#non

Yes, Kālāmas, it is proper that your have doubt, that you have perplexity, for a doubt has arisen in a matter which is doubtful. Now, look you Kālāmas, do not be led by reports, or traditions, or hearsay. Be not led by the authority of religious texts, not by the delight in speculative opinions, nor by seeming possibilities, not by the idea: 'this is our teacher'. But, O Kālāmas, when you know for yourself that certain things are unwholesome, and wrong, and bad, then give them up... And when you know for yourself that certain things are wholesome and good, then accept them and follow them. ↗

— Gautama Buddha

#confusion #doubt #good-judgment #nonconformity #questioning

As writers we intend to make a difference, to alter people's lives for the greater good. . .this is why we write, to have an impact on society, to put a personal stamp on history. . .Art and literature are the legacies we leave to succeeding generations. We'll be forgotten, but our books and essays, our stories and poems can survive us. . . ↗

— Lee Gutkind

#writers-on-writing #writing #writing-life #art

I respect those who say that the United States should simply withdraw from the Middle East, but I don't respect them for anything but their honesty. ↗

— Christopher Hitchens

#isolationism #middle-east #noninterventionism #respect

My kids are starting to notice I'm a little different from the other dads. "Why don't you have a straight job like everyone else?" they asked me the other day. I told them this story: In the forest, there was a crooked tree and a straight tree. Every day, the straight tree would say to the crooked tree, "Look at me...I'm tall, and I'm straight, and I'm handsome. Look at you...you're all crooked and bent over. No one wants to look at you." And they grew up in that forest together. And then one day the loggers came, and they saw the crooked tree and the straight tree, and they said, "Just cut the straight trees and leave the rest." So the loggers turned all the straight trees into lumber and toothpicks and paper. And the crooked tree is still there, growing stronger and stranger every day. ↗

— Tom Waits

#individuality #music #musician #non-conformity #humor

If I had a world of my own, everything would be nonsense. Nothing would be what it is, because everything would be what it isn't. And contrary wise, what is, it wouldn't be. And what it wouldn't be, it would. You see? ↗

— Lewis Carroll

#mad-hatter #nonsense #nothing

Anon, who wrote so many poems without signing them, was often a woman. ↗

— Virginia Woolf

#poetry #woman #woman

The most effective way of destroying art is the canonization of one given form. And one philosophy. ↗

— Yevgeny Zamyatin

#canon #literature #writing #art

Liberty and democracy become unholy when their hands are dyed red with innocent blood. ↗

— Mahatma Gandhi

#liberty

Say what you want but you NEVER say it with violence! ↗