Quis Custodiet Ipsos Custodes?

I have this Word document I use as a sort of notepad, where I keep all sorts of things that interest me. It's where I have conveniently located the full text of the Declaration of Independence, the Black Panthers' Ten Point Program, the lyrics to "Scarborough Fair" (give 'em a read, they're creepy), and "Jabberwocky" (I love portsmanteaux). "Quis Custodiet Ipsos Custodes" - "Who Watches the Watchmen," roughly - is the title of this document, because it was after seeking out the accurate latinate translation that I got into grabbing these things wherever I saw them. Looking on it now, full as it is, I realize that the document offers a strange sort of insight into what I consider important, what interests me about what and how other people think, and what artistry and sophistry really touch or inspire me.

Things not listed below: the aforementioned ballad and narrative; Yeats' "The Second Coming;" "The Walrus and the Carpenter;" lots of Shakespeare (because love is not love which alters where it alteration finds). President Andrew Shepard's (Michael Douglas) final monologue from The American President.

These are a few of the quotes I found particularly interesting.

• "Liberalism is not so much a party creed or set of fixed platform promises as it is an attitude of mind and heart, a faith in man's ability through the experiences of his reason and judgment to increase for himself and his fellow men the amount of justice and freedom and brotherhood which all human life deserves." -- Sen. John F. Kennedy, September 14, 1960

• Love the earth and sun and the animals, despise riches, give alms to everyone that asks, stand up for the stupid and crazy, devote your income and labor to others, hate tyrants, argue not concerning God, have patience and indulgence toward the people, take off your hat to nothing known or unknown, or to any man or number of men [sic] — go freely with powerful uneducated persons, and with the young, and with the mothers or families — re-examine all you have been told in school or church or in any book, and dismiss whatever insults your own soul; and your very flesh shall be a great poem, and have the richest fluency, not only in its words, but in the silent lines of its lips and face, and between the lashes of your eyes, and in every motion and joint of your body. –Walt Whitman

• We were founded on a very basic double standard. This country was founded by slave owners who wanted to be free. Am I right? A group of slave owners who wanted to be free, so they killed a lot of white English people in order to continue owning their black African people, so they could wipe out the rest of the red Indian people and move west and steal the rest of the land from the brown Mexican people, giving them a place to take off and drop their nuclear weapons on the yellow Japanese people. You know what the motto of this country ought to be? You give us a color, we'll wipe it out. –George Carlin

• “Being powerful is like being a lady. If you have to tell someone you are, you aren’t.” – Margaret Thatcher

• "Here lies the demon of screamin,' who never woke up from the dream he was dreamin'. Until one day he took a magic potion and all that remained was Sweet Emotion." --Steven Tyler’s tombstone

• Odi et amo. Quare id faciam, fortasse requiris? Nescio, sed fieri sentio et excrucior. (I hate and I love. Why do I do this, perhaps you ask? I know not; but I feel it happening and I am tortured.)

• Life is 10% how you make it, and 90% how you take it. --Irving Berlin

• One of the many major problems with governing people is that of whom you get to do it; or rather of who manages to get people to let them do it to them. To summarize: it is a well known fact, that those people who most want to rule people are, ipso facto, those least suited to do it. To summarize the summary: anyone who is capable of getting themselves made president should on no account be allowed to do the job. To summarize the summary of the summary: people are a problem. --Douglas Adams

• “Two things fill the mind with ever new and increasing admiration and awe, the oftener and more steadily we reflect on them, the starry heavens above and the moral law within.” – Immanuel Kant

• "The starry heavens above me / The moral law within: / So the world appears /...through this mist of tears" --Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds
  

• The dogmas of the quiet past are inadequate to the stormy present. The occasion is piled high with difficulty and we must rise to the occasion. We cannot escape history. We will be remembered in spite of ourselves. The fiery trial through which we pass will light us down, in honor or dishonor, to the last generation. We shall nobly save, or meanly lose our last, best hope of Earth. --Lincoln

That's just a taste. My purpose with this blog is to give myself a vent for my constantly churning opinions and beliefs; to share with others any interesting things I might come across on the Internets - the whole big mess a' wires'n'cords'n'things - and why I find them interesting. It's a way of doing this without cluttering people's Facebook mini-feeds or Google Reader inboxes. Much.

There will also be much love shown to, and discourse drawn from, the webcomic Questionable Content - so if you haven't gotten at least a taste, go straightaway and do so now. Jeph Jacques doesn't know it, but he will be my muse. You just can't not respond when you read him.

That's all I've got by way of introduction. Enjoy.