“
Too many dogs continue to be abused and abandond - one is too many - and people continue to kill people for money and envy and no reason at all. Bad people succeed and good people fail, but that's not the end of the story. Miracles happen that nobody sees, and among us walk heroes who are never recognised, and people live in loneliness because they cannot believe they are loved
”
”
Dean Koontz (The Darkest Evening of the Year)
“
More often than not, what animals require our protection from is not hurricanes or fires, but abuse at the hands of other people".
”
”
Julie Klam (Love at First Bark: How Saving a Dog Can Sometimes Help You Save Yourself)
“
She was in a terrible marriage and she couldn't talk to anyone. He used to hit her, and in the beginning she told him that if it ever happened again, she would leave him. He swore that it wouldn't and she believed him. But it only got worse after that, like when his dinner was cold, or when she mentioned that she'd visited with one of the neighbors who was walking by with his dog. She just chatted with him, but that night, her husband threw her into a mirror.
”
”
Nicholas Sparks (Safe Haven)
“
I shall destroy capitalism! Do you hear! I shall destroy every single capitalist! And I shall start with you, you dog, if you don't help us with the bomb!'
Allan noted that the had managed to be both a rat and a dog in the course of a minute or so. And that Stalin was being rather inconsistent, because now he wanted to use Allan's services after all.
But Allan wasn't going to sit there and listen to this abuse any longer. He had come to Moscow to help them out, not to be shouted at. Stalin would have to manage on his own.
'I've been thinking,' said Allan.
'What,' said Stalin angrily.
'Why don't you shave off that moustache?'
With that the dinner was over, because the interpreter fainted.
”
”
Jonas Jonasson (The Hundred-Year-Old Man Who Climbed Out of the Window and Disappeared (The Hundred-Year-Old Man, #1))
“
How many abused souls—dogs and humans alike—have remained in an unloving place because staying was far less terrifying than leaving?
”
”
Ted Kerasote (Merle's Door: Lessons from a Freethinking Dog)
“
I once fed a dog-fight operator to the dogs he had abused for so long, and do you want to know something? It felt so good. It was justice, girl. The fucking law never gave a shit about a victim, but justice is all heart.
”
”
Cedric Nye (Jango's Anthem)
“
Hi, I’m Jude Ryder Jamieson,” he began, extending his hand. I took it, shaking it. He held onto it when I tried to pull it back. “My mom left when I was thirteen. My dad’s serving a life sentence for killing a young kid. I spent the last five years in a boys’ home being bullied, beat, and abused by the kids, the staff, and even the goddamn dog. I sold drugs. I did drugs. I got arrested. A lot. I screwed a lot of faceless women.” He paused, sucking in a breath. “And then I met one whose face I couldn’t forget. I fell in love with her. I hurt her because I fell in love with her and was afraid she was going to leave me the way everyone else had.” He lifted his other hand, cradling mine between his. “I still love her.
”
”
Nicole Williams
“
Look into their eyes and tell them "I'm sorry, you have to die, but I need to eat". Look into their eyes, and tell them "I know there is an abundance of plant based foods I could eat, but I would still rather eat you". Look into their eyes and tell them "I know I don't NEED to eat you, but I am going to pay someone else to murder you anyway" Look into their eyes and tell them "I'm sorry you lived a short enslaved, abused and tortured life, but I don't care because I am selfish" Look into their eyes and tell them " I love my cat/dog, but your life doesn't matter as much" Go ahead, take a look into their eyes and tell them that!
”
”
Jenn V Keller-Lowe
“
In Germany, Dodd had noticed, no one ever abused a dog, and as a consequence dogs were never fearful around men and were always plump and obviously well tended. "Only horses seem to be equally happy, never children or the youth," he wrote. ... He called it "horse happiness" and had noticed the same phenomenon in Nuremburg and Dresden. In part, he knew this happiness was fostered by German law, which forbade cruelty to animals and punished violators with prison.
"At a time when hundreds of men have been put to death without trial or any sort of evidence of guilt, and when the population literally trembles with fear, animals have rights guaranteed them which men and women cannot think of expecting."
He added, "One might easily wish he were a horse!
”
”
Erik Larson (In the Garden of Beasts: Love, Terror, and an American Family in Hitler's Berlin)
“
It is a clear indictment of how ingrained our state of cognitive dissonance is that we see attempts at moral consistency as signs of extremism. Is it not strange that we call those who kill dogs animal abusers, those who kill pigs normal and those who kill neither extremists? Is it not odd that someone who smashes a car window to rescue a dog on a hot day is viewed as a hero but some one who rescues a piglet suffering on a far is a criminal?
”
”
Ed Winters (This is Vegan Propaganda (and Other Lies the Meat Industry Tells You))
“
I realized I had become wild and undomesticated, living a gypsy life—coming and going from Bernie’s. But even the thought about settling down in a cozy home with a dog and a cat, not to mention a person, would cause me to panic, pick up and run away. It’s not that I would want to leave. I would have to. The very idea of being settled, I found unsettling. I believed I didn’t deserve these things. I felt secure and comfortable getting what I needed on the fly—no commitments.
”
”
Samantha Hart (Blind Pony: As True A Story As I Can Tell)
“
In 1965, a psychologist named Martin Seligman started shocking dogs.
He was trying to expand on the research of Pavlov--the guy who could make dogs salivate when they heard a bell ring. Seligman wanted to head in the other direction, and when he rang his bell, instead of providing food, he zapped the dogs with electricity. To keep them still, he restrained them in a harness during the experiment. After they were conditioned, he put these dogs in a big box with a little fence dividing it into two halves. He figured if the dog rang the bell, it would hop over the fence to escape, but it didn't. It just sat there and braced itself. They decided to try shocking the dog after the bell. The dog still just sat there and took it. When they put a dog in the box that had never been shocked before or had previously been allowed to escape and tried to zap it--it jumped the fence.
You are just like these dogs.
If, over the course of your life, you have experienced crushing defeat or pummeling abuse or loss of control, you convince yourself over time that there is no escape, and if escape is offered, you will not act--you become a nihilist who trusts futility above optimism.
Studies of the clinically depressed show that they often give in to defeat and stop trying. . .
Any extended period of negative emotions can lead to you giving in to despair and accepting your fate. If you remain alone for a long time, you will decide loneliness is a fact of life and pass up opportunities to hang out with people. The loss of control in any situation can lead to this state. . .
Choices, even small ones, can hold back the crushing weight of helplessness, but you can't stop there. You must fight back your behavior and learn to fail with pride. Failing often is the only way to ever get the things you want out of life. Besides death, your destiny is not inescapable.
”
”
David McRaney (You Are Not So Smart)
“
I remember the pain I felt, and wonder why a man who was such an accomplished liar had to tell the truth that day.
”
”
Toni Maguire (Don’t Tell Mummy: A True Story of the Ultimate Betrayal)
“
Reducing economic inequality and helping victims of domestic violence and child abuse are critical if we want to cut violence and crime.
”
”
Bruce D. Perry (The Boy Who Was Raised as a Dog: And Other Stories from a Child Psychiatrist's Notebook)
“
Is it not strange that we call those who kill dogs animal abusers, those who kill pigs normal and those who kill neither extremists? Is it not odd that someone who smashes a car window to rescue a dog on a hot day is viewed as a hero but someone who rescues a piglet suffering on a farm is a criminal?
”
”
Ed Winters (This Is Vegan Propaganda (& Other Lies the Meat Industry Tells You))
“
You cannot murder interns, but other than that, they are the same as mules. You can rob them, abuse them, debase them. There are no limits. When a man agrees to be intern, he is saying, “I am no longer human being with rights, I am like dog or monkey. Use me for labor until my body breaks and then consume all of my meats.” I
”
”
Simon Rich (Spoiled Brats: And Other Stories)
“
Tristan’s Mom: What are these?
Tristan: Your granddaughters.
Tristan’s Dad: Don’t worry honey, you don’t look old enough to be a mother let alone a
grandmother.
Tristan’s Mom: Again with the flattery, thank you dear. Where did they come from?
Tristan: Camie gave birth last night.
Jeff: I didn’t know she was pregnant.
Tristan: She wasn’t. It was a miracle.
Tristan’s Mom: Do they have names?
Tristan: Phineas and Ferb.
Jeff: From the cartoon?
Tristan’s Dad: That figures, he named the dog Scooby.
Tristan’s Mom: They sound like boy names.
Tristan: Mom! Shhh, you’ll give them a complex.
Jeff: If that Ferb one climbs my legs again I’m drop kicking it.
Tristan: That’s child abuse and I’ll press charges. Besides, they just miss their mom.
Jeff: I’m calling CPS (cat protective services)…
Tristan: What for?
Jeff: Because you’re making your kids live in a broken home unnecessarily.
Tristan: I’m not talking to you anymore.
Jeff: Fine, as long as you to talk to her.
Tristan: Back off.
Jeff: Nope, not gonna do it.
Tristan: I’m warning you man.
Jeff: You miss her too.
Tristan: Yeah, so?
Jeff: So do something about it.
Tristan: Happy? Last night was miserable and I think it’s too late.
Jeff: You still have a 12 year old ace in the hole.
Tristan: Saving it as a last resort.
Tristan’s Dad: Honey, do you have a clue as to what they’re talking about?
Tristan’s Mom: No and I don’t want one.
Jeff: I’m just helping my nieces get their parents back together. Dude, it’s time. Make the call.
Tristan: Alright, I did it. But I get the feeling I’m about to do business with the mob. I hope I don’t
wake up with the head of my horse in bed with me tonight.
Jeff: Well, a good father will do anything he can to protect his family, even if that means he runs
the risk of sleeping with the fishes.
Tristan: Okay girls, your aunt helped Daddy come up with a plan and if it works you should get to
see Mommy today. Cross your paws, or claws, or whatever…just cross something for luck.
