#ruth

On some positions, cowardice asks the question, is it expedient? And then expedience comes along and asks the question, is it politic? Vanity asks the question, is it popular? Conscience asks the question, is it right? There comes a time when one must take the position that is neither safe nor politic nor popular, but he must do it because conscience tells him it is right. ↗

— Martin Luther King Jr.

#questions

The illusion which exalts us is dearer to us than ten thousand truths. ↗

— Anton Chekhov

#truth #short-story

A great writer reveals the truth even when he or she does not wish to. ↗

— Tom Bissell

#writers #writing #writer

...the heart is an organ of fire. ↗

— Michael Ondaatje

#english

I was going to die, sooner or later, whether or not I had even spoken myself. My silences had not protected me. Your silences will not protect you.... What are the words you do not yet have? What are the tyrannies you swallow day by day and attempt to make your own, until you will sicken and die of them, still in silence? We have been socialized to respect fear more than our own need for language." I began to ask each time: "What's the worst that could happen to me if I tell this truth?" Unlike women in other countries, our breaking silence is unlikely to have us jailed, "disappeared" or run off the road at night. Our speaking out will irritate some people, get us called bitchy or hypersensitive and disrupt some dinner parties. And then our speaking out will permit other women to speak, until laws are changed and lives are saved and the world is altered forever. Next time, ask: What's the worst that will happen? Then push yourself a little further than you dare. Once you start to speak, people will yell at you. They will interrupt you, put you down and suggest it's personal. And the world won't end. And the speaking will get easier and easier. And you will find you have fallen in love with your own vision, which you may never have realized you had. And you will lose some friends and lovers, and realize you don't miss them. And new ones will find you and cherish you. And you will still flirt and paint your nails, dress up and party, because, as I think Emma Goldman said, "If I can't dance, I don't want to be part of your revolution." And at last you'll know with surpassing certainty that only one thing is more frightening than speaking your truth. And that is not speaking. ↗

— Audre Lorde

#revolution #silence #speaking-out #truth #change

Things come apart so easily when they have been held together with lies. ↗

— Dorothy Allison

#lying #truth #lie

We should show life neither as it is, nor as it should be, but as we see it in our dreams. ↗

— Anton Chekhov

#dreams

There is no doubt fiction makes a better job of the truth. ↗

— Doris Lessing

#on-fiction #storytelling #truth #truth-telling #job

Simple can be harder than complex: You have to work hard to get your thinking clean to make it simple. But it’s worth it in the end because once you get there, you can move mountains. ↗

— Steve Jobs

#hard #simple #thinking #truth #wisdom

At times to be silent is to lie. You will win because you have enough brute force. But you will not convince. For to convince you need to persuade. And in order to persuade you would need what you lack: Reason and Right ↗

— Miguel de Unamuno

#lying #reason #silence #truth #winning