#mon

The first key to leadership was self-control, particularly the mastery of pride, which was something more difficult, he explained, to subdue than a wild lion and anger, which was more difficult to defeat than the greatest wrestler. He warned them that "if you can't swallow your pride, you can't lead. ↗

— Jack Weatherford

#control #ghengis-khan #historical-person #leadership #mongols

For if in careless summer days In groves of Ashtaroth we whored, Repentant now, when winds blow cold, We kneel before our rightful lord; The lord of all, the money-god, Who rules us blood and hand and brain, Who gives the roof that stops the wind, And, giving, takes away again; Who spies with jealous, watchful care, Our thoughts, our dreams, our secret ways, Who picks our words and cuts our clothes, And maps the pattern of our days; Who chills our anger, curbs our hope, And buys our lives and pays with toys, Who claims as tribute broken faith, Accepted insults, muted joys; Who binds with chains the poet’s wit, The navvy’s strength, the soldier’s pride, And lays the sleek, estranging shield Between the lover and his bride. ↗

— George Orwell

#condoms #money #poetry #poverty #sex

When a good man lends himself to the advocacy of slavery, he must, at least for a time, feel himself to be any where but at home, amongst his new thoughts, doctrines, and modes of reasoning. ↗

— Gerrit Smith

#advocacy #amongst #any #doctrines #feel

Therefore, it is we who are responsible for much of the evil in the world; and we are each morally required to accept rather than project that ponderous responsibility-lest we prefer instead to wallow in a perennial state of powerless, frustrated, furious, victimhood. For what one possesses the power to bring about, one has also the power to limit, mitigate, counteract, or transmute. ↗

— Stephen A. Diamond

#evil #existentialism #anger

Monsters were declared to be warnings against sin, individual or collective, and demonstrations of the anger and the glory of God. ↗

— Dudley Wilson

#anger

But if it not be true, the myth itself requires to be explained, and every principle of philosophy and common sense demand that the explanation be sought, not in arbitrary allegorical categories, but in the actual facts of ritual or religious custom to which the myth attaches. ↗

— William Robertson Smith

#allegorical #arbitrary #attaches #be true #categories

I suddenly realized. The zebra. It is not something outside of us. The zebra is something inside of us. Our fears. Our own self-destructive nature. The zebra is the worst part of us when we are face-to-face with our worst times. The demon is us! ↗

— Garth Stein

#fear #self-destruction #art

The wide world is full of people wanting help, Jon. Would that some could find the courage to help themselves. - Lord Commander Mormont ↗

— George R.R. Martin

#george-r-r-martin #jon-snow #lord-commander-mormont #song-of-ice-and-fire #courage

and half of learning to play is learning what not to play and she's learning the spaces she leaves have their own things to say and she's trying to sing just enough so that the air around her moves and make music like mercy that gives what it is and has nothing to prove she crawls out on a limb and begins to build her home and it's enough just to look around and to know that she's not alone up up up up up up up points the spire of the steeple but god's work isn't done by god it's done by people ↗

— Ani DiFranco

#integrity #intrinsic-motivation #simons-rock #transcendence #wind

As humanity perfects itself, man becomes degraded. When everything is reduced to the mere counter-balancing of economic interests, what room will there be for virtue? When Nature has been so subjugated that she has lost all her original forms, where will that leave the plastic arts? And so on. In the mean time, things are going to get very murky. ↗

— Gustave Flaubert

#capitalism #humnaity #life #mankind #money