Most of the trouble in this world has been caused by folks who can't mind their own business, because they have no business of their own to mind, any more than a smallpox virus has.
Interpretation
This quote suggests that many issues arise from people who interfere in others' affairs, often stemming from their own lack of purpose.
William S. Burroughs highlights the detrimental effects of individuals who meddle in matters that do not concern them, implying that their inability to focus on their own lives leads to chaos. Drawing a parallel to a smallpox virus, he illustrates how such interference can propagate negative consequences within society, emphasizing the importance of personal responsibility and a healthy boundary between public and private concerns.
In practice
This quote could be used in a speech about personal responsibility and the importance of focusing on one's own life.
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.
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.
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.
Just because it's on the radio doesn't mean we have to suspend belief in the evidence of our senses.
They wonder much to hear that gold, which in itself is so useless a thing, should be everywhere so much esteemed, that even men for whom it was made, and by whom it has its value, should yet be thought of less value than it is.
It is far more comforting to think God listened and said no, than to think that nobody’s out there.
Scepticism is the first step towards truth.
A building has integrity just like a man. And just as seldom.
Yet it is the narrative that is the life of the dream while the events themselves are often interchangeable. The events of the waking world on the other hand are forced upon us and the narrative is the unguessed axis along which they must be strung.
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