#ali

I was unwilling to - without getting too philosophical about it - I was unwilling to structure my spirituality in the way that the church wanted me to structure it. ↗

— Peter Jurasik

#church #getting #i #me #philosophical

I think kids slowly begin to realize that what they're learning relates to other things they know. Then learning starts to get more and more exciting. ↗

— Norton Juster

#exciting #get #i #i think #kids

And thus to my final and most melancholy point: a great number of Stalin's enforcers and henchmen in Eastern Europe were Jews. And not just a great number, but a great proportion. The proportion was especially high in the secret police and 'security' departments, where no doubt revenge played its own part, as did the ideological attachment to Communism that was so strong among internationally minded Jews at that period: Jews like David Szmulevski. There were reasonably strong indigenous Communist forces in Czechoslovakia and East Germany, but in Hungary and Poland the Communists were a small minority and knew it, were dependent on the Red Army and aware of the fact, and were disproportionately Jewish and widely detested for that reason. Many of the penal labor camps constructed by the Nazis were later used as holding pens for German deportees by the Communists, and some of those who ran these grim places were Jewish. Nobody from Israel or the diaspora who goes to the East of Europe on a family-history fishing-trip should be unaware of the chance that they will find out both much less and much more than the package-tour had promised them. It's easy to say, with Albert Camus, 'neither victims nor executioners.' But real history is more pitiless even than you had been told it was. ↗

— Christopher Hitchens

#camus #communism #czechoslovakia #david-szmulevski #east-germany

Many individuals have, like uncut diamonds, shining qualities beneath a rough exterior. ↗

— Juvenal

#diamonds #exterior #individuals #like #many

Quality training is what I do now; before it was a combination of both quality and quantity. Now I'm not trying to be a world-class athlete, I don't need to train at that level. It's about being fit, fit for life. ↗

— Jackie Joyner-Kersee

#athlete #before #being #both #combination

It is not easy for men to rise whose qualities are thwarted by poverty. ↗

— Juvenal

#men #poverty #qualities #rise #thwarted

So the ideology was that: use sounds as instruments, as sounds on tape, without the causality. It was no longer a clarinet or a spring or a piano, but a sound with a form, a development, a life of its own. ↗

— Luc Ferrari

#clarinet #development #form #ideology #instruments

To have the opportunity to lead the Solicitor General's office is the honor of a lifetime. As you know, this is an office with a long and rich tradition, not only of extraordinary legal skill but also of extraordinary professionalism and integrity. That is due, in large measure, to the people who have led it. ↗

— Elena Kagan

#due #extraordinary #general #honor #integrity

I paint my own reality. The only thing I know is that I paint because I need to, and I paint whatever passes through my head without any other consideration. ↗

— Frida Kahlo

#because #consideration #head #i #know

A healthy and fully functioning society must allocate its resources among a variety of competing interests, all of which are more or less valid but none of which should take precedence over national security. ↗

— Herman Kahn

#among #competing #fully #functioning #healthy