”
”
Jenn Cooksey (Shark Bait (Grab Your Pole, #1))
“
In the United States the legacy of settler colonialism can be seen in the endless wars of aggression and occupations; the trillions spent on war machinery, military bases, and personnel instead of social services and quality public education; the gross profits of corporations, each of which has greater resources and funds than more than half the countries in the world yet pay minimal taxes and provide few jobs for US citizens; the repression of generation after generation of activists who seek to change the system; the incarceration of the poor, particularly descendants of enslaved Africans; the individualism, carefully inculcated, that on the one hand produces self-blame for personal failure and on the other exalts ruthless dog-eat-dog competition for possible success, even though it rarely results; and high rates of suicide, drug abuse, alcoholism, sexual violence against women and children, homelessness, dropping out of school, and gun violence.
”
”
Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz (An Indigenous Peoples' History of the United States (ReVisioning American History, #3))
“
If anyone attempted to rule the world by the gospel and to abolish all temporal law and sword on the plea that all are baptized and Christian, and that, according to the gospel, there shall be among them no law or sword - or need for either - pray tell me, friend, what would he be doing? He would be loosing the ropes and chains of the savage wild beasts and letting them bite and mangle everyone, meanwhile insisting that they were harmless, tame, and gentle creatures; but I would have the proof in my wounds. Just so would the wicked under the name of Christian abuse evangelical freedom, carry on their rascality, and insist that they were Christians subject neither to law nor sword, as some are already raving and ranting.
To such a one we must say: Certainly it is true that Christians, so far as they themselves are concerned, are subject neither to law nor sword, and have need of neither. But take heed and first fill the world with real Christians before you attempt to rule it in a Christian and evangelical manner. This you will never accomplish; for the world and the masses are and always will be unchristian, even if they are all baptized and Christian in name. Christians are few and far between (as the saying is). Therefore, it is out of the question that there should be a common Christian government over the whole world, or indeed over a single country or any considerable body of people, for the wicked always outnumber the good. Hence, a man who would venture to govern an entire country or the world with the gospel would be like a shepherd who should put together in one fold wolves, lions, eagles, and sheep, and let them mingle freely with one another, saying, “Help yourselves, and be good and peaceful toward one another. The fold is open, there is plenty of food. You need have no fear of dogs and clubs.” The sheep would doubtless keep the peace and allow themselves to be fed and governed peacefully, but they would not live long, nor would one beast survive another.
For this reason one must carefully distinguish between these two governments. Both must be permitted to remain; the one to produce righteousness, the other to bring about external peace and prevent evil deeds. Neither one is sufficient in the world without the other. No one can become righteous in the sight of God by means of the temporal government, without Christ's spiritual government. Christ's government does not extend over all men; rather, Christians are always a minority in the midst of non-Christians. Now where temporal government or law alone prevails, there sheer hypocrisy is inevitable, even though the commandments be God's very own. For without the Holy Spirit in the heart no one becomes truly righteous, no matter how fine the works he does. On the other hand, where the spiritual government alone prevails over land and people, there wickedness is given free rein and the door is open for all manner of rascality, for the world as a whole cannot receive or comprehend it.
”
”
Martin Luther (Luther and Calvin on Secular Authority (Cambridge Texts in the History of Political Thought))
“
Every marriage that ends in divorce; every serviceman who kills him- or herself; and every time a young warrior experience substance abuse issues, we witness a casualty of war.
”
”
Jay Kopelman (From Baghdad to America: Life Lessons from a Dog Named Lava)
“
Dogs try to do what’s right. Most of them, anyway. And dogs suffer. They’re tormented and starved and abused by people unworthy of them. Who knows what you endured before you found me? My furry warrior.
”
”
Dean Koontz (Ashley Bell)
“
Look into their eyes and tell them "I'm sorry, you have to die, but I need to eat."
Look into their eyes, and tell them "I know there is an abundance of plant based foods I could eat, but I would still rather eat you."
Look into their eyes and tell them "I know I don't NEED to eat you, but I am going to pay someone else to murder you anyway."
Look into their eyes and tell them "I'm sorry you lived a short enslaved, abused and tortured life, but I don't care because I am selfish."
Look into their eyes and tell them "I love my cat/dog, but your life doesn't matter as much."
Go ahead, take a look into their eyes and tell them that!
”
”
Jenn V Keller-Lowe
“
To accept the environmentalist argument that the suffering of individual animals is inconsequential compared to the ozone layer, we must be willing to admit that the sufferings of minority groups, raped women, battered wives, abused children, people sitting on death row, and our loved ones are small potatoes beneath the hole in the sky. To worry about any of them is, in effect, to miniaturize the big picture to portraits of battered puppy dogs.
”
”
Karen Davis
“
Some of those reported legitimate pit bull attacks—the price of so many unsocialized, abused, and aggressively trained dogs popping up around the country—but many were the result of pit bull hysteria, in which almost any incident involving a dog was falsely reported as a pit bull attack. The breed, which had existed in some form for hundreds of years, didn’t suddenly lose control. The dogs simply fell into the hands of many more people who had no interest in control.
”
”
Jim Gorant (The Lost Dogs: Michael Vick's Dogs and Their Tale of Rescue and Redemption)
“
At the end of the day, what it all comes down to is that believers are basically scared shitless of the very god whom they believe loves them. This reminds of an abused dog that lives in fear of being beaten by their master, but still dutifully retrieves the morning newspaper.
”
”
Al Stefanelli
“
Undaunted, she was completely alone for the first time in her life. Soberly examining each one of the bruises left beneath her skin from Hank’s forceful hands, she felt safe in the freedom of loneliness. The evening was serene, and Violet was unworried that everything would work out.
”
”
Norah Ann Marler
“
This, after all, is the king who passed the law about putting trousers on cats and dogs, who made too-loud laughter a punishable crime. According to rumor, he was abused by his father, the last king. But that's the story people always tell, isn't it, when they want to explain inexplicable behavior?
”
”
Michael Cunningham (A Wild Swan: And Other Tales)
“
The reality is that if we took the legally sanctioned practices from the animal farming industries and then applied them to other situations, we would think those practices horrendous. For example, if dog owners were cutting off their pets' tails and chopping their teeth out, we would condemn that as being horrific animal abuse. But we do it to pigs and call it high welfare. If someone was killing puppies by thumping their heads against a wall or dislocating their necks, we would call that evil, yet that happens to animals such as piglets and chickens and we call it humane. But the experience is the same for the individual animal, regardless of what species they are.
”
”
Ed Winters (This is Vegan Propaganda (and Other Lies the Meat Industry Tells You))
“
What better weapon than the human brain? The human brain was Mrs Twartski's and Wiezenslowski's domain. The children who were used were the castaways of the United States government, like dogs abandoned and a vet's office. Mrs. Twartski read the letter out loud, slowly and carefully enunciating every word in her thick Polish accent. The German scientists were looking for children who could learn quickly, were between ages four and twelve, and could withstand being famished without dying. Deutschland were paying dollar $50,000 per subject. Everyone in living room exactly Mrs. Twartski and all my aunts let out a huge "Ahhh". My sister's and my eyes grew wide because we had no idea what this meant or why the adults were so excited. Then my sister's eyes narrowed as if she knew something that I didn't yet, as if she had just figured something out.
”
”
Wendy Hoffman (The Enslaved Queen: A Memoir About Electricity and Mind Control (The Karnac Library))
“
Every time a dog humps your leg, you're being raped. #metoo
”
”
Oliver Markus Malloy (Inside The Mind of an Introvert: Comics, Deep Thoughts and Quotable Quotes (Malloy Rocks Comics Book 1))
“
and argued and sulked, the more grown-up
”
”
Kate Skylark (Dirty Little Dog: A Horrifying True Story of Child Abuse, and the Little Girl Who Couldn't Tell a Soul. (Skylark Child Abuse True Stories Book 1))
“
didn’t misbehave badly in front of Nicola – I would have felt disgraced,
”
”
Kate Skylark (Dirty Little Dog: A Horrifying True Story of Child Abuse, and the Little Girl Who Couldn't Tell a Soul. (Skylark Child Abuse True Stories Book 1))
“
charismatic and enigmatic child, and I grew to admire her
”
”
Kate Skylark (Dirty Little Dog: A Horrifying True Story of Child Abuse, and the Little Girl Who Couldn't Tell a Soul. (Skylark Child Abuse True Stories Book 1))
“
I'm getting tired of Harpo, she say. All he think about since us married is how to make me mind. He don't want a wife, he want a dog.
”
”
Alice Walker (The Color Purple)
“
Working with traumatized and maltreated children has also made me think carefully about the nature of humankind and the difference between humankind and humanity. Not all humans are humane. A human being has to learn how to become humane. That process—and how it can sometimes go terribly wrong—is another aspect of what this book is about. The stories here explore the conditions necessary for the development of empathy—and those that are likely, instead, to produce cruelty and indifference. They reveal how children’s brains grow and are molded by the people around them. They also expose how ignorance, poverty, violence, sexual abuse, chaos and neglect can wreak havoc upon growing brains and nascent personalities.
”
”
Bruce D. Perry (The Boy Who Was Raised As a Dog: And Other Stories from a Child Psychiatrist's Notebook)
“
The U.S. government has in recent years fought what it termed wars against AIDS, drug abuse, poverty, illiteracy and terrorism. Each of these wars has budgets, legislation, offices, officials, letterhead—everything necessary in a bureaucracy to tell you something is real. —Bruce Jackson Keynote address “Media and War” symposium, University of Buffalo November 17–18, 2003
”
”
Don Winslow (The Cartel (Power of the Dog #2))
“
In politics he was a Tory, except when the Tories were in office, during which period he roundly abused them for being a pack of Radicals. He was a hero to his valet, who bullied him, and a terror to most of his relations, whom he bullied in turn. Only England could have produced him, and he always said that the country was going to the dogs. His principles were out of date, but there was a good deal to be said for his prejudices.
”
”
Oscar Wilde (The Picture of Dorian Gray)
“
Has Stalin understood correctly?’ asked Stalin. ‘You were on Franco’s side, you have fought against Comrade Mao, you have… saved the life of the pig in London and you have put the deadliest weapon in the world in the hands of the arch-capitalists in the USA.
