#rio

Is this, Miriam wonders, what they call the march of history? And even if she doesn't fully understand, it doesn't mean she can't appreciate the need, the periodic need for some people to resort to gasoline, rags, and matches. Doesn't it always come to this? Isn't history as much about tearing things down as it is about building things up? ↗

— Peter Orner

#history #humanity #mankind #march #need

Love is curiosity sometimes. Concentrated wondering about the other one. ↗

— Kij Johnson

#love #love

Rocher was on the floor, crawling on her stomach toward Jate's feet. "I love you...," she kept repeating, in a demonic whisper. "I have to show you... my butt. ↗

— Paul Rudnick

#jate #rocher #tattoo #love

Patriotism is the virtue of the vicious ↗

— Oscar Wilde

#nationalism #patriotism #virtue

I hate the world and almost all the people in it. I hate the Labour Congress and the journalists who send men to be slaughtered, and the fathers who feel a smug pride when their sons are killed, and even the pacifists who keep saying human nature is essentially good, in spite of all the daily proofs to the contrary. I hate the planet and the human race—I am ashamed to belong to such a species. ↗

— Bertrand Russell

#pacifists #patriotism #war #men

Women particularly should concern themselves with peace because men by nature are more foolhardy and headstrong, and their overwhelming desire to avenge themselves prevents them from foreseeing the resulting dangers and terrors of war. But woman by nature is more gentle and circumspect. Therefore, if she has sufficient will and wisdom she can provide the best possible means to pacify man. ↗

— Christine de Pizan

#circumspection #empowerment #men #peace #peacemaking

But men labor under a mistake. The better part of the man is soon ploughed into the soil for compost. By a seeming fate, commonly called necessity, they are employed, as it says in an old book, laying up treasures which moth and rust will corrupt and thieves break through and steal. ↗

— Henry David Thoreau

#priorities #treasure #men

She wanted to tell him so much, on the tarmac, the day he left. The world is run by brutal men and the surest proof is their armies. If they ask you to stand still, you should dance. If they ask you to burn the flag, wave it. If they ask you to murder, re-create. Theorem, anti-theorem, corollary, anti-corollary. Underline it twice. It’s all there in the numbers. Listen to your mother. Listen to me, Joshua. Look me in the eyes. I have something to tell you. ↗

— Colum McCann

#armies #children #lessons #let-the-great-world-spin #loss

I once had been in the middle of a mass chaos and terrible riots. There, I witnessed how men were truly such as beasts unleashed. ↗

— Toba Beta

#chaos #human #riots #true-fear #unleashed

There is, perhaps, no more dangerous man in the world than the man with the sensibilities of an artist but without creative talent. With luck such men make wonderful theatrical impresarios and interior decorators, or else they become mass murderers or critics. ↗

— Dame Edna Everage

#critics #humor #interior-decorators #murderers #talent