Argue With Stupid Quotes

Never argue with stupid people, they will drag you down to their level and then beat you with experience.

This is what you shall do; Love the earth and sun and the animals, despise riches, give alms to every one that asks, stand up for the stupid and crazy, devote your income and labor to others, hate tyrants, argue not concerning God, have patience and indulgence toward the people, take off your hat to nothing known or unknown or to any man or number of men, go freely with powerful uneducated persons and with the young and with the mothers of families, read these leaves in the open air every season of every year of your life, re-examine all you have been told at school or church or in any book, dismiss whatever insults your own soul, and your very flesh shall be a great poem and have the richest fluency not only in its words but in the silent lines of its lips and face and between the lashes of your eyes and in every motion and joint of your body.

You cannot argue stupidity, you just have to accept it patiently as one of those things.

Fucking beautiful,” I whisper. She smiles and then ducks her head. “I feel stupid.” “I barely know you, so I’m not about to argue with you over your level of intelligence, because you could very well be as dumb as a rock. But at least you’re pretty.

I entered Excessive Modesty Mode. Nothing is stupider and more ineffective than Excessive Modesty Mode. It is a mode in which you show that you’re modest by arguing with someone who is trying to compliment you. Essentially, you are going out of your way to try to convince someone that you’re a jerk.

All beauty comes from beautiful blood and a beautiful brain. If the greatnesses are in conjunction in a man or woman it is enough...the fact will prevail through the universe...but the gaggery and gilt of a million years will not prevail. Who troubles himself about his ornaments or fluency is lost. This is what you shall so: Love the earth and sun and the animals, despise riches, give alms to every one that asks, stand up for the stupid and crazy, devote your income and labor to others, hate tyrants, argue not concerning God, have patience and indulgence toward the people, take off your hat to nothing known or unknown or to any man or number of men, go freely with powerful uneducated persons and with the young and with the mothers of families, read these leaves in the open air every season of every year of your life, re-examine all you have been told at school or church or in any book, dismiss whatever insults your own soul, and your very flesh shall be a great poem and have the richest fluency not only in its words but in the silent lines of its lips and face and between the lashes of your eyes and in every motion and joint of your body...

You can not argue with stupid but you can certainly play with it.

But you can't argue that the world isn't in an unhealthy moral state." "Wouldn't think of it dearest. People lie, cheat, rape, swindle, kill, maim, torture and destroy. Bad thing. People also pop into bed together and cosy up. Good thing. If we think fucking is a sign of moral decay then we're a little bit stupid-stupid, aren't we?

Blitzen and Hearthstone collapsed at the bow. They started arguing with each other about which of them had taken the stupider risks, but they were so tired the debate deteriorated into a half-hearted poking contest, like a couple of second-graders.

Simmon pushed his hair out of his eyes, laughing boyishly. "You can't argue your way out of this one! She's obviously stupid for you. And you're just plain stupid, so it's a great match.

I would argue that stupidity is born out of bad reading, bad teaching and bad thinking!

Never argue with a mother who's scolding her child.

Someday I will stop being young and wanting stupid tattoos. There are 7 people in my house. We each have different genders. I cut my hair over the bathroom sink and everything I own has a hole in it. There is a banner in our living room that says “Love Cats Hate Capitalism.” We sit around the kitchen table and argue about the compost pile and Karl Marx and the necessity of violence when The Rev comes. Whatever the fuck The Rev means. Every time my best friend laughs I want to grab him by the shoulders and shout “Grow old with me and never kiss me on the mouth!” I want us to spend the next 80 years together eating Doritos and riding bikes. I want to be Oscar the Grouch. I want him and his girlfriend to be Bert and Ernie. I want us to live on Sesame Street and I will park my trash can on their front stoop and we will be friends every day. If I ever seem grouchy it’s just because I am a little afraid of all that fun. There is a river running through this city I know as well as my own name. It’s the first place I’ve ever called home. I don’t think its poetry to say I’m in love with the water. I don’t think it’s poetry to say I’m in love with the train tracks. I don’t think it’s blasphemy to say I see God in the skyline. There is always cold beer asking to be slurped on back porches. There are always crushed packs of Marlboro’s in my back pockets. I have been wearing the same patched-up shorts for 10 days. Someday I will stop being young and wanting stupid tattoos.

Never argue with a stupid person. They bring you down to their level, then beat you with their experience.

Let me guess. You think we’re going to live happily ever after, like some stupid fairy tale?” “Why not?” His stare dared me to laugh or, worse, to argue. “Because the whole thing is ridiculous,” I said. I despised the bitterness in my own voice. I sounded so damaged. Good. If he thought I was his soul mate for some mysterious reason he wouldn’t let on, let him see the worst of me. “It’s not ridiculous to me. Perhaps that’s the difference between predators and prey, love. I’ll never stop hunting. But I expect that one day, you’ll stop running.” “Because I want to die?” “Because you want to live.

The Couple Overfloweth We sometimes go on as though people can’t express themselves. In fact they’re always expressing themselves. The sorriest couples are those where the woman can’t be preoccupied or tired without the man saying “What’s wrong? Say something…,” or the man, without the woman saying … and so on. Radio and television have spread this spirit everywhere, and we’re riddled with pointless talk, insane quantities of words and images. Stupidity’s never blind or mute. So it’s not a problem of getting people to express themselves but of providing little gaps of solitude and silence in which they might eventually find something to say. Repressive forces don’t stop people expressing themselves but rather force them to express themselves; What a relief to have nothing to say, the right to say nothing, because only then is there a chance of framing the rare, and ever rarer, thing that might be worth saying. What we’re plagued by these days isn’t any blocking of communication, but pointless statements. But what we call the meaning of a statement is its point. That’s the only definition of meaning, and it comes to the same thing as a statement’s novelty. You can listen to people for hours, but what’s the point? . . . That’s why arguments are such a strain, why there’s never any point arguing. You can’t just tell someone what they’re saying is pointless. So you tell them it’s wrong. But what someone says is never wrong, the problem isn’t that some things are wrong, but that they’re stupid or irrelevant. That they’ve already been said a thousand times. The notions of relevance, necessity, the point of something, are a thousand times more significant than the notion of truth. Not as substitutes for truth, but as the measure of the truth of what I’m saying. It’s the same in mathematics: Poincaré used to say that many mathematical theories are completely irrelevant, pointless; He didn’t say they were wrong – that wouldn’t have been so bad. (Negotiations)

watched in horror until Walter Cronkite finally announced the news that Kennedy was dead. The boys didn’t try to argue about the stupidity of the ancient Hebrews again.

There is no point in arguing with stupid, they will drag you down and beat you with experience every time.

Neither force, nor argument, nor opinion," said Merlyn with the deepest sincerity, "are thinking. Argument is only a display of mental force, a sort of fencing with points in order to gain a victory, not for truth. Opinions are the blind alleys of lazy or of stupid men, who are unable to think. If ever a true politician really thinks a subject out dispassionately, even Homo stultus will be compelled to accept his findings in the end. Opinion can never stand beside truth. At present, however, Homo impoliticus is content either to argue with opinions or to fight with his fists, instead of waiting for the truth in his head. It will take a million years, before the mass of men can be called political animals.

I mean she doesn’t… understand the things…” No, he knew that wasn’t true. He knew she understood. Too much maybe. “I don’t want her in my shit, Mom.” “Oh honey, that’s too fucking bad,” she said matter-of-factly. “She’s not going anywhere, you can hang that up. And that woman loves you. I see it and I thank God for that! And do you know why?” “No, I don’t know why. It’s a mystery to me why—a fucking… oxymoron.” “Because she sees the good man in you, baby!” she squealed. “There is no good man in me,” he argued, his frustration mounting. “You’re stupid if you think you’ll convince her or me of that.

There's no point in arguing with an idiot - save for exposing their stupidity in their own words.

It is very painful to argue with an incredibly ignorant person. Not because they are stupid, but because the stupid are unbelievable arrogant and insulting. Their constant intention to manipulate a conversation in order to nullify their responsibility transforms any conversation into a game of theirs to bring another person down rather than using logic, and much less allow an agreement.

This is what you should do: Love the earth and sun and animals, Despise riches, give alms to everyone that asks, Stand up for the stupid and crazy, Devote your income and labor to others, hate tyrants, Argue not concerning God, Have patience and indulgence toward the people... Reexamine all you have been told in school or church or in any book, Dismiss what insults your very soul, And your flesh shall become a great poem.