‘I might have known,’ Stalin mumbled and in his anger forgot to talk in the third person. ‘And now you are here to sell yourself to Soviet socialism? One hundred thousand dollars, is that the price for your soul? Or has the price gone up during the course of the evening?’
Allan no longer wanted to help. Of course, Yury was still a good man and he was the one who actually needed the help. But you couldn’t get away from the fact that the results of Yury’s work would end up in the hands of Comrade Stalin, and he was not exactly Allan’s idea of a real comrade. On the contrary, he seemed unstable, and it would probably be best for all concerned if he didn’t get the bomb to play with.
‘Not exactly,’ said Allan. ‘This was never about money…’
He didn’t get any further before Stalin exploded again.
‘Who do you think you are, you damned rat? Do you think that you, a representative of fascism, of horrid American capitalism, of everything on this Earth that Stalin despises, that you, you, can come to the Kremlin, to the Kremlin, and bargain with Stalin, and bargain with Stalin?’
‘Why do you say everything twice?’ Allan wondered, while Stalin went on:
‘The Soviet Union is prepared to go to war again, I’ll tell you that! There will be war, there will inevitably be war until American imperialism is wiped out.’
‘Is that what you think?’ asked Allan.
‘To do battle and to win, we don’t need your damned atom bomb! What we need is socialist souls and hearts! He who knows he can never be defeated, can never be defeated!’
‘Unless of course somebody drops an atom bomb on him,’ said Allan.
‘I shall destroy capitalism! Do you hear! I shall destroy every single capitalist! And I shall start with you, you dog, if you don’t help us with the bomb!’
Allan noted that he had managed to be both a rat and a dog in the course of a minute or so. And that Stalin was being rather inconsistent, because now he wanted to use Allan’s services after all.
But Allan wasn’t going to sit there and listen to this abuse any longer. He had come to Moscow to help them out, not to be shouted at. Stalin would have to manage on his own.
‘I’ve been thinking,’ said Allan.
‘What,’ said Stalin angrily.
‘Why don’t you shave off that moustache?’
With that the dinner was over, because the interpreter fainted
”
”
Jonas Jonasson (Der Hundertjährige, der aus dem Fenster stieg und verschwand)
“
They drove through the small town. Theo could see little through the windshield, but his senses were alive. The three of them—the beater, the boy, and the dog—said nothing all the way home, anchored in the weight of their terrible love.
”
”
Steven James Taylor (the dog)
“
Sometimes I fixate on how disgusting humans are. I think about how we do things like litter and invent nuclear bombs. I think about racism, war, rape, child abuse, and climate change. I think about how gross people are. I think about public bathrooms, armpits, and about all of our dirty hands. I think about how infection and diseases are spread. I think about how every human has a butt, and about how disgusting that is. Other times I fixate on how endearing people are. We sleep on soft surfaces; we like to be cozy. When I see cats cuddled up on pillows, I find it sweet; we are like that too. We like to eat cookies and smell flowers. We wear mittens and hats. We visit our families even when we’re old. We like to pet dogs. We laugh; we make involuntary sounds when we find things funny. Laughing is adorable, if you really think about it. We have hospitals. We invented buildings meant to help repair people. Doctors and nurses study for years to work here. They come here every day just to patch other people up. If we discovered some other animal who created infrastructure in the anticipation that their little animal peers might get hurt, we would all be absolutely moved and amazed.
”
”
Emily R. Austin (Everyone in This Room Will Someday Be Dead)
“
Back in the time before Columbus, there were only Indians here, no skyscrapers, no automobiles, no streets. Of course, we didn't use the words Indian or Native American then; we were just people. We didn't know we were supposedly drunks or lazy or savages. I wondered what it was like to live without that weight on your shoulders, the weight of the murdered ancestors, the stolen land, the abused children, the burden every Native person carries.
We were told in movies and books that Indians had a sacred relationship with the land, that we worshipped and nurtured it. But staring at Nathan, I didn't feel any mystical bond with the rez. I hated our shitty unpaved roads and our falling-down houses and the snarling packs of dogs that roamed freely in the streets and alleys. But most of all, I hated that kids like Nathan - good kids, decent kids - got involved with drugs and crime and gangs, because there was nothing for them to do here. No after-school jobs, no clubs, no tennis lessons. Every month in the Lakota Times newspaper there was an obituary for another teen suicide, another family in the Burned Thigh Nation who'd had their heart taken away from them. In the old days, the eyapaha was the town crier, the person who would meet incoming warriors after a battle, ask them what happened so they wouldn't have to speak of their own glories, then tell the people the news. Now the eyapaha, our local newspaper, announced losses and harms too often, victories and triumphs too rarely.
”
”
David Heska Wanbli Weiden (Winter Counts)
“
The dog leash was still tied tight around the oak tree in the back, stretched worn and limp across the green grass as if trying to escape to freedom; and he buried his wife without a tombstone. Where before, she sat most times in his home, licking her wounds.
”
”
Anthony Liccione
“
The infamous Pit bulls were recently bred by some irresponsible owners for fighting; but did you know that early pit bulls were terrific nanny dogs? They actually kept watch on infants and had the tough skin and musculature to withstand playful abuse by infants.
”
”
Lisa Cook (Aggressive Dog Training - Eliminate Bad Behavior in 7 Days!)
“
We use horses as our slaves; we chain dogs; we steal eggs from the chickens, honey from the bees; we make wallets out of crocodiles; we imprison the birds; we torture the bulls in the arenas; we whip the lions and beat the tigers in the circuses! What are we? Definitely not ethical creatures!
”
”
Mehmet Murat ildan
“
People may indeed be treated as objects and may be profoundly affected thereby. Kick a dog often enough and he will become cowardly or vicious. People who are kicked undergo similar changes; their view of the world and of themselves is transformed. . . People may indeed be brainwashed, for benign or exploitative reasons. . .
If one's destiny is shaped by manipulation one has become more of an object, less of a subject, has lost freedom. . .
If, however, one's destiny is shaped from within then one has become more of a creator, has gained freedom. This is self-transcendence, a process of change that originates in one's heart and expands outward. . . begins with a vision of freedom, with an "I want to become...", with a sense of the potentiality to become what one is not. One gropes toward this vision in the dark, with no guide, no map, and no guarantee. Here one acts as subject, author, creator.
”
”
Allen Wheelis (How People Change)
“
Most people don't die young, at least not here in America. Tragedy is unavoidable, but in this country, it doesn't usually come in the way one dies but rather in the way one lives. Failed marriages, fucked-up children, abuse of self, abuse of wife, abuse of dog, loneliness, depression, loathing, yawn, whatever.
”
”
Warren Adler (Cult)
“
Most people don't die young, at least not here in America. Tragedy is unavoidable, but in this country, it doesn't usually come in the way one dies but rather in the way one lives. Failed marriages, fucked-up children, abuse of self, abuse of wife, abuse of dog, loneliness, depression, loathing, yawn, whatever.
”
”
Chuck Wendig (Blackbirds (Miriam Black, #1))
“
You would think no harm in a child's caressing a large dog, even if he was black; but a creature that can think, and reason, and feel, and is immortal, you shudder at; confess it, cousin. I know the feeling among some of you northerners well enough. Not that there is a particle of virtue in our not having it; but custom with us does what Christianity ought to do,—obliterates the feeling of personal prejudice. I have often noticed, in my travels north, how much stronger this was with you than with us. You loathe them as you would a snake or a toad, yet you are indignant at their wrongs. You would not have them abused; but you don't want to have anything to do with them yourselves. You would send them to Africa, out of your sight and smell, and then send a missionary or two to do up all the self-denial of elevating them compendiously. Isn't that it?" "Well, cousin," said Miss Ophelia, thoughtfully, "there may be some truth in this.
”
”
Harriet Beecher Stowe (Uncle Tom's Cabin)
“
Daizell Charnage has been unfairly maligned, and I will not have it. If he has my countenance – and he does, because he is my friend – then any man who chooses to abuse or to cut him on his father’s account offends Severn. I shall make that known, and we will see how the sheep of the Polite World behave when the dog barks!
”
”
K.J. Charles (The Duke at Hazard (The Gentlemen of Uncertain Fortune #2))
“
Repetitive, forceful corrections had taught this gentle dog that at a specific spot the handler would always yank the lead. Thus, each time the Newf arrived at that point, she'd freeze for a beat and close her eyes in anticipation of the impending blow. This caused her to lag, which led to another correction, which resulted in more lagging, another correction, ad infinitum.
It was a classic example of canine learned helplessness, whereby a dog learns to accept abuse as a natural, inevitable consequence of living with humans. Repeated corrections had only frightened and confused the animal, and she was trying to protect herself in the only way she knew how.
”
”
Joel M. McMains
“
The dominance panacea is so out of proportion that entire schools of training are based on the premise that if you can just exert adequate dominance over the dog, everything else will fall into place. Not only does it mean that incredible amounts of abuse are going to be perpetrated against any given dog, probably exacerbating problems like unreliable recalls and biting, but the real issues, like well-executed conditioning and the provision of an adequate environment, are going to go unaddressed, resulting in a still-untrained dog, perpetuating the pointless dominance program. None of this is to say that dogs aren’t one of those species whose social life appears to lend itself to beloved hierarchy constructs. But, they also see well at night, and no one is proposing retinal surgery to address their non-compliance or biting behavior. Pack theory is simply not the most elegant model for explaining or, especially, for treating problems like disobedience, misbehavior or aggression. People who use aversives to train with a dominance model in mind would get a better result with less wear and tear on the dog by using aversives with a more thorough understanding of learning theory, or, better yet, forgoing aversives altogether and going with the other tools in the learning theory tool box. The dominance concept is simply unnecessary.
