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rescogitans

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I think; therefore I am.

Created on 2006-06-17 03:09:24 (#10470013), last updated 2009-11-15

547 comments received, 3,192 comments posted

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208 Journal Entries, 229 Tags, 44 Memories, <10 ScrapBook Files, 0 Virtual Gifts, 96 Userpics

Basic Info

Name:	Shay
Birthdate:	1987-12-29
Location:	New Zealand (Aotearoa)
Website:	Film Idiom

Bio

About Me

Well, my username (res cogitans) is what 17th century French Philosopher René Descartes used to describe "the thinking being" in his philosophical system. I think therefore I am and all that jazz ;) I'm really interested in philosophy and philosophers thus the name.

I'm just going to let my choice of favourite quotes speak for themselves...

Quotes

"The reward for conformity was that everyone liked you except yourself." - Rita Mae Brown

"In the long run, nothing can withstand reason and experience, and the contradiction religion offers to both is palpable." - Sigmund Freud

"If voting changed anything, they'd make it illegal." - Emma Goldman

"The most violent element in society is ignorance. " - Emma Goldman

"Nothing will benefit human health and increase chances for survival of life on Earth as much as the evolution to a vegetarian diet. "-Albert Einstein

"Non-violence leads to the highest ethics, which is the goal of all evolution. Until we stop harming all other living beings, we are still savages."-Thomas Edison

"Education is an admirable thing, but it is well to remember from time to time that nothing that is worth knowing can be taught." -Oscar Wilde

"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

“There was truth and there was untruth, and if you clung to the truth even against the whole world, you were not mad."
- George Orwell (Nineteen Eighty-Four)

"Beneath this mask there is more than flesh. Beneath this mask there is an idea, Mr. Creedy, and ideas are bulletproof." - V for Vendetta

“The oppressed are allowed once every few years to decide which particular representatives of the oppressing class are to represent and repress them.”- Karl Marx

“Religion is the impotence of the human mind to deal with occurrences it cannot understand”- Marx

“Social progress can be measured by the social position of the female sex”- Marx

"Someone has said that it requires less mental effort to condemn than to think." - Emma Goldman

"To be conscious that you are ignorant is a great step to knowledge." - Benjamin Disraeli

"All over the place, from the popular culture to the propaganda system, there is constant pressure to make people feel that they are helpless, that the only role they can have is to ratify decisions and to consume." - Noam Chomsky

"People demand freedom of speech as a compensation for the freedom of thought, which they seldom use." - Soren Kierkegaard

"If you don't control your mind, someone else will." - John Allston

"To be governed is to be watched over, inspected, spied on, directed, legislated over, regulated, docketed, indoctrinated, preached at, controlled, assessed, weighed, censored, ordered about, by men who have neither right, nor knowledge, nor virtue." - Pierre-Joseph Proudhon

"The state calls its own violence law, but that of the individual, crime." - Max Stirner

"The only demand that property recognizes is its own gluttonous appetite for greater wealth, because wealth means power; the power to subdue, to crush, to exploit, the power to enslave, to outrage, to degrade."- Emma Goldman

"Society is like a stew. If you don't stir it up every once in a while then a layer of scum floats to the top."- Edward Abbey

"It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his job depends on not understanding it."- Upton Sinclair

"Those who cannot learn from history are doomed to repeat it." -George Santaynna

"There are times when I look at people and I see nothing worth liking"- Daniel Plainview (TWBB)

“Be daring, be different, be impractical, be anything that will assert integrity of purpose and imaginative vision against the play-it-safers, the creatures of the commonplace, the slaves of the ordinary.” - Cecil Beaton

"Except our own thoughts, there is nothing absolutely in our power."- Rene Descartes

