Motto for latin countries: If you're not late, you're not on time

The strategist chooses the shortest path while the leader chooses the path through which he learns something new.

La alternabilidad entre derecha e izquierda es un principio subversivo. Este principio en lo político es llevado adelante gradualmente por gobiernos de derecha e izquierda en contubernio. Primero la derecha liberal toma el gobierno y economiza a la comunidad, después la izquierda sube al poder y utiliza esta economización del hombre para poder despojarle de toda visión trascendente rebajándole a una condición vegetativa. Así, lo que la derecha no alcanza a subvertir, se lo deja a la izquierda, y viceversa, hasta esclavizar por completo al homo economicus en pos de la corrección política al servicio de la sinarquía internacional.

Thirty years later, his regime had accomplished its historical task. Economic development had transformed Spanish society, radical mass politics had been extinguished, and democracy was no longer hazardous for capital. So completely had the dictatorship done its work that a toothless Bourbon socialism was incapable even of restoring the republic it had overthrown. In this Spanish laboratory could be found a parabola of the future, which the Latin American dictators of the 1970s – Pinochet is the exemplary case – would repeat, architects of a political order in which electors, grateful for civic liberties finally restored, could be trusted henceforward not to tamper with the social order. Today the Spanish template has become the general formula of freedom: no longer making the world safe for democracy, but democracy safe for this world.

Carved above the lintel were the words SCIENTIA POTESTAS EST. Science points east, I wondered? Science is portentous, yes? Science protests too much. Scientific potatoes rule. Had I stumbled on the lair of dangerous plant geneticists?

(on the word "fuck")

'Oh, come on, Mum,' I sighed at her protest. 'It's just an old Anglo-Saxon word for the female organ which has been adopted by an inherently misogynist language as a negative epithet. It's the same as "fuck", it basically means the same as copulate, but the latter is perfectly acceptable. Why? Because copulate has its roots in Latin and Latin reminds us that we are a sophisticated, learned species, not the rutting animals that these prehistoric grunts would have us appear to be, and isn't that really the issue here? We don't want to admit that we are essentially animals? We want to distinguish ourselves from the fauna with grand conceits and elaborate language; become angels worthy of salvation, not dumb creatures consigned to an earthly, terminal end. It's just a word, Mum; a sound meaning a thing; and your disgust is just denial of a greater horror: that our consciousness is not an indication of our specialness but the terrifying key to knowing how truly insignificant we are.'

She told me to got fuck myself.