”
”
Jean Donaldson (The Culture Clash: A Revolutionary New Way to Understanding the Relationship Between Humans and Domestic Dogs)
“
He was allowed a room here with Kane because of a special international military passport that declared the dog to be a working animal. Kane even had his own rank — major, one station higher than Tucker. All military war dogs were ranked higher than their handlers. It allowed any abuse of the dogs to be a court martial offense: for striking a superior officer.
”
”
James Rollins (Tracker (Sigma Force, #7.5))
“
You would think no harm in a child's caressing a large dog, even if he was black; but a creature that can think, and reason, and feel, and is immortal, you shudder at; confess it, cousin, I know the feeling among some of you northerners well enough. Not that there is a particle of virtue in our not having it; but custom with us does what Christianity ought to do, – obliterates the feeling of personal prejudice. I have often noticed, in my travels north, how much stronger this was with you than with us. You loathe them as you would a snake or a toad, yet you are indignant at their wrongs. You would not have them abused; but you don't want to have anything to do with them yourselves. You would send them to Africa, out of your sight and smell, and then send a missionary or two to do up all the self-denial of elevating them compendiously.
”
”
Harriet Beecher Stowe
“
One of PETA's agenda items is the extinction of problem breeds like the pit bull; the claim is that making them extinct is the only way to protect the animals from abuse. Apparently the problem of abuse is not one that involves the behavior of the abusive human. Following this line of "ethical" thinking, the problem of divorce should be solved by banning marriage, and child abuse is best addressed by euthanizing children.
”
”
Ken Foster (The Dogs Who Found Me: What I've Learned from Pets Who Were Left Behind)
“
Teafortwo was a wyrman. Barrel-chested creatures like squat birds, with thick arms like a human dwarf’s below those ugly, functional wings, the wyrmen ploughed the skies of New Crobuzon. Their hands were their feet, those arms jutting from the bottom of their squat bodies like crows’ legs. They could pace a few clumsy steps here and there balancing on their palms, if they were indoors, but they preferred to careen over the city, yelling and swooping and screaming abuse at passers-by. The wyrmen were more intelligent than dogs or apes, but decidedly less than humans. They thrived on an intellectual diet of scatology and slapstick and mimicry, picking names for each other gleaned without understanding from popular songs and furniture catalogues and discarded textbooks they could just about read. Teafortwo’s sister, Isaac knew, was called Bottletop; one of his sons Scabies.
”
”
China Miéville (Perdido Street Station (New Crobuzon, #1))
“
True blues ain't no new news about who's been abused
For the blues is as old as my stolen soul
I sang the blues when the missionaries came
Passing out bibles in Jesus' name
I sang the blues in the hull of the ship
Beneath the sting of the slavemaster's whip
I sang the blues when the ship anchored the dark
My family being sold on a slave block
I sang the blues being torn from my first born
And hung my head and cried when my wife took his life
And then committed suicide.
I sang the blues on the slavemaster's plantation helping
Him build his free nation
I sang the blues in the cottonfield, hustlin' to make the daily yield
I sang the blues when he forced my woman to beg
Lord knows how I wished he was dead
I sang the blues on the run, ducking the dogs and dodging the gun
I sang the blues hanging from the tree in a desperate attempt to break free
I sang the blues when the sun went down, cursing the master when he wasn't around
I sang the blues in all these wars dying for some unknown cause
I sang the blues in a high tone, low moan, loud groan, soft grunt, hard funk
I sang the blues in land sea and air, about who when why and where
I sang the blues in church on sunday, slaving on monday, misused on tuesday, abused on wednesday, accused on thursday, fried alive on friday, and died on saturday.
Sho nuff singing the blues
I sang the blues in the summer, fall winter and spring
I know sho nuff the blues is my thing
I sang the backwater blues, rhythm and blues, gospel blues, saint louis blues, crosstown blues, chicago blues, mississippi GODDAMN blues, the watts blues, the harlem blues, hoe blues, gut-bucket blues, funky chunky blues, i sang the up north cigarette corp blues, the down south sprung out the side of my mouth blues,
I sang the blues black, i sang the blues blacker, i sang the blues blackest
I SANG BOUT MY SHO NUFF BLUE BLACKNESS!
from "True Blues" by the Last Poets
”
”
Jalal Mansur Nuriddin
“
As she observed him, she briefly frowned, it was one of the quandaries a woman sometimes faces, not just a woman, but all of us: she entrances one man without effort, a man who is undesired, who follows her around like a dog, however much he is whipped or abused, while all her efforts to attract and then ensnare another man, the truly desired man, come to naught. Charm is not universal, desire is too often unreciprocated, it gathers and pools in the wrong places, slowly becoming toxic.
”
”
Katie Kitamura (A Separation)
“
In a televised version of one of Nancy’s books, these child hunts were given a more sinister connotation with the children running terrified through woods while their father, on horseback, thundered after them with a pack of hounds baying. In fact the children loved it – they thought the hound was ‘so clever’.29 In her novel Nancy had referred to ‘four great hounds in full cry after two little girls’ and ‘Uncle Matthew and the rest would follow on horseback’.30 As a result, fiction overlaid fact, and during research for this book I met people who believed, and read articles that stated, that the Mitfords led the lives of the fictional Radletts, and at least one American journalist was convinced that David had ‘hunted’ his poor abused children with dogs. There was never any pressure to conform and the children grew as they wanted. There were no half-measures in their behaviour. ‘We either laughed so uproariously that it drove the grown-ups mad, or else it was a frightful row which ended in one of us bouncing out of the room in floods of tears, banging the door as loud as possible.
”
”
Mary S. Lovell (The Sisters: The Saga of the Mitford Family)
“
people talk of beauty lightly, and having no feeling for words, they use that one carelessly, so that it loses its force; and the thing it stands for, sharing its name with a hundred trivial objects, is deprived of dignity. They call beautiful a dress, a dog, a sermon; and when they are face to face with Beauty cannot recognise it. The false emphasis with which they try to deck their worthless thoughts blunts their susceptibilities. Like the charlatan who counterfeits a spiritual force he has sometimes felt, they lose the power they have abused.
”
”
W. Somerset Maugham (The Moon and Sixpence is a novel by W. Somerset Maugham - Pursuing Passion at Any Cost: The Enigmatic Tale of The Moon and Sixpence)
“
Does it ever get to be too late? If neither of you abuses the dog (should they finally get a dog?) or leaves the children in the car on a hot day. Does it ever become irreparable? If so, when? How do you, how does any“one, know when they cross over from working through this to it’s too late? Is there (she suspects there must be) an interlude during which you’re so bored or disappointed or ambushed by regret that it is, truly, too late? Or, more to the point, do we arrive at it’s too late over and over again, only to return to working through this before it’s too late arrives, yet again?
”
”
Michael Cunningham (Day)
“
But I try to make sure they understand that writing, and even getting good at it, and having books and stories and articles published, will not open the doors that most of them hope for. It will not make them well. It will not give them the feeling that the world has finally validated their parking tickets, that they have in fact finally arrived. My writer friends, and they are legion, do not go around beaming with quiet feelings of contentment. Most of them go around with haunted, abused, surprised looks on their faces, like lab dogs on whom very personal deodorant sprays have been tested.
”
”
Anne Lamott (Bird by Bird: Some Instructions on Writing and Life)
“
As if somehow irony,” she recaps for Maxine, “as practiced by a giggling mincing fifth column, actually brought on the events of 11 September, by keeping the country insufficiently serious — weakening its grip on ‘reality.’ So all kinds of make-believe—forget the delusional state the country’s in already—must suffer as well. Everything has to be literal now.”
“Yeah, the kids are even getting it at school.” Ms. Cheung, an English teacher who if Kugelblitz were a town would be the neighborhood scold, has announced that there shall be no more fictional reading assignments. Otis is terrified, Ziggy less so. Maxine will walk in on them watching Rugrats or reruns of Rocko’s Modern Life, and they holler by reflex, “Don’t tell Ms. Cheung!”
“You notice,” Heidi continues, “how ‘reality’ programming is suddenly all over the cable, like dog shit? Of course, it’s so producers shouldn’t have to pay real actors scale. But wait! There’s more! Somebody needs this nation of starers believing they’re all wised up at last, hardened and hip to the human condition, freed from the fictions that led them so astray, as if paying attention to made-up lives was some form of evil drug abuse that the collapse of the towers cured by scaring everybody straight again.
”
”
Thomas Pynchon (Bleeding Edge)
“
The suffering of abused pets amounts to a tiny fraction of the suffering we inflict on animals. In 2012 there were 164 million owned dogs and cats in the United States.2 The majority of them probably live reasonably good lives, but even if every single one of them were abused, this number would be dwarfed by the 9.1 billion animals annually raised and slaughtered for food in the United States.3 Factory-farmed animals have to endure a lifetime of suffering much more severe than the typical dog or cat, and in the United States there are fifty-five times as many factory-farmed animals as there are dogs and cats. Anyone who kept a dog confined in the way that breeding sows are frequently confined in factory farms—in crates so small they cannot even turn around or walk a single step—would be liable to prosecution for cruelty. In The Animal Activists’ Handbook Matt Ball and Bruce Friedrich make a startling claim that vividly illustrates the vastly greater suffering of animals raised for food compared to other ways in which we cause animals to suffer: “Every year, hundreds of millions of animals—many times more than the total number killed for fur, housed in shelters, and locked in laboratories combined—don’t even make it to slaughter. They actually suffer to death.
”
”
Peter Singer (The Most Good You Can Do: How Effective Altruism Is Changing Ideas About Living Ethically)
“
One year later the society claimed victory in another case which again did not fit within the parameters of the syndrome, nor did the court find on the issue. Fiona Reay, a 33 year old care assistant, accused her father of systematic sexual abuse during her childhood. The facts of her childhood were not in dispute: she had run away from home on a number of occasions and there was evidence that she had never been enrolled in secondary school. Her father said it was because she was ‘young and stupid’. He had physically assaulted Fiona on a number of occasions, one of which occurred when she was sixteen. The police had been called to the house by her boyfriend; after he had dropped her home, he heard her screaming as her father beat her with a dog chain.
