#ali

...What happens is of little significance compared with the stories we tell ourselves about what happens. Events matter little, only stories of events affect us. ↗

— Rabih Alameddine

#reality #stories #story #storytelling #perception

Most of us go through each day looking for what we saw yesterday And, not surprisingly, that is what we find. ↗

— James A. Kitchens

#perception #reality #perception

If you meet a loner, no matter what they tell you, it’s not because they enjoy solitude. It’s because they have tried to blend into the world before, and people continue to disappoint them. ↗

— Jodi Picoult

#reality #solitude #sisters

Books serve to show a man that those original thoughts of his aren't very new after all. ↗

— Abraham Lincoln

#originality #unique #thought

Jesus was not content to derive his ethics from the scriptures of his upbringing. He explicitly departed from them. [...] Since a principal thesis of this chapter is that we do not, and should not, derive our morals from scripture, Jesus has to be honoured as a model for that very thesis. ↗

— Richard Dawkins

#jesus #morality #scripture #scripture

When a person screams in pain, the actual pain is only half the noise they make. The other half is the terror at being forced to accept that they exist. ↗

— Noah Cicero

#pain #screaming #suffering #terrorism

He thought each memory recalled must do some violence to its origins. As in a party game. Say the words and pass it on. So be sparing. What you alter in the remembering has yet a reality, known or not. ↗

— Cormac McCarthy

#reality #violence

Every day you may make progress. Every step may be fruitful. Yet there will stretch out before you an ever-lengthening, ever-ascending, ever-improving path. You know you will never get to the end of the journey. But this, so far from discouraging, only adds to the joy and glory of the climb. ↗

— Winston Churchill

#perseverance #progress #path

Ethics and I had crossed paths recently, and I’m not sure that I fell on the right side of the morality line. ↗

— S.C. Stephens

#path

Propaganda is to a democracy what the bludgeon is to a totalitarian state. ↗

— Noam Chomsky

#democracy #propaganda #state #totalitarian #totalitarian state