#sm

Like that's the only reason anyone would ever buy a first-aid kit? Don't take this the wrong way, Professor McGonagall, but what sort of crazy children are you used to dealing with?" "Gryffindors," spat Professor McGonagall, the word carrying a freight of bitterness and despair that fell like an eternal curse on all youthful heroism and high spirits. ↗

— Eliezer Yudkowsky

#harry-potter #world-domination #heroism

Animals make us Human. ↗

— Temple Grandin

#heroism

In one of his last newsletters, Mike Ranney wrote: "In thinking back on the days of Easy Company, I'm treasuring my remark to a grandson who asked, 'Grandpa, were you a hero in the war?' No,'" I answered, 'but I served in a company of heroes. ↗

— Stephen E. Ambrose

#heroism #war #heroism

I am too much of a skeptic to deny the possibility of anything... ↗

— Thomas Henry Huxley

#skepticism #thinking #skepticism

Whether the mask is labeled fascism, democracy, or dictatorship of the proletariat, our great adversary remains the apparatus—the bureaucracy, the police, the military. Not the one facing us across the frontier of the battle lines, which is not so much our enemy as our brothers' enemy, but the one that calls itself our protector and makes us its slaves. No matter what the circumstances, the worst betrayal will always be to subordinate ourselves to this apparatus and to trample underfoot, in its service, all human values in ourselves and in others. ↗

— Simone Weil

#democracy #fascism #military #police #military

Now, the invention of the scientific method and science is, I'm sure we'll all agree, the most powerful intellectual idea, the most powerful framework for thinking and investigating and understanding and challenging the world around us that there is, and that it rests on the premise that any idea is there to be attacked and if it withstands the attack then it lives to fight another day and if it doesn't withstand the attack then down it goes. Religion doesn't seem to work like that; it has certain ideas at the heart of it which we call sacred or holy or whatever. That's an idea we're so familiar with, whether we subscribe to it or not, that it's kind of odd to think what it actually means, because really what it means is 'Here is an idea or a notion that you're not allowed to say anything bad about; you're just not. Why not? - because you're not! ↗

— Douglas Adams

#religion #science #religion

I think, tribalism is a mental prison…and pride of identity coupled with arrogance is one of the leading factors that limit one’s ability to abandon it. ↗

— Duop Chak Wuol

#limitations-of-knowledge #tribalism #arrogance

You were in Sweden?" Boomer asked. "No," I said. "The trip got called off at the last minute. Because of political the unrest" "In Sweden?" Priya seemed skeptical. "Yeah-isn't it strange how the Times isn't covering it? Half the country's on strike because of that thing the crown prince said about Pippi Longstocking Which means no meatballs for Christmas, if you know what I mean." "That's so sad!" Boomer said. ↗

— David Levithan

#skepticism

Leaving your religion and having to invent your own system of values is a big deal, after all. ↗

— Therese Doucet

#faith #philosophy #religion #faith

Long ago I yearned to be a hero without knowing, in truth, what a hero was. Now, perhaps, I understand it a little better. A grower of turnips or a shaper of clay, a Commot farmer or a king--every man is a hero if he strives more for others than for himself alone. Once you told me that the seeking counts more than the finding. So, too, must the striving count more than the gain. ↗

— Lloyd Alexander

#heroism