Rayne, why is it you feel the need to argue with every single thing I say?" "Because every single thing you say is usually stupid and ridiculous.

Calvin: If you could wish for anything, what would it be? Hobbes: A big sunny field to be in. Calvin: A STUPID FIELD?! You've got that now! Think BIG! Riches! Power! Pretend you could have ANYTHING! ... Calvin: Actually, its hard to argue with someone who looks so happy. Hobbes: Z

She spent the foggy day in endless, aimless walking, for it seemed to her that if she moved quickly enough she would escape the fear that hunted her. It was a vague and shadowy fear of something cruel and stupid that had caught her and would never let her go. She had always known that it was there - hidden under the more of less pleasant surface of things. Always. Ever since she was a child. You could argue about hunger or cold or loneliness, but with that fear you couldn't argue. It went too deep. You were too mysteriously sure of its terror. You could only walk very fast and try to leave it behind you.

We do not argue that war is better than peace; we are not so stupid as that. But it is not peace when cruelty reigns, when stronger men steal from farmers and craftworkers, when the child can be enslaved or the old thrown out to starve, and no one lifts a hand. That is not peace: that is conquest, and evil.

You have a picture of life within you, a faith, a challenge, and you were ready for deeds and sufferings and sacrifices, and then you became aware by degrees that the world asked no deeds and no sacrifices of you whatever, and that life is no poem of heroism with heroic parts to play and so on, but a comfortable room where people are quite content with eating and drinking, coffee and knitting, cards and wireless. And whoever wants more and has got it in him--the heroic and the beautiful, and the reverence for the great poets or for the saints--is a fool and a Don Quixote. Good. And it has been just the same for me, my friend. I was a gifted girl. I was meant to live up to a high standard, to expect much of myself and do great things. I could have played a great part. I could have been the wife of a king, the beloved of a revolutionary, the sister of a genius, the mother of a martyr. And life has allowed me just this, to be a courtesan of fairly good taste, and even that has been hard enough. That is how things have gone with me. For a while I was inconsolable and for a long time I put the blame on myself. Life, thought I, must in the end be in the right, and if life scorned my beautiful dreams, so I argued, it was my dreams that were stupid and wrong headed. But that did not help me at all. And as I had good eyes and ears and was a little inquisitive too, I took a good look at this so-called life and at my neighbors and acquaintances, fifty or so of them and their destinies, and then I saw you. And I knew that my dreams had been right a thousand times over, just as yours had been. It was life and reality that were wrong. It was as little right that a woman like me should have no other choice than to grow old in poverty and in a senseless way at a typewriter in the pay of a money-maker, or to marry such a man for his money's sake, or to become some kind of drudge, as for a man like you to be forced in his loneliness and despair to have recourse to a razor. Perhaps the trouble with me was more material and moral and with you more spiritual--but it was the same road. Do you think I can't understand your horror of the fox trot, your dislike of bars and dancing floors, your loathing of jazz and the rest of it? I understand it only too well, and your dislike of politics as well, your despondence over the chatter and irresponsible antics of the parties and the press, your despair over the war, the one that has been and the one that is to be, over all that people nowadays think, read and build, over the music they play, the celebrations they hold, the education they carry on. You are right, Steppenwolf, right a thousand times over, and yet you must go to the wall. You are much too exacting and hungry for this simple, easygoing and easily contented world of today. You have a dimension too many. Whoever wants to live and enjoy his life today must not be like you and me. Whoever wants music instead of noise, joy instead of pleasure, soul instead of gold, creative work instead of business, passion instead of foolery, finds no home in this trivial world of ours--

We reside as well on a planet where the efficacy of medical science is questioned and media personalities argue whether a clot of cells has more value than a woman's life. To put it another way, these are unutterably stupid times.

The fair-haired man was one of those people in whose character there is at first sight a certain obstinacy. Before you can open your mouth, they are already prepared to argue and, it seems, will never agree to anything that is clearly contrary to their way of thinking, will never call a stupid thing smart, and in particular will never dance to another man's tune; but it always ends up that there is a certain softness in their character, that they will agree precisely to what they had rejected, will call a stupid thing smart, and will then go off dancing their best to another man's tune - in short, starts out well, ends in hell.

I was arguing with the paramedics after they got me into the ambulance, begging for something to eat because I was so damn hungry. Maybe that’s why I didn’t walk into the stupid white light. Maybe I knew they wouldn’t have anything to eat down that way.

There is no need," Capricorn finally began, raising his voice, "for me to explain to most of you why the three prisoners you see there are to be punished. For the rest, it is enough for me to say it is for treachery, loose talk, and stupidity. One may argue, of course, over whether or not stupidity is a crime deserving of death. I think it is, for it can have exactly the same consequences as treachery.

I shook my head. "I'm good, Nicky helped." Nicky looked at Edward. "She's having one of those what-if-killing-feels-really-good, doesn't-that-make-me-a-bad-person moments." Edward nodded as if that made perfect sense. "Then it feels good. We can't really control what flips our switch; don't judge it, Anita, and just accept it." I wanted to argue, but it would have been beyond stupid to argue with the two sociopaths in my life. "Why do I have moral quandary questions with the two of you?" "Because you don't really have moral quandaries about violence, Anita, but you're afraid of being judged for enjoying it, so you only bring it to the two people in your life who won't judge you." I wanted to argue with Edward, but I couldn't. "Well, fuck.

Stop arguing with people. Let go of your anger. It doesn't matter who wins arguments, who was right or wrong. Nobody really wins, especially in stupid political disputes. Arguing and anger are just another kind of war, and trust me, war is terrible." "So your mission... is to forgive someone." p.236

I never argued with people who underestimated me. If the accent and the muscles and the movies made people think I was stupid, it worked to my advantage

I don't debate where there is no debate. I'm smart. You're stupid. Debate over.

There comes a point in some conversations where I simply quit and let reality do my talking for me.

Many years later when I began training as a plastic surgeon, I understood something that I had not that day in the kitchen arguing for Thalia to leave Tinos for the boarding school. I learned that the world didn't see the inside of you, that it didn't care a whit about the hopes and dreams, and sorrows, that lay masked by skin and bone. It was as simple, as absurd, and as cruel as that. My patients knew this. They saw that much of what they were, would be, or could be hinged on the symmetry of their bone structure, the space between their eyes, their chin length, the tip projection of their nose, whether they had an ideal nasofrontal angle or not. Beauty is an enormous unmerited gift given randomly, stupidly.

He gave a talk in which he argued that the way they measured risk was completely idiotic. They measured risk by volatility: how much a stock or bond happened to have jumped around in the past few years. Real risk was not volatility; real risk was stupid investment decisions.

The real question of government versus private enterprise is argued on too philosophical and abstract a basis. Theoretically, planning may be good. But nobody has ever figured out the cause of government stupidity—and until they do (and find the cure), all ideal plans will fall into quicksand.

There is also the basic inequality of being born either with a natural talent or without one. Clever or stupid. No matter how much you try to argue against it, Dora, we are not born equal. All we can ever strive for is the equality of opportunity for those who have the ability to make the most of it.

It is very painful to argue with an incredibly ignorant person. Not because they are stupid, but because the stupid are unbelievably arrogant and insulting. Their constant intention to manipulate a conversation in order to nullify their responsibility transforms any conversation into a game of theirs to bring another person down rather than using logic, and much less allow an agreement.

This is what you shall do: love the earth and sun and the animals, despise riches, give alms to every one that asks, stand up for the stupid and crazy, devote your income and labour to others, hate tyrants, argue not concerning God, have patience and indulgence towards the people, take off your hat to nothing known or unknown or to any man or number of men, go freely with powerful uneducated persons and with the young and with the mothers of families, read these leaves in the open air every season of every year of your life, re-examine all you have been told at school or church or in any book,

These emotional cues were distracting. I was used to arguing with scientists who would explain with perfectly bland faces why you were wrong and stupid.

Never argue with stupid people, because they will drag you down to their level and then beat you with experience. - Mark Twain

Stay in the car Nick" "okay." Ash gets out abd goes to look at the dead body. "For an immortal being with 11,000 years under his belt Ash sure is stupid." Nick gets out and sees the blood. "That's a lot of blood." Nick's book starts sending him an alert. "What Lassie? You going to tell Timmy about the well?" pulls out book, and opens it. words start to appear. LOOK AND YOU WILL SEE THAT WHICH WAS CAN NEVER BE. WHEN THEY SEEK A BOY YOUR AGE... ... RUN, YOU FLIPPIN MORON, RUN! "I'm not gonna argue with my book on that. The safest place is with Ash.

