peace fails, we have our armaments to fall back upon."

— Woodrow Wilson



"The more peace there is in us, the more peace there will be in our troubled world."

— Etty Hillesum



"Peace is the skillful management of conflict."

— Kenneth Boulding



"Many soldiers — tired by the rigidities of normal life — look back at violent moments of their war experiences despite the hunger and terror, as the monumental culminating experiences of their lives."

— Joost van Meerlo



"It is worth noting that retired officers are amongst those professional groups with the highest rate of suicide, in part because the military values which they have acquired during their service often conflict with the values of civilian society."

— Richard Holmes



"They have not wanted Peace at all; they have wanted to be spared war — as though the absence of war was the same as peace."

— Dorothy Thompson



"Well, I have tried to be meek.

And I have tried to be mild,

But I spat like a woman,

And sulked like a child,

I have lived behind walls,

That have made me alone,

Striven for peace,

Which I never have known."

— from "The Man's Too Strong" by Dire Straits



"While the Swiss believes in peace, and desires it above all else, his good sense tells him this is best assured by preparedness at all times."

— Colonel George Bell



". . . I am tired; my heart is sick and sad. From where the sun now stands I will fight no more forever."

— Chief Joseph of the Nez Perce



"Culture and Peace are the most sacred goals of humanity."

— Nicholas Roerich



"Who desires peace, let him prepare for war."

— Vegetius (4th c.)



"It seems to me that there are two great enemies of peace — fear and selfishness."

— Katherine Paterson, from The Horn Book



"It's perfectly true that Israel wants peace. So did Hitler. Everybody wants peace. The question is, on what terms?"

— Noam Chomsky



"First keep the peace within yourself, then you can also bring peace to others."

— Thomas a Kempis (1420)



"They have not wanted Peace at all; they have wanted to be spared war — as though the absence of war was the same as peace."

— Dorothy Thompson, from On the Record



"There can be no peace without law."

— Dwight D. Eisenhower



"The arts of peace are great,

And no less glorious than those of war."

— William Blake, from King Edward III



"He had rid himself of the red sickness of battle. The sultry nightmare was in the past. He had been an animal blistered and sweating in the heat and pain of war. He turned now with a lover's thirst to images of tranquil skies, fresh meadows, cool brooks — an existence of soft and eternal peace."

— Stephen Crane, from The Red Badge of Courage (p. 156)

[Cain]

LIFE



"You are enrolled in a full-time informal school called LIFE. Each day in this school, you will have the opportunity to learn lessons. You may like the lessons, or think them irrelevant and stupid."

— Seneca Wolf Clan Teaching Lodge



"Life itself is your teacher, and you are in a state of constant learning."

— Bruce Lee



"Human incarnation os not simply an opportunity to learn, but rather an obligation to participate in humankind's condition, purpose, and responsibilities."

— Anderson Reed, from Shouting at the Wolf (p. 9)



"One of the greatest sins is the unlived life."

— John O'Donohue



"Dost thou love life? Then do not squander time, for that is the stuff life is made of."

— Benjamin Franklin, from Poor Richard's Almanac



"All the things that used to bother me are so small and silly. I know what life is worth, now I've seen so much death."

— unknown Israeli paratrooper



"Life is a tragedy for those who feel, and a comedy for those who think."

— Jean de la Bruyere



"Life is the span of time appointed for accomplishment. Every fleeting moment is an opportunity, and those who are great are the ones who have recognized life as the opportunity for all things."

— Manly P. Hall



"Human beings are afraid of dying. They are always running after something: money, honor, pleasure. But if you had to die right now, what would you want?"

— Taisen Deshimaru



"Dreams are real while they last. Can we say any more of life?"

— Havelock Ellis



"Life is real! Life is earnest!

And the grave is not its goal."

— Longfellow



"Life is not a spectacle or a feast; it is a predicament."

— George Santayana



"You've never lived until you've almost died. For those who have had to fight for it, life has a flavour the protected will never know."

— Theodore Roosevelt



"Everybody dies, but not everybody lives."

— Thomas Lynch



"All life is an experiment."

— Ralph Waldo Emerson



"It was easy to read the message in his entrails. Man was matter, that was (his) secret. Drop him out a window and he'll fall. Set fire to him and he'll burn. Bury him and he'll rot, like other kinds of garbage. The spirit gone, man is garbage."

