The Art of Tetman Callis

“The system is rigged.  Look around.  Oil companies guzzle down billions in profits.  Billionaires pay lower tax rates than their secretaries.  And Wall Street C.E.O.s—the same ones who wrecked our economy and destroyed millions of jobs—still strut around Congress, no shame, demanding favors, and acting like we should thank them.” – Senator Elizabeth Warren (quoted [...]

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“Government gets used to protect those who have already made it.  That becomes the game.  And so we had the big crash and I thought, O.K.!  We tested the alternative theory.  Cut taxes, reduce regulations and financial services, and see what happens to the economy.  We ran a thirty-year test on that and it was [...]

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“There is nobody in this country who got rich on his own.  Nobody.  You built a factory out there, good for you.  But I want to be clear.  You moved your goods to the market on the roads the rest of us paid for.  You hired workers the rest of us paid to educate.” – [...]

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“There is no absurdity so palpable that one could not fix it firmly in the head of every man on earth provided one began to imprint it before his sixth year by ceaselessly rehearsing it before him with solemn earnestness.” – Arthur Schopenhauer, “On Psychology” (trans. Hollingdale)

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“Freedom of the press is to the machinery of the state what the safety-valve is to the steam engine: every discontent is by means of it immediately relieved in words—indeed, unless this discontent is very considerable, it exhausts itself in this way.  If, however, it is very considerable, it is as well to know of [...]

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“Justice is in itself powerless: what rules by nature is force.  To draw this over on to the side of justice, so that by means of force justice rules—that is the problem of statecraft, and it is certainly a hard one.”– Arthur Schopenhauer, “On Law and Politics” (emphasis in original, trans. Hollingdale)

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“The capitalist world, and in particular the heart of it, the world of buying and selling, offers almost nothing a young man wants: the instincts of youth are at variance with the demands of business, and especially with those of clerking.  What young man is by nature diligent, sober, and regular in his habits?  Respectful [...]

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“In a society like ours, the legal system is, in a sense, a polite gesture granted collectively by millions of people–and it can be overridden just as easily as a river can overflow its banks.  Then a seeming anarchy takes over; but anarchy has its own kinds of rules, no less than does civilized society: [...]

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“What matters is that my uncle wouldn’t stop doing drugs. And that one night he got so wasted, he passed out on the railroad tracks and his friends left him there. Because there are people who will leave you on the railroad tracks and there are people who would never do something like that. Not [...]

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“You pull the pin out of a hand grenade, and in a few seconds it explodes and men in a small area get killed and wounded.  That makes bodies to be buried, hurt men to be treated.  It makes widows and fatherless children and bereaved parents.  It means pension machinery, and it makes for pacifism [...]

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“Capitalism is itself a kind of social technology, one capable of organizing and managing a massive and complex division of labor without concentrating power over the system at any one point. But it is a technology that is much better suited to some tasks than others. When maximizing the output of commodities with the least [...]

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“If it is to remain something meaningful, philosophy does not have to limit itself to describing things, it has to make things happen, it has to effectuate a change. That’s why the locus of philosophy, the place where it dwells, is not the books, nor the academic papers, but the body of the philosopher. Philosophy [...]

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“It is a dangerous thing to suddenly deprive a man of hope–he can turn violent.  It is important to kill hope slowly, so that the loser has time to adjust unconsciously to the loss.” – Alasdair Gray, Lanark (emphasis in original)

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“Neither goodness nor generosity nor courtesy can exist, any more than friendship can, if they are not sought of and for themselves, but are cultivated only for the sake of sensual pleasure or personal advantage.” – Marcus Tullius Cicero, De Officiis (trans. Miller)

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“The American brand of anti-urban, anti-immigration, anti-college sentiment is a populist strain that runs throughout American history: it’s Jefferson versus Madison. Ruralism versus urbanism, self-sufficiency versus government planning, these are rhetorical tropes trotted out by politicians at every election. No secret police enforces either of them: they are the warp and woof of our national [...]

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“We lose the subject of animals when we move out of childhood. In childhood animals are all around us, and then we throw them out. In childhood they’re everywhere, the stuff of our stories and our art and our songs, of our clothes and blankets, of toys and games. Then in adulthood they’re distant symbols [...]

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“When most people leave school they have to live by work which can’t be liked for its own sake and whose practical application is outside their grasp.  Unless they learn to work obediently because they’re told to, and for no other reason, they’ll be unfit for human society.” – Alasdair Gray, Lanark

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“A man once said in Auschwitz that indifference is the greatest sin of the 20th Century.  Well, I think it is the greatest sin of the 21st Century as well.  We need to shake off this indifference, the destructive tolerance of evil.” – Jim Caviezel, quoted in the production notes for The Stoning of Soraya [...]

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“Social media, as well as the pervasiveness of cameras and other surveillance apparatuses, have the potential to persecute anyone as though they are an undeserving celebrity due for a takedown. In a world where motion-sensitive cameras lie in wait to transmit images of your walking down the street in real time to online observers for [...]

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“Every citizen is charged with knowledge of the law.” — Judge C. Shannon Bacon

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“Let it be set down as an established principle, then, that what is morally wrong can never be expedient — not even when one secures by means of it that which one thinks expedient; for the mere act of thinking a course expedient, when it is morally wrong, is demoralizing.” – Marcus Tullius Cicero, De [...]

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“Supposing that we were bound to everything that our friends desired, such relations would have to be accounted not friendships but conspiracies.” – Marcus Tullius Cicero, De Officiis (trans. Miller)

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“It is the error of men who are not strictly upright to seize upon something that seems to be expedient and straightway to dissociate that from the question of moral right. To this error the assassin’s dagger, the poisoned cup, the forged wills owe their origin; this gives rise to theft, embezzlement of public funds, [...]

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“We need artists to work outside the establishment and start looking at the world in a different way – to start challenging preconceptions instead of reinforcing them.” — Will Gompertz (quoted by Edward Helmore and Paul Gallagher in The Guardian)

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“Those whose office it is to look after the interests of the state will refrain from that form of liberality which robs one man to enrich another. Above all, they will use their best endeavours that everyone shall be protected in the possession of his own property by the fair administration of the law and [...]

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“We must take measures that there shall be no indebtedness of a nature to endanger the public safety. It is a menace that can be averted in many ways; but should a serious debt be incurred, we are not to allow the rich to lose their property, while the debtors profit by what is their [...]

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“This is the highest statesmanship and the soundest wisdom on the part of a good citizen, not to divide the interests of the citizens but to unite all on the basis of impartial justice.” – Marcus Tullius Cicero, De Officiis (trans. Miller)

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“It is the peculiar function of the state and the city to guarantee to every man the free and undisturbed control of his own particular property.” – Marcus Tullius Cicero, De Officiis (trans. Miller)

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“I hold that an attempt to control the Senate on the part of the Executive is subversive of the principles of our Constitution. The Executive department is independent of the Senate, and the Senate is independent of the President. In maters of legislation the President has a veto on the action of the Senate, and [...]

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“We have enough objects of charity at home, and it is our duty to take care of our own poor and our own suffering, before we go abroad to intermeddle with other people’s business.” – Stephen A. Douglas, Political Debates Between Abraham Lincoln and Stephen A. Douglas

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