Favorite Quotes |
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“My definition of a free society is a society where it is safe to be unpopular.”
~ Adlai Stevenson
"Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that." - Martin Luther King, Jr.
“The fear of freedom is the fear of assuming responsibility.”
― Joost A.M. Meerloo, The Rape of the Mind: The Psychology of Thought Control, Menticide, and Brainwashing
“Hatred is the most accessible and comprehensive of all the unifying agents. Mass movements can rise and spread without belief in a god, but never without a belief in a devil.” ― Eric Hoffer, The True Believer
“One does not become enlightened by imagining figures of light, but by making the darkness conscious.”
- Carl Jung
"The only way to deal with an unfree world is to become so absolutely free that your very existence is an act of rebellion." ― Albert Camus
“There are two ways to be fooled. One is to believe what isn't true; the other is to refuse to believe what is true.” ― Søren Kierkegaard
“We forget that, although freedom of speech constitutes an important victory in the battle against old restraints, modern man is in a position where much of what "he" thinks and says are the things that everybody else thinks and says; that he has not acquired the ability to think originally - that is, for himself - which alone gives meaning to his claim that nobody can interfere with the expression of his thoughts.” ― Erich Fromm, The Fear of Freedom
“Mistaking insolence for freedom has always been the hallmark of the slave.”
― Wilhelm Reich
"Nowadays people know the price of everything and the value of nothing."
― Oscar Wilde (The Picture of Dorian Gray)
Peterson’s point is that high-intelligence and wisdom are not related.
“… So it's the arrogance that brings up the block and I see this for example, happening in the United States in particular, because the last time I went down there.
For example, I had friends down there and and some of those friends are very very smart people, and some of them were talking about the Trump voters, and they were talking about the Trump voters with contempt.
And I thought you better watch that because that's 50% of the damn population, and it might be convenient to think that they're stupid and beneath you, but it's not conducive to a civil state, and there's no evidence that it's true.” - Jordan Peterson
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C3fy0RYpU8Q
“With such [collectivist] systems, the individual has always been a victim, twisted against him-or-her-self and commanded to be “unselfish” in sacrificial service to some allegedly higher value called God or pharaoh or emperor or king or society or the state or the race or the proletariat – or the cosmos. It is a strange paradox of our history that this doctrine – which tells us that we are to regard ourselves, in effect, as sacrificial animals – has been generally accepted as a doctrine representing benevolence and love for humankind. From the first individual…who was sacrificed on an altar for the good of the tribe, to the heretics and dissenters burned at the stake for the good of the populace or the glory of God, to the millions exterminated in…slave-labor camps for the good of the race or of the proletariat, it is this [collectivist] morality that has served as justification for every dictatorship and every atrocity, past or present.”
- Nathaniel Branden, The Psychology of Romantic Love
"The evil that is in the world almost always comes of ignorance, and good intentions may do as much harm as malevolence if they lack understanding." ~ Albert Camus
"'Tolerance' is when you tolerate things that actually bother you."
― From “On Tolerance,” by Alex Tabarrok
The Fox and the Grapes - Aesop / Moral 1) "You often hate what you can't have."
Moral 2) "There are many who pretend to despise and belittle that which is beyond their reach."
"In politics, shared hatreds are almost always the basis of friendships."
― Alexis de Tocqueville
"All I can do is reply on my own behalf, realizing that what I say is relative. Accepting the absurdity of everything around us is one step, a necessary experience: it should not become a dead end. It arouses a revolt that can become fruitful. An analysis of the idea of revolt could help us to discover ideas capable of restoring a relative meaning to existence, although a meaning that would always be in danger." - Albert Camus
“Despite what you may be told, respect should not have to be earned, it is owed to you as a human being, especially by those who have power over you in some way.” - Amanda Coffman
"Anyone can become angry. That is easy. But to be angry with the right person to the right degree at the right time for the right purpose and in the right way, that is not easy."
― Aristotle
"Whoever would overthrow the liberty of a nation must begin by subduing the freeness of speech."
― Benjamin Franklin
“We go about our daily lives understanding almost nothing of the world.”
― Carl Sagan
“The brutal excesses of the lowest classes would be forgotten, but so would the highest cultivation. as information was diffused to a population more widely literate, the abject ignorance of the old regime would become a thing of the past, but genius would become more rare. Virtues of the highest, brightest, and purist temper would no longer reveal the greatness that is in the best human beings …”
― Charles Van Doren, in reference to “Democracy In America” (1835), written by Alexis de Tocqueville (1805-1869)
“If the counsel of the peaceniks had been followed, Kuwait would today be the nineteenth province of Iraq. Bosnia would be a trampled and cleansed province of Greater Serbia, Kosovo would have been emptied of most of its inhabitants, and the Taliban would still be in power in Afghanistan. Yet nothing seems to disturb the contented air of moral superiority of those that intone the 'peace movement'.”
― Christopher Hitchens
“If you want to stay in for the long haul, and lead a life that is free from illusions either propagated by you or embraced by you, then I suggest you learn to recognize and avoid the symptoms of the zealot and the person who knows he is right. For the dissenter, the skeptical mentality is at least as important as any armor of principle.”
― Christopher Hitchens, Letters to a Young Contrarian
"They were expected to cooperate on a plan (that) emphasized debate between experts rather then action by leaders." ~ Cormac O'Brien, Outnumbered ( Why the Prussian army, even with a 2 to 1 advantage over Napoleon, lost the Battle of Auerstadt)
"I am afraid. Not of life, or death, or nothingness, but of wasting it as if I had never been.”
