Maarva Karasi Andor, Andor

My name is Maarva Karasi Andor. I'm honored to stand before you, honored to be a Daughter of Ferrix, and honored to be worthy of the Stone. How strange... Feel as if I can see it.

I was six, I think, the first time I touched a Funerary Stone. Heard our music. Felt our history. Holding my sister's hand as we walked all the way from Fountain Square… Where you stand now, I've been more times than I can remember. I always wanted to be lifted. I was always eager, always waiting to be inspired. I remember every time it happened, every time the dead lifted me with their truth.

And now I'm dead. And I yearn to lift you. Not because I want to shine or even be remembered. It's because I want you to go on. I want Ferrix to continue. In my waning hours, that's what comforts me most. But I fear for you. We've been sleeping. We've had each other and Ferrix. Our work. Our days. We had each other and they left us alone. We kept the trade lanes open and they left us alone. We took their money and ignored them. We kept their engines churning, and the moment they pulled away, we forgot them. Because we had each other. We had Ferrix.

But we were sleeping. I've been sleeping. I've been turning away from a truth I wanted not to face. There is a wound that won't heal at the center of the galaxy. There is a darkness reaching like rust into everything around us. We let it grow, and now it's here. It's here and it's not visiting anymore, it wants to stay. The Empire is a disease that thrives in darkness. It is never more alive than when we sleep. It's easy for the dead to tell you to fight. And maybe it's true, maybe fighting’s useless. Perhaps it's too late.

But I'll tell you this, if I could do it again, I'd wake up early and be fighting these bastards from the start. Fight the Empire!

Billie Joe Armstrong

The thing about punk is that there are purists. Once you start going outside of that, they don’t think what you’re doing is punk rock.

Frank Zappa (Album "Warning" Label)

Warning Guarantee:

This album contains material which a truly free society would neither fear nor suppress.

In some socially retarded areas, religious fanatics and ultra-conseervative political organizations violate your First Amendment Rights by attempting to censor rock & roll albums. We feel that this is un-Constituational and un-American.

As an alternative to these government-supported programs (designed to keep you docile and ignorant), Barking Pumpkin is pleased to provide stimulating digital audio entertainment for those of you who have outgrown the ordinary.

The language and concepts herein are GUARANTEED NOT TO CAUSE ETERNAL TORMENT IN THE PLACE WHERE THE GUY WITH THE HORNS AND POINTED STICKS CONDUCTS HIS BUSINESS.

This guarantee is as real as the threats of the video fundamentalists who use attacks on rock music in their attempt to transform America into a nation of check-mailing nincompoops (in the name of Jesus Christ). If there is a hell, its fires wait for them, not us.

Frank's "warning" label was the best. pic.twitter.com/jqwPLOc4ns

— Patrick McKeon *Chairman: Dept of Redundancy Dept (@KlashNYC) September 21, 2026

More info:

• Frank Zappa: Even His Instrumental Album Had A Warning Label | The Vintage News
• The Bizarre Time When Frank Zappa's Entirely Instrumental Album Received an "Explicit Lyrics" Sticker | Open Culture

Barbara Alice Mann

Westerners are fond of the saying Life isn't fair. Then, they end in snide triumphant: So get used to it! What a cruel, sadistic notion to revel in! What a terrible, patriarchal response to a child's budding sense of ethics. Announce to an Iroquois, Life isn’t fair, and her response will be: Then make it fair!

Rabbi Tzvi Freeman

What is it that the child has to teach?

The child naively believes that everything should be fair and everyone should be honest, that only good should prevail, that everybody should have what they want and there should be no pain or sadness.

The child believes the world should be perfect and is outraged to discover it is not.

And the child is right.

W.E.B. Du Bois

Work is service, not gain. The object of work is life, not income. The reward of production is plenty, not private fortune. We should measure the prosperity of a nation not by the number of millionaires but by the absence of poverty, the prevalence of health, the efficiency of the public schools, and the number of people who can and do read worthwhile books.

Frank Herbert (Dune)

Once men turned their thinking over to machines in the hope that this would set them free. But that only permitted other men with machines to enslave them.

Boots Riley

Until we can democratically control the wealth that is created from our labor, there isn't real democracy.

George Bernard Shaw

Never wrestle with pigs. You both get dirty and the pig likes it.

Epicurus

The wise man thinks of fame just enough to avoid being despised.

Mark David Chapman, Murderer of John Lennon

I knew what I was doing, and I knew it was evil, I knew it was wrong, but I wanted the fame so much that I was willing to give everything and take a human life.

Franklin D. Roosevelt

We must scrupulously guard the civil rights and civil liberties of all our citizens, whatever their background. We must remember that any oppression, any injustice, any hatred, is a wedge designed to attack our civilization.

George Orwell, 1984

The Party told you to reject the evidence of your eyes and ears. It was their final, most essential command.

Abraham Lincoln

The dogmas of the quiet past are inadequate to the stormy present. The occasion is piled high with difficulty, and we must rise with the occasion. As our case is new, so we must think anew and act anew. We must disenthrall ourselves, and then we shall save our country.

Franklin D. Roosevelt

We have come to a clear realization of the fact that true individual freedom cannot exist without economic security and independence. "Necessitous men are not free men." People who are hungry and out of a job are the stuff of which dictatorships are made.