After adjusting the height of the microphone, the speaker began:
“My topic for tonight is:
‘What Is The Difference Between Waking Up and Having A  Stroke?’ --
the first thing to consider is.......ahh......ahh, what was I talking about?…”
(Of note: his appearance was part of this year’s International Irony Hoe-down
And Fancy Thinker's Conference.)

To be asleep is to believe that your inner life can change outward events;
to be unenlightened is to say that it cannot.
Either way: life wins  --  and the dense get ditzier.

Progress in the city is having an increasing number of unnatural, beneficial things
men can avail themselves of without having to think about them
each time they are utilized (like breathing, but in a non physical realm.)

Definitions.
Athlete: A man with no intellectual ability.
Intellectual: A man with no athletic ability.
Artist: A man with no respect for either of the two.

The misjudgment in men’s use of the term Nature
is their unrealized commingling of two different affairs: Life and the Universe.

Civilization is the favored entry in a sack race between the two spots of
Starvation & Distraction.

One man went outdoors, shook his fist at life and declared:
“Me having to put up with all this stuff should at least entitle me to know
what is going on!” and quite shockingly life shouted back:
“You think I don’t feel the same way!”

One day one man suddenly understood: “I am the inferior of any one I criticize,
and call stupid  --  not in some moral or metaphorical sense  --  but really inferior.”

Civilization is the place where a man can become a specialist in a subject
that has no practical use.

Asking a man any question having to do with his biology is asking for trouble.
(Answering such: the chilblain of the few.)

The criticism in a piece of humor is what makes it remembered.

For ordinary minds Great Literature is in lengthy, weighty books,
while for the certain man it can be in merely the briefest mention of the truth.

The sense of individuality men feel about themselves can be seen as
life’s crowning achievement  --  yet it shows no special respect therefor.

The All Pervasive, But Seldom Noted Influence Of Mind & Words.
Salt is composed clearly of two things: sodium and chloride,
but also of a third something, of which men normally never note,
but which makes salt what it is to men.

There is a common denominator to all men’s notions of Fate:
a name they employ in their refusal to say the actual one.

The struggle to awaken from the mind’s natural dream can be liked to walking a tightrope, which initially seems to be quite up high and away from everyday life;
then later it is felt to be but inches off the ground,
and away from the mundane reality of things.
    One rebel once noted:
              “The more I see,
                the more that everything looks like me.”

Originality is as foreign to intellectuals of the collective as is creativity to its artists.
The city’s unsaid motto is:
“’Tis not the excitement of freshness that is needed but the stability of repetition.”
(Needless to say the outlier rebel does not same embrace.)

The tests they give in prison are to find out how dumb you are  --  not how smart,
for if you had any intelligence you wouldn’t be in prison.

The Truth presented succinctly is twice as truthful.

Literary & Other Stuff Outside The City.
The independent mind has no interest in the Preface to anything.

You have already completed the tests they give in prison and told them everything they need to know about you just by agreeing to take them.
    (“Is the city a staggering place or what!”)

Hormones may make you fat but neurons keep you aware of and talking about it.
(Another Outstanding, Though Commonly Underappreciated Feature Of Mind.)

A mother of one city child offered this defense of her young:
“He may seem simple and shallow on the outside,
but on the inside he is deeply moody and convoluted.”
(Must it be noted that the word, defense has a meaning to ordinary men
of no use to the rebel.)

Life first had men create gods who rewarded them for having emotions which
foster civility;
do men now await a shift to a deity who honors intellectual achievements?

There are two ways to learn every lesson: this way -- and that way.

The first thing new born ideas say is:
“Okay, I know he’s around here somewhere  --  let me at ‘im!”

There are two ways to learn every lesson: this way and that way;
there is also a third way.
(“I told ya to let me at ‘im.”)