― Daniel Keyes, Flowers for Algernon
"There is a tendency to judge a race, a nation or any distinct group by its least worthy members. Though manifestly unfair, this tendency has some justification. For the character and destiny of a group are often determined by its inferior elements." - Eric Hoffer (The True Believer)
“One of my favorite philosophical tenets is that people will agree with you only if they already agree with you. You do not change people’s minds.”
― Frank Zappa
“Those who dance are considered insane by those who cannot hear the music.” ― George Carlin
"Tolerance is the virtue of a man without convictions."
- G.K. Chesterton
"Ninety-nine percent of failures come from people who have the habit of making excuses"
― George Washington Carver
“If your actions inspire others to dream more, learn more, do more and become more, you are a leader.”
― John Quincy Adams
"The greatest deception men suffer is from their own opinions."
~ Leonardo da Vinci
"How Can I Stand Idle While My Neighbor Bleeds?"
― Leviticus 19:16
"I'm for truth, no matter who tells it. I'm for justice, no matter who it's for or against."
― Malcom X
"I believe in human beings, and that all human beings should be respected as such, regardless of their color." ― Malcolm X
"When the search for truth is confused with political advocacy, the pursuit of knowledge is reduced to the quest for power." ― Alston Chase
"Sometimes you have to play a long time to be able to play like yourself."
― Miles Davis
“Hating people because of their color is wrong. And it doesn’t matter which color does the hating. It’s just plain wrong.”
― Muhammad Ali
"It isn't the mountains ahead to climb that wear you out; it's the pebble in your shoe."
― Muhammad Ali
"A good head and a good heart are always a formidable combination."
― Nelson Mandela
"Education is the most powerful weapon which you can use to change the world."
― Nelson Mandela
"Be yourself. Everyone else is already taken."
― Oscar Wilde
“I am invisible, understand, simply because people refuse to see me. Like the bodiless heads you see sometimes in circus sideshows, it is as though I have been surrounded by mirrors of hard, distorting glass. When they approach me they see only my surroundings, themselves or figments of their imagination, indeed, everything and anything except me.”
― Ralph Ellison
"To strive with an equal is dangerous; with a superior, mad; with an inferior, degrading."
― Seneca the Younger
"A flock of PhDs had cornered the problem and were attempting unsuccessfully to beat it to death with their sheepskins." ― Stan Modjesky
"Any physical theory is always provisional, in the sense that it is only a hypothesis: you can never prove it. No many how many times the results of experiments agree with some theory, you can never be sure that the next time the result will not contradict the theory. On the other hand, you can disprove a theory by finding even a single observation that disagrees with the predictions of the theory."
― Stephen Hawking
“Knowledge comes as it will. Life's lessons come at the most surprising times.”
― Terry Goodkind, Stone of Tears
“Villainy wears many masks, and none so dangerous as the mask of virtue.” - Washington Irving
"When the soul looks out of its body, it should see only beauty in its path. These are the sights we must hold in mind, in order to move to a higher place."
— Yusef Lateef
"the great 'scientists"'throughout history have always "revealed their work." In a way Steyn is right, otherwise, we would know nothing about the work that made the scientists great in the first place. We could name this principle The Law of Universal Inverse Relative Obscurity Probabilities ... The chances of a great scientist becoming great if they do not reveal their work / based on a face book discussion, 04/17/2014
I'm a big fan of Orwell. As a socialist, he certainly picked on conservatives, however his essays dealt a lot with the underlying psychology of leftist politics: “intellectual dishonesty”, evasions of facts, and tendencies towards totalitarianism. / G.F. Spicka
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"He (Orwell) stressed seeing the world 'clearly', i.e., without propaganda and fabrications, and acknowledged that the social situation had improved since the time of Marx. He despised pacifists, and did not hesitate to say that England was free because of its armed forces." / g.f.s FB
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"In regard to cameras on a nation’s flagpole, I think he (Orwell) would have no problem understanding the necessity of surveillance in today’s climate of terrorism. The film, 'Sum of all Fears', hints at what could happen." / gfs FB
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"I was thinking of rubber chickens the other day after seeing a report claiming that kids who ate chicken meat on bones, were more agressive then those who ate it boneless. Imagine a few years from now, masses of protesters marching through the streets of Washington, demanding the development of boneless chicken breeds, whirling rubber chickens over there heads as a symbolic gesture ;)" - G. F. Spicka 5/2014
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"There's too much of this dancing around real issues rather then confronting them. A display of self-righteousness certainly makes one feel good, but it does little to alleviate problems." - g.f.s. FB 6/20/15
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"The thing is, ordinary people don't go around killing others, it's the criminals and mentally unstable. Why penalize ordinary people for something they'll never do?" - g.f.s. FB 6/20/15 (gum control)
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“ … what happened to you shouldn’t have and I’m terribly sorry that it did, but as I said, none of that happened to him (Kavanaugh).”
Except that it did. None of those woman proved their accusations, none of them filed a complaint when it happened. In other words, as some like to say, they "lied."
If we as a nation base our judgements on hearsay rather then ascertainable evidence, then we are surely on our way to fascism. FB 10/08/3028
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“The press is a gang of cruel faggots. Journalism is not a profession or a trade. It is a cheap catch-all for fuckoffs and misfits—a false doorway to the backside of life, a filthy piss-ridden little hole nailed off by the building inspector, but just deep enough for a wino to curl up from the sidewalk and masturbate like a chimp in a zoo-cage.”
― Hunter S. Thompson, Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas