Useless quote for 14 June:

"I do not ask that you place hands upon the tyrant to topple him over, but simply that you support him no longer …"

Étienne de La Boétie, "Discourse on Voluntary Servitude" (1548)

Useless quote for 13 June:

"It is not the extent of their information that appalls; it is the absence of any reflection upon it, any sense of relation between it and them and the world."

~ Jacques Barzun, "The Culture We Deserve" (Wesleyan University Press, 1989)

Useless quote for 12 June:

"DUTY, n. That which sternly impels us in the direction of profit, along the line of desire."

~ Ambrose Bierce, in "The Cynic's Dictionary" (1906), later in "The Devil's Dictionary" (1911).

Useless quote for 11 July:

"The rulers wanted to fool us,
since they saw we were connected with the good."

~ The Gospel of Philip (trans. Dr. Barnstone, 2003)

Link to source:
http://www.gnosis.org/naghamm/GPhilip-Barnstone.html

Useless quote for 9 June:

"Who we see on stage, and whose stories we tell, speaks to who we value in society."

~ Karen Zacarías, in a 14 September 2015 article, "Interview: A Date with DESTINY: Talking with Playwright Karen Zacarías" (Broadway World, Washington DC)

Link to source:
https://www.broadwayworld.com/washington-dc/article/BWW-Interview-A-Date-with-DESTINY-Talking-with-Playwright-Karen-Zacaras-20150914

Useless quote for June 8:

"Others are basically saying that cooperating with a foreign dictator is no big deal if it protects us against real threats, like universal health care."

~ Paul Krugman, in his Op-Ed piece "The New Climate of Treason", The New York Times, 14 July 2017

Link to source:
https://archive.nytimes.com/krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2017/07/14/the-new-climate-of-treason/

Useless quote for 7 June:

"There can be no gradualist, ecomodernist answer to the dire ecological problems we face, because when looking at the human effect on the planet there is nothing gradual about it; it is a Great Acceleration and a rift in the Earth system."

~ John Bellamy Foster, in a 2 July 2017 interview with "Left Voice"

Link to source:
https://www.leftvoice.org/A-Resistance-Movement-for-the-Planet-Full-Interview/

Useless quote for 6 June:

"Racist, erratic and unpredictable, brutal, inept, bellicose, irrational, ridiculous, and militaristic."

U.S. Ambassador Thomas Patrick Melady, in a January 2, 1973, telegram from the U.S. Embassy in Uganda to the U.S. Department of State

Link to source (PDF of telegram):
https://web.archive.org/web/20060610225610/http://www.state.gov/documents/organization/67103.pdf

Useless quote for 5 June:

"[Hiraeth] is an unattainable longing for a place, a person, a figure, even a national history that may never have actually existed."

~ Pamela Petro, in "Dreaming in Welsh", The Paris Review Sep 18, 2012

NB: "hireath" is pronounced “here-eyeth” (with a rolled “r”).

Link to source:
https://www.theparisreview.org/blog/2012/09/18/dreaming-in-welsh/

Useless quote for 4 June:

"My hair!"

~ Donald J. Trump's response to the question 'If you could change one thing about yourself, what would it be?' in Vanity Fair's "Proust Questionnaire", 1 Sep 2004

Link to source:
https://www.vanityfair.com/culture/2004/09/donald-trump-proust-questionnaire

Useless quote for 3 Jun:

"American birders use a nice shorthand expression for such an epiphany: 'the spark bird' – the encounter that switched on the nature-loving light."

Mark Cocker, in "Review: A Curious Boy: The Making of a Scientist by Richard Fortey", The Guardian 18 March 2021

Link to source:
https://www.theguardian.com/books/2021/mar/18/a-curious-boy-by-richard-fortey-review-the-making-of-a-scientist

Useless quote for 2 Jun 2025:

"Authoritarianism corrupts society."

~ Shadi Hamid, in "Why the Russian People Go Along With Putin’s War", The Atlantic, 23 April 2022

Link to source (paywalled):
https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2022/04/russians-support-putin-invasion-popularity/629653/

Useless quote for 1 June:

"… mercatoresque et venales in vicen facti quaerimus non quale sit quidque, sed quanti …"

(We become alternately merchants and merchandise, and we ask, not what a thing truly is, but what it costs.
Trans. Richard M. Gummere, 1925)

~ Seneca the Younger (Lucius Annaeus Seneca the Younger), in Letter CXV to Lucius ("On the superficial blessings"), c. 65 AD

Link to source (1971 Loeb Edition, Vol. III):
https://archive.org/details/adluciliumepistu03sene/page/318/mode/2up?view=theater

Reminder:
These are called 'useless quotes' because they remain useless until we think about them.

Useless quote for 31 May:

"What is to be done with the millions of facts that bear witness that men, consciously, that is fully understanding their real interests, have left them in the background and have rushed headlong on another path, to meet peril and danger, compelled to this course by nobody and by nothing …"

~ Fyodor Dostoyevsky, in "Notes from the Underground" (1864)

Useless quote for 30 May:

"Beware of thinkers whose minds function only when they are fueled by a quotation."

~ Emil Cioran, in "Aveux et anathèmes" (1987); in English, "Anathemas and Admirations" (1991; trans. Richard Howard)

Useless quote for 29 May:

"… such a continuous stream of standardized opinion, borne along upon an equally inexhaustible flood of news and sensation, collected from every part of the world every hour of the day, that there is neither the need nor the leisure for personal reflection. All this is but a part of a tremendous educating process. But it is an education which passes in at one ear and out at the other."

~ Winston Churchill, in his essay "Mass Effects in Modern Life" (1 Dec 1925)

Link to source:
https://winstonchurchill.org/resources/speeches/1915-1929-nadir-and-recovery/mass-effects-in-modern-life/

Useless quote for 28 May:

"The trees shed abundant fruit, and round their feet the earth of its own accord put forth flowers from the tender grass."

~ Rhodius Apollonius, "The Argonautica" c. 3 BCE (trans. R. C. Seaton, 1912)

Useless quote for 27 May:

"In the products of the culture industry human beings get into trouble only so that they can be rescued unharmed, usually by representatives of a benevolent collective; and then in empty harmony, they are reconciled with the general, whose demands they had experienced at the outset as irreconcilable with their interests."

~ Theodor W. Adorno, "The Culture industry: Selected essays on mass culture" (Routledge, 1991)

Useless quote for 26 May:

"You do not wipe away the scars of centuries by saying, 'Now you are free to go where you want, and do as you desire, and choose the leaders you please.' "

~ Lyndon B. Johnson, in his 4 June 1965 Commencement Address at Howard University