#tan

If other people do not understand our behavior—so what? Their request that we must only do what they understand is an attempt to dictate to us. If this is being "asocial" or "irrational" in their eyes, so be it. Mostly they resent our freedom and our courage to be ourselves. We owe nobody an explanation or an accounting, as long as our acts do not hurt or infringe on them. How many lives have been ruined by this need to "explain," which usually implies that the explanation be "understood," i.e. approved. Let your deeds be judged, and from your deeds, your real intentions, but know that a free person owes an explanation only to himself—to his reason and his conscience—and to the few who may have a justified claim for explanation. ↗

— Erich Fromm

#freedom #life #understanding #art

The four stages of acceptance: 1. This is worthless nonsense. 2. This is an interesting, but perverse, point of view. 3. This is true, but quite unimportant. 4. I always said so." (Review of The Truth About Death, in: Journal of Genetics 1963, Vol. 58, p.464) ↗

— J.B.S. Haldane

#dispute #haldane #opportunism #science #self-contradiction

The ache for home lives in all of us. The safe place where we can go as we are and not be questioned. ↗

— Maya Angelou

#comfort #home #protection #safety #security

Character is like a tree and reputation its shadow. The shadow is what we think it is and the tree is the real thing. ↗

— Abraham Lincoln

#character #simile #substance #character

Sometimes people let the same problem make them miserable for years when they could just say, So what. That's one of my favorite things to say. So what. ↗

— Andy Warhol

#getting-over-it #problems

We are all going, I thought, and it applies to turtles and turtlenecks, Alaska the girl and Alaska the place, because nothing can last, not even the earth itself. The Buddha said that suffering was caused by desire, we'd learned, and that the cessation of desire meant the cessation of suffering. When you stopped wishing things wouldn't fall apart, you'd stop suffering when they did. ↗

— John Green

#nothing

Consequently, if you believe God made Satan, you must realize that all Satan's power comes from God and so that Satan is simply God's child, and that we are God's children also. There are no children of Satan, really. ↗

— Anne Rice

#satan #vampire #children

Nothing brings down walls as surely as acceptance. ↗

— Deepak Chopra

#christ

If God were our one and only desire we would not be so easily upset when our opinions do not find outside acceptance. ↗

— Thomas à Kempis

#christ #christian #opinions #christ

Now, now my good man, this is no time to be making enemies." (Voltaire on his deathbed in response to a priest asking him that he renounce Satan.) ↗

— Voltaire

#enemies #satan #enemy