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I had a prof one time... He said, "Class, you will forget almost everything I will teach you in here, so please remember this: that God spoke to Balaam through his ass, and He has been speaking through asses ever since. So, if God should choose to speak through you, you need not think too highly of yourself. And, if on meeting someone, right away you recognize what they are, listen to them anyway."
--
Lufkin, Texas (July 19, 1997)

 

Rich Mullins

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What of the tale of Balaam's ass speaking to him, probably in Hebrew? Is it true, or is it a fable? Many asses have spoken, and doubtless some in Hebrew, but they have not been that breed of asses. Is salvation to depend on a belief in a monstrosity like this?

 

Clarence Darrow

 

Do you remember that in classical times when Cicero had finished speaking, the people said, "How well he spoke" but when Demosthenes had finished speaking, they said, "Let us march."

 

Demosthenes

 

"You fought for the knife?"
"Yes, but — "
"Then you're a warrior. That's what you are. Argue with anything else, but don't argue with your own nature."
Will knew that the man was speaking the truth. But it wasn't a welcome truth. It was heavy and painful. The man seemed to know that, because he let Will bow his head before he spoke again.
"There are two great powers," the man said, "and they've been fighting since time began. Every advance in human life, every scrap of knowledge and wisdom and decency we have has been torn by one side from the teeth of the other. Every little increase in human freedom has been fought over ferociously between those who want us to know more and be wiser and stronger, and those who want us to obey and be humble and submit."
"And now those two powers are lining up for battle. And each of them wants that knife of yours more than anything else. You have to choose, boy. We've been guided here, both of us — you with the knife, and me to tell you about it."

 

Philip Pullman

 

Traditionally the gaze was conceived as a way of fingering, of touching. The old Greeks spoke about looking as a way of sending out my psychopodia, my soul's limbs, to touch your face and establish a relationship between the two of us. This relationship was called vision. Then, after Galileo, the idea developed that the eyes are receptors into which light brings something from the outside, keeping you separate from me even when I look at you. People began to conceive of their eyes as some kind of camera obscura. In our age people conceive of their eyes and actually use them as if they were part of a machinery. They speak about interface. Anybody who says to me, "I want to have an interface with you," I say, "please go somewhere else, to a toilet or wherever you want, to a mirror." Anybody who says, "I want to communicate with you," I say, "Can't you talk? Can't you speak? Can't you recognize that there's a deep otherness between me and you, so deep that it would be offensive for me to be programmed in the same way you are."

 

Ivan Illich

 

We on the left keep dividing ourselves into little splinter groups. "Anyone who isn't a vegetarian is automatically evil!" "Anyone who isn't an environmentalist wants to pollute the world!" "If you're not gay, then you must be homophobic!" "Look at me wrong? You're a racist!" "Wear lipstick? You can't be a feminist!" Divide, Divide, Divide, Divide, Divide! And while the left is all up their own asses with their little pet causes, the right comes in and takes control over that which is rightly everyone's. And speaking of splinters, most pathetic of all: "The only thing that matters in the entire universe is the punk rock scene! And you're an evil, sell-out traitor to the sacred punk rock scene if you disagree with anything I say, listen to music that I don't like, dress funny, dress normal, laugh without permission, or even so much as speak to another artist who ever made a dime off of their years of hard work without at least beating them up first!"...how pathetic is that? Every day, I walk from my home to the offices of Alternative Tentacles, and I lose count of the number of people, including entire families, holding up cardboard signs saying "Homeless: Will Work for Food"! Hard as it may be for some crybabies to believe, people in that situation could care less that "Green Day and The Offspring sold out when they signed to major labels."! Other things are more important!

 

Jello Biafra