"There are no more barriers to cross. All I have in common with the uncontrollable and the insane, the vicious and the evil, all the mayhem I have caused and my utter indifference toward it I have now surpassed. My pain is constant and sharp, and I do not hope for a better world for anyone. In fact, I want my pain to be inflicted on others. I want no one to escape. But even after admitting this, there is no catharsis; my punishment continues to elude me, and I gain no deeper knowledge of myself. No new knowledge can be extracted from my telling. This confession has meant nothing."

“You wouldn't know it, from some of the things I've said over the years, but I like people… I do… I like people, but I like them in short bursts. I don't like people for extended periods of time. I'm all right with them for a little while, but once you get past around a minute, minute-and-a-half, I gotta get the fuck outta there.”
— George Carlin

Hear, hear.
p/s Looks like shit may just get real with H7N9. (I pity the chickens which were needlessly culled though…)

“That which has no existence cannot be destroyed—that which cannot be destroyed cannot require anything to preserve it from destruction. Natural rights is simple nonsense: natural and imprescriptible rights, rhetorical nonsense—nonsense upon stilts. But this rhetorical nonsense ends in the old strain of mischievous nonsense for immediately a list of these pretended natural rights is given, and those are so expressed as to present to view legal rights. And of these rights, whatever they are, there is not, it seems, any one of which any government can, upon any occasion whatever, abrogate the smallest particle.”
— Jeremy Bentham, The Works of Jeremy Bentham, Vol. 2

“The individual has always had to struggle to keep from being overwhelmed by the tribe. If you try it, you will be lonely often, and sometimes frightened. But no price is too high to pay for the privilege of owning yourself.”
— Friedrich Nietzsche

I became an ardent fan of Friedrich Nietzsche ever since I chanced upon the translated version of one of his (in my opinion, most brilliant of) works, Der Antichrist (translated as The Antichrist in English). It was a most delightful read indeed and below lies a short extract of the introduction by the translator, H.L. Mencken. To wit:

“No man of sound information, at the time Nietzsche planned “The Antichrist,” actually believed that the world was created in seven days, or that its fauna was once overwhelmed by a flood as a penalty for the sins of man, or that Noah saved the boa constrictor, the prairie dog and the pediculus capitis by taking a pair of each into the ark, or that Lot’s wife was turned into a pillar of salt, or that a fragment of the True Cross could cure hydrophobia. Such notions, still almost universally prevalent in Christendom a century before, were now confined to the great body of ignorant and credulous men—that is, to ninety-five or ninety-six percent, of the race.”

I hope that you may enjoy Nietzche's brilliant writings as much as I have, and here is a link to an online publication of The Antichrist.

I shall end off with another quote by Nietzche:

“After coming into contact with a religious man I always feel I must wash my hands.”

Oh god this had me in stitches his sense of humour is impeccable!