(no subject)
QRT-
-Really going overboard this time.
-"A man is but the product of his thoughts. What he thinks, he becomes." ~Ghandi
-"I labor, I spend, I strive, I design, I love, I cling, I uphold, I give way, I envy, I long, I scorn, I die, I hide, I want." ~Saul Bellow
-Awareness is always the first step.
-The end does justify the means if the means do no great harm and the end is noble and actually is achievable.
-"There is only one way to defeat the enemy, and that is to write as well as one can. The best argument is an undeniably good book." ~Saul Bellow
-How do all these wise, thoughtful words from the past seem to have little bearing on today's discourse? It depresses me to think that high truths already exist and we ignore them. We don't have to accept them verbatim but we also do not have to start from scratch each generation.
-Quite engrossed with the prose of dead old men.
-"At the age of twenty six I am in the condition of an aged person - all my old friends are gone ... & my heart fails when I think by how few ties I hold to the world...." ~Mary Shelley
-"When you read, don't just consider what the author thinks, consider what you think."
-Falsely attributed.
-"Quotation confesses inferiority."
-Is there anything I could say better?
-"At all times pseudoprofound aphorisms have been more popular than rigorous arguments."
-"I shall never be ashamed to quote a bad author if what he says is good."
-When in doubt sweat and stew.
-Time to sit around and think of a way to justify what I already believe.
-"Mean world syndrome"
-"Seven social sins: politics without principles, wealth without work, pleasure without conscience, knowledge without character, commerce without morality, science without humanity, and worship without sacrifice." ~Ghandi
-No, I'm working on the list, not the things on it.
-"We never get anywhere in this world without the forces of history and individual persons in the background helping us to get there. If you have the privilege of a fine education, well, you have it because somebody made it possible. If you have the privilege to gain wealth and a bit of the world’s goods, well, you have it because somebody made it possible. So don’t boast, don’t be arrogant. You, at that moment, rise out of your self-centeredness to the type of living that makes you an integrated personality." ~MLK Jr
-Remember, all was one.
-Don't brew in shame.
-"Sometimes I wish I was gay, or straighter."
-"predictable excuse intolerance bingo."
-They take a reasonable notion and muddle it with their bias and desire to be provocative.
-What would it be like if there was no gender or racial discrimination in the workplace or perhaps more importantly in the path to it? What if there was no institutional and cultural resistance due to stereotypes? I cannot see how it could be anything but good. Even if this ideal was reached I would be surprised if the genders were equally represented in every field. I do not mean to be judgmental, for all I know females would be the larger population in many scientific fields. But that asymmetry, likely small, would be a generalization and has no bearing on how we should treat individuals. We all deserve the chance and opportunity to seek our desires without being marginalized. If we can make that world we will all be stronger and frankly it's just a place I'd rather live.
-Once again that grain of truth behind the closed mind.
-"Everybody knows there is no fineness or accuracy of suppression; if you hold down one thing, you hold down the adjoining." ~Saul Bellow
-What should I do about it? Something, that's for sure.
-I am not saying there is an endpoint.
-"How can you have a war on terrorism when war itself is terrorism?" ~Howard Zinn
-I am really worried that you are darkening. Your agony does not justify your pride. And yet you remain brave.
-Ascetic ideal.
-"I think, in most cases, the difference between depression and disappointment is your level of commitment." ~Marc Maron
-An underrated torture is plucking nose hair.
-"Get past your ego."
-You are not the underdog so you will be critiqued even if you have some level of justification.
-Don't feel so bad you old fool.
-Overreactant.
-"do it scared"
-I get so anxious the first time. Then after I am just bored with it.
-"I don't know how the hell people get things done. I know that once you start to do them, everything is okay." ~Marc Maron
-"defiantly understand"
-Down you are.
-"we were masturbating about an idea. We were poets."
-Local sounds lost in the bustle.
-Does some oppression motivate outliers to a higher standard?
-"I've always resented the smug statements of politicians, media commentators, corporate executives, who talked of how, in America, if you worked hard, you would become rich. The meaning of that was, if you were poor, it was because you hadn't worked hard enough. I knew this was a lie-about my father, and millions of others: men and women who worked harder than anyone." ~Howard Zinn
-It took me a while to process what my mom was saying.
