Jack Cady Quotes

“I almost don’t believe in ghosts.”
She was stating part of the problem. If ghosts are a metaphor for history, then belief is a leap into reality. If history is a metaphor for ghosts, matters get really serious.

I watched the flickers, thought of modern times, and it came to me that we’ve never stopped fighting. When our wars ceased, a rearguard action began. We fought against deterioration of order; and lost as an old culture died and society went crazy at the funeral. Yammer got crowned King, with chatter its Queen.

The world was changing, and it wouldn’t change back.

The crotch and the brain are the engines of history.

It’s no big job to fool yourself.

The fires of history burn hot and long, but memories of fires do not burn long enough.

The message says that, unless it is stopped right now, it all begins again; the old hatreds, the ego rampant, the fists raised proclaiming that one or another god grants the right to yell instead of think. The message says that each time the world forgets how Evil exists, Evil gets a resurrection; and the word “honor,” extinguishing, turns to smoke.
But there once lived men who knew that some things were worth dying for. There once were women who fought for their own, and fought for others as much as they were able.
In a geriatric ward a body is no big advantage, anyway, and so this is how it shapes: we can’t form the future but we can show responsibility.

Absolute Evil exists. As kids we geriatrics learned all about it, and no damn social worker had better come along and blame “evil” on “conditions.” Evil is a force in the universe, a force using any weakness it finds to do its dirt; and with Evil, Hell is just a sideline.

Snowy owls come floating in from northward, while folks go to church on Sunday against the time when there’s some better amusement. Men hang around town, because home is either empty or crowded, depending on if you’re married. Folks sit before television, watching the funny, goofy, unreal world where everybody plays at being sexy and naked, even when they’re not.

Evil uses Hell as a parking lot, and you don’t have to die to park. Evil sets people in the middle of war, famine, excess prosperity, or other of Hell’s appurtenances, then stands back as people freeze or sizzle; and screw themselves. The main interest of Evil is destruction of faith in gods and ethics, knowledge and honor. When faith is destroyed people create their own hells, and a sign stretches across the universe writ large for all to see. It reads: The Future Is Canceled.

The whole business lay ringed with mystery, with improbabilities, but also with certainty of total destruction if we failed. There might be total destruction if we succeeded, but that was someone else’s problem. We could only set the standard, write our last will and testament through action, and hope someone could still read deeply enough to raise arms against the encroaching night.

Flags are symbols. Words are symbols. Steeples are symbols. Red lights in front of cathouses are symbols. The world don't know it, but the world lives by symbols, some good, some as bad as flags.

You can only picture the future based on what you know about the past. If history dies the future can only be hideous.

No one recalls the names of dog soldiers who fought beside Leonidas at Thermopylae, or with Charles Martel at the battle of Tours; but how they fought, and what they fought for, lives through centuries. Without those forgotten men western civilization could not have come into being. They put it all on the line, because there are times in history when universal evil crawls from its cave of darkness.
When those battles happened, though, what did anyone know? The dog soldier only knew that some fool Persian had it in his head to whip the world, or a Moorish chieftain was on the prod.
And the dog soldier stood. He stood between the enemy and home, standing before a way of life that was particularly his. If in his home he was boss during peace, then during war he paid for the honor. The male of the species defends his land and home. It will always be that way. At least that is true of the Infantry.

I needed this the way guys in trenches need head lice.