Quote #45

Venereal: From Venus, the goddess of love, this word refers to the reality of desire. With the rise of Protestantism and science, the word 'disease' was tacked on in a revealing combination of categorization and moralizing. 'Which disease?' 'The disease of love.'

More from John Ralston Saul

  1. United States: .... A nation given either to unjustified over-enthusiasms or infantile furies.
  2. On June 22nd, [1633,] in the morning, in the great hall of the Convent of Santa Maria Sopra Minerva, Galileo was found guilty of holding a …
  3. [C]ontent [is] an obstacle to the exercise of power.
  4. There is something silly about grown men and women striving to reduce their vision of themselves and of civilization to bean counting.
  5. The transnational corporations and the money markets have declared the era of human-designed regulations over. Now the market must reign. B…
  6. [G]iven our inability over the past two decades to deal with an unbreakable chain of unemployment, debt, inflation and no real growth, we h…
  7. 'The recession is over.' This phrase has been used twice a year since 1973 by government leaders throughout the West. Its meaning is unclea…
  8. Each [ideology], in the oppressive air of conformity which ideologies create, will force public figures to conform or be ruined on the scaf…

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