-I apologize profusely.
-"There's some sage advice for you, youngster, from a season veteran-be careful about falling for people who have all the same bad qualities as you."
-Subtext out of context.
-"You could compile the worst book in the world entirely out of selected passages from the best writers in the world."
-Strict and loose.
-Sharper than cuts.
-How do you react so calmly? I admire that control though it may be your nature and not restraint.
-"I'm so powerful on stage I seem to have created a monster. When I'm performing I'm an extrovert yet inside I'm a completely different man" ~Freddie Mercury
-It is fine to hate things but choose well as each takes a toll.
-The greatest crimes also steal morality from the victims.
-It is just, not fair.
-"Capitalism has always been a failure for the lower classes. It is now beginning to fail for the middle classes." ~Howard Zinn
-"Pessimism becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy; it reproduces itself by crippling our willingness to act." ~Howard Zinn
-Frozen in fuckery.
-I cannot believe that any word is bad in itself. Context can make normally kind words terrible and bad words decent.
-"You don't give people a hard time. You cut through their shit by ignoring social convention." ~Alex
-"Tom Swift and His Wizard Camera" "Tom Swift and the Galaxy Ghosts"
-All of these are awesome.
-Finally down to finite not infinite.
-Easily placed lines.
-I am not suddenly going to know what should go there.
-"But as you're vomiting out sentence after sentence, occasionally one will flow out that is genius"
-It is hard to stand for something.
-You end up with just small and stubborn things.
-"You can spend the entire second half of your life recovering from the mistakes of the first half. " ~Saul Bellow
-"A writer who can't deal with rejection is like a surfboard who can’t deal with water."
-No wait.
-"I am not an absolute pacifist, because I can't rule out the possibility that under some, carefully defined circumstances, some degree of violence may be justified, if it is focused directly at a great evil. Slave revolts are justified..." ~Howard Zinn
-It does not always fail so it is always tempting.
-The answer, as usual, is both.
-What makes you think you should be shielded from this bitterness?
-Hot enough to melt a pot.
-"The weak can never forgive. Forgiveness is the attribute of the strong." ~Ghandi
-I would not even like you if you thought you owed me.
-It is always the face.
-The sexiest thing is expression.
-The important thing is not what you do the first time, but how you respond to feedback.
-I will admit it, because on some level I am proud of it.
-Recurrent themes.
-"The term 'just war' contains an internal contradiction. War is inherently unjust, and the great challenge of our time is how to deal with evil, tyranny, and oppression without killing huge numbers of people." ~Howard Zinn
-Why do we seem to reserve our energy for destruction and cynicism?
-Rarely unique.
-"Nothing moderate can have any claim to our attention."
-"We take foreigners to be incomplete Americans - convinced that we must help and hasten their evolution."
-"middlebrow highmindedness"
-"Facts always are sensational." ~Saul Bellow
-And if you don't think those voices in my head should have a say you don't believe in democracy.
-"I swear to you there are divine things more beautiful than words can tell."
-That does not mean he gets the last say, but just that he gets a say. And it is foolish to trot him out like some representative of that entire group when there are clearly many opinions.
-"...maybe there’s some relief in creatively facing your worst fears."
-I really hate tucking in a shirt. A wedding is an exception due to indulgent fanciness.
-"...I made the unpardonable sin of forgetting to acknowledge that some people are different. I forgot that some readers might be lead to believe, in their innocence, that our conversations are so sweeping as to completely reject the very notion that we live in a world that has a multitude of personal views and behaviors."
-Constructing a statement with care.
-"There is no flag large enough to cover the shame of killing innocent people for a purpose which is unattainable." ~Howard Zinn
-I may have.
-Up for going down?
-"catcher's mitt appeal"
-Misfitting.
-"i am a sex machine ready to reload"
-"There is no moral argument which to me is all-powerful. Even if the bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki ended the war sooner did that justify killing several hundred thousand innocent people? Would the defenders of the bombing agree to kill 100,000 American or English children in order to shorten the war? If the answer is no, it means that Japanese children do not deserve to live as our children do. If the answer is no, one must use the word 'racism' to describe the conclusion that the bombs should have been dropped." ~Howard Zinn