#pol

If once the people become inattentive to the public affairs, you and I, and Congress and Assemblies, Judges and Governors, shall all become wolves. It seems to be the law of our general nature, in spite of individual exceptions. ↗

— Thomas Jefferson

#political-philosophy #nature

The reason I don't Kill Myself is because I know I can. ↗

— Stanley Victor Paskavich

#mental-disorders #mental-health #suicide #suicide-attempt #mental-health

Because I was single, there was a chance I was a homosexual. Because I went to Syracuse, wherever that was, then I was probably a Communist. Or worse, a Liberal. Because I was from Memphis, I was a subversive intent on embarrassing Ford County. ↗

— John Grisham

#thriller #thriller

So long as there shall exist, by virtue of law and custom, decrees of damnation pronounced by society, artificially creating hells amid the civilization of earth, and adding the element of human fate to divine destiny; so long as the three great problems of the century—the degradation of man through pauperism, the corruption of woman through hunger, the crippling of children through lack of light—are unsolved; so long as social asphyxia is possible in any part of the world;—in other words, and with a still wider significance, so long as ignorance and poverty exist on earth, books of the nature of Les Misérables cannot fail to be of use. HAUTEVILLE HOUSE, 1862. [Translation by Isabel F. Hapgood] ↗

— Victor Hugo

#les-misérables #political #poverty #society #victor-hugo

Because normal human activity is worse for nature than the greatest nuclear accident in history. ↗

— Martin Cruz Smith

#humanity #nature #nuclear #nuclear-war #pollution

A nation is a detour of nature to arrive at five or six great men- yes, and then to get around them. ↗

— Friedrich Nietzsche

#philosophy #politics #men

Saudis of all sorts recent having to beg princes for favors to secure services that should be a public right ↗

— Karen Elliott House

#religion

The foundation of individual rights is the assumption that people have wants and needs and are authorities on what those wants and needs are. If people's stated desires were just some kind of erasable inscription or reprogrammable brainwashing, any atrocity could be justified. ↗

— Steven Pinker

#justice #politics #rights #nature

Grammar is politics by other means. ↗

— Donna J. Haraway

#gender #grammar #linguistics #politics #nature

Hatred is the most accessible and comprehensive of all the unifying agents. Mass movements can rise and spread without belief in a god, but never without a belief in a devil. ↗

— Eric Hoffer

#nature