Film

There Will Be Blood, Donnie Darko, I Heart Huckabees, Waking Life, V For Vendetta, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, Amelie, The Fall, Southland Tales, Network, Zodiac, Zeitgeist: Addendum, William Shakespeare's Romeo + Juliet, Pan's Labyrinth, Lost in Translation, Wizard of Oz, A Scanner Darkly, Fight Club, Everything is Illuminated, Pleasantville, Pride & Prejudice, Citizen Kane, The Godfather, Atonement, The Godfather Part II, Goodfellas, All The President's Men, JFK, 11:14, Rear Window, Psycho, The Birds, The Philadelphia Story, One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, Life is beautiful, Malena, No Country For Old Men, Death Proof, Kill Bill: Vol. 1, Being John Malkovich, Adaptation, Girl with a Pearl Earring, Into the Wild, Fast Food Nation, Léon, Proof, Stranger than Fiction, The Third Man, The Bicycle Thief, The 400 Blows, Notes On A Scandal, Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, Misery, Groundhog Day, Grease, West Side Story, Chitty Chitty Bang Bang, Chicago, Singin' In The Rain, Easter Parade, Meet Me in St Louis, For Me & My Gal, The Phantom of the Opera, Beauty And The Beast, The Princess Bride, When Harry Met Sally, Sleepless In Seattle, Annie Hall, Manhattan, Hannah And Her Sisters, Crimes and Misdemeanors, Broken Flowers, Lars and the Real Girl, Thelma and Louise, A Simple Plan, Back to the Future, Back to the future Part 2, Napoleon Dynamite, Elf, Severance, The Namesake, Toy Soldiers, The Goonies, Alpha Dog, Black Snake Moan, La Vie En Rose, Dog Day Afternoon, Little Miss Sunshine, The Prestige, The Illusionist, Letters From Iwo Jima, 3:10 to Yuma, The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford, Marie Antoinette, Scoop, She's the man, Cloverfield, Knocked Up, Superbad, Forgetting Sarah Marshall, Pineapple Express, Infamous, Good bye Lenin!, Todo Sobre Mi Madre, Doubt, Vicky Cristina Barcelona, Revolutionary Road, The Visitor, The Reader, The Wrestler, Watchmen, Glass: A Portrait of Philip in Twelve Parts, Synecdoche, New York, Star Trek, Let the Right One In, Female Agents, Sunshine Cleaning, District 9, Inglourious Basterds, etc.

Music

Green Day, Radiohead, Muse, Bob Dylan, The Smashing Pumpkins, Bear McCreary, My Chemical Romance, Pink Floyd, Jimmy Eat World, Yellowcard, The White Stripes, Placebo, Death Cab For Cutie, Arcade Fire, Interpol, Matchbox 20, Nirvana, Linkin Park, Jeff Buckley, The Verve, Led Zeppelin, Neil Young, The Rolling Stones, AC/DC, Queen, Live, Michael Jackson, Justin Timberlake, X-Ray Dog, Dario Marianelli, Jean-Yves Thibaudet, John Lennon, The Killers, Lifehouse, Sarah Maclachlan, Pearl Jam, Foo Fighters, Alanis Morissette, Melissa Etheridge, The Cure, The Who, INXS, Journey, Bon Jovi, Janis Joplin, Jimi Hendrix, Carly Simon, CCR, Jefferson Airplane, Foreigner, Sublime, Bonnie Tyler, Stereophonics, Anna Nalick, Goo Goo Dolls, Gary Jules, David Gray, Billie Holiday, Judy Garland, Edith Piaf, Rodrigo y Gabriela, N*E*R*D, Thirsty Merc, Snow Patrol, Kelly Clarkson, Pink, Gavin Degraw, Augustana, Nada Surf, James Dooley, To Have Heroes, Travis, The Honorary Title, 30 Seconds To Mars, The Get Up Kids, Dashboard Confessional, Jet, Wes Carr, Johnny Gallagher, Ray LaMontagne, Damien Rice, Duffy, Within Temptation, Devotchka, The Dead Weather, Philip Glass, Opera & Classical.

Literature

1984, Fahrenheit 451, Harry Potter Series, The Trial, Animal Farm, The Stranger, Anna Karenina, Where The Wild Things Are, Lemony Snicket, Like Water For Chocolate, etc.

Battlestar Galactica (2004 Re-imagined, aka the best show ever made), Dead Like Me, Wonderfalls, Pushing Daisies, Summer Heights High, We Can Be Heroes, The Simpsons, Seinfeld, Big Love, Breaking Bad, Dexter, Reno 911, The Office (US), Extras, The Office (UK), True Blood, In Treatment, Carnivàle, Deadwood, The L Word, Laverne and Shirley, Veronica Mars, Absolutely Fabulous, Arrested Development, Family Guy, Caprica. I don't really watch TV (TV is mind control), but I see or have seen these shows through various other means because they are enjoyable to me for either their intellectual or comedic worth.

Filmmakers

Richard Linklater, Spike Jonze, Tarsem Singh, Alfred Hitchcock, Woody Allen, Charlie Kaufman, Quentin Tarantino, Richard Kelly, Sophia Coppola, Orson Welles, Joe Wright, Marc Forster, David Fincher, Paul Thomas Anderson, M. Night Shyamalan, Francis Ford Coppola, Guillermo del Toro, Michael Moore, Alfonso Cuarón.

Credits