On Mankind

[Mad Madison]

"When you're born you get a ticket to the freak show. When you're born in America, you get a front row seat." -George Carlin

[ToALonelyPeace]

"It is not absurd to suppose that the extermination of man begins with the extermination of man's germs. One has only to consider the human being himself, complete with his emotions, his passions, his laughter, his sex and his secretions, to conclude that man is nothing but a dirty little germ--an irrational virus marring a universe of transparency. Once he has been purged, once everything has been cleaned up and all infection--whether of a social or a bacillary kind--has been driven out, then only the virus of sadness will remain in a mortally clean and mortally sophisticated world."

The Transparency of Evil, Jean Baudrillard

[qcrisp]

Quote Originally Posted by Piranesi

Man, n. An animal so lost in rapturous contemplation of what he thinks he is as to overlook what he indubitably ought to be. His chief occupation is extermination of other animals and his own species, which, however, multiplies with such insistent rapidity as to infest the whole habitable earth and Canada. --- Bierce.

Just reading this over, it occurs to me it would work just as well if we replaced the word "rapturous" with the word "sneering".