— Joseph Heller, from Catch-22 (p. 554)



". . . the stoics regarded life as a difficult voyage in which most men are shipwrecked; they felt that man's only chance of escaping shipwreck was through reason and self-discipline."

— Colin Wilson



"Life is suffering."

— Buddha



"Although the world is full of suffering, it is also full of the overcoming of it."

— Helen Keller



"We are not human beings having a spiritual experience. We are spiritual beings having a human experience."

— Pierre Teilhard de Chardin



"Our truest life is when we are in dreams awake."

— Henry David Thoreau



"Life does not accommodate you, it shatters you. It is meant to, and it couldn't do it better. Every seed destroys its container or else there would be no fruition."

— Florida Scott-Maxwell, from The Measure of My Days



"I am one of those people who just can't help getting a kick out of life — even when it's a kick in the teeth."

— Polly Adler, from A House Is Not a Home



"Life is an illusion."

— Mata Hari, as she prepared to meet the firing squad in 1917



"Life was meant to be lived, and curiosity must be kept alive. One must never, for whatever reason, turn his back on life."

— Eleanor Roosevelt



"Life is either a daring adventure or nothing. To keep our faces toward change and behave like free spirits in the presence of fate is strength undefeatable."

— Helen Keller



"What, after all, is human life if not a continuous performance in which all go about wearing different masks, in which everyone acts a part assigned to him until the stage director removes him from the boards?"

— Erasmus



"Once weaned from the ephemeral craving for TV, most people will find they enjoy the time they spend reading. I'd like to suggest that turning off that endlessly quacking box is apt to improve the quality of your life as well as the quality of your writing."

— Stephen King, from On Writing (p. 148)



"Life is better than death, I believe, if only because it is less boring, and because it has fresh peaches in it."

— Alice Walker



"Life, being sacred, demands our full participation."

— Starhawk, from Dreaming the Dark (p. 42)



"Death belongs to life as birth does. The walk is in the raising of the foot as in the laying of it down."

— Rabindranath Tagore, from Stray Birds (CCLXVII)



"What would the engineer say, after you had explained your problem and enumerated all of the dissatisfactions in your life? He would probably tell you that life is a very hard and complicated thing; that no interface can change that; that anyone who believes otherwise is a sucker; and that if you don't like having choices made for you, you should start making your own."

— Neal Stephenson, from In the Beginning . . . Was the Command Line (p. 151)



"People say that what we're all seeking is a meaning for life. I don't think that's what we're really seeking. I think that what we're seeking is an experience of being alive, so that our life experiences on the purely physical plane will have resonances within our innermost being and reality, so that we actually feel the rapture of being alive."

— Joseph Campbell, from The Power of Myth

[Cain]

PSEUDOSPECIATION



"Pseudospeciation is the ability to assign inferior and subhuman qualities to one's enemy."

— unknown



"Sometimes people denigrate others to justify maltreatment of them. To reassure ourselves that the things we do and the lives we lead are proper, we rationalize our actions. We can feel justified in discriminating, subjugating, enslaving, or even killing others, if we are able to convince ourselves that the other group is inferior, immoral, or less than human."

— from the textbook Contemporary Social Problems, 2nd edition (p. 257)



"Most people believe that it is wrong to kill another human being, yet we send our young off to war and expect them to rapidly change their beliefs and begin killing on command. To facilitate this change, we often use new words, commonly racist in nature."

— from The Warrior's Edge, by Col. John B. Alexander, Major Richard Groller, and Janet Morris (p. 24)



"To poison the mind of an individual against some other individual is an easy, all-too-common practice — so common that the phrase describing it is familiar in all languages. . . . Poisoning group minds against other groups is an equally familiar phenomenon. Common metaphors frequently conceal deep metaphysical truths. The term 'spellbinder' — originally applied only to an actual witch or sorcerer — has become a common appellation for the rabble-rousing orator. Baboon talk, direct in its appeal to the emotions, short-circuiting the mind and substituting 'feeling' for 'thinking' sets nations at each other's throats. Adolf Hitler was a bloodier witch and weaver of evil incantations than the foulest witch in any German fairy tale."

— William Seabrook, from Witchcraft (p. 84)



"The key to success is the fact that most barroom brawlers and marauding motorists share a common failing: they're assholes."

— N. Mashiro, Ph.D.



"There is good clinical evidence for the assumption that destructive aggression occurs, at least to a large degree, in conjunction with a momentary or chronic emotional withdrawal."

