Gentle reader, the Fountain of Youth is radioactive, and those who imbibe its poisonous heavy waters will suffer the hideous fate of decaying metal. Yet almost without exception, the wretched idiot inhabitants of our benighted planet would gulp down this radioactive excrement if it were offered.
Interpretation
The quote critiques humanity's reckless pursuit of youth and immortality, suggesting that such desires can lead to self-destruction.
William S. Burroughs' quote serves as a commentary on the folly of human beings in their relentless quest for youth and immortality. He uses the metaphor of the 'Fountain of Youth' as a radioactive source that symbolizes peril; though it promises eternal vitality, it carries with it dire consequences. By highlighting how people would willingly consume something harmful if it offered the allure of youth, Burroughs underscores the destructive nature of their desires and the irrationality that can accompany the pursuit of eternal life.
In practice
Discussing the dangers of chasing unrealistic beauty standards in a social media workshop.
God save the Queen and a fascist regime … a flabby toothless fascism, to be sure. Never go too far in any direction, is the basic law on which Limey-Land is built. The Queen stabilizes the whole sinking shithouse and keeps a small elite of wealth and privilege on top. The English have gone soft in the outhouse. England is like some stricken beast too stupid to know it is dead. Ingloriously foundering in its own waste products, the backlash and bad karma of empire
Like most qualities, cuteness is delineated by what it isn't. Most people aren't cute at all, or if so they quickly outgrow their cuteness ... Elegance, grace, delicacy, beauty, and a lack of self-consciousness: a creature who knows he is cute soon isn't.
There is nothing more provocative than minding your own business.
Language is a virus from outer space.
One very important aspect of art is that it makes people aware of what they know and don’t know they know... Once the breakthrough is made, there is a permanent expansion of awareness. But there is always a reaction of rage, of outrage, at the first breakthrough... So the artist, then, expands awareness. And once the breakthrough is made, this becomes part of the general awareness.
when I become death. Death is the seed from which I grow.
We assume, to begin with, that the individual is at least as complex in his internal structure as the language is which he speaks - otherwise, how could he speak a language which is complex?
If the newspapers of a country are filled with good news, the jails of that country will be filled with good people.
The world is by no means averse to religion. In fact, it is devoted to it with a passion. It will buy any recipe for salvation as long as that formula leaves the responsibility for cooking up salvation firmly in human hands. The world is drowning in religion. But it is scared out of its wits by any mention of the grace that takes the world home gratis.
Nothing has a greater tendency to lessen the reverence which mankind ought to have for the Supreme Being, than a careless repetition of his name upon every trifling occasion . . . . To prevent this profanation, such passages are selected from scripture, as contain some important precepts of morality and religion, in which that sacred name is seldom mentioned. Let sacred things be appropriated to sacred purposes.
Blessed is the servant who esteems himself no more highly when he is praised and exalted by people than when he is considered worthless, foolish, and to be despised; since what a man is before God, that he is and nothing more.
The federal government is acknowledged by all to be one of enumerated powers. The principle, that it can exercise only the powers granted to it . . . is now universally admitted.
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