As before there was no evidence of repression of memory in this case. Fiona Reay had been telling the same story to different health professionals for years. Her medical records document her consistent reference to family problems from the age of 14. She finally made a clear statement in 1982 when she asked a gynaecologist if her need for a hysterectomy could be related to the fact that she had been sexually abused by her father. Five years later she was admitted to psychiatric hospital stating that one of the precipitant factors causing her breakdown had been an unexpected visit from her father. She found him stroking her daughter. There had been no therapy, no regression and no hypnosis prior to the allegations being made public.
The jury took 27 minutes to find Fiona Reay’s father not guilty of rape and indecent assault. As before, the court did not hear evidence from expert witnesses stating that Fiona was suffering from false memory syndrome. The only suggestion of this was by the defence counsel, Toby Hedworth. In his closing remarks he referred to the ‘worrying phenomenon of people coming to believe in phantom memories’.
The next case which was claimed as a triumph for false memory was heard in March 1995. A father was aquitted of raping his daughter. The claims of the BFMS followed the familiar pattern of not fitting within the parameters of false memory at all. The daughter made the allegations to staff members whom she had befriended during her stay in psychiatric hospital. As before there was no evidence of memory repression or recovery during therapy and again the case failed due to lack of corroborating evidence. Yet the society picked up on the defence solicitor’s statements that the daughter was a prone to ‘fantasise’ about sexual matters and had been sexually promiscuous with other patients in the hospital.
~ Trouble and Strife, Issues 37-43
”
”
Trouble and Strife
“
I've seen cases on the Internet, of a dog being locked in a car for several hours and comments from people so enraged, that they threaten physical violence toward the perpetrator; some even crying out for the owners to be faced with the death penalty! These self same people will likely not think twice about the animals on their plates. In fact, they usually react more strongly toward such events (dogs locked in cars) than do most vegans. The often unconsidered, deep seated reasoning behind their indignation, is to draw away attention from their own wrong doings toward animals, and focus it elsewhere. If they shout loud enough, perhaps people won't notice that they themselves, are behind far worse animal treatment!
”
”
Mango Wodzak (Destination Eden - Eden Fruitarianism Explained)
“
I did research online to see if I could find a rescue group that would take her, and instead I found Pit Bull Rescue Central (wwwpbrc.net), a clearinghouse of listings for pit bulls all across the country, all in need of homes, most with horrific
histories of abuse. The Web site, completely volunteer-run, offers information on the breed, on what to do if you have found a pit bull, and on how to test a dog's temperament; it also stringently screens applicants trying to adopt one of the listed dogs. To list a dog, you have to fax the vet records, including proof that the animal has been spayed or neutered. I have never seen so thorough a site-and all of the "staff" got involved with the breed the same way I did: by finding a stray pit bull whom no one else would help with or take off their hands.
”
”
Ken Foster (The Dogs Who Found Me: What I've Learned from Pets Who Were Left Behind)
“
the following prayer by Dr. Jane Goodall, who was named a UN Messenger of Peace for her continued world efforts, she seems to touch on most aspects of world conflict as we know them today and as they pertain to all living things. Prayer for World Peace We pray to the great Spiritual Power in which we live and move and have our being. We pray that we may at all times keep our minds open to new ideas and shun dogma; that we may grow in our understanding of the nature of all living beings and our connectedness with the natural world; that we may become ever more filled with generosity of spirit and true compassion and love for all life; that we may strive to heal the hurts that we have inflicted on nature and control our greed for material things, knowing that our actions are harming our natural world and the future of our children; that we may value each and every human being for who he is, for who she is, reaching to the spirit that is within,knowing the power of each individual to change the world. We pray for social justice, for the alleviation of the crippling poverty that condemns millions of people around the world to lives of misery—hungry, sick, and utterly without hope. We pray for the children who are starving,who are condemned to homelessness, slave labor, and prostitution, and especially for those forced to fight, to kill and torture even members of their own family. We pray for the victims of violence and war, for those wounded in body and for those wounded in mind. We pray for the multitudes of refugees, forced from their homes to alien places through war or through the utter destruction of their environment. We pray for suffering animals everywhere, for an end to the pain caused by scientific experimentation, intensive farming, fur farming, shooting, trapping, training for entertainment, abusive pet owners, and all other forms of exploitation such as overloading and overworking pack animals, bull fighting, badger baiting, dog and cock fighting and so many more. We pray for an end to cruelty, whether to humans or other animals, for an end to bullying, and torture in all its forms. We pray that we may learn the peace that comes with forgiving and the strength we gain in loving; that we may learn to take nothing for granted in this life; that we may learn to see and understand with our hearts; that we may learn to rejoice in our being. We pray for these things with humility; We pray because of the hope that is within us, and because of a faith in the ultimate triumph of the human spirit; We pray because of our love for Creation, and because of our trust in God. We pray, above all, for peace throughout the world. I love this beautiful and magnanimous prayer. Each request is spelled out clearly and specifically, and it asks that love, peace, and kindness be shown to all of earth’s creatures, not just its human occupants.
”
”
Joe Vitale (The Secret Prayer: The Three-Step Formula for Attracting Miracles)
“
And the old man groaned, and beat his head
With his hands, and stretched out his arms
To his beloved son, Hector, who had
Taken his stand before the Western Gate,
Determined to meet Achilles in combat.
Priam's voice cracked as he pleaded:
"Hector, my boy, you can't face Achilles
Alone like that, without any support—
You'll go down in a minute. He's too much
For you, son, he won't stop at anything!
O, if only the gods loved him as I do:
Vultures and dogs would be gnawing his corpse.
Then some grief might pass from my heart.
So many fine sons he's taken from me,
Killed or sold them as slaves in the islands.
Two of them now, Lycaon and Polydorus,
I can't see with the Trojans safe in town,
Laothoë's boys. If the Greeks have them
We'll ransom them with the gold and silver
Old Altes gave us. But if they're dead
And gone down to Hades, there will be grief
For myself and the mother who bore them.
The rest of the people won't mourn so much
Unless you go down at Achilles' hands.
So come inside the wall, my boy.
Live to save the men and women of Troy.
Don't just hand Achilles the glory
And throw your life away. Show some pity for me
Before I go out of my mind with grief
And Zeus finally destroys me in my old age,
After I have seen all the horrors of war—
My sons butchered, my daughters dragged off,
Raped, bedchambers plundered, infants
Dashed to the ground in this terrible war,
My sons' wives abused by murderous Greeks.
And one day some Greek soldier will stick me
With cold bronze and draw the life from my limbs,
And the dogs that I fed at my table,
My watchdogs, will drag me outside and eat
My flesh raw, crouched in my doorway, lapping
My blood.
When a young man is killed in war,
Even though his body is slashed with bronze,
He lies there beautiful in death, noble.
But when the dogs maraud an old man's head,
Griming his white hair and beard and private parts,
There's no human fate more pitiable."
And the old man pulled the white hair from his head,
But did not persuade Hector.
”
”
Homer (The Iliad)
“
While being intensely observed, I was forced to watch as the boy was first tortured with cigarette burns and threats of death, then forced to kill his dog with a knife. Afterward, sobbing and terrified, he was tied to the chair. I was told he was weak and therefore unworthy to live. As a tribute to me, I was ordered to kill him and release him from his life bonds. Saying “no” under such circumstances, especially as a child, was not an option, but even so I found myself unable to commit such an act. I complained that I couldn’t do it because he was looking at me, my hope being that my excuse would excuse me from committing murder. The men were not to be daunted. Grabbing hold of the boy’s head, proclaiming they were doing it in my honor, they removed his eyes with a scalpel. I still hear the boy’s screams. Once they realized that the screams were bothering me, they removed his tongue. The sounds of his gurgling screams were finally enough; I plunged the knife handed to me into his chest.
”
”
David Shurter (Rabbit Hole: A Satanic Ritual Abuse Survivor's Story)
“
The same thing happened with large civic clients. He and Calvert Vaux had built and refined Central Park from 1858 through 1876, but forever afterward Olmsted found himself defending the park against attempts to tinker with its grounds in ways he considered tantamount to vandalism. It wasn’t just Central Park, however. Every park seemed subject to such abuse. “Suppose,” he wrote to architect Henry Van Brunt, “that you had been commissioned to build a really grand opera house; that after the construction work had been nearly completed and your scheme of decoration fully designed you should be instructed that the building was to be used on Sundays as a Baptist Tabernacle, and that suitable place must be made for a huge organ, a pulpit and a dipping pool. Then at intervals afterwards, you should be advised that it must be so refitted and furnished that parts of it could be used for a court room, a jail, a concert hall, hotel, skating rink, for surgical cliniques, for a circus, dog show, drill room, ball room, railway station and shot tower?” That, he wrote, “is what is nearly always going on with public parks. Pardon me if I overwhelm you; it is a matter of chronic anger with me.
”
”
Erik Larson (The Devil in the White City)
“
He was known by three names. The official records have the first one: Marcos Maria Ribeira. And his official data. Born 1929. Died 1970. Worked in the steel foundry. Perfect safety record. Never arrested. A wife, six children. A model citizen, because he never did anything bad enough to go on the public record.
The second name he had was Marcao. Big Marcos. Because he was a giant of a man. Reached his adult size early in his life. How old was he when he reached two meters? Eleven? Definitely by the time he was twelve. His size and strength made him valuable in the foundry,where the lots of steel are so small that much of the work is controlled by hand and strength matters. People's lives depended on Marcao's strength.
His third name was Cao. Dog. That was the name you used for him when you heard his wife, Novinha, had another black eye, walked with a limp, had stitches in her lip. He was an animal to do that to her.
Not that any of you liked Novinha. Not that cold woman who never gave any of you good morning. But she was smaller than he was, and she was the mother of his children, and when he beat her, he deserved the name of Cao.
