#til

In the long run, we shape our lives, and we shape ourselves. The process never ends until we die. And the choices we make are ultimately our own responsibility. ↗

— Eleanor Roosevelt

#die #ends #lives #long #long run

One night I was standing on Third Avenue playing my guitar, when this big Irish policeman came strolling by, and stopped to listen to my singing and playing. When I was done, he politely handed me a ticket for disturbing the peace, while at the same time telling me how much he liked my voice. I wish I still had that ticket. ↗

— Frank Stallone

#big #came #disturbing #done #guitar

No race can prosper till it learns that there is as much dignity in tilling a field as in writing a poem. ↗

— Booker T. Washington

#field #learns #much #poem #prosper

There can be no settlement of a great cause without discussion, and people will not discuss a cause until their attention is drawn to it. ↗

— William Jennings Bryan

#cause #discuss #discussion #drawn #great

I will no longer mutilate and destroy myself in order to find a secret behind the ruins. ↗

— Hermann Hesse

#self-destruction #self-mutilation #truth #wisdom #destruction

It is an infantile superstition of the human spirit that virginity would be thought a virtue and not the barrier that separates ignorance from knowledge. ↗

— Voltaire

#human #human spirit #ignorance #infantile #knowledge

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

The family is the cradle of the world’s misinformation. There must be something in family life that generates factual error. Over-closeness, the noise and heat of being. Perhaps even something deeper like the need to survive. Murray says we are fragile creatures surrounded by a world of hostile facts. Facts threaten our happiness and security. The deeper we delve into things, the looser our structure may seem to become. The family process works towards sealing off the world. Small errors grow heads, fictions proliferate. I tell Murray that ignorance and confusion can’t possibly be the driving forces behind family solidarity. What an idea, what a subversion. He asks me why the strongest family units exist in the least developed societies. Not to know is a weapon of survival, he says. Magic and superstition become entrenched as the powerful orthodoxy of the clan. The family is strongest where objective reality is most likely to be misinterpreted. What a heartless theory, I say. But Murray insists it’s true. ↗

— Don DeLillo

#hostile-facts #white-noise #family

If all printers were determined not to print anything till they were sure it would offend nobody, there would be very little printed. ↗

— Benjamin Franklin

#determined #little #nobody #offend #print

If there really had been a Mercutio, and if there really were a Paradise, Mercutio might be hanging out with teenage Vietnam draftee casualties now, talking about what it felt like to die for other people's vanity and foolishness. ↗

— Kurt Vonnegut

#futility #shakespeare #shakespeare