#tory

...What happens is of little significance compared with the stories we tell ourselves about what happens. Events matter little, only stories of events affect us. ↗

— Rabih Alameddine

#reality #stories #story #storytelling #perception

Humans are pattern-seeking story-telling animals, and we are quite adept at telling stories about patterns, whether they exist or not. ↗

— Michael Shermer

#perceptions #storytelling #perception

When you're young and healthy you can plan on Monday to commit suicide, and by Wednesday you're laughing again. ↗

— Marilyn Monroe

#my-story #suicide #commitment

Hold up your head! You were not made for failure, you were made for victory. Go forward with a joyful confidence. ↗

— George Eliot

#failure

I have nothing to offer but blood, toil, tears and sweat. We have before us an ordeal of the most grievous kind. We have before us many, many long months of struggle and of suffering. You ask, what is our policy? I can say: It is to wage war, by sea, land and air, with all our might and with all the strength that God can give us; to wage war against a monstrous tyranny, never surpassed in the dark, lamentable catalogue of human crime. That is our policy. You ask, what is our aim? I can answer in one word: It is victory, victory at all costs, victory in spite of all terror, victory, however long and hard the road may be; In “Blood, Toil, Tears, and Sweat,” his first speech as Prime Minister to the House of Commons May 13, 1940 quoted by Jeffrey R. Holland in “However Long and Hard the Road” BYU Devotional 18 Jan 1983 ↗

— Winston Churchill

#goals #victory #vision #work #crime

There are only patterns, patterns on top of patterns, patterns that affect other patterns. Patterns hidden by patterns. Patterns within patterns. If you watch close, history does nothing but repeat itself. What we call chaos is just patterns we haven't recognized. What we call random is just patterns we can't decipher. what we can't understand we call nonsense. What we can't read we call gibberish. There is no free will. There are no variables. ↗

— Chuck Palahniuk

#history #history-repeating-itself #patterns #free

It frustrates and fascinates me that we'll never know for sure, that despite the best efforts of historians and scientists and poets, there are some things we'll just never know. What the first song sounded like. How it felt to see the first photograph. Who kissed the first kiss, and if it was any good. ↗

— Isaac Marion

#the-unknowable #effort

Violence, naked force, has settled more issues in history than has any other factor. ↗

— Robert A. Heinlein

#violence #war #violence

The purpose of a storyteller is not to tell you how to think, but to give you questions to think upon. ↗

— Brandon Sanderson

#purpose

All over the world major museums have bowed to the influence of Disney and become theme parks in their own right. The past, whether Renaissance Italy or Ancient Egypt, is re-assimilated and homogenized into its most digestible form. Desperate for the new, but disappointed with anything but the familiar, we recolonize past and future. The same trend can be seen in personal relationships, in the way people are expected to package themselves, their emotions and sexuality, in attractive and instantly appealing forms. ↗

— J.G. Ballard

#disney #future #history #past #relationships