#pro

I had seen nothing sacred, and the things that were glorious had no glory and the sacrifices were like the stockyards at Chicago if nothing was done with the meat except to bury it.  ↗

— Ernest Hemingway

#war #propaganda

A good American makes propaganda for whatever existence has forced him to become. ↗

— Saul Bellow

#characterization #propaganda

Inside, I’m assaulted by the evening propaganda broadcasts coming over the apartment’s hardwired loudspeaker. There’s one in every apartment and factory floor in Pyongyang ↗

— Adam Johnson

#propaganda

You are going to break your promise. I understand. And I hold my hands over the ears of my heart, so that I will not hate you. ↗

— Catherynne M. Valente

#broken-promise #trust #betrayal

The man who refuses to judge, who neither agrees nor disagrees, who declares that there are no absolutes and believes that he escapes responsibility, is the man responsible for all the blood that is now spilled in the world. Reality is an absolute, existence is an absolute, a speck of dust is an absolute and so is a human life. Whether you live or die is an absolute. Whether you have a piece of bread or not, is an absolute. Whether you eat your bread or see it vanish into a looter's stomach, is an absolute. There are two sides to every issue: one side is right and the other is wrong, but the middle is always evil. The man who is wrong still retains some respect for truth, if only by accepting the responsibility of choice. But the man in the middle is the knave who blanks out the truth in order to pretend that no choice or values exist, who is willing to sit out the course of any battle, willing to cash in on the blood of the innocent or to crawl on his belly to the guilty, who dispenses justice by condemning both the robber and the robbed to jail, who solves conflicts by ordering the thinker and the fool to meet each other halfway. In any compromise between food and poison, it is only death that can win. In any compromise between good and evil, it is only evil that can profit. In that transfusion of blood which drains the good to feed the evil, the compromise is the transmitting rubber tube. ↗

— Ayn Rand

#compromise #conflict-resolution #evil #indecisiveness #judgement

Protestants believe that the sacraments are like ladders that God gave to us by which we can climb up to Him. Catholics believe that they are like ladders that God gave to Himself by which He climbs down to us. ↗

— Peter Kreeft

#christianity #god #jesus-shock #protestantism #sacraments

A shaft of moonlight illuminated a row of sentinel silver birch in a phosphorescent glow, appearing almost ethereal in the relative surrounding gloom. Boris had stopped again, his silhouette a stark black juxtaposition against the background of illuminated branches. ↗

— R.D. Ronald

#visual-moments #visualization

Quand on a terminé sa toilette du matin, il faut faire soigneusement la toilette de la planète. ↗

— Antoine de Saint-Exupéry

#earth #environment #environmental-protection #environmentalism

People often ask, "What is the single most important environmental population problem facing the world today?" A flip answer would be, "The single most important problem is our misguided focus on identifying the single most important problem! ↗

— Jared Diamond

#error #misguidedness #population #problems #environmentalism

there is only one way under high heaven to get the best of an argument - and that is to avoid it . ↗

— Dale Carnegie

#wisdom #self-improvement