#lief

A child who is protected from all controversial ideas is as vulnerable as a child who is protected from every germ. The infection, when it comes- and it will come- may overwhelm the system, be it the immune system or the belief system. ↗

— Jane Smiley

#child #controversial #every #germ #ideas

The best lightning rod for your protection is your own spine. ↗

— Ralph Waldo Emerson

#courage #courage-to-be-oneself #independent-thought #lightning #lightning-rod

Alice laughed. 'There's no use trying,' she said. 'One can't believe impossible things.' I daresay you haven't had much practice,' said the Queen. 'When I was your age, I always did it for half-an-hour a day. Why, sometimes I've believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast. There goes the shawl again! ↗

— Lewis Carroll

#breakfast #humor #impossible #age

Nonsense is that which does not fit into the prearranged patterns which we have superimposed on reality...Nonsense is nonsense only when we have not yet found that point of view from which it makes sense. ↗

— Gary Zukav

#mind #new_age #nonsense #perception #physics

I worry that, especially as the Millennium edges nearer, pseudoscience and superstition will seem year by year more tempting, the siren song of unreason more sonorous and attractive. Where have we heard it before? Whenever our ethnic or national prejudices are aroused, in times of scarcity, during challenges to national self-esteem or nerve, when we agonize about our diminished cosmic place and purpose, or when fanaticism is bubbling up around us - then, habits of thought familiar from ages past reach for the controls. The candle flame gutters. Its little pool of light trembles. Darkness gathers. The demons begin to stir. ↗

— Carl Sagan

#carl-sagan #cosmos #age

If Jesus rose from the dead, then you have to accept all that he said; if he didn't rise from the dead, then why worry about any of what he said? The issue on which everything hangs is not whether or not you like his teaching but whether or not he rose from the dead. ↗

— Timothy Keller

#resurrection #skepticism #age

Sometimes when you get older—and I'm not talking about you, I'm talking generally, because everyone ages differently—things you think on and wish on start to seem real. And then you believe them, and before you know it they're a part of your history, and if someone challenges you on them and says they're not true—why, then you get offended. ↗

— Sara Gruen

#belief #challenge #history #life #offended

... researchers argue that it's of utmost importance to unravel the nature of black holes, lest we someday begin to worship them. Sounds ridiculous, but whole segments of humankind have often revered the unknowable, venerating that which cannot be tested experimentally. Come to think of it, many still do in twenty-first-century society. ↗

— Eric Chaisson

#black-holes #science #testing #worship #age

Hierarchy and discipline gave shape to the world;that was what he had always believed.Life was made easy by adherence toa rigid structure.But maybe that only really worked when you were at the top of the ladder,when you were doing well.The further down the rungs you went,the more of a victim of circumstances you became and the less it mattered whether or not you were in control. ↗

— James Lovegrove

#discipline #life #systems #age

Ο θυμός άλλο πράμα. Ο άνθρωπος κοκκινίζει, φωνάζει, κάνει, χτυπιέται και ξεθυμαίνει. Ουφ! Η χολή άλλο. Αυτή καθίζει μέσα στα σωθικά, συμμαζεύεται στην καρδιά του ανθρώπου, τήνε κιτρινίζει, σα φλερόνι και τήνε σαπίζει!... Να τι κερδίζει ένας που χολεύεται... ↗

— Konstantinos Theotokis "Η Ζωή Και Ο Θάνατος Του Καραβέλα"

#heart #man #relief #rot #win