#sen

I am a strong individualist by personal habit, inheritance, and conviction; but it is a mere matter of common sense to recognize that the State, the community, the citizens acting together, can do a number of things better than if they were left to individual action. ↗

— Theodore Roosevelt

#unity #community

We went to the moon to have fun, but the moon turned out to completely suck. ↗

— M.T. Anderson

#fun

There are people in the world, who are just wrong, and then there are the masses of population that are right, or at the very least they lie in the veil of between. I on the other hand, do not belong to any group. I don’t exist. It’s not that I don’t have substance; I have a body like everyone else. I can feel the fire when it burns against my skin, the rain when it caresses my face and the breeze as it fingers my hair. I have all the senses that other people do. I am just empty, inside. ↗

— J.D. Stroube

#caress #emptiness #empty #exist #fire

I'm not really sure which parts of myself are real and which parts are things I've gotten from books. ↗

— Beatrice Sparks

#sense-of-self #identity

You know, I think I knew you for about three weeks before I ever really saw you smile. And then one day, Morgan said something and you laughed, and I remember thinking it was really cool because it meant something. You're not the kind of person who smiles for nothing, Colie. I have to earn every one. ↗

— Sarah Dessen

#sarah-dessen #moon

Manners are a sensitive awareness of the feelings of others. If you have that awareness, you have good manners, no matter what fork you use. ↗

— Emily Post

#feelings #fork #good #good manners #manners

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

It is a pity that there are no big creatures to prey on humanity. If there were enough dragons and rocs, perhaps mankind would turn its might against them. Unfortunately man is preyed upon by microbes, which are too small to be appreciated. ↗

— T.H. White

#odin #sword-sentiments #war #mankind

I'm an agent of Her Majesty's Secret Service. I do not do booby traps. ↗

— Ally Carter

#townsend #service

Silence becomes cowardice when occasion demands speaking out the whole truth and acting accordingly. ↗

— Mahatma Gandhi

#complicity #dissent #protest #truth-telling #silence