Ja luulen, että hienostunein elämä

on se, jota ei voida elää.

Konstantinos Kavafis(1863-1933):  Runoja(1987). Suomentanut Aapo Junkola(1935-). Sivu 40.

Time has already rendered its verdict, the verdict of the world - except for the Soviet Union, which still holds him in great respect. That Fremont was in fact closely tied to Soviet intrigue in the United States, backed in fact by Soviet interests and his strategy framed by Soviet planners, is in dispute but is nonetheless a fact. The Soviets backed him, the right-wingers backed him, and finally just about everyone, in the absence of any other candidate, backed him. Who else could they vote for?

When you consider that in effect Fremont was running against no one else, that the Democratic Party had been infiltrated by his people, spied on, wiretapped, reduced to shambles, it makes more sense. Fremont had the backing of the US intelligence community, as they liked to call themselves, and ex-agents played an effective role in decimating political opposition. In a one-party system there is always a landslide.

One asks, Why should such disparate groups as the Soviet Union and the US intelligence community back the same man? I am no political theoretician, but Nicholas one time said, 'They both like figureheads who are corrupt. So they can govern from behind. The Soviets and the fuzz, they're all for shadow governments. They always will be, because basically each of them is the man with the gun. The pistol to the head.'

No one had put a pistol to Ferris Fremont's head. He was the pistol itself, pointed at our head. Pointed at the people who had elected him. Behind him stood all the cops in the world, the left-wing cops in Russia, the right-wing cops in the United States.

Philip K. Dick(1928-1982): Radio Free Albemuth(1987; 1. painos 1985), sivu 31.

Kapitalistisen maailman ja kapitalistisen tietoisuuden ristiriitainen ykseys värähtelee elämän jokaisessa atomissa eikä anna minkään levätä eristäytyneenä, mutta ei ratkaise mitään.

Mihail Bahtin(1895-1975): Dostojevskin poetiikan ongelmia(1991; Problemy poetiki Dostojevskogo, 1963). Suomentaneet Paula Niemimen ja Tapani Laine, sivu 39.

Siinä oli kuutisenkymmentä muhkeata valkoista veliinikantista nidettä Aisopoksesta Zenoniin, juuri kylliksi vallasherralle: Enempi olisi tehnyt hänestä mietiskelijän, millä olisi ollut katastrofaaliset seuraukset hänen elintavoilleen tai omaisuudelleen.

Joseph Brodsky(1940-1996): Veden peili(i. p., 1. painos 1994; Watermark, 1992; suomentanut Marja Alopaeus), sivu 48.

The Parisian bourgeois could not suppress indigence, so they took measures to marginalize the indigent...

The great ordinance of John the Good of 1350 certainly took effect in the capital, though the king's authority over the whole kingdom may be questioned. It aimed to reduce wages to the pre-plague level and levy sanctions against patrons and employers who attempted to pay more for work. The ordinance claimed that such interventionist measures, among the first to leave written proof, were justified by the discovery that both men and women were refusing to work if their wages were not augmented, preferring to be idle, frequenting taverns where they gambled and drank. The ordinance denounced the perversion of power that let inferiors and little people thus take command, maintaining that such insubordination was the source of all the sins that royal authority ought to correct most harshly.

Simone Roux(1934-): Paris in the Middle Ages(2009; Paris au Moyen Âge, 2003. Kääntänyt Jo Ann McNamara[1931-2009]), sivut 80.

It is my considered opinion that the sweetest relief from suffering and the best comfort in affliction that this world affords are to be found almost entirely in the study of literature, and so I believe that the splendour of historical writing is to be cherished with the greatest delight and given the pre-eminent and most glorious position.

Henry of Huntingdon(c.1088 - vuoden 1156 jälkeen, ennen vuotta 1165): The History of the English People 1000-1154(2009), sivu 3.