— Erich Fromm



"The will to kill, the complete lack of sympathy and compassion, and no hesitation in killing the subject, is paramount. You must take his life as detachedly as you might swat a fly or crush an ant."

— John Minnery



"When I was killing the enemy I was killing a commie. . . . Oh, maybe the first time I saw a dead North Vietnamese I flinched a bit but after that they just became dead animals. It was either he'd shoot me or I'd shoot him and I wasn't shooting at a person. I was shooting at a bunch of ideologies."

— Simon Cole



"I've noticed that the putrid punks and other throwbacks who wander the streets of latter day civilization devise weapons quite similar in construction to stone axes and pikes . . . they are as deadly as the bludgeons and flint knives that earlier savages created from the shadows of their bestial and soulless minds."

— Fred Rexer, Jr.



"All these people start filing out of the bar — they're winos, street people, buzzards, lowlifes. They really are skeletons. Scumbags, street urchins; they're white, black; their teeth are rotted."

— Bill McCarthy



"Slime, sleaze, rejects. Crooked, bent, needing to straighten out. Rascals, hooligans, thieves, scoundrels. Corrupt, rotten, stinking. Shitheads, assholes. People with no respect for the law, the straight and narrow, the right way, the one way. People who don't fear God or man. Animals, perverts, dogs, mongrels, coyotes. Mixed-up, confused, crazy, insane, psychopathic. Wayward souls, lost souls, ingrates. Butchers, skull-bashers, cold-blooded murderers. Cold as ice — they'd rob their own mothers."

— Jerry Fjerkenstad



"They peep out from under cardboard crates, cursing me under their breath. They parade up and down the street day after day, year after year, screaming at invisible foes. Their hearts are pumping, but their brains are stalled. Their minds are warped from booze, neglect, religion, and war. They contribute nothing to society. Their unnecessary lives are carried out on a dead-end street."

— Debbie Goad



"By thinking abstractly, and identifying your opponent as something 'subhuman' (for example: a goblin, troll, zombie, or caveman), it is possible to achieve a killer mindset in short order. By visualizing such a loathsome creature standing before you, you will automatically expect to be lied to and misdirected prior to your attempted victimization, so it is highly unlikely that you will be tricked or surprised. Furthermore, you will not hesitate to respond to a perceived threat, and you will strive to inflict maximum damage forthwith."

— C. R. Jahn, from Hardcore Self-Defense (p. 12)



"When you have your boot on someone's neck, you have to justify it. The justification has to be their depravity."

— Noam Chomsky

[Cain]

WORLD WAR III



"Mankind must put an end to war, or war will put an end to mankind."

— this quote has been attributed to both John F. Kennedy and Martin Luther King Jr.



"It seems politically impossible for a capitalist democracy to organize expenditure on the scale necessary to make the grand experiment which would prove my case — except in war conditions."

— John Maynard Keynes



"World War III will be a guerilla information war, with no division between military and civilian participation."

— Marshall McLuhan



"While in theory there is nothing which is absolutely inevitable, in actuality there are things which are almost inevitable. People believe that wars happen in the future, whereas in reality they happen in the past; the fighting is only a consequence of many events which have already occurred. Viewed from this perspective, all the causes of the Third World War have already happened. There is therefore only a very remote possibility that the conflict itself will not take place."

— Osho



"I don't know what weapons will be used in World War III, but I do know World War IV will be fought with spears and clubs!"

— Albert Einstein



"There will be entirely new weapons. In one day more men will die than in all previous wars combined. . . . Gigantic catastrophes will occur. . . . The third great war will be the end of many nations."

— Stormberger (18th c.)



"The whole country will become so utterly desolated and depopulated that the crow of a cock shall not be heard, deer and other animals shall be exterminated by horrid black rain."

— Brahan Seer (1665)



"If only one-third of humanity will survive it is better!"

— Meishu-Sama (1955)

[Cain]

DISHONOR



"There are mistakes too monstrous for remorse . . ."

— Edwin Arlington Robinson



"When honour's lost, 'tis a relief to die;

Death's but a sure retreat from infamy."

