#constraints

We come to a corner where there are a few people protesting the festivities. I don't understand this at all. It's like protesting the fact that some people are red-haired. In my experience, desire is desire, love is love. I have never fallen in love with a gender. I have fallen for individuals. I know this is hard for people to do, but I don't understand why it's so hard, when it's so obvious. ↗

— David Levithan

#free-of-gender-constraints #love-is-love #omnisexuality #pansexuality #queerness

I have been thinking ... that the social moulds civilization fits us into have no more relation to our actual shapes than the conventional shapes of the constellations have to the real star-patterns. I am called Mrs. Richard Phillotson, living a calm wedded life with my counterpart of that name. But I am not really Mrs. Richard Phillotson, but a woman tossed about, all alone, with aberrant passions, and unaccountable antipathies… ↗

— Thomas Hardy

#social-constraints #nature

I think frugality drives innovation, just like other constraints do. One of the only ways to get out of a tight box is to invent your way out. ↗

— Jeff Bezos

#constraints #drives #frugality #get #i

Modernism released us from the constraints of everything that had gone before with a euphoric sense of freedom. ↗

— Arthur Erickson

#constraints #euphoric #everything #freedom #gone

But as for activism, my parents did what they could, given the constraints, but were never involved in the causes I think of when I think of activists. ↗

— Paul Farmer

#activists #causes #constraints #could #did

The first breath of adultery is the freest; after it, constraints aping marriage develop. ↗

— John Updike

#after #breath #constraints #develop #first

At a minimum, in explaining evolutionary pathways through time, the constraints imposed by history rise to equal prominence with the immediate advantages of adaptation. ↗

— Stephen Jay Gould

#advantages #constraints #equal #evolutionary #explaining

If we define optimism broadly as the tendency to maintain a positive outlook, then realistic optimism is the tendency to maintain a positive outlook within the constraints of the available "measurable phenomena situated in the physical and social world" (DeGrandpre, 2000, p. 733). With respect to fuzzy meaning, realistic optimism involves enhancing and focusing on the favorable aspects of our experiences. Examples include being lenient in our evaluation of past events, actively appreciating the positive aspects of our current situation, and routinely emphasizing possible opportunities for the future. With respect to fuzzy knowledge, realistic optimism involves hoping, aspiring, and searching for positive experiences while acknowledging what we do not know and accepting what we cannot know. ↗

— Sandra L. Schneider

#constraints #evaluation #opportunities #optimism #positivity

The constraints of melodrama can be a great blessing, because they demand that all the characters involved - as absurd and extreme as they may initially seem - must stay utterly rooted in their own reality, or the whole project collapses. ↗

— Stanley Tucci

#because #blessing #characters #collapses #constraints

pour que tu sois libre de la liberté du chanteur qui improvise sur l'instrument à cordes, ne faut-il pas que je t'exerce d'abord les doigts et t'enseigne l'art du chanteur? Ce qui est guerre, contrainte et endurance. Et pour que tu sois libre de la liberté du montagnard, ne faut-il pas que tu aies exercé tes muscles, ce qui est guerre, contrainte et endurance? Et pour que tu sois libre de la liberté du poête, ne faut-il pas que tu aies exercé ton cerveau et forgé ton style, ce qui est guerre, contrainte et endurance? (chapitre CLII) ↗

— Antoine de Saint-Exupéry

#freedom #art