Quote

If all individuals were conditioned to machine efficiency in the performance of their duties there would have to be at least one person outside the machine to give the necessary orders if the machine absorbed or eliminated all those outside the machine, the machine will slow down and stop forever.

William S. Burroughs

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William S. Burroughs
Age: 83 †
Born: 1914
Born: February 5
Died: 1997
Died: August 11
Essayist
Novelist
Painter
Photographer
Poet
Prosaist
Science Fiction Writer
Screenwriter
Writer
St. Louis
Missouri
William Seward Burroughs II
Uilʹi︠a︡m Berrouz
William Lee
William Burroughs
Ouiliam Baroouz
William Seward Burroughs
Willy Lee
William S. (William Seward) Burroughs
Give
Necessary
Duties
Persons
Outside
Efficiency
Person
Duty
Machine
Giving
Least
Slow
Would
Stop
Performance
Eliminated
Forever
Individuals
Conditioned
Individual
Performances
Absorbed
Order
Machines
Orders

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There's no place for impractical dreamers around here.
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We have a great elaborate machine which I feel has to be completely dismantled - in order to do that we need people who understand how the machine works - the mass media - unparalleled opportunity.
William S. Burroughs
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When people start talking about their bowel movements, they are inexorable as the processes of which they speak.
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A functioning police state needs no police.
William S. Burroughs
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Everything Jack says is to be taken with considerable reserve.
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Be just and if you can't be just, be arbitrary.
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Silence is only frightening to people who are compulsively verbalizing.
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A consumer society is about simplfying and degrading the consumer as well as the product.
William S. Burroughs
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Whether you like it or not, you are committed to the human endeavor. I cannot ally myself with such a purely negative goal as avoidance of suffering. Suffering is a chance you take by the fact of being alive.
William S. Burroughs
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It is indeed difficult to make a living as a writer, and my advice to anyone contemplating a literary career is to have some other trade.
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(1) Never give anything away for nothing. (2) Never give more than you have to give (always catch the buyer hungry and always make him wait). (3) Always take everything back if you possibly can.
William S. Burroughs
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danger is a biologic necessity, like dreams. if you face death, for that time, for the period of direct confrontation, you are immortal.
William S. Burroughs
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Every word is autobiographical, and every word is fiction.
William S. Burroughs
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Thanks for the American dream, to vulgarize and falsify until the bare lies shine through. Thanks for a country where nobody's allowed to mind their own business.
William S. Burroughs
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Many of my characters first came through to me as voices. That's why I use a tape recorder.
William S. Burroughs
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I think all writers write for an audience. There is no such thing as writing for yourself.
William S. Burroughs
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A doctor is not criticized for describing the manifestations and symptoms of an illness, even though the symptoms may be disgusting. I feel that a writer has the right to the same freedom In fact, I think that the time has come for the line between literature and science, a purely arbitrary line, to be erased.
William S. Burroughs
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Like Spain, I am bound to the past.
William S. Burroughs
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A junky runs on junk time. When the junk is cut off, the clock runs down and stops. All he can do is hang on and wait for non-junky time to start. A sick junky has no escape from external time, no place to go. He can only wait.
William S. Burroughs
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Virtue is simply happiness, and happiness is a by-product of function. You are happy when you are functioning.
William S. Burroughs