‎"He who joyfully marches to music in rank and file has already earned my contempt. He has been given a large brain by mistake, since for him the spinal cord would fully suffice. This disgrace to civilization should be done away with at once. Heroism at command, senseless brutality, and all the loathsome nonsense that goes by the name of patriotism, how violently I hate all this, how despicable and ignoble war is; I would rather be torn to shreds than be part of so base an action! It is my conviction that killing under the cloak of war is nothing but an act of murder." - Albert Einstein

"Self-knowledge is like lost innocence, however unsettling you find it; it can never be un-thought or un-known" - Michael Sandel

State of Mind

as kids we ask ourselves the question - what on earth are we born to do! Not of course with the curious, aspirational exaltation...but with that submissive, disillusioned desperation. Many years and many a moments of truth later we realise that there isn't much really. While the realisation sets a lot of us on the right path complete with fast cars, lovely women and other worldly vices, it chokes the last morsels of hope out of a lot of others. Most of these others then reach for superior altitudes, inferior intoxicants and ulterior habitat. It is the rest of these others however that are most severely compromised in the process. This lot is borne by contradictions. They just wont run hard enough nor quit.....