I believe that banking institutions are more dangerous to our liberties than standing armies. If the American people ever allow private banks to control the issue of their currency, first by inflation, then by deflation, the banks and corporations that grow up around them will deprive the people of all property until their children wake-up homeless ( Read more... )

Where there is no common power, there is no law, where no law, no injustice. Force, and fraud, are in war the cardinal virtues.

~ Thomas Hobbes

Leviathan; Chapter 13

Title: Her Will, Be it Their Peace
Category: Gossip Girl
Pairing/Character(s): Blair/Nate/Serena
Rating: PG
Disclaimer: Gossip Girl and all immediate characters, themes and ideas are registered trademarks and belong to Cecily von Ziegesar, Josh Schwartz and Stephanie Savage. No profit is being accumulated from this writing piece.
Word Count: 2, ( Read more... )

Crush humanity out of shape once more, under similar hammers, and it will twist itself into the same tortured forms. Sow the same seed of rapacious license and oppression over again, and it will surely yield the same fruit according to its kind.

~ Charles Dickens

A Tale of Two Cities; Chapter 15

Many have imagined republics and principalities which have never been seen or known to exist in reality; for how we live is so far removed from how we ought to live, that he who abandons what is done for what ought to be done, will rather bring about his own ruin than his preservation.

~ Niccolò Machiavelli

The Prince; Chapter 15

The state of this week’s Gossip Girl has left me in dire need of inspiration. It’s sad really, as I still have a meme request to fill, but seeing as it involves Serena I need all the help I can get. So I came up with this exercise of sorts that I hope will help get me back into the spirit of things.

Just name a pairing, accompanied by a single ( Read more... )

Title: Before the Gates of Hell
Category: Gossip Girl
Pairing/Character(s): Tripp/Blair, Nate/Blair, William/Blair
Rating: M
Disclaimer: Gossip Girl and all immediate characters, themes and ideas are registered trademarks and belong to Cecily von Ziegesar, Josh Schwartz and Stephanie Savage. No profit is being accumulated from this writing piece. ( Read more... )

Everything that deceives may be said to enchant.

~ Plato

The Republic; Book III

...we have bondage and hit men.
 
( Read more... )

He’s gone.

It is the first time all night her mind has acknowledged those words in such a combination. All tragic and absolute in their implication, and she wills herself to focus on something else, anything else… on any meagre route of escape from the anarchy reigning havoc on every facet of her being.

But she cannot move. Cannot remove herself ( Read more... )