Tell me, is this the man you knew? Spent more hours in the bars than anyone but never made any friends there, never the camaraderie of alcohol for him. You couldn't even tell how much he had been drinking. He was surly and short-tempered before he had a drink and he was surly and short-tempered right before he passed out-nobody could tell the difference. You never heard of him having a friend, and none of you was ever glad to see him come into a room. That's the man you knew, most of you. Cao. Hardly a man at all.
A few men, the men from the foundry in Bairro das Fabricados, knew him as a strong arm as they could trust. They knew he never said he could do more than he could do and he always did what he said he would do. You could count on him. So, within the walls of the foundry, he had their respect. But when you walked out of the door, you treated him like everybody else-ignored him, thought little of him.
Some of you also know something else that you never talk about much. You know you gave him the name Cao long before he earned it. You were ten, eleven, twelve years old. Little boys. He grew so tall. It made you ashamed to be near him. And afraid, because he made you feel helpless.
So you handled him the way human beings always handle things that are bigger than they are. You banded together. Like hunters trying to bring down a mastodon. Like bullfighters trying to weaken a giant bull to prepare it for the kill. Pokes, taunts, teases. Keep him turning around. He can't guess where the next blow was coming from. Prick him with barbs that stay under his skin. Weaken him with pain. Madden him. Because big as he is, you can make him do things. You can make him yell. You can make him run. You can make him cry. See? He's weaker than you after all.
There's no blame in this. You were children then, and children are cruel without knowing better. You wouldn't do that now. But now that I've reminded you, you can clearly see an answer. You called him a dog, so he became one. For the rest of his life, hurting helpless people. Beating his wife. Speaking so cruelly and abusively to his son, Miro, that it drove the boy out of his house. He was acting the way you treated him, becoming what you told him he was.
But the easy answer isn't true. Your torments didn't make him violent - they made him sullen. And when you grew out of tormenting him, he grew out of hating you. He wasn't one to bear a grudge. His anger cooled and turned into suspicion. He knew you despised him; he learned to live without you. In peace.
So how did he become the cruel man you knew him to be? Think a moment. Who was it that tasted his cruelty? His wife. His children. Some people beat their wife and children because they lust for power, but are too weak or stupid to win power in the world.
”
”
Orson Scott Card
“
GET MOVING
People are often scared of the word exercise. We associate the word with pain, and we think of it as a chore. (And it can be--who likes going to the gym at 6 A.M.?) If that’s how you’re thinking, then you need to change your psychology. I don’t think of my body in terms of exercise; I think in terms of movement. Look at the actual word--I see it as “meant to move.” As human beings, going back to the beginning of civilization, we’ve had to move to survive. We had to throw spears to hunt, we had to prepare land to plant seeds, we had to gather firewood. Our bodies are hardwired to move. Not even TiVo can rewire those thousands of years of DNA. This isn’t a new idea, but it’s easy to forget: your body is connected to your mind and spirit.
People say, “I’m miserable because I’m overweight” or “I’m overweight because I’m miserable,” but these two go hand in hand. I know when I drink to excess or put poisons in my body, the next day I’m not going to feel happy or inspired. The body is the vehicle that can help you reach your dreams. Keeping it moving, strong, and healthy paves the way to overall well-being. You can’t say you love yourself when you abuse yourself physically, and by not using your body, you’re abusing it.
But here’s the first piece of good news: you don’t have to be in the gym to exercise. You just need to move--and keep moving. It can be anywhere, at any time. Sometimes I’ll do push-ups during a commercial break while watching TV. Sometimes I take a short walk, even around the block with my dog, just to break up my day. Your body wants to move; your body was created to move. You have to feed that. When you’re feeling miserable, your body is telling you to get on your feet. Moving makes you feel good. It helps you slay the demon of procrastination that lurks in the shadow of every human being. Most of us sleepwalk through life because we’re waiting for the perfect time, the perfect place, and the perfect opportunity to improve ourselves. Stop waiting. Start moving and keep moving.
”
”
Derek Hough (Taking the Lead: Lessons from a Life in Motion)
“
A woman paralyzed by her own selfishness and triviality, a woman who knew she should love her life more than she did but couldn’t seem to love her life beyond a few odd inconsequential incidents.
It is, in fact, time to start dating again. But Dan has no idea what that means for a gay man well into his thirties who has neither money nor abs.
- if you’re delivering a song, there are instances when the veil of the ordinary falls away and you are, fleetingly, a supernatural being, with music rampaging through you and soaring out into a crowd. You connect, you’re giving it, you’re the living sweat-slicked manifestation of music itself, the crowd feels it as piercingly as you do. Always, almost always, you “spot a girl. She doesn’t need to be pretty. She’s the love of somebody’s life (you hope she is), and for those few seconds she’s the love of yours, you’re singing to her and she’s singing back to you, by raising her arms over her head and swinging her hips, adoring you or, rather, adoring some being who is you and the song combined, able to touch her everywhere. It’s the briefest of love affairs. -
Isabel is embarrassed about her sadness. She’s embarrassed about being embarrassed about her sadness, she who has love and money. She tries looking discreetly into her bag for a Kleenex, without anything that could be called frantic rummaging. She ponders the prospect that decadent unhappiness might, in its way, be worse than genuine, legitimate despair. Which is, as she knows, a decadent question to pose at all.
- members of a biological aristocracy -
Dan is taken by a tremor of scorn twisted up with painful affection, as if they were two names for the same emotion
- but that’s my narcissism speaking ive been working on the idea that there are other people in the world -
Beyond lust there’s a purity, you know?
Does it ever get to be too late? If neither of you abuses the dog (should they finally get a dog?) or leaves the children in the car on a hot day. Does it ever become irreparable? If so, when? How do you, how does any“one, know when they cross over from working through this to it’s too late? Is there (she suspects there must be) an interlude during which you’re so bored or disappointed or ambushed by regret that it is, truly, too late? Or, more to the point, do we arrive at it’s too late over and over again, only to return to working through this before it’s too late arrives, yet again?
Do you think we ever really survive our childhoods?
Most mothers think their children are amazing and singular people. Most mothers are wrong about that.
You’re beautiful in your own skin. You brought with you into the world some kind of human amazingness, and you can depend on it, always. Please try not to ever let anybody talk you out of that.
She says, “You’re not in love with me.”
“Trust me. I’ve had a lot of experience at not being in love with people. I’ve been not in love with pretty much everybody, all my life.”
She wonders how many women think more kindly and, all right, more lustfully toward their husbands after they’ve left them. Maybe someone’s done a study.
“If you’re determined to be insulted.
”
”
Michael Cunningham (Day)
“
In opting for large scale, Korean state planners got much of what they bargained for. Korean companies today compete globally with the Americans and Japanese in highly capital-intensive sectors like semiconductors, aerospace, consumer electronics, and automobiles, where they are far ahead of most Taiwanese or Hong Kong companies. Unlike Southeast Asia, the Koreans have moved into these sectors not primarily through joint ventures where the foreign partner has provided a turnkey assembly plant but through their own indigenous organizations. So successful have the Koreans been that many Japanese companies feel relentlessly dogged by Korean competitors in areas like semiconductors and steel. The chief advantage that large-scale chaebol organizations would appear to provide is the ability of the group to enter new industries and to ramp up to efficient production quickly through the exploitation of economies of scope.70 Does this mean, then, that cultural factors like social capital and spontaneous sociability are not, in the end, all that important, since a state can intervene to fill the gap left by culture? The answer is no, for several reasons. In the first place, not every state is culturally competent to run as effective an industrial policy as Korea is. The massive subsidies and benefits handed out to Korean corporations over the years could instead have led to enormous abuse, corruption, and misallocation of investment funds. Had President Park and his economic bureaucrats been subject to political pressures to do what was expedient rather than what they believed was economically beneficial, if they had not been as export oriented, or if they had simply been more consumption oriented and corrupt, Korea today would probably look much more like the Philippines. The Korean economic and political scene was in fact closer to that of the Philippines under Syngman Rhee in the 1950s. Park Chung Hee, for all his faults, led a disciplined and spartan personal lifestyle and had a clear vision of where he wanted the country to go economically. He played favorites and tolerated a considerable degree of corruption, but all within reasonable bounds by the standards of other developing countries. He did not waste money personally and kept the business elite from putting their resources into Swiss villas and long vacations on the Riviera.71 Park was a dictator who established a nasty authoritarian political system, but as an economic leader he did much better. The same power over the economy in different hands could have led to disaster. There are other economic drawbacks to state promotion of large-scale industry. The most common critique made by market-oriented economists is that because the investment was government rather than market driven, South Korea has acquired a series of white elephant industries such as shipbuilding, petrochemicals, and heavy manufacturing. In an age that rewards downsizing and nimbleness, the Koreans have created a series of centralized and inflexible corporations that will gradually lose their low-wage competitive edge. Some cite Taiwan’s somewhat higher overall rate of economic growth in the postwar period as evidence of the superior efficiency of a smaller, more competitive industrial structure.
”
”
Francis Fukuyama (Trust: The Social Virtues and the Creation of Prosperity)
“
Well, that’s the question, isn’t it. I told her if anything ever happens to Molly again I’m going to write a book about how I was forced to run away because my mother was a dog abuser and I’m going to self-publish it and go on a national book tour. That gave her something to think about.
”
”
W. Bruce Cameron (A Dog's Purpose Boxed Set (A Dog's Purpose #1-2))
“
I passed the book back to him, but not before catching that he was a dog-earer. It hurt my heart to see page abuse like that, but I’d deal.
”
”
Isabel Bandeira (Bookishly Ever After (Ever After, #1))
“
A few dogs barked as I passed by their territories, their chains clanking as they rose to attention then snapping with a metallic clang when they reached the limit of their freedom. I empathized with their pathetic existence, neglected yet tethered in place by the very people who ignored them . I was tempted to unhook their chains and set them free, but would they be any better off, left to fend for themselves ? Most of them had a roof over their heads of some kind, food and water if not always enough, and most were not abused, just forgotten — their novelty worn off, their owners distracted by the pursuit of other pleasures.
