#sm

There are no innocent bystanders ... what are they doing there in the first place? ↗

— William S. Burroughs

#responsibility #voyeurism #innocence

They were close enough that he could feel the hurried beat of her heart. He could feel Charlotte's indecision in every word she didn't say and every move she didn't make. She was tense with uncertainty, quivering with irresolution. She might not be leaning into him, but she wasn't pulling away, either. ↗

— Lauren Willig

#night-jasmine #uncertainty #temptation

I hate purity, I hate goodness! I don't want virtue to exist anywhere. I want everyone to be corrupt to the bones. ↗

— George Orwell

#political-satire #quthoritarianism #russian-revolution #virtue

We are not to simply bandage the wounds of victims beneath the wheels of injustice, we are to drive a spoke into the wheel itself. ↗

— Dietrich Bonhoeffer

#justice #justice

To avoid criticism say nothing, do nothing, be nothing. ↗

— Aristotle

#criticism

But smiles and tears are so alike with me, they are neither of them confined to any particular feelings: I often cry when I am happy, and smile when I am sad. ↗

— Anne Brontë

#smiles #tears #tears

Loyalty to country ALWAYS. Loyalty to government, when it deserves it. ↗

— Mark Twain

#politics #political

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

Agnostics are just atheists without balls. ↗

— Stephen Colbert

#america

You'll never have a quiet world till you knock the patriotism out of the human race. ↗

— George Bernard Shaw

#human race #knock #never #out #patriotism