Your people have never been more in need of someone to believe in." "The mere idea of that someone being me makes me a little ill." "It may seem unkind to say this, Max, but the way it makes you feel is perhaps the least important thing right now." A petulant part of me wanted to argue with her. But she gave me a deadpan stare that cut off my unspoken retort with, I escaped slavery, killed my master, forced a foreign country to take me seriously, traded away my autonomy, led a revolution, overthrew an empire, and then followed you back to your stupid broken country to support you only for you to whine about how you don’t “feel” like you can do this?

But we don't want all those things," said an old bear. 'We want to be free. And we want to hear Aslan speak himself.' 'Now don't you start arguing,' said the ape, 'for it's a thing I won't stand. I'm a Man: you're only a fat, stupid old bear. What do you know about freedom? You think freedom means doing what you like. Well, you're wrong. That isn't true freedom. True freedom means doing what I tell you.

Some of you will say, This is stupid. Will I break my promise not to argue the point, even though I consider Mr. Owen’s poems the greatest to come out of World War I? No! It’s just my opinion, you see, and opinions are like assholes: everybody has one.” They all roared at that, young ladies and gentlemen alike. Mr. Ricker drew himself up. “I may give some of you detentions if you disrupt my class, I have no problem with imposing discipline, but never will I disrespect your opinion. And yet! And yet!” Up went the finger. “Time will pass! Tempus will fugit! Owen’s poem may fall away from your mind, in which case your verdict of is-stupid will have turned out to be correct. For you, at least. But for some of you it will recur. And recur. And recur. Each time it does, the steady march of your maturity will deepen its resonance. Each time that poem steals back into your mind, it will seem a little less stupid and a little more vital. A little more important. Until it shines, young ladies and gentlemen. Until it shines.

God, but it was fun! It was the way I liked it. No arguing, no talking to the stupid peasants. I just walked into that room with a tommy gun and shot their guts out. They never thought that there were people like me in this country. They figured us all to be soft as horse manure and just as stupid.

If you with your knowledge of present and past recall that a certain man slipped on, say, a banana peel, or fell off his chair, or drowned in a river, that recollection does not mean that you caused him to slip, or fall, or drown. Correct? Of course it's correct! It happened, and you know it, but knowledge is not cause. Of course! Anyone who argues otherwise is a stupid ignoramus. Well, so with me. My knowledge of the future does not cause the future. It merely sees it.

I've seen people severely messed up by their own knowledge of biases. They have more ammunition with which to argue against anything they don't like. And that problem—too much ready ammunition—is one of the primary ways that people with high mental agility end up stupid, in Stanovich's "dysrationalia" sense of stupidity.

At some point in this course, perhaps even tonight, you will read something difficult, something you only partially understand, and your verdict will be this is stupid. Will I argue when you advance that opinion in class the next day? Why would I do such a useless ting? My time with you in short, only thirty-four weeks of classes, and I will not waste it arguing about the merits of this short story or that poem. Why would I, when all such opinions are subjective, and no final resolution can ever be reached?' Some of the kids - Gloria was one of them - now looked lost, but Pete understood exactly what Mr. Ricker, aka Ricky the Hippie, was talking about... 'Time is the answer," Mr Ricker said on the first day of Pete's sophomore year. He strode back and forth, antique bellbottoms swishing, occasionally waving his arms. "Yes! Time mercilessly culls away the is-stupid from the not-stupid." ... "It will occur for you, young ladies and gentlemen, although I will be in your rear-view mirror by the time it happens. Shall I tell you how it happens? You will read something - perhaps 'Dulce et Decorum Est,' by Wilfred Owen. Shall we use that as an example? Why not?' Then, in a deeper voice that sent chills up Pete's back and tightened his throat, Mr. Ricker cried, " 'Bent double, like old beggars under sacks, Knock-kneed, coughing like hags, we cursed through sludge...' And son on. Cetra-cetra. Some of you will say, This is stupid." .... 'And yet!" Up went the finger. "Time will pass! Tempus will fugit! Owen's poem may fall away from your mind, in which case your verdict of is-stupid will have turned out to be correct. For you, at least. But for some of you, it will recur. And recur. Each time it does, the steady march of your maturity will deepen its resonance. Each time that poem sneaks back into your mind, it will seem a little less stupid and a little more vital. A little more important. Until it shines, young ladies and gentlemen. Until it shines.

So,Batman,eh?" Effing St. Clair. I cross my arms and slouch into one of the plastic seats. I am so not in the mood for this.He takes the chair next to me and drapes a relaxed arm over the back of the empty seat on his other side. The man across from us is engrossed in his laptop,and I pretend to be engrossed in his laptop,too. Well,the back of it. St. Clair hums under his breath. When I don't respond,he sings quietly. "Jingle bells,Batman smells,Robin flew away..." "Yes,great,I get it.Ha ha. Stupid me." "What? It's just a Christmas song." He grins and continues a bit louder. "Batmobile lost a wheel,on the M1 motorway,hey!" "Wait." I frown. "What?" "What what?" "You're singing it wrong." "No,I'm not." He pauses. "How do you sing it?" I pat my coat,double-checking for my passport. Phew. Still there. "It's 'Jingle bells, Batman smells,Robin laid an egg'-" St. Clair snorts. "Laid an egg? Robin didn't lay an egg-" "'Batmobile lost a wheel,and the Joker got away.'" He stares at me for a moment,and then says with perfect conviction. "No." "Yes.I mean,seriously,what's up with the motorway thing?" "M1 motorway. Connects London to Leeds." I smirk. "Batman is American. He doesn't take the M1 motorway." "When he's on holiday he does." "Who says Batman has time to vacation?" "Why are we arguing about Batman?" He leans forward. "You're derailing us from the real topic.The fact that you, Anna Oliphant,slept in today." "Thanks." "You." He prods my leg with a finger. "Slept in." I focus on the guy's laptop again. "Yeah.You mentioned that." He flashes a crooked smile and shrugs, that full-bodied movement that turns him from English to French. "Hey, we made it,didn't we? No harm done." I yank out a book from my backpack, Your Movie Sucks, a collection of Roger Ebert's favorite reviews of bad movies. A visual cue for him to leave me alone. St. Clair takes the hint. He slumps and taps his feet on the ugly blue carpeting. I feel guilty for being so harsh. If it weren't for him,I would've missed the flight. St. Clair's fingers absentmindedly drum his stomach. His dark hair is extra messy this morning. I'm sure he didn't get up that much earlier than me,but,as usual, the bed-head is more attractive on him. With a painful twinge,I recall those other mornings together. Thanksgiving.Which we still haven't talked about.

Whereas my tribe is motley and chaotic. My tribe is dense and tumultuous. We argue and tease and wrangle and goof and fly upside down. We are brilliant and stupid. We are lonely and livid. We lie, we laugh. We are greedy and foolish. Sometimes we all sing together. We tease dogs. We can be cruel, but never for very long. We just can't sustain it. If we could sustain and organize our cruelty we'd rule the world. But what kind of life is that? We all fly home together at the end of the day. We have no kings. We have no outlaws. We have no ranking. We have no priests. We have no status. Age confers nothing in our clan. Size confers nothing. We have no warriors. We have no beauties. That's just how it is. We all look the same. Our stories go all day long. We remember everything. Our life can be maddening. It gets loud. We never agree on anything. We bicker. We play jokes. We take chances. I have often taken refuge with your tribe just to escape the hubbub of my tribe. Your tribe is better able to be alone.