”
”
Kellie McAllen (Flightless Bird (The Caged, #1))
“
People who abuse animals will and often do abuse their spouses and children. One of my first memories is being held back from trying to save my puppy as my dad beat the dog within an inch of his life.
”
”
Jessica Marie Baumgartner
“
This split between verbal and performance scores is often seen in abused or traumatized children and can indicate that the developmental needs of certain brain regions, particularly those cortical areas involved in modulating the lower, more reactive regions have been not been met.
”
”
Bruce D. Perry (The Boy Who Was Raised as a Dog: And Other Stories from a Child Psychiatrist's Notebook)
“
the control she gained over the situation allowed her to manage her anxiety such that it minimized the effects that the abuse had on her daily life.
”
”
Bruce D. Perry (The Boy Who Was Raised as a Dog: And Other Stories from a Child Psychiatrist's Notebook)
“
Even though I meant what I had said about sharing [bodies], I felt like a goner. From now on, I was going to be watched, spied on, by this being of a different and, maybe, terrifying species. I could not escape into myself anymore. I would no longer be alone! The last refuge of an abused convict, of a beaten dog, would no longer be a refuge for me! There would always a presence, even if I were dying of pain!
Oh! I wanted to escape from Kmôhoûn of Tkoukra—just for a few hours—a few minutes!
”
”
John-Antoine Nau (Enemy Force)
“
Those of us who work with troubled children have to guard constantly against our preconceptions about a situation; one person’s “troubled teen” may be another person’s “victim of sexual abuse,” and the label given to the child often determines how he is treated. A child seen as “bad” will be treated differently from one viewed as “mad,” and both will have their behavior seen in a very different light depending on whether the clinician sees a “victim” or a “perpetrator.” Further, depending upon one’s point of view, the exact same behavior can be framed as “running away” or “seeking help” and the perspective will profoundly affect decisions about what to do for and to the child.
”
”
Bruce D. Perry (The Boy Who Was Raised as a Dog: And Other Stories from a Child Psychiatrist's Notebook)
“
Let’s talk about the Johnny Depp vs Amber Heard trial! I’m trying to keep on open mind about other people’s opinions on the case but I still believe that it can be prevented with a simple no. Amber has done so much damage to Johnny’s career. It seems to me that an old fling of mine is mirroring what went on with Johnny and Amber in their home. He is with someone who people only knows because of him. This person is a person of color but that doesn’t mean that she can’t abuse someone and their dog. I’ve spoken to someone who thinks that she is abusing him. Abuse can be done mentally, emotionally, or physically. Grooming can also be done the same way too. And deleting evidence of conversation is a crime, it’s also known as tampering with evidence so that the guilty party remains free. I’m sick and tired of those who are trying to speak up get silenced by “successful” people. People don’t see the truth because of the things people are hiding from the public. This brings me back to my post about standing up from myself and speaking up about grooming. And honestly, I do have a history with Tom Hiddleston. He was someone who I’ve met when I was 7 or 8 years old in Scotland. This is true because I’ve lived it and I can tell you the things he said. But back to the trial, I am glad that someone with mental issues (Winona Ryder) is standing up for a friend. I, too, have mental issues and I’m also standing up for a friend. Abuse is something that can be lethal and can also be prevented. Amber lied to everyone about what happened in 2016. I believe that Zawe will also lie about what happened at home with Tom and his dog when the time comes. I have a friend who also thinks that Zawe is like Amber Heard. I’m saying this because enough is enough. I stand with those who have been abused by someone.
”
”
Laika Constantino
“
If you absolutely have to hurt it [a dog] to get it to do what you want, then maybe what you want isn't worth doing.
”
”
Deborah Glaefke Gilbert
“
They shot him like a dog, and me they slapped. That's how it always is--they shoot the men like dogs, and the women get slapped. "I don't have the heart to kill you even though you deserve it," their leader, who, oddly enough, was the shortest one. "We won't even rape you," he added, and from the look in his eyes, I could tell that he considered himself a prince, but instead of thanking him for his courtesy, I started to cry. It's tough being a woman, what with all those slaps and all the men you lose. When you're a man, they take you out of bed in the middle of the night once, drag you into the street, and bam, it's over. But when you're a woman, it never ends.
”
”
Etgar Keret (The Girl on the Fridge)
“
Jesus has always stayed with me. Even during times when people I loved turned their backs on me, I was
physically and verbally abused, members told lies about me, local leaders eschewed me, a gift of wrapped dog
poop was left for me, letters were sent to me telling me to leave the Church because I didn’t belong, threats to
kill me were made, and the unsuccessful attempts to harm me. Jesus has always stayed with me, blessing me and
teaching me and reassuring me.
”
”
Alice Faulkner Burch (My Lord, He Calls Me: Stories of Faith by Black American Latter-day Saints)
“
Backing down to my father was not optional. My mother's obedience was more like a well-trained dog than an equal partner. Fear is not love. I know that logically, but healing from that has taken longer than I thought it would. My mother will never admit the abuse she endured from my father because dead people all turn into saints for some reason
”
”
Danielle Stewart (The Girl at the Party)
“
I tried to date, like a normal twenty-something, but it didn’t work out. There’s something off about you when you’ve been abused, when you’re damaged, broken. You’re different. Men can sniff out the pain in you, like dogs picking up on a scent. I’d put my makeup on, wear my nicest dresses, go on dates and try to be on my best behaviour but they never bought it. They could see the cracks in my eyes, the holes in my soul, the emptiness waiting to be filled. Men aren’t knights in shining armour – that’s fairytale bullshit. They’re not looking for someone to save. Men like simple girls. Off-the-shelf girls. Ready to go. Easy company. Decent hearts.
They’re not there to heal you or rescue you. I thought my looks would help. A bat of my lashes will make a man do a favour for me, but it won’t make a good guy fall for me. My pretty face isn’t valuable enough currency to make up for the scars. The men I dated picked up on the trauma, the voids, the hurt, and they didn’t want it in their lives. They didn’t want it in their homes. They didn’t want its legacy in their children.
”
”
Zoe Rosi (Pretty Evil)
“
Upon arriving we went straight into the school. Shepherd boys would come here twice a week, have a hot meal, go to a class. We sat in semi-darkness, beside a paraffin lamp, watching a lesson, and then we sat on the ground with a dozen boys, some as young as eight. We listened to them describe their daily trek to our school. It defied belief: after twelve hours of tending their cattle and sheep, they’d walk for two hours through mountain passes just to learn maths, reading, writing. Such was their hunger to learn. They braved sore feet, bitter cold – and far worse. They were so vulnerable on the road, so exposed to the elements, several had died from lightning strikes. Many had been attacked by stray dogs. They dropped their voices and told us that many had also been sexually abused by wanderers, rustlers, nomads and other boys. I felt ashamed to think of all my bitching about school. About anything.
”
”
Prince Harry (Spare)
“
(The seige of Alma's castle)
For all so soone, as Guyon thence was gon
Vpon his voyage with his trustie guide,
That wicked band of villeins fresh begon
That castle to assaile on euery side,
And lay strong siege about it far and wide.
So huge and infinite their numbers were,
That all the land they vnder them did hide;
So fowle and vgly, that exceeding feare
Their visages imprest, when they approched neare.
Them in twelue troupes their Captain did dispart
And round about in fittest steades did place,
Where each might best offend his proper part,
And his contrary obiect most deface,
As euery one seem’d meetest in that cace.
Seuen of the same against the Castle gate,
In strong entrenchments he did closely place,
Which with incessaunt force and endlesse hate,
They battred day and night, and entraunce did awate.
The first troupe was a monstrous rablement
Of fowle misshapen wights, of which some were
Headed like Owles, with beckes vncomely bent,
Others like Dogs, others like Gryphons dreare,
And some had wings, and some had clawes to teare,
And euery one of them had Lynces eyes,
And euery one did bow and arrowes beare:
All those were lawlesse lustes, corrupt enuies,
And couetous aspectes, all cruell enimies.
Those same against the bulwarke of the Sight
Did lay strong siege, and battailous assault,...
The second Bulwarke was the Hearing sence,
Gainst which the second troupe dessignment makes;
Deformed creatures, in straunge difference,
Some hauing heads like Harts, some like to Snakes,
Some like wild Bores late rouzd out of the brakes;
Slaunderous reproches, and fowle infamies,
Leasings, backbytings, and vaine-glorious crakes,
Bad counsels, prayses, and false flatteries.
All those against that fort did bend their batteries.
Likewise that same third Fort, that is the Smell
Of that third troupe was cruelly assayd:
Whose hideous shapes were like to feends of hell,
Some like to hounds, some like to Apes, dismayd,
Some like to Puttockes, all in plumes arayd:
All shap’t according their conditions,
For by those vgly formes weren pourtrayd,
Foolish delights and fond abusions,
Which do that sence besiege with light illusions.
And that fourth band, which cruell battry bent,
Against the fourth Bulwarke, that is the Tost,
Was as the rest, a grysie rablement,
Some mouth’d like greedy Oystriges, some fast
Like loathly Toades, some fashioned in the wast
Like swine; for so deformd is luxury,
Surfeat, misdiet, and vnthriftie wast,
Vaine feasts, and idle superfluity:
All those this sences Fort assayle incessantly.
But the fift troupe most horrible of hew,
And fierce of force, was dreadfull to report:
For some like Snailes, some did like spyders shew,
And some like vgly Vrchins thicke and short:
Cruelly they assayled that fift Fort,
Armed with darts of sensuall delight,
With stings of carnall lust, and strong effort
Of feeling pleasures, with which day and night
Against that same fift bulwarke they continued fight.
”
”
Edmund Spenser (The Faerie Queene)
“
The girls were afraid to tell the truth; the boy was afraid not to.
”
”
Diane N. Black (Dead Dog Road)
“
Chatting to the gossip of flames
waking from the slumber of
our flesh-drunk night together—
it’s only when I step out
to pee do I notice—
how far, burgundy-dark,
the moon has risen….
