[At this point a nurse showed up, interrupting our talk. Although he was only sixty-five {Jean-Paul} Sartre was already suffering from all the amphetamines he had taken his whole adult life and needed to receive special injections once a month. After the nurse left, he continued.]
Sartre: She’s a real petit bourgeois. I gave her this book to read, The Trial of Geismar, with my preface, and I told her it was about the May ’68 student rebellion, but she was shocked.
John Gerassi: Why the shots?
Sartre: I had dizzy spells during the vacation, and the doctors concluded that my veins had hardened somewhat, so the shots are to enlarge them.
Gerassi: The consequence of speed?
Sartre: I guess. But even if it kills me tomorrow, it was worth it. I mean, I never slept more than four hours day for the past forty years. If you add that up, it means I’m already ninety, consciously at least.
—John Gerassi, Talking with Sartre: Conversations and Debates
If the people of our own time are not able to realize the fruits of the practice, why is that? It is because they do not have the virtue of self-confidence. Because you do not have the virtue of self-confidence, you are always preoccupied, in a hurry to run after myriad kinds of objects outside yourselves, and then you are turned around in circles by these objects and lose all your freedom.
—Nhat Hanh, Nothing to Do, Nowhere To Go
My Lai was part of a major operation. Operation Wheeler Wallawa, which killed nobody knows how many thousands or tens of thousands of people in real massacres. Operation Speedy Express, to take another example, the media bypassed, although it was a peace movement issue. That made My Lai look like a tea party.
—Noam Chomsky, Chronicles of Dissent
O, most wicked speed: to post
with such dexterity to incestuous sheets!
—William Shakespeare, Hamlet
Before starting the car
I know where I am going.
The car and I are one.
If the car goes fast, I go fast.
—Nhat Hanh, Present Moment, Wonderful Moment: Mindfulness Verses for Daily Living
A mind that is fast is sick.
A mind that is slow is sound.
A mind that is still is divine.
—Meher Baba, in Eknath Easwaran, Meditation
