#author

I am an anarch – not because I despise authority, but because I need it. Likewise, I am not a nonbeliever, but a man who demands something worth believing in. ↗

— Ernst Jünger

#authority #beliefs #ernst-jünger #anarchism

Authority allows two roles: the torturer and the tortured. Twists people into joyless mannequins that fear and hate, while culture plunges into the abyss. ↗

— Alan Moore

#culture

Wherever there is a man who exercises authority, there is a man who resists authority. ↗

— Oscar Wilde

#resistance

All for one and one for all. ↗

— Alexandre Dumas

I am often described to my irritation as a 'contrarian' and even had the title inflicted on me by the publisher of one of my early books. (At least on that occasion I lived up to the title by ridiculing the word in my introduction to the book's first chapter.) It is actually a pity that our culture doesn't have a good vernacular word for an oppositionist or even for someone who tries to do his own thinking: the word 'dissident' can't be self-conferred because it is really a title of honor that has to be won or earned, while terms like 'gadfly' or 'maverick' are somehow trivial and condescending as well as over-full of self-regard. And I've lost count of the number of memoirs by old comrades or ex-comrades that have titles like 'Against the Stream,' 'Against the Current,' 'Minority of One,' 'Breaking Ranks' and so forth—all of them lending point to Harold Rosenberg's withering remark about 'the herd of independent minds.' Even when I was quite young I disliked being called a 'rebel': it seemed to make the patronizing suggestion that 'questioning authority' was part of a 'phase' through which I would naturally go. On the contrary, I was a relatively well-behaved and well-mannered boy, and chose my battles with some deliberation rather than just thinking with my hormones. ↗

— Christopher Hitchens

#contrarianism #dissent #dissidents #free-thought #harold-rosenberg

TWO AND TWO MAKES FIVE ↗

— George Orwell

#orwell #russian-revolution #satire #satire

I place my fingers upon these keys typing 2,000 dreams per minute and naked of spirit dance forth my cosmic vortex upon this crucifix called language. ↗

— Aberjhani

#books #creativity #determination #dreams #endurance

The most intriguing people you will encounter in this life are the people who had insights about you that you didn't know about yourself. ↗

— Shannon L. Alder

#family #friendship #pastors #family

People should know better than to be an ass in front of writers. We immortalize things. Lots of things. And we take liberties with character descriptions. ↗

— Michelle M. Pillow

#character #fantasy #fiction #michelle-pillow #romance-novel

Molly was arrested. Possession.” I blinked at him. “She was possessed? ↗

— Jim Butcher

#quote #dresden-files