A Quote by Don DeLillo

I think if you maintain a force in the world that comes into people's sleep, you are exercising a meaningful power. — © Don DeLillo
I think if you maintain a force in the world that comes into people's sleep, you are exercising a meaningful power.
As a German philosopher writing in the aftermath of the Nazi regime, Marcuse understood the sleep inducing force of indoctrination, its power to make people forget and forfeit their own real interests. "The fact that the vast majority of the population accepts, and is made to accept, this society does not render it less irrational and less reprehensible," he wrote. "The distinction between true and false consciousness, real and immediate interest still is meaningful."
There is between sleep and us something like a pact, a treaty with no secret clauses, and according to this convention it is agreed that, far from being a dangerous, bewitching force, sleep will become domesticated and serve as an instrument of our power to act. We surrender to sleep, but in the way that the master entrusts himself to the slave who serves him.
Another option, which I think is the thing that makes more sense, is this fact that the police are a reflection of the occupation of certain neighborhoods and certain parts of cities that are designed, basically, to keep the bottom down and basically maintain the status quo, but out of sight, so that the other side - the people in power, the people with money, the people with comfort, the people that are living in the "safer" areas - are sure that they can sleep safely in their bed while bad thing are happening to people and it's not their problem.
Exercising power can do strange things to people. You can become convinced that you're irreplaceable. You can become convinced that you're always right. And I think the danger is the longer you stay in power, the more likely that is to happen.
How you choose to present yourself to the world shows what's meaningful to you - and what you want others to think is meaningful to you.
The base of all artistic genius is the power of conceiving humanity in a new, striking, rejoicing way, of putting a happy world ofits own creation in place of the meaner world of common days, of generating around itself an atmosphere with a novel power of refraction, selecting, transforming, recombining the images it transmits, according to the choice of the imaginative intellect. In exercising this power, painting and poetry have a choice of subject almost unlimited.
The meaningful times, the meaningful people, even the people who were not so meaningful, but these people who have done things in your life that make you what you are, they're bricks in the building that you are.
The students I've been with these twenty years are looking for a world where it becomes a little easier to love and a lot harder to hate, where learning nonviolence means that we dedicate our hearts, minds, time, and money to a commitment that the force of love, the force of truth, the force of justice, and the force of organized resistance to corrupt power are seen as sane and the force of fists, guns, armies, and bombs insane.
I believe that there is a greater power in the world than the evil power of military force, of nuclear bombs -- there is the power of good, of morality, of humanitarianism.
When you vote, you are exercising political authority, you're using force. And force, my friends, is violence. The supreme authority from which all other authorities are derived.
I believe military force can be used to redress or change the balance of power in the world, but I think that that's always a losing operation if you're not trying to do it in a way which corresponds to the basic desires of the people on whom you are acting.
Those in power have made it so we have to pay simply to exist on the planet. We have to pay for a place to sleep, and we have to pay for food. If we don't, people with guns come and force us to pay. That's violent.
So much of what people think about when they think about health is primary care, but health is so much more than that. Health is about the decisions you make everyday. It's about where you sleep. It's about are you exercising, it's about what you eat.
I think Chinese leadership is trying to tell the world they have another set of logic or reasoning or values which are different from yours. Of course, I don't think they believe that. It's just an argument that's made when you can't confront the truth and facts. They really want to maintain power.
I believe that I'm a hillbilly in my values and in my attitudes, and I don't want to lose that. I think it's possible to maintain a big chunk of that identity so long as you're self-reflective and meaningful about it.
I think that Bill and Hillary Clinton have a very special relationship and I think in very many ways to them it's a very satisfying relationship. I think that it's a mutual respect with a goal of power to achieve, maintain power. And I think that they have been good partners in that.
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