Quotes

Karlysymon

Superstar
Joined
Mar 18, 2017
Messages
6,722
“Pride leads to every other vice: it is the complete anti-God state of mind. Does this seem to you exaggerated? If so, think it over. … [T]he more pride one had, the more one disliked pride in others. In fact, if you want to find out how proud you are the easiest way is to ask yourself, ‘How much do I dislike it when other people snub me, or refuse to take any notice of me, or shove their oar in, or patronise me, or show off?’ The point is that each person’s pride is in competition with everyone else’s pride. It is because I wanted to be the big noise at the party that I am so annoyed at someone else being the big noise. Two of a trade never agree”. — C. S. Lewis, Mere Christianity
 
Joined
Mar 30, 2017
Messages
3,578
True love does not just choose one person. When true love is there, you shine like a lamp. You don’t just shine on one person in the room. That light you emit is for everyone in the room. If you really have love in you everyone around you will profit – not only humans, but animals, plants, and minerals. Love, true love, is that. True love is equanimity.

- Thich Nhat Hanh
 

Hooligan69

Established
Joined
Apr 15, 2019
Messages
279
“In an ever-changing, incomprehensible world the masses had reached the point where they would, at the same time, believe everything and nothing, think that everything was possible and that nothing was true. ... Mass propaganda discovered that its audience was ready at all times to believe the worst, no matter how absurd, and did not particularly object to being deceived because it held every statement to be a lie anyhow. The totalitarian mass leaders based their propaganda on the correct psychological assumption that, under such conditions, one could make people believe the most fantastic statements one day, and trust that if the next day they were given irrefutable proof of their falsehood, they would take refuge in cynicism; instead of deserting the leaders who had lied to them, they would protest that they had known all along that the statement was a lie and would admire the leaders for their superior tactical cleverness.”

― Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism
 

DesertRose

Superstar
Joined
May 20, 2017
Messages
7,596
“Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and it never will. Find out just what any people will quietly submit to and you have found out the exact measure of injustice and wrong which will be imposed upon them, and these will continue till they are resisted with either words or blows, or with both. The limits of tyrants are prescribed by the endurance of those whom they oppress.”
― Frederick Douglass

“We know that no one ever seizes power with the intention of relinquishing it. Power is not a means; it is an end.”
― George Orwell, 1984
 

DesertRose

Superstar
Joined
May 20, 2017
Messages
7,596
You are precisely as big as what you love and precisely as small as what you allow to annoy you.

The Right's view of government and the Left's view of big business are both correct.


Every war results from the struggle for markets and spheres of influence, and every war is sold to the public by professional liars and totally sincere religious maniacs, as a Holy Crusade to save God and Goodness from Satan and Evil.

On a planet that increasingly resembles one huge Maximum Security prison, the only intelligent choice is to plan a jail break.

Robert Anton Wilson
 

Tidal

Star
Joined
Mar 4, 2020
Messages
3,803
"Just make up your mind at the very outset that your work is going to stand for quality... that you are going to stamp a superior quality upon everything that goes out of your hands, that whatever you do shall bear the hall-mark of excellence." - Orison Swett Marden (1850-1924)
 

Tidal

Star
Joined
Mar 4, 2020
Messages
3,803
"Luck has a peculiar habit of favoring those who don't depend on it" - Anon
"Luck is not something you can mention in the presence of self-made men"- E.B.White
"Luck? I don't know anything about luck. I've never banked on it.... Luck to me is something else.....realizing what is opportunity and what isn't" - Lucille Ball
"Luck is when opportunity knocks and you answer" -Anon
"Luck is believing you're lucky" - Tennessee Williams

"A person does not seek luck, luck seeks the person" - Turkish proverb
"I make my own luck"- PoorOldSpike (wargame champion)
 

Hooligan69

Established
Joined
Apr 15, 2019
Messages
279
To slow a beast, you break its limbs. To slow a nation, you break its people. You rob them of volition. You demonstrate your absolute command over their destiny. You make it clear that ultimately it falls to you to decide who lives, who dies, who prospers, who doesn’t. To exhibit your capability you show off all that you can do, and how easily you can do it. How easily you could press a button and annihilate the earth. How you can start a war, or sue for peace. How you can snatch a river away from one and gift it to another. How you can green a desert, or fell a forest and plant one somewhere else. You use caprice to fracture a people’s faith in ancient things—earth, forest, water, air. Once that’s done, what do they have left? Only you. They will turn to you, because you’re all they have. They will love you even while they despise you. They will trust you even though they know you well. They will vote for you even as you squeeze the very great from their bodies. They will drink what you give them to drink. They will breathe what you give them to breathe. They will live where you dump their belongings. They have to. What else can they do? There’s no higher court of redress. You are their mother and their father. You are the judge and the jury. You are the World. You are God.

- Arundhati Roy, The Cost of Living
 

DesertRose

Superstar
Joined
May 20, 2017
Messages
7,596
“Equipped as he is by his very nature for worship, man cannot not worship ; and if his outlook is cut off from the spiritual plane, he will find a “god” to worship at some lower level, thus endowing something relative with what belongs only to the Absolute. Hence the existence today of so many “words to conjure with” like “freedom”, “equality”, “literacy”, “science”, “civilization”, words at the utterance of which a multitude of souls fall prostrate in sub-mental adoration.”
― Martin Lings, Ancient Beliefs and Modern Superstitions
 

DesertRose

Superstar
Joined
May 20, 2017
Messages
7,596
What upsets people is not things themselves, but their judgments about these things.
Man is not worried by real problems so much as by his imagined anxieties about real problems.
Make the best use of what is in your power, and take the rest as it happens
— Epictetus​
 

DesertRose

Superstar
Joined
May 20, 2017
Messages
7,596
It has frequently been observed that terror can rule absolutely only over people who are isolated against each other and that therefore one of the primary concerns of tyrannical government is to bring this isolation about. Isolation may be the beginning of terror; it certainly is its most fertile ground; it always is its result. This isolation is, as it were, pretotalitarian; its hallmark is impotence insofar as power always comes from people acting together, acting in concert; isolated people are powerless by definition.”

Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism
 

Frank Badfinger

Superstar
Joined
Aug 4, 2019
Messages
15,774
It has frequently been observed that terror can rule absolutely only over people who are isolated against each other and that therefore one of the primary concerns of tyrannical government is to bring this isolation about. Isolation may be the beginning of terror; it certainly is its most fertile ground; it always is its result. This isolation is, as it were, pretotalitarian; its hallmark is impotence insofar as power always comes from people acting together, acting in concert; isolated people are powerless by definition.”

Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism
Wow!! I'm stealing this as my new signature. Thanks DR!
 
Top