Everybody has got to live for something, but Jesus is arguing that, if he is not that thing, it will fail you. First, it will enslave you. Whatever that thing is, you will tell yourself that you have to have it or there is no tomorrow. That means that if anything threatens it, you will become inordinately scared; if anyone blocks it, you will become inordinately angry; and if you fail to achieve it, you will never be able to forgive yourself. But second, if you do achieve it, it will fail to deliver the fulfillment you expected. Let me give you an eloquent contemporary expression of what Jesus is saying. Nobody put this better than the American writer David Foster Wallace. He got to the top of his profession. He was an award-winning, bestselling postmodern novelist known around the world for his boundary-pushing storytelling. He once wrote a sentence that was more than a thousand words long. A few years before the end of his life, he gave a now-famous commencement speech at Kenyon College. He said to the graduating class, Everybody worships. The only choice we get is what to worship. And the compelling reason for maybe choosing some sort of god . . . to worship . . . is that pretty much anything else you worship will eat you alive. If you worship money and things, if they are where you tap real meaning in life, then you will never have enough, never feel you have enough. It’s the truth. Worship your own body and beauty and sexual allure, and you will always feel ugly. And when time and age start showing, you will die a million deaths before [your loved ones] finally plant you. . . . Worship power, and you will end up feeling weak and afraid, and you will need ever more power over others to numb you to your own fear. Worship your intellect, being seen as smart, you will end up feeling stupid, a fraud, always on the verge of being found out. Look, the insidious thing about these forms of worship is not that they are evil or sinful; it is that they’re unconscious. They are default settings.4 Wallace was by no means a religious person, but he understood that everyone worships, everyone trusts in something for their salvation, everyone bases their lives on something that requires faith. A couple of years after giving that speech, Wallace killed himself. And this nonreligious man’s parting words to us are pretty terrifying: “Something will eat you alive.” Because even though you might never call it worship, you can be absolutely sure you are worshipping and you are seeking. And Jesus says, “Unless you’re worshipping me, unless I’m the center of your life, unless you’re trying to get your spiritual thirst quenched through me and not through these other things, unless you see that the solution must come inside rather than just pass by outside, then whatever you worship will abandon you in the end.

This is what you shall do: Love the earth and sun and the animals, despise riches, give alms to every one that asks, stand up for the stupid and crazy, devote your income and labor to others, hate tyrants, argue not concerning God, have patience and indulgence toward the people, take off your hat to nothing known or unknown, or to any man or number of men—go freely with powerful uneducated persons, and with the young, and with the mothers of families—re-examine all you have been told in school or church or in any book, and dismiss whatever insults your own soul; and your very flesh shall be a great poem, and have the richest fluency, not only in its words, but in the silent lines of its lips and face, and between the lashes of your eyes, and in every motion and joint of your body. The poet shall not spend his time in unneeded work. He shall know that the ground is already plough'd and manured; others may not know it, but he shall. He shall go directly to the creation. His trust shall master the trust of everything he touches—and shall master all attachment.

Common sense argued that she shouldn’t attribute to malice what could perfectly well be explained by stupidity,

His lips lowered to mine, kissing me stupid, and I forgot for a few minutes why we were arguing.

I had figured out that it was a bad idea, but, well, it´s hard to argue with love, even when it´s making you do something really stupid.

Never argue with a stupid person, he’ll drag you down to his level and then beat you with experience.

we probably don’t know many of the answers and can’t argue cleverly. And yet I suppose there’s room for the stupid as well,

What I feel? Like how I want to take your pain away and yet throttle you at the same moment? How your stupid dimples are infuriating, look for them every time you smile because I know that's a real smile. I don't know why I look forward to arguing with you, but I do. You're clever, and you are kinder than even you realise- even though I know you have earned the title of the Dark One. You are a puzzle I want to figure out, but at the same time, don't. And when I realised You have so many masks- so many layers, I kept wanting to peel them back, even though I fear it will only hurt more in the end.' I shook my head as I curled my fingers around the collar of my tunic. 'I don't understand any of this. Like how do I want to stab you and kiss you at the same time? And I know you said that I deserve to be with someone who didn't kidnap me, or someone I don't want to stab-' 'Forget I said that,' he said, closer to me when I looked up. 'I have no idea what I was talking about. Maybe I didn't even say that.' My lips twitched. 'You totally said that.' 'You're right. I did. Forget it.

Good guys and terrible guys seem to be stupid at the same ratio.” “Bodee’s not.” “Bodee doesn’t count. He was raised by wolves on Neptune or something,” I argue. “Yeah. Back to Collie.

The stupidity of the phrase appalled me while I was trying to finish it, but the power of sentences has nothing to do with their sense or the logic of their construction. My idiotic mumble seemed to please him. He cut it short by saying, with courteous placidity that argued an immense power of self-control or else a wonderful elasticity of spirits—"Altogether my mistake.

The first thing people usually do when they decide to reduce the outrage in their lives is stop talking about politics altogether - or at least stop arguing with people who disagree with them. This is exactly the wrong response. We are supposed to argue about politics; we're just supposed to figure out how to do it without shouting at the top of our lungs and calling each other stupid or evil. Democracy calls us to have uncomfortable conversations. It asks us to listen to each other even when we would rather be listening to ourselves - or to people enough like us that we might as well be listening to ourselves. It is easier and more comfortable for us to live in perpetual high dudgeon inside our echo chambers than it is to have a meaningful conversation with people who disagree with us. The entire outrage industry has been designed to keep us in our bubbles, never challenged by disagreement and never required to think that we might be wrong.

STREETER: Let’s just not argue. You can call me stupid, all right. I can call you a coward, all right. It’s just I believe one thing, you believe something else. I think the world’s got an outside chance, you believe it hasn’t. That’s all.

I used to feel the need to argue with every mouth breather and dimwit until one day it dawned on me that when it was all said and done, my blood pressure would be up 20 points and the person I was arguing with would still be fucking stupid.

In my own experience, it is entirely possible for a person to know a woman is trans, insist they do not believe she is really a woman, and yet still treat her misogynistically. This may seem a paradox, - but, as Serano argues, it is because our popular culture and media has spent decades depicting trans women as extreme embodiments of very misogynistic tropes. First, we are represented as agents of vapid and regressive femininity - vain, obsessed with how we look, stupid, weak, childish, and entitled. We are simultaneously hypersexualized: either as grotesque sexual deviants, particularly if we are unconventionally feminine (or lesbians); or, as yielding, sexually passive and deceptive if we are more feminine in appearance and/or if we date men.

But during that time, all the wise scholars and profound thinkers who ran the place fell to brooding on the nature of human society, and came to the conclusion that, left to itself, it didn’t work terribly well. And why? Because, they argued, plausibly enough, it tends to be run by idiots; kings (ruled by their own base desires and hopelessly interbred) or dictators (anyone who seizes power by that very act disqualifies himself from being trusted with it) or oligarchies (irredeemably self-serving and corrupt) or, God help us, democracies (in the republic of the stupid, the half-witted man is prime minister) – there had to be a better way, and to the wisest men in the known world, it was painfully obvious what it was. If a job needs doing, do it ourselves.

I've never understood white people who can't admit they're white. I mean, white isn't just a color. And maybe that's the problem for them. White is a passport. It's a ticket. The world is a white amusement park and your white skin buys you into it. A woman in economy argued with me about this once. She said, "I've heard this idea and it makes me uncomfortable." "It probably should," I said. Dad and I have been broke since he got cancer and sometimes he can't put the heat on over sixty-two or put food in the fridge, but we were always white and he always made sure I knew that. Which sounds stupid because how can a person not know they're white, right? You don't have to be racist to not know you're white. But sometimes you do. And Marla has no idea she's white or that the whole world was made for people like her.

She threw the stupid missionary book across the room. It was the first time they’d ever really disagreed, and since he wouldn’t stay and let her convince him she was right, she didn’t know what to do with herself except pace and argue with him in her head instead of in person.

Now don't you start arguing," said the Ape, "for it's a thing I won't stand. I'm a Man: you're only a fat, stupid old Bear. What do you know about freedom? You think freedom means doing what you like. Well, you're wrong. That isn't true freedom. True freedom means doing what I tell you.

Nobody likes congestion, and, despite appearances, I am not arguing here for more of it. Rather, I am asking that it be better understood by those who build and rebuild our communities, so that we can stop making stupid decisions that placate angry citizens while only hurting them in the long run.

