#cho

Honestly, if you're given the choice between Armageddon or tea, you don't say 'what kind of tea? ↗

— Neil Gaiman

#choice #tea #choice

Despite everything, I can’t bear the thought of this ring being lost forever, any more than I can bear the thought of leaving you forever. And though I have no choice about the one, at least I can choose about the other. ↗

— Cassandra Clare

#choice

Through others we become ourselves. ↗

— Lev S. Vygotsky

#educatin #identity #imitation #psychology #self-awareness

…there is an idea of a Patrick Bateman, some kind of abstraction, but there is no real me, only an entity, something illusory, and though I can hide my cold gaze and you can shake my hand and feel flesh gripping yours and maybe you can even sense our lifestyles are probably comparable: I simply am not there. It is hard for me to make sense on any given level. Myself is fabricated, an aberration. I am a noncontingent human being. My personality is sketchy and unformed, my heartlessness goes deep and is persistent. My conscience, my pity, my hopes disappeared a long time ago (probably at Harvard) if they ever did exist. There are no more barriers to cross. All I have in common with the uncontrollable and the insane, the vicious and the evil, all the mayhem I have caused and my utter indifference toward it, I have now surpassed. I still, though, hold on to one single bleak truth: no one is safe, nothing is redeemed. Yet I am blameless. Each model of human behavior must be assumed to have some validity. Is evil something you are? Or is it something you do? My pain is constant and sharp and I do not hope for a better world for anyone. In fact, I want my pain to be inflicted on others. I want no one to escape. But even after admitting this—and I have countless times, in just about every act I’ve committed—and coming face-to-face with these truths, there is no catharsis. I gain no deeper knowledge about myself, no new understanding can be extracted from my telling. There has been no reason for me to tell you any of this. This confession has meant nothing…. ↗

— Bret Easton Ellis

#ellis #commitment

PTSD is a whole-body tragedy, an integral human event of enormous proportions with massive repercussions. ↗

— Susan Pease Banitt

#healing #mental-health #psychology #ptsd #spirituality

It's often a bad sign when people defend themselves against charges which haven't been made. ↗

— Christopher Hitchens

#defensiveness #noam-chomsky #september- #iraq

There is a noticeable element of the pathological in some current leftist critiques, which I tend to attribute to feelings of guilt allied to feelings of impotence. Not an attractive combination, because it results in self-hatred. ↗

— Christopher Hitchens

#guilt #impotence #iraq-war #leftism #pathology

The quality of the relationships that students have in class with their peers and teachers is important to their success in school. ↗

— Bob Pletka

#school #student #teacher #education

A poet is a nightingale who sits in darkness and sings to cheer its own solitude with sweet sounds. ↗

— Percy Bysshe Shelley

#poets

To find out what is truly individual in ourselves, profound reflection is needed; and suddenly we realize how uncommonly difficult the discovery of individuality is. ↗

— C.G. Jung

#individuality #introspection #psychology #consciousness