#we

Some Westerners... have argued that the West does not have problems with Islam but only with violent Islamist extremists. Fourteen hundred years of history demonstrate otherwise. ↗

— Samuel P. Huntington

#western-civilization #islam

If citizens followed their leaders' example throughout history, the human race would have died out centuries ago. ↗

— Heather Brewer

#ninth-grade-slays #the-chronicles-of-vladimir-tod #vladimir-tod #race

When your desires are strong enough, you will appear to possess superhuman powers to achieve. ↗

— Napoleon Hill

#desire #power #achievement

Whatever you choose, however many roads you travel, I hope that you choose not to be a lady. I hope you will find some way to break the rules and make a little trouble out there. And I also hope that you will choose to make some of that trouble on behalf of women. ↗

— Nora Ephron

#college

When one is deprived of ones liberty, one is right in blaming not so much the man who puts the shackles on as the one who had the power to prevent him, but did not use it. ↗

— Thucydides

#slavery

Not all men (and especially the wisest) share the opinion that it is bad for women to be educated. But it is very true that many foolish men have claimed this because it displeased them that women knew more than they did. ↗

— Christine de Pizan

#education #empowerment #inequality #knowledge #men

Hey, what is it with you? Why are you so spaced out? You still haven't answered me." I probably still haven't completely adapted to the world," I said after giving it some thought. "I don't know, I feel like this isn't the real world. The people, the scene: they just don't seem real to me." Midori rested an elbow on the bar and looked at me. "There was something like that in a Jim Morrison song, I'm pretty sure." People are strange when you're a stranger. ↗

— Haruki Murakami

#norwegian-wood #space

No book worth its salt is meant to put you to sleep, it's meant to make you jump out of your bed in your underwear and run and beat the author's brains out. ↗

— Bohumil Hrabal

#books #brains #sleep #underwear #authority

The Professor never really seemed to care whether we figured out the right answer to a problem. He preferred our wild, desperate guesses to silence, and he was even more delighted when those guesses led to new problems that took us beyond the original one. He had a special feeling for what he called the "correct miscalculation," for he believed that mistakes were often as revealing as the right answers. ↗

— Yoko Ogawa

#delight #guesses #math #struggle #math

Sometimes we must undergo hardships, breakups, and narcissistic wounds, which shatter the flattering image that we had of ourselves, in order to discover two truths: that we are not who we thought we were; and that the loss of a cherished pleasure is not necessarily the loss of true happiness and well-being. (109) ↗

— Jean-Yves Leloup

#emotional-wounds #happiness #hardships #self-image #suffering