There's one big difference between the poor and the rich,' Kite says, taking a drag from his cigarette. We are in a pub, at lunch-time. John Kite is always, unless stated otherwise, smoking a fag, in a pub, at lunch-time. 'The rich aren't evil, as so many of my brothers would tell you. I've known rich people -- I have played on their yachts -- and they are not unkind, or malign, and they do not hate the poor, as many would tell you. And they are not stupid -- or at least, not any more than the poor are. Much as I find amusing the idea of a ruling class of honking toffs, unable to put their socks on without Nanny helping them, it is not true. They build banks, and broker deals, and formulate policy, all with perfect competency. 'No -- the big difference between the rich and the poor is that the rich are blithe. They believe nothing can ever really be so bad, They are born with the lovely, velvety coating of blitheness -- like lanugo, on a baby -- and it is never rubbed off by a bill that can't be paid; a child that can't be educated; a home that must be left for a hostel, when the rent becomes too much. 'Their lives are the same for generations. There is no social upheaval that will really affect them. If you're comfortably middle-class, what's the worst a government policy could do? Ever? Tax you at 90 per cent and leave your bins, unemptied, on the pavement. But you and everyone you know will continue to drink wine -- but maybe cheaper -- go on holiday -- but somewhere nearer -- and pay off your mortgage -- although maybe later. 'Consider, now, then, the poor. What's the worst a government policy can do to them? It can cancel their operation, with no recourse to private care. It can run down their school -- with no escape route to a prep. It can have you out of your house and into a B&B by the end of the year. When the middle-classes get passionate about politics, they're arguing about their treats -- their tax breaks and their investments. When the poor get passionate about politics, they're fighting for their lives. 'Politics will always mean more to the poor. Always. That's why we strike and march, and despair when our young say they won't vote. That's why the poor are seen as more vital, and animalistic. No classical music for us -- no walking around National Trust properties, or buying reclaimed flooring. We don't have nostalgia. We don't do yesterday. We can't bear it. We don't want to be reminded of our past, because it was awful; dying in mines, and slums, without literacy, or the vote. Without dignity. It was all so desperate, then. That's why the present and the future is for the poor -- that's the place in time for us: surviving now, hoping for better, later. We live now -- for our instant, hot, fast treats, to prep us up: sugar, a cigarette, a new fast song on the radio. 'You must never, never forget, when you talk to someone poor, that it takes ten times the effort to get anywhere from a bad postcode, It's a miracle when someone from a bad postcode gets anywhere, son. A miracle they do anything at all.

Ding! Princess Alpacca, pronounced like the animal, first in line to the throne of Alieya Island, a small nation below the south of France. The Queen invited her to Wessco after an attempted coup forced her family into exile last year. She doesn’t speak English and I don’t know a word of Aliesh. This is going to be a challenge. Guermo, her translator, glares at me like I’m the bubonic plague in human form—with a mixture of hatred, disgust, and just a touch of fear. She speaks in Aliesh, looking at me. And Guermo translates. “She says she thinks you are very ugly.” Princess Alpacca nods vigorously. She’s pretty in a cute kind of way. Wild curly hair, round hazel eyes, a tiny bulbous nose, and full cheeks. “She says she doesn’t like you or your stupid country,” Guermo informs me. Another nod and a blank but eager smile. “She says she would rather throw herself off the rocks to her death in the waves and be devoured by the fish than be your queen.” I look him in the face. “She barely said anything.” He shrugs. “She says it with her eyes. I know these things. If you weren’t so stupid you would know too.” More nodding. “Fantastic.” She says something to Guermo in Aliesh, then he says something back—harshly and disapproving. And now, they’re arguing. But they can stay. Guermo is obviously in love with Alpacca and she clearly has no idea. My presence will force him to admit his feelings . . . but does she return his infatuation? It’ll be like living in a Latin soap opera—dramatic, passionate, and over the top. I have to see how it ends. Ding!

The perfect sheets, the chilly rooms: they were stupid things, taken one by one, but all together they were a convincing substitute for a life. One where suffering seemed to have no place, the idea of pain or misfortune starting to fuzz out and seem less likely. And who could argue with that, with wanting to be protected?

Some argue that it is the very attempt to institutionalize love that destroys it. The more love is rendered obligatory, a duty, whether religious, moral, or otherwise, the more it shrivels up and dies like a plant cultivated under the wrong conditions. “If we really love each other, why do we need a stupid piece of paper?” they ask.

What if we are all getting stupid at more or less the same rate and we don’t realize it because we are all declining together? You might argue that we’d see a general fall in IQ scores, but what if it’s not the kind of deterioration that shows up in IQ tests? What if it were reflected in just, say, poor judgment or diminished taste? We

Such shocking cleanliness, edging on the perverse. She wanted to throw herself on those perfect uncreased sheets, but didn’t. The perfect sheets, the chilly rooms: they were stupid things, taken one by one, but all together they were a convincing substitute for a life. One where suffering seemed to have no place, the idea of pain or misfortune starting to fuzz out and seem less likely. And who could argue with that, with wanting to be protected? No problem was unsolvable. Could she imagine the trajectory continuing upward? Good fortune accruing and accruing, the world suddenly opening in any direction, like one of those trick boxes, the sides falling down and revealing there were no more limits.

Why do adults have to diminish everything by feeling they need to end meetings with a false positive? It's so selfish. They say it not because they believe it, but because it helps them feel some kind of accomplishment when they walk away. Like they've done their job. But what do they leave behind? It's like when teachers tell Tyler that he should be a lawyer because he's good at arguing, but meanwhile he can't pass grade nine. No one wants to say he's stupid, or that he's probably going to end up in jail like his brother, so they fill his head with these stupid dreams until he's eighteen, with no credits and totally messed up for life. I say, tell the truth, squash the dream, and stop with the second chances.

They and the coyotes lived clever, despairing, submarginal lives. They landed with no money, no equipment, no tools, no credit, and particularly with no knowledge of the new country and no technique for using it. I don’t know whether it was a divine stupidity or a great faith that let them do it. Surely such venture is nearly gone from the world. And the families did survive and grow. They had a tool or a weapon that is also nearly gone, or perhaps it is only dormant for a while. It is argued that because they believed thoroughly in a just, moral God they could put their faith there and let the smaller securities take care of themselves. But I think that because they trusted themselves and respected themselves as individuals, because they knew beyond doubt that they were valuable and potentially moral units—because of this they could give God their own courage and dignity and then receive it back. Such things have disappeared perhaps because men do not trust themselves any more, and when that happens there is nothing left except perhaps to find some strong sure man, even though he may be wrong, and to dangle from his coattails.

The HTX-20 isn't' supposed to explode unless it gets bumped around too much. Right, Badger?" Mal pressed. "That's right. Or gets wet or hot or all that other gubbins. We went over it, didn't we? You need a refresher course?" "No, it's just that crate got bumped. How do we know things are still all right?" Badger looked at him as if Mal was the stupid one. "We're not dead." Hard to argue with that.

High and mighty guzzlers, and you, O all you precious pox-ridden—while you have the leisure and I have nothing else more important to do, let me ask you a question: why does everybody say, as if it were proverbially true, that the world is no longer flat? Understand, please, that "flat" here means "without zest, unsalted, insipid, washed-out": taking it metaphorically, it signifies "crazy, foolish, senseless, rot-brained." Would you argue, as indeed one might logically infer, that if we say that the world has been flat, now we have to say that it's become wise? What was it that made it flat? Why was it flat? Why should it be wise? What do you think ancient stupidity was? What do you think constitutes our present wisdom? What made it flat? What has made it wise? Are there more lovers of flatness or more lovers of wisdom? Just exactly when was it flat? Just exactly when was it wise? Who's responsible for that earlier flatness? Who's responsible for that later wisdom? Why did that ancient flatness end right now, and not at some other time? Why did our present wisdom begin right now, and not sooner? What harm did our earlier flatness do us? What good is this new wisdom? How did we get rid of our ancient flatness? How was our present wisdom brought about?

This is what you shall do: Love the earth and sun and the animals, despise riches, give alms to every one that asks, stand up for the stupid and crazy, devote your income and labor to others, hate tyrants, argue not concerning God, have patience and indulgence toward the people, take off your hat to nothing known or unknown or to any man or number of men, go freely with powerful uneducated persons and with the young and with the mothers of families, read these leaves in the open air every season of every year of your life, re-examine all you have been told at school or church or in any book, dismiss whatever insults your own soul, and your very flesh shall be a great poem and have the richest fluency not only in its words but in the silent lines of its lips and face and between the lashes of your eyes and in every motion and joint of your body —

I hate the fact I feel obliged to do anything because I was stupid enough to initiate this. Thinking I’m now committed to some sort of sexual encounter is everything I would hotly and passionately argue against, if it was a hypothetical, and especially if it was someone else. It’s one of those unpleasant moments in life you confront the fact your beliefs in theory and behavior in practice can be two entirely different things.

This is what you shall do: love the earth and sun and the animals, despise riches, give alms to every one that asks, stand up for the stupid and crazy, devote your income and labour to others, hate tyrants, argue not concerning God, have patience and indulgence towards the people, take off your hat to nothing known or unknown or to any man or number of men, go freely with powerful uneducated persons and with the young and with the mothers of families, read these leaves in the open air every season of every year of your life, re-examine all you have been told at school or church or in any book, dismiss whatever insults your own soul; and your very flesh shall be a great poem, and have the richest fluency, not only in its words, but in the silent lines of its lips and face, and between the lashes of your eyes, and in every motion and joint of your body.