On four paws the shepherd-
dogs bound, lightly
though the trees they
hardly touch on earth—
we saw it from far
sunk here
in an always-ache….
Dyeing paling twilight woods—
a pair of wasps, spiraling, writhe….
Wetted lips of hers
and mine, just-parted,
move over each other
with tongues just-coming
but refuse—
like mists of evening
they've no place to settle….
Just-here though she's singing
she’s in some song from long ago—
poised on the brink
of twilight longing
three thousand miles
rush through my heart….
Under undulating curtains—
I hover above her
the tips of me brushing
the tips of her—
breathing back and forth
a column of air
we share our breath
slowly asphyxiating….
From burning wood campfire sparks dart off
extinguishing in the wet blue dark…
how you blow your long wind
across my embers,
through my soul, she pleads me,
take away the pain—
I dip a branch in blue water
and plunge it into coals….
***
In pre-dawn dark, against
a leaping inferno of flames
black monolith of wood
in the cast iron compartment
softens, and—gradually— fractures
to cells, warping upward,
until from the top a shard splinters:
pearls of flame string a fiber
and leap in little tongues
while the log, glowing, engulfed,
is consumed by the inferno contained….
A shadow daunts me, haunts and taunts me
now reaching far, now recoiling, now growing bold….
I once sang eruptions and the wind—
then appeared you
it took my whole life
singing only the songs of you
and still I sing for you
what other refuge
can stay me from this torment?
So— my doppelganger has arrived
no one said it would happen this way
but the way his hands
fold like mine, the style
of his humor, broadness of his smile—
even the way he walks….
Licking and lapping these lashings
of grasses are in tongues at my feet
smoldering's the fury within me—
I have seen my fields of daylight warp
to noxious-air infernos
but still to the clean blue of the flame
I take rest in her breast….
His songs I mouth, and in my head
is his voice— I cannot hear my own….
in my mind I see myself— thin,
stupid— my arms too weak,
my own chest too frail— and besides
I prefer him more….
Along spiral lines, seed-heads decay— swept away
they whirl and writhe in the hot blue fire of evening….
Stuck in a mural of sticky flesh— the family…
I am locked-in-arms with brothers
and sisters, drooping at the thighs
with nieces and nephews,
grafted to parents at the scalp, and
pasted with toddlers all over…
hived, sapped, black I sit, subject
to the flavors and aromas of your abuse….
Then— be wrapped in his presence…
crescendo to his warmth
the cascade of your laughter
search in his wrinkles
for the boy inside him…
I’m just biding here, bragless,
trying to admit these
rival-streams that flow
in one latticework of blood….
Halves of flesh and bosomy hips, lips
like dark ripe fruits they're chasing—
I chased them…
full-feathered was their hair
like floss in the sunshine
fine-fingered was their style
like laces cut to curves:
and then there was you,
returning one, just there
like the midnight moon
in my sky at noontime….
”
”
Mark Kaplon
“
Occasionally, even today, you come across certain people who seem to possess an impressive inner cohesion. They are not leading fragmented, scattershot lives. They have achieved inner integration. They are calm, settled, and rooted. They are not blown off course by storms. They don't crumble in adversity. Their minds are consistent and their hearts are dependable. Their virtues are not the blooming virtues you see in smart college students; they are the ripening virtues you see in people who have lived a little and have learned from joy and pain.
Sometimes you don't even notice these people, because while they seem kind and cheerful, they are also reserved. They possess the self- effacing virtues of people who are inclined to be useful but don't need to prove anything to the world: humility, restraint, reticence, temperance, respect, and soft self-discipline.
They radiate a sort of moral joy. They answer softly when challenged harshly. They are silent when unfairly abused. They are dignified when others try to humiliate them, restrained when others try to provoke them. But they get things done. They perform acts of sacrificial service with the same modest everyday spirit they would display if they were just getting the groceries. They are not thinking about what impressive work they are doing. They are not thinking about themselves at all. They just seem delighted by the flawed people around them. They just recognize what needs doing and they do it.
They make you feel funnier and smarter when you speak with them. They move through different social classes not even aware, it seems, that they are doing so. After you've known them for a while it occurs to you that you've never heard them boast, you've never seen them self-righteous or doggedly certain. They aren't dropping little hints of their own distinctiveness and accomplishments.
They have not led lives of conflict-free tranquillity, but have struggled toward maturity. They have gone some way toward solving life's essential problem, which is that, as Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn put it, 'the line separating good and evil passes not through states, nor between classes, nor between political parties either—but right through every human heart.'
These are the people who have built a strong inner character, who have achieved a certain depth. In these people, at the end of this struggle, the climb to success has surrendered to the struggle to deepen the soul. After a life of seeking balance, Adam I bows down before Adam II. These are the people we are looking for.
”
”
David Brooks
“
I have a theory about suburbs,” Grace mused. “...it all happens here, all the great crimes, kept hidden until they’re too loud to contain. Quiet perversions, quite substance abuse, quiet violence, quiet art. We just don’t hear about it until something big happens. You mark my words – in one of those houses down there is a man with a needle in his arm, fucking a dog whilst composing the greatest poetry since Homer.
”
”
Gavin G. Smith (A Quantum Mythology)
“
And unlike most of our kin, he did not stay angry and blame white folk for his shortcomings like an adult child blames his once abusive parent.
”
”
Noel Anenberg (The Dog Boy)
“
Republicans moved in the opposite direction: they began to stoke hostility toward integration in schools and neighborhoods and to enflame resentment toward government initiatives to help nonwhites move into the middle class. This racial strategy succeeded in winning white votes; more direly, it also worked to turn whites against liberal government. New Deal opponents had long repeated a tired mantra: the undeserving poor abuse government help, robbing hardworking taxpayers. This tale had little traction when whites saw themselves as the beneficiaries of government help, but once convinced that government aimed to shower minorities with their hard-earned tax dollars, this suddenly propelled many whites to reject liberalism. Attacks on integration quickly segued into broadsides against an activist state that funded welfare, schooling, job training programs, and so forth. Hostility toward the New Deal surged among whites—once it came to be seen as a repudiation of lazy, threatening nonwhites and the big government that coddled them.
”
”
Ian F. Haney-López (Dog Whistle Politics: How Coded Racial Appeals Have Reinvented Racism and Wrecked the Middle Class)
“
As we learned in response to the last great economic calamity to confront the country, to ensure broad prosperity government has four crucial roles to play: first, to help people weather the vicissitudes that easily plunge families into poverty, for instance job loss or ill health; second, to provide escalators of upward mobility, such as quality schooling, higher education, and mortgage assistance; third, to build the nation’s infrastructure, thus laying the groundwork for the next great economic boom; and fourth, to rein in marketplace abuses through regulation, and to prevent excessive concentrations of wealth through progressive taxation. This is the New Deal liberal vision that propelled the largest expansion of the middle class ever seen, and that once enjoyed broad support across the whole country. Throughout
”
”
Ian F. Haney-López (Dog Whistle Politics: How Coded Racial Appeals Have Reinvented Racism and Wrecked the Middle Class)
“
Occasionally, even today, you come across certain people who seem to possess an impressive inner cohesion. They are not leading fragmented, scattershot lives. They have achieved inner integration ... They radiate a sort of moral joy. They answer softly when challenged harshly. They are silent when unfairly abused. They are dignified when others try to humiliate them, restrained when others try to provoke them. But they get things done. They perform acts of sacrificial service with the same modest everyday spirit they would display if they were just getting the groceries. They are not thinking about what impressive work they are doing. They are not thinking about themselves at all. They just seem delighted by the flawed people around them. They just recognize what needs doing and they do it. They make you feel funnier and smarter when you speak with them. They move through different social classes not even aware, it seems, that they are doing so. After you've known them for a while it occurs to you that you've never heard them boast, you've never seen them self-righteous or doggedly certain. they aren't dropping little hints of their own distinctiveness and accomplishments. They have not led lives of conflict-free tranquility, but have struggled toward maturity.
”
”
David Brooks
“
There was something about Sean Cassidy that reminded me of the dogs that came into the shelter in New York, abused and mistreated, barking at everyone because they didn’t know who to trust. Obviously, it was a ridiculous notion. Sean wasn’t a rescue dog, he was a primped and pampered thoroughbred.
”
”
L.H. Cosway (The Player and the Pixie (Rugby, #2))
“
You know, I’ve been hanging around your place, riding with you, throwing the stick for your dogs, and I never asked you about the husbands. Like, how many? And why you think it didn’t work out?” “What makes you think I feel like telling you?” she asked. “Aw, you’ll tell me,” he said. “You’re just that kinda gal. And I told you about my wife.” “Okay,” she said, still slapping sandwiches together. “The synopsis. The first one was fifteen years older than me, my agent. He’s still my agent—he married the talent, not the person I was. He was very ambitious for me, for us both. He still thinks I divorced him because of his age, but I divorced him because all he cared about was my career. I don’t think he could tell you my favorite color…” “Yellow,” Walt said. Her head snapped around and she stared at him. “Yellow,” she said. “That was easy,” he said. “It’s all around and you wear it a lot. Red’s important, too.” “Right,” she said, shocked. She shook herself. “Okay, number two hit, number three cheated, number four had a child he failed to mention, number five—” “All right, wait,” Walt said. “Is this going to go on for a real long time?” She grinned at him. “Didn’t you look it up on the Internet?” “I did not,” he said, almost insulted. “We’re stopping at five. He had a substance-abuse problem. I didn’t know about it beforehand, obviously. I tried to help, but I was in the way—he needed to be on his own. That’s when I decided that, really, I should quit doing that. Marrying. But please understand, it’s not all my fault—Hollywood doesn’t exactly have a reputation for long, sturdy relationships. I did the best I could.” “I have no doubt,” he said. “Do you say that because you have no doubt? Or are you being a sarcastic ass to a poor woman who had to go through five miserable husbands?” He chuckled. Then he slipped an arm around her waist and kissed her cheek.
”
”
Robyn Carr (Second Chance Pass)