"[The Olympics are] an event manipulated into misleading people into believing that we have entered a new, successful and harmonious period in our history. This is not true."
--
Kirby, Simon. “Truth to Power.” Index on Censorship 37:2 (May 2008), 20–34. http://www.indexoncensorship.org/wp-content/uploads/2008/12/ai-weiwei_a_309689.pdfAi Weiwei
The luge is the only Olympic event where you could have people competing in it against their will, and it would look exactly the same. Take people off the street, "Hey, hey, hey, what is this?! I don't wanna be in the luge!" Once you put that helmet on them, "You're in the luge, buddy!" "aaaAAAaaaAAAaaaAAA...aaaAAAAA..." World record. Didn't even wanna do it. I'd like to see that next Olympics, the Involuntary Luge.
Jerry Seinfeld
The interlacedness of the two heterogeneous origins [Remark: This refers to the origins of governance: (1) necessity to work cooperatively, (2) the fight between man and man] prevails as the fundamental characteristic of governance. Therefore even any true community, being successful somewhere between boundaries for a common purpose, elsewhere becomes in theory a means for misleading, used to interpret and cover-up actually existing power. Again and again things are named by their contrary and are hidden. In that manner, under the pretense of communication - the open discussion - people are interrogated and commands are given, under the pretense of freedom and voluntariness behavior is enforced, in the coat of pure ethics the evil is carried out, under the pretense of truth lies and fraud are committed, and all values valid at any one time are, depending on the situation, either applied or ignored. [Remarks: "Herrschaft" = "governance" or "leadership", "Gewalt" = "power" or "violence"]
Karl Jaspers
The Gospels contain a fairy-story, or a story of a larger kind which embraces all the essence of fairy-stories. ... But this story has entered History and the primary world; ... It has pre-eminently the "inner consistency of reality." There is no tale ever told that men would rather find was true, and none which so many sceptical men have accepted as true on its own merits. For the Art of it has the supremely convincing tone of Primary Art, that is, of Creation. ...this story is supreme; and it is true. Art has been verified. God is the Lord, of angels, and of men — and of elves. Legend and History have met and fused.
J. R. R. Tolkien
I remind young people everywhere I go, one of the worst things the older generation did was to tell them for twenty-five years "Be successful, be successful, be successful" as opposed to "Be great, be great, be great". There's a qualitative difference.
Cornel West
I am unable to watch the Olympics due to the blustering jingoism that drenches the event. Has England ever been quite so foul with patriotism? The "dazzling royals" have, quite naturally, hi-jacked the Olympics for their own empirical needs, and no oppositional voice is allowed in the free press. It is lethal to witness. As London is suddenly promoted as a super-wealth brand, the England outside London shivers beneath cutbacks, tight circumstances and economic disasters. Meanwhile the British media present 24-hour coverage of the "dazzling royals", laughing as they lavishly spend, as if such coverage is certain to make British society feel fully whole. In 2012, the British public is evidently assumed to be undersized pigmies, scarcely able to formulate thought.
Morrissey
Weiwei, Ai
Weldon, Fay
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