I just don’t want to do that anymore. Can’t we just lie fully clothed in bed together while holding hands and talking about how good pork belly tacos taste? I don’t want to do the “I’m sorry this is my disgusting body” apology jig ever again, nor will there ever be a time that the “just let me keep my shirt on” waltz isn’t utterly humiliating. Why must they always argue? Just let me keep this stupid long-sleeved shirt on already.

Similarly, when Mr Quest complained about the international ring of Jews who controlled the world (which he had taken to doing lately, after reading some pamphlet sent to him through the post), Martha argued against him, in the most reasonable and logical manner; for one does not learn so young that against some things reason is powerless. And when Mrs Quest said that all the kaffirs were dirty and lazy and inherently stupid, she defended them.

She was theorizing on the Deep State; that enduring Turkish paranoia that the nation really was a conspiracy run by a cabal of generals, judges, industrialists and gangsters. The Taksim Square massacre of three years before, the Kahramanmaraş slaughter of Alevis a few months after, the oil crisis and the enduring economic instability, even the ubiquity of the Grey Wolves nationalist youth movement handing out their patriotic leaflets and defiling Greek Churches: all were links in an accelerating chain of events running through the fingers of the Derin Devlet. To what end? the men asked. Coup, she said, leaning forward, her fingers pursed. It was then that Georgios Ferentinou adored her. The classic profile, the strength of her jaw and fine cheekbones. The way she shook her head when the men disagreed with her, how her bobbed, curling hair swayed. The way she would not argue but set her lips and stared, as if their stupidity was a stubborn offence against nature. Her animation in argument balanced against her marvellous stillness when listening, considering, drawing up a new answer. How she paused, feeling the regard of another, then turned to Georgios and smiled. In the late summer of 1980 Georgios Ferentinou fell in love with Ariana Sinanidis by Meryem Nasi’s swimming pool. Three days later, on September 12th, Chief of General Staff Kenan Evren overthrew the government and banned all political activity.

And now there’s another thing you got to learn,” said the Ape. “I hear some of you are saying I’m an Ape. Well, I’m not. I’m a Man. If I look like an Ape, that’s because I’m so very old: hundreds and hundreds of years old. And it’s because I’m so old that I’m so wise. And it’s because I’m so wise that I’m the only one Aslan is ever going to speak to. He can’t be bothered talking to a lot of stupid animals. He’ll tell me what you’ve got to do, and I’ll tell the rest of you. And take my advice, and see you do it in double quick time, for he doesn’t mean to stand any nonsense.” There was dead silence except for the noise of a very young badger crying and its mother trying to make it keep quiet. “And now here’s another thing,” the Ape went on, fitting a fresh nut into its cheek, “I hear some of the horses are saying, Let’s hurry up and get this job of carting timber over as quickly as we can, and then we’ll be free again. Well, you can get that idea out of your heads at once. And not only the Horses either. Everybody who can work is going to be made to work in future. Aslan has it all settled with the King of Calormen—The Tisroc, as our dark faced friends the Calormenes call him. All you Horses and Bulls and Donkeys are to be sent down into Calormen to work for your living—pulling and carrying the way horses and such-like do in other countries. And all you digging animals like Moles and Rabbits and Dwarfs are going down to work in The Tisroc’s mines. And—” “No, no, no,” howled the Beasts. “It can’t be true. Aslan would never sell us into slavery to the King of Calormen.” “None of that! Hold your noise!” said the Ape with a snarl. “Who said anything about slavery? You won’t be slaves. You’ll be paid—very good wages too. That is to say, your pay will be paid into Aslan’s treasury and he will use it all for everybody’s good.” Then he glanced, and almost winked, at the chief Calormene. The Calormene bowed and replied, in the pompous Calormene way: “Most sapient Mouthpiece of Aslan, The Tisroc (may-he-live-forever) is wholly of one mind with your lordship in this judicious plan.” “There! You see!” said the Ape. “It’s all arranged. And all for your own good. We’ll be able, with the money you earn, to make Narnia a country worth living in. There’ll be oranges and bananas pouring in—and roads and big cities and schools and offices and whips and muzzles and saddles and cages and kennels and prisons—Oh, everything.” “But we don’t want all those things,” said an old Bear. “We want to be free. And we want to hear Aslan speak himself.” “Now don’t you start arguing,” said the Ape, “for it’s a thing I won’t stand. I’m a Man: you’re only a fat, stupid old Bear. What do you know about freedom? You think freedom means doing what you like. Well, you’re wrong. That isn’t true freedom. True freedom means doing what I tell you.” “H-n-n-h,” grunted the Bear and scratched its head; it found this sort of thing hard to understand.

After one game of chess with him, he flipped the board. “Fuck your Nigger chess, this is Jewish chess,” he said. “Do you have something against Black people?” I asked. “Nigger is not black, Nigger means stupid,” he argued. We had many discussions like that. At the time we had only one Black guard who had no say, and when he worked with ■​■​■​■​■​■​■​ they never interacted. ■​■​■​■​■​■​■​ resented him. ■​■​■​■​■​■​■​ had a very strong personality, dominant, authoritarian, patriarchal, and arrogant.

They landed with no money, no equipment, no tools, no credit, and particularly with no knowledge of the new country and no technique for using it. I don’t know whether it was a divine stupidity or a great faith that let them do it. Surely such venture is nearly gone from the world. And the families did survive and grow. They had a tool or a weapon that is also nearly gone, or perhaps it is only dormant for a while. It is argued that because they believed thoroughly in a just, moral God they could put their faith there and let the smaller securities take care of themselves. But I think that because they trusted themselves and respected themselves as individuals, because they knew beyond doubt that they were valuable and potentially moral units—because of this they could give God their own courage and dignity and then receive it back. Such things have disappeared perhaps because men do not trust themselves any more, and when that happens there is nothing left except perhaps to find some strong sure man, even though he may be wrong, and to dangle from his coattails.

They want nature to be restored, but fight against one of nature’s fundamental rules. In nature, the cruelty displayed by the hunter is a passing moment, an accepted entity, the reason why animals do not grow old in the wild. Yet the animal-rights people plod on, entrenched in their own vision of a world that never existed, a world they have conjured up with the same religious fanaticism of the deer whackers. Nature suffers while these extremes in stupidity argue and howl at each other with the fervor and rage of the mentally imbalanced.

Fall behind me States! A man before all—myself, typical, before all. Give me the pay I have served for, Give me to sing the songs of the great Idea, take all the rest, I have loved the earth, sun, animals, I have despised riches, I have given aims to every one that ask'd, stood up for the stupid and crazy, devoted my income and labor to others, Hated tyrants, argued not concerning God, had patience and indulgence toward the people, taken off my hat to nothing known or unknown, Gone freely with powerful uneducated persons and with the young, and with the mothers of families, Read these leaves to myself in the open air, tried them by trees, stars, rivers, Dismiss'd whatever insulted my own soul or defiled my body, Claim'd nothing to myself which I have not carefully claim'd for others on the same terms, Sped to the camps, and comrades found and accepted from every State, (Upon this breast has many a dying soldier lean'd to breathe his last, This arm, this hand, this voice, have nourish'd, rais'd, restored, To life recalling many a prostrate form;) I am willing to wait to be understood by the growth of the taste of myself, Rejecting none, permitting all. (Say O Mother, have I not to your thought been faithful? Have I not through life kept you and yours before me?)

I said that Oxide was simply another product line. This statement deeply worried two of my employees who had graduated from Stanford Business School. They scheduled an appointment and presented me with a slide deck detailing why my decision to start Oxide was quixotic, misguided, and downright stupid. They argued that it would steal precious resources from our core business while pursuing a product that would surely fail. I let them present all forty-five slides without my asking them a single question. When they finished I said, “Did I ask for this presentation?” Those were the first words I spoke as I made the transition from a peacetime CEO to a wartime CEO.

The first time they argue she is sure that she loves him. It’s the first time she really knows it, because even though her thoughts have been telling her so for days and somewhere there is a burning for him that is impossible to extinguish, she doesn’t really believe that love is anything more than science. Hormones, evolution, love, nuclear fusion, quantum theory, it’s all just a theory. It’s all just a sensation they tried to give an explanation to because humans are small, and stupid. Because people want to be romantic about everything, they want to give names to the stars, they want to tell stories. Love is a story, that’s all, until she fights with him for the first time.