— Samuel Garth



"There is a boundary in each man. He can eat crow and brown-nose to an extent. He can shuck the Man for a while, become a good "actor." But when a man goes beyond the last essential boundary, it alters his ontology, so to speak. It's like the small pebble that starts a landslide no-one can stop. You can betray the pigs until, lo, you've betrayed yourself. You want to survive so badly, to be free of violence so terribly, you will literally do anything after you start across that boundary. You'll allow anyone to order you around. You'll let your ma, wife, kids die just to stay alive yourself. You'll wallow in the gutter of man's soul to live. You'll suck every cock in the cellhouse to "get along". There is nothing you won't do."

— Jack Henry Abbott



"This is the punishment of a liar: He is not believed even when he speaks the truth."

— Babylonian Talmud



"Lying was not condemned as sin, but simply denounced as weakness, and, as such, highly dishonorable."

— Nitobe, on bushido



"There smites nothing so sharp, nor smelleth so sour

As shame."

— William Langland



"To do injustice is more disgraceful than to suffer it."

— Plato



"He will find ways to disrupt your family life or damage your standing at work. He will do things like start painful rumors or manipulate people around you through lies and deception. His motive is to get others to harm you for him. He doesn't care if you are harmed physically, emotionally, or financially."

— Edward Lewis, from Hostile Ground (p. 11)



"Mother, your eyes have gone suddenly cold,

And it wasn't what I was expecting.

Once I did think that I'd find comfort there,

And instead you've gone hard and suspecting. . ."

— Suzanne Vega, from "Bad Wisdom"



"We should not pity or pardon those who have yielded to great temptation, or, perchance, great provocation. Besides, it is right that our sympathies should be kept for the injured."

— Benjamin Disraeli



"Truthfulness has never been counted among the political virtues, and lies have always been regarded as justifiable tools in political dealings."

— Hannah Arendt, from Crises of the Republic



"Of course the ideal samurai was as rare as the courteous knight. In both Europe and Japan a satiric literature chronicles the misdeeds of these 'sacred' warriors. Sadistic cruelty, an exaggerated sense of personal honor, or just plain foolishness was the stuff of these satires."

— Robert Moore & Douglas Gillette, from The Warrior Within (p. 84)



"I know that we all stumble down dark paths and we don't quite know what to make of life. But if you are reading this and you ever get to the point in your life where you want to fuck or murder a kid, forget prison. You've got to kill yourself."

— Dennis Miller, from Comic Relief (p. 144)



"Having the thoughts is sick. Acting on those thoughts is evil."

— Andrew Vachss



"Lying is an accursed vice. It is only our words which bind us together and make us human. If we realized the horror and weight of lying, we would see it as more worthy of the stake than other crimes."

— Montaigne



"Remember the Oliver North trial? Even though years have passed, I can't figure that one out. He was dismissed from the military, right? But when he went to court he wore his uniform. Now I've been fired from a lot of jobs, but you don't see me tooling around in my Burger King outfit."

— Bob Goldthwait, from Comic Relief (p. 178)



"Don't step on your dick."

— old biker sayin'

[Cain]

COWARDICE



"To see what is right and to not do it is want of courage."

— Confucius



"Lying is not so much an act of immorality as it is one of cowardice."

— Forrest E. Morgan



"A sword is useless in the hands of a coward."

— unknown



"Experience shows that in the overwhelming majority of cases the sadist is a coward, incapable of sacrificing himself."

— Victor Suvorov



"The attacker is generally a coward who either fights under the influence of alcohol or drugs or attacks from the rear, possibly with a weapon or an accomplice(s) or both."

— Geoff Thompson



"If you love wealth better than liberty, the tranquility of servitude better than the animating contest of freedom, go home from us in peace. We ask not your counsels or arms. Crouch down and lick the hands which feed you; may your chains set lightly upon you and may posterity forget that ye were our countrymen."

— Samuel Adams (1776)



"A cowardly man thinks he will live forever

If he can avoid fighting

But old age will give him no mercy

Though he be spared by spears"

— from Havamal, verse 16, Plowright translation



"Despair and postponement are cowardice and defeat. Man were born to succeed, not to fail."

— Henry David Thoreau



"I've got no problem with pacifists — as long as they're willing to use limited violence against criminals who would deliberately harm those whose safety they're directly responsible for. If a man won't stand up to defend a woman or child, then he's nothing but a fucking coward — philosophical bullshit aside."

— anonymous (RWT)



"Ridicule is a weak weapon, when leveled at a strong mind; But common men are cowards and dread an empty laugh."

— Martin Farquhar Tupper



"A coward threatens when he is safe."

— Johann Wolfgang von Goethe



"Don't be a wussy!"

— Papa Titus