“Plowing like a Negro” is actually the way to success”

“Our success and how well we develop in life is greatly influenced by our perceptions, responses and decisions during challenging times”

“Our future success is directly proportional to our ability to understand, adopt and integrate new technology into our work.”

“Earlier adopters will be ultimate winners.”

“[The] tremendous and still accelerating development of science and technology has not been accompanied by an equal development in social, economic, and political patterns…We are now…only beginning to explore the potentialities which it offers for developments in our culture outside technology, particularly in the social, political and economic fields. It is safe to predict that…such social inventions as modern-type Capitalism, Fascism, and Communism will be regarded as primitive experiments directed toward the adjustment of modern society to modern methods”

“We’re part of a culture where everything is measured by money, fame and sex. It’s a religion.”

“The most powerful force ever known on this planet is human cooperation — a force for construction and destruction.”

“There is no problem with the wider culture that you cannot see in the spades in the Christian Church. The rot is in us, and not simple out there. And Christians are making a great mistake by turning everything into culture wars. It’s a much deeper crisis.”

“A religion is a system of symbols which acts to establish powerful, pervasive, and long-lasting moods in men by formulating conceptions of a general order of existence and clothing those conceptions with such an aura of factuality that the moods and motivations seem uniquely realistic.”

“Fundamentalism’s strident denunciation of its opponents is a sign of its weakness, its dogmatic authoritarianism is a pathological mutation of faith.”

“Culture is religion externalized.”

“Another important consequence in the arrival of digital technology and its facilitation of feedback is that we can look at large systems and recognize them once more not only as part of ourselves, but also as components that can change… Now, though, we live in a world where text is fluid, where is responds to our instructions. Writing something down records it, but does not make it true or permanent. So why should we put up with a system we don’t like simply because it’s been written somewhere?”

“The things you experience are written on your cells as memories and patterns, which are reprinted again on the next generation. And even if you never lift a shovel or plant a cabbage, every day of your life something is written upon you. And when you die, the entirety of that written record returns to the earth. All we have on this earth, all we are, is a record. Maybe the only things that persist are not the evildoers and demons (though, admittedly, they do have a certain longevity) but copies of things. The original has long since passed away from this universe, but on and on we copy.”

“All trademarks, company names, registered names, products, characters, mottos, logos, jingles and catchphrases used or cited in this work are the property of their respective owners and have only been mentioned and or used as cultural references to enhance the narrative and in no way were used to disparage or harm the owners and their companies. It is the author’s sincerest wish the owners of the cited trademarks, company names, etc. appreciate the success they have achieved in making their products household names and appreciate the free plug.”

“Ours is a culture and a time immensely rich in trash as it is in treasures.”