#position

Power does not corrupt men; fools, however, if they get into a position of power, corrupt power. ↗

— George Bernard Shaw

#does #fools #get #however #into

As Israel prepares to enter, my position is well known. It is one that I have taken at previous Olympics. It is wrong that the IOC refuses to have a minute's silence for Israeli athletes that were slaughtered in Munich. ↗

— Brian Williams

#enter #i #israel #israeli #known

There were corpses here and there and pools of blood. I remember seeing a butterfly flutter up and down that street. Summer does not abdicate. ↗

— Victor Hugo

#juxtaposition #revolution #death

As you enter positions of trust and power, dream a little before you think. ↗

— Toni Morrison

#dream #enter #little #positions #power

There is much modern music that is better adapted to a wind combination than to a string, although for obvious reasons originally scored for an orchestra. If in such cases the interpretation is equal to the composition the balance of a wind combination is more satisfying. ↗

— John Philip Sousa

#although #balance #better #cases #combination

Our first record didn't come out on vinyl, so I think that might have had something to do with actually being in a position to make sure that it came out in vinyl this time. It sounds way better. ↗

— Jeff Ament

#being #better #came #come #first

If Poe had stuck only to these principles, he would have written Love Story. Luckily he knew that if plot is the dominant element in every story, it must however be tempered with other elements...Hence his calculation of the number of lines, his analysis of the musicality of the word "Nevermore," and the deliberate visual contrast between Pallas's white breast and the blackness of the raven, and everything that makes "The Raven" a poetic composition and not a horror film. ↗

— Umberto Eco

#the-raven #love

In recent times, more and more human thinking has come to assume that the idea of a universal natural law and the idea of 'God' are pointing to one and the same reality. ↗

— Wilhelm Reich

#god #nature

Mr. Cat and Mr. Dog were neighbors who fought like, well, cats and dogs. That is until Mr. Rat moved in. It's fascinating how easily two enemies ally at the introduction of a third. ↗

— Richelle E. Goodrich

#ally #enemies #fighting #human-nature #opposition

I am often described to my irritation as a 'contrarian' and even had the title inflicted on me by the publisher of one of my early books. (At least on that occasion I lived up to the title by ridiculing the word in my introduction to the book's first chapter.) It is actually a pity that our culture doesn't have a good vernacular word for an oppositionist or even for someone who tries to do his own thinking: the word 'dissident' can't be self-conferred because it is really a title of honor that has to be won or earned, while terms like 'gadfly' or 'maverick' are somehow trivial and condescending as well as over-full of self-regard. And I've lost count of the number of memoirs by old comrades or ex-comrades that have titles like 'Against the Stream,' 'Against the Current,' 'Minority of One,' 'Breaking Ranks' and so forth—all of them lending point to Harold Rosenberg's withering remark about 'the herd of independent minds.' Even when I was quite young I disliked being called a 'rebel': it seemed to make the patronizing suggestion that 'questioning authority' was part of a 'phase' through which I would naturally go. On the contrary, I was a relatively well-behaved and well-mannered boy, and chose my battles with some deliberation rather than just thinking with my hormones. ↗

— Christopher Hitchens

#contrarianism #dissent #dissidents #free-thought #harold-rosenberg