Reprise of a Couple Quotes

Here are a couple quotes from some old posts. Some favorutes of mine worth revisiting every now and then

 First one was written in the 1930s, published in the early 1940s:

"A civilization which for any reason puts a human life at a disadvantage; or a civilization which can exist only by putting human life at a disadvantage; is worthy neither of the name nor of continuance. And a human being whose life is nurtured in an advantage which has accrued from the disadvantage of other human beings, and who prefers that this should remain as it is, is a human being by definition only, having much more in common with the bedbug, the tapeworm, the cancer, and the scavengers of the deep sea."

James Agee,  Let Us Now Praise Famous Men

Written in the 1930s but could just as well describe today's 1%: 

"For these men were all the victims of an occupational disease--a kind of mass hypnosis that denied to them the evidence of their senses.  It was a monstrous and ironic fact that the very men who had created this world in which every value was false and theatrical saw themselves, not as creatures tranced by fatal illusions, but rather as the most knowing, practical, and hard-headed men alive.  They did not see themselves as gamblers, obsessed by their own fictions of speculation, but as brilliant executives of great affairs who at every moment of the day 'had their fingers on the pulse of the nation.' So when they looked about them and saw nothing but the myriad shapes of privilege, dishonesty, and self-interest, they were convinced that this was inevitably 'the way things are."

Thomas Wolfe, You Can't Go Home Again