#o

the fact that every people feel itself threatened by the others gives the state it's definite unifying powers; it depends upon the instinct of self-preservation of society itself; the latent external crisis enables it to get the upper hand in internal crises ↗

— Martin Buber

#politics #power #state #anarchy

I see the glass half full and thank God for what I have. ↗

— Ana Monnar

#gratitude #optimism #optimistic #gratitude

You look like a puppy. Like I'm jingling my keys and you're jumping by the door waiting for your walk" "Woof. ↗

— Maggie Stiefvater

#sam-roth #sam

Nowadays you have to be a scientist if you want to be a killer. No, no, I was neither. Ladies and gentleman of the jury, the majority of sex offenders that hanker for some throbbing, sweet-moaning, physical but not necessarily coital, relation with a girl-child, are innocuous, inadequate, passive, timid strangers who merely ask the community to allow them to pursue their practically harmless, so-called aberrant behavior, their little hot wet private acts of sexual deviation without the police and society cracking down upon them. We are not sex fiends! We do not rape as good soldiers do. We are unhappy, mild, dog-eyed gentlemen, sufficiently well integrated to control our urge in the presence of adults, but ready to give years and years of life for one chance to touch a nymphet. Emphatically, no killers are we. Poets never kill. ↗

— Vladimir Nabokov

#pedophilia #poets #soldiers #life

I grew up in a world that told girls they couldn't play rock and roll. ↗

— Joan Jett

#musician #musician

I have lived with several Zen masters -- all of them cats. ↗

— Eckhart Tolle

#cat-people #cats #integrity #meditation #peace

Thousands of years ago the first man discovered how to make fire. He was probably burnt at the stake he'd taught his brothers to light, but he left them a gift they had not conceived and he lifted darkness from the face of the Earth. ↗

— Ayn Rand

#integrity #objectivism #integrity

I can't deceive myself that out of the bare stark realization that no matter how enthusiastic you are, no matter how sure that character is fate, nothing is real, past or future, when you are alone in your room with the clock ticking loudly into the false cheerful brilliance of the electric light. And if you have no past or future which, after all, is all that the present is made of, why then you may as well dispose of the empty shell of present and commit suicide. ↗

— Sylvia Plath

#future #loneliness #suicide #journalism

You know what the issue is? Do you want to know? It's what these guys have decided to call America. They have the audacity to say, 'There, you sons of bitches, don't lay a finger on it. That is a finished product.'" "But any country is still in the making. Always. That's just history, people have to see that. ↗

— Barbara Kingsolver

#diversity #kingsolver #lacuna #diversity

Diversity and independence are important because the best collective decisions are the product of disagreement and contest, not consensus or compromise. ↗

— James Surowiecki

#decisions #diversity #diversity