It wasn’t very long until all the land in the barren hills near King City and San Ardo was taken up, and ragged families were scattered through the hills, trying their best to JOHN STEINBECK scratch a living from the thin flinty soil. They and the coyotes lived clever, despairing, submarginal lives. They landed with no money, no equipment, no tools, no credit, and particularly with no knowledge of the new country and no technique for using it. I don’t know whether it was a divine stupidity or a great faith that let them do it. Surely such venture is nearly gone from the world. And the families did survive and grow. They had a tool or a weapon that is also nearly gone, or perhaps it is only dormant for a while. It is argued that because they believed thoroughly in a just, moral God they could put their faith there and let the smaller securities take care of themselves. But I think that because they trusted themselves and respected themselves as individuals, because they knew beyond doubt that they were valuable and potentially moral units—because of this they could give God their own courage and dignity and then receive it back. Such things have disappeared perhaps because men do not trust themselves any more, and when that happens there is nothing left except perhaps to find some strong sure man, even though he may be wrong, and to dangle from his coattails.

Did he want Nick to die on the floor of his bathroom from an overdose of mentholated rub? Did he want me to spend the last eighty years of my lifespan in a convent? Maybe he was mad that I was trying to sneak out of the house wearing his jeans for the third day in a row. "I am taking Doofus for another walk," I said clearly,daring him to defy me. "That would not be good for Doofus." Josh folded his arms. "Mom,that would not be good for Doofus." Oh! Dragging Mom into this was low.Not to mention Doofus. "Since when is going for a walk not good for a dog?" I challenged Josh. "He's an old dog," Josh protested. "He's four!" I pointed out. "That's twenty-eight in dog years! He's practically thirty!" "Strike!" Mom squealed amid the noise of electronic pins falling. Then she shook her game remote at both of us in turn. "I'm not stupid, you know.And I'm not as out of it as you assume. I know the two of you are really arguing about something else.It's those jeans again, isn't it?" She nodded to me. "I should cut them in half and give each of you a leg.Why does either of you want to wear jeans with 'boy toy' written across the seat anyway?" "I thought that was the fashion." Josh said. "Grandma wears a pair of sweatpants with 'hot mama' written across the ass." "That is different," Mom hissed. "She wears them around the kitchen." I sniffed indignantly. "I said," I announced, "I am goig for a walk with my dog. My beloved canine and I are taking a turn around our fair community. No activity could be more wholesome for a young girl and her pet. And if you have a problem with that,well! What is this world coming to? Come along, dear Doofus." I stuck my nose in the air and stalked past them, but the effect was lost. Somewhere around "our fair community," Mom and Josh both had lost interest and turned back to the TV. Or so I thought.But just as I was about to step outside,hosh appeared in the doorway between the kitchen and the mud room. "What the hell are you doing" he demanded. I said self-righteously, "I am taking my loyal canine for a w-" "You're going to Nick's,aren't you?" he whispered. "Do you think that's a good idea? I heard you yelled at him for no reason at the half-pipe,right before he busted ass.

No dragon was safe in the Sky Palace, but the ones in the most danger by far were the daughters of Queen Scarlet. Or was it now daughter, singular? Ruby hadn’t seen her sister, Tourmaline, in three days. Not since the night they went flying together and, high in the starlit sky, glowing in the light of two of the moons, Tourmaline had whispered that she was almost ready. “Don’t be an idiot. You’re only ten, and furthermore, you’ll never be ready,” Ruby had whispered back. “She killed her mother plus all three of her sisters and eleven of ours. There’s no way to defeat her.” “She can’t be queen forever,” Tourmaline said. “She has been queen forever,” Ruby argued. “Twenty-four years is a long time but not that long,” said Tourmaline. “Queen Oasis was queen longer than that, and look what happened to her.” “Are you planning to throw a scavenger at Mother?” Ruby asked. “Because I’m sure she’d appreciate a snack before she kills you.” “It’s always going to be like this,” Tourmaline hissed. She flicked clouds away with her dark orange wings. “Until one of us challenges her and wins. You and I are the only ones left now — the only hope the SkyWings have of a decent queen. Ruby, if I defeat her and become queen, we can get out of this war.” Ruby wasn’t so sure about that. She’d met Burn, and she suspected the SandWing wouldn’t let her allies go that easily. But it didn’t matter — there was no way Tourmaline could win a battle with their mother. “The prophecy will take care of the war,” she argued. “The brightest night is in four days … ” “Right.” Tourmaline rolled her eyes. “I’ll just wait for a bunch of eggs that haven’t even hatched yet to save us. Ruby, I don’t want to wait for things to happen to me. I want to make them happen.” “I don’t want to watch you die,” Ruby growled. Her sister hovered in front of her for a moment. Stars glittered in her eyes, searching Ruby’s. She’s wondering if I want the throne for myself, Ruby thought. She thinks I’m trying to talk her out of it because I’m planning something. Like I’m that stupid. “Well, don’t worry, I won’t do it yet,” Tourmaline promised. “Another few months of training, maybe. I’m feeling really strong, though. I beat Vermilion in a fight the other day. Want to hear about it?” Ruby

You can't convince yourself! You either believe or you don't believe." (28) "She say you ask weird questions, but I say you're student, you supposed to ask! Her job to answer! I say you're lazy, if student ask, you answer!" "Yeah! She told me my real great-grandparents are these white people named Adan and Eve!" "Bullshit! But hey, Ciao Wen, be smart. Why you argue with her about that? You know they believe this stuff, just let them believe." "But she told me I was going to Hell if I didn't believe and told me to ask God into my heart!" ""Ha, ha, yeah, she told me, too, think she do something soo good to help you. Whatever. You know it's lies, let those idiots believe. Just focus on real school. Don't be stupid and fight them, you'll lose." (30)

But here through the dusk comes one who is not glad to be at rest. He is a workman on the ranch, an old man, an immigrant Italian. He takes his hat off to me in all servility, because, forsooth, I am to him a lord of life. I am food to him, and shelter, and existence. He has toiled like a beast all his days, and lived less comfortably than my horses in their deep-strawed stalls. He is labour-crippled. He shambles as he walks. One shoulder is twisted higher than the other. His hands are gnarled claws, repulsive, horrible. As an apparition he is a pretty miserable specimen. His brain is as stupid as his body is ugly. "His brain is so stupid that he does not know he is an apparition," the White Logic chuckles to me. "He is sense-drunk. He is the slave of the dream of life. His brain is filled with superrational sanctions and obsessions. He believes in a transcendent over-world. He has listened to the vagaries of the prophets, who have given to him the sumptuous bubble of Paradise. He feels inarticulate self-affinities, with self-conjured non-realities. He sees penumbral visions of himself titubating fantastically through days and nights of space and stars. Beyond the shadow of any doubt he is convinced that the universe was made for him, and that it is his destiny to live for ever in the immaterial and supersensuous realms he and his kind have builded of the stuff of semblance and deception. "But you, who have opened the books and who share my awful confidence—you know him for what he is, brother to you and the dust, a cosmic joke, a sport of chemistry, a garmented beast that arose out of the ruck of screaming beastliness by virtue and accident of two opposable great toes. He is brother as well to the gorilla and the chimpanzee. He thumps his chest in anger, and roars and quivers with cataleptic ferocity. He knows monstrous, atavistic promptings, and he is composed of all manner of shreds of abysmal and forgotten instincts." "Yet he dreams he is immortal," I argue feebly. "It is vastly wonderful for so stupid a clod to bestride the shoulders of time and ride the eternities." "Pah!" is the retort. "Would you then shut the books and exchange places with this thing that is only an appetite and a desire, a marionette of the belly and the loins?" "To be stupid is to be happy," I contend. "Then your ideal of happiness is a jelly-like organism floating in a tideless, tepid twilight sea, eh?

This is what you shall do: Love the earth and sun and the animals, despise riches, give alms to every one that asks, stand up for the stupid and crazy, devote your income and labor to others, hate tyrants, argue not concerning God, have patience and indulgence toward the people, take off your hat to nothing known or unknown or to any man or number of men, go freely with powerful uneducated persons and with the young and with the mothers of families, read these leaves in the open air every season of every year of your life, re-examine all you have been told at school or church or in any book, dismiss whatever insults your own soul, and your very flesh shall be a great poem and have the richest fluency not only in its words but in the silent lines of its lips and face and between the lashes of your eyes and in every motion and joint of your body. .

America was sleeping when I crept into the hospital wing that night. She was cleaner, but her face still seemed worried, even at rest. "Hey, Mer," I whispered, rounding her bed. She didn't stir. I didn't dare sit, not even with the excuse of checking on the girl I rescued. I stood in the freshly pressed uniform I would only wear for the few minutes it took to deliver this message. I reached out to touch her, but then pulled back. I looked into her sleeping face and spoke. "I - I came to tell you I'm sorry. About today, I mean," I sucked in a deep breath. "I should have run for you. I should have protected you. I didn't, and you could have died." Her lips pursed and unpursed as she dreamed. "Honestly, I'm sorry for a lot more than that," I admitted. "I'm sorry I got mad in the tree house. I'm sorry I ever said to send in that stupid form. It's just that I have this idea..." I swallowed. " I have this idea that maybe you were the only one I could made everything right for. " I couldn't save my dad. I couldn't protect Jemmy. I can barely keep my family afloat, and I just thought that maybe I could give you a shot at a life that would be better than the one that I would have been able to give you. And I convinced myself that was the right way to love you." I watched her, wishing I had the nerve to confess this while she could argue back with me and tell me how wrong I'd been. " I don't know if I can undo it, Mer. I don't know if we'll ever be the same as we used to be. But I won't stop trying. You're it for me," I said with a shrug. "You're the only thing I've ever wanted to fight for." There was so much more to say, but I heard the door to the hospital wing open. Even in the dark, Maxon's suit was impossible to miss. I started walking away, head down, trying to look like I was just on a round. He didn't acknowledge me, barely even noticed me as he moved to America's bed. I watched him pull up a chair and settle in beside her. I couldn't help but be jealous. From the first day in her brother's apartment - from the very moment I knew how I felt about America - I'd been forced to love her from afar. But Maxon could sit beside her, touch her hand, and the gap between their castes didn't matter. I paused by the door, watching. While the Selection had frayed the line between America and me, Maxon himself was a sharp edge, capable of cutting the string entirely if he got too close. But I couldn't get a clear idea of just how near America was letting him. All I could do was wait and give America the time she seem to need. Really, we all needed it. Time was the only thing that would settle this.

At that time I was still naive enough to try to make clear to them the madness of their ideas; in my small circle I talked until my tongue was weary and till my throat was hoarse, and I thought I could succeed in convincing them of the destructiveness of their Marxist doctrine of irrationality; but the result was contrary. It seemed as though the increasing realization of the destructive influence of Social Democratic theories would serve only to strengthen their determination. The more I argued with them, the more I got to know their dialectics. First they counted on the ignorance of their adversary; then, when there was no way out, they themselves pretended stupidity. If all this was of no avail, they refused to understand or they changed the subject when driven into a corner; they brought up truisms, but they immediately transferred their acceptance to quite different subjects, and, if attacked again, they gave way and pretended to know nothing exactly. Wherever one attacked one of these prophets, one's hands seized slimy jelly; it slipped through one's fingers only to collect again in the next moment. If one smote one of them so thoroughly that, with the bystanders watching, he could but agree, and if one thus thought he had advanced at least one step, one was greatly astonished the following day. The Jew did not in the least remember the day before, he continued to talk in the same old strain as if nothing had happened, and if indignantly confronted, he pretended to be astonished and could not remember anything except that his assertions had already been proved true the day before. Often I was stunned. One did not know what to admire more: their glibness of tongue or their skill in lying. I gradually began to hate them.

No one called him Fai except his grandmother. What sort of name is Frank? she would scold. That is not a Chinese name. I’m not Chinese, Frank thought, but he didn’t dare say that. His mother had told him years ago: There is no arguing with Grandmother. It’ll only make you suffer worse. She’d been right. And now Frank had no one except his grandmother. Thud. A fourth arrow hit the fence post and stuck there, quivering. “Fai,” said his grandmother. Frank turned. She was clutching a shoebox-sized mahogany chest that Frank had never seen before. With her high-collared black dress and severe bun of gray hair, she looked like a school teacher from the 1800s. She surveyed the carnage: her porcelain in the wagon, the shards of her favorite tea sets scattered over the lawn, Frank’s arrows sticking out of the ground, the trees, the fence posts, and one in the head of a smiling garden gnome. Frank thought she would yell, or hit him with the box. He’d never done anything this bad before. He’d never felt so angry. Grandmother’s face was full of bitterness and disapproval. She looked nothing like Frank’s mom. He wondered how his mother had turned out to be so nice—always laughing, always gentle. Frank couldn’t imagine his mom growing up with Grandmother any more than he could imagine her on the battlefield—though the two situations probably weren’t that different. He waited for Grandmother to explode. Maybe he’d be grounded and wouldn’t have to go to the funeral. He wanted to hurt her for being so mean all the time, for letting his mother go off to war, for scolding him to get over it. All she cared about was her stupid collection. “Stop this ridiculous behavior,” Grandmother said. She didn’t sound very irritated. “It is beneath you.” To Frank’s astonishment, she kicked aside one of her favorite teacups. “The car will be here soon,” she said. “We must talk.” Frank was dumbfounded. He looked more closely at the mahogany box. For a horrible moment, he wondered if it contained his mother’s ashes, but that was impossible. Grandmother had told him there would be a military burial. Then why did Grandmother hold the box

They’re all okay, then?” I grin like an idiot. What is wrong with me? She rises from her chair, fluid and vaguely shimmering. Her grace is legendary. I’m agile and strong, but I’d rather move like sunbeams on water, like Selena. “In good health and arguing incessantly with Desma and Aetos. Those two are under the impression the Sintans abducted you.” She’s asking a question. I owe her an answer. “They did. Sort of.” Her sculpted lips purse. “Help me understand a ‘sort of’ abduction,” Selena says, pouring me a cup of water. Well, it sounds stupid when you say it like that. My throat is parched, so I drink before answering. “He’s Beta Sinta. He said he’d have you all arrested if I didn’t come.” “And you believed him?” It’s a loaded question coming from Selena. I nod. After nearly a month with him, I also know he would have done it because he felt he had to, not because he wanted to. “He needs a powerful Magoi to help him and his precious Alpha sister, Egeria.” Egeria is no Alpha. She sounds more like a buttercup. Beta Sinta on the other hand, he’s Alpha material. Fierce on the battlefield, bloody, focused, ruthless…fair? “Plus, he had a magic rope.” Selena laughs, and the sound is like wind chimes on a spring breeze. “You? Caught by a magic rope?” I flush. “Don’t remind me.” She clears her throat, taming more laughter, and asks, “Will you help him?” Selena may not know who I am, but I’m certain she knows what I am—the Kingmaker—even if we’ve never discussed it. “My abilities can be valuable in diplomatic situations,” I say carefully. “He came here to save you. He looked like he cared.” I shrug, glancing down. “I’m a weapon he doesn’t want to lose.” “I think there’s more.” My eyes snap back up. “Don’t infer something that isn’t there. We’re both monsters.” Her dark-blue gaze flicks over me, unnerving. “Monsters still mate.” I choke on my own spit and then cough. A faint smile curves her lips. “Why didn’t you just escape?” “The rope.” That stupid, infuriating enchanted rope that led me to make a binding vow to stay with Beta Sinta until his—or my, if it comes first—dying day. She looks incredulous. “You couldn’t find a way out?” “It was a bloody good rope!

The government has a great need to restore its credibility, to make people forget its history and rewrite it. The intelligentsia have to a remarkable degree undertaken this task. It is also necessary to establish the "lessons" that have to be drawn from the war, to ensure that these are conceived on the narrowest grounds, in terms of such socially neutral categories as "stupidity" or "error" or "ignorance" or perhaps "cost." Why? Because soon it will be necessary to justify other confrontations, perhaps other U.S. interventions in the world, other Vietnams. But this time, these will have to be successful intervention, which don't slip out of control. Chile, for example. It is even possible for the press to criticize successful interventions - the Dominican Republic, Chile, etc. - as long as these criticisms don't exceed "civilized limits," that is to say, as long as they don't serve to arouse popular movements capable of hindering these enterprises, and are not accompanied by any rational analysis of the motives of U.S. imperialism, something which is complete anathema, intolerable to liberal ideology. How is the liberal press proceeding with regard to Vietnam, that sector which supported the "doves"? By stressing the "stupidity" of the U.S. intervention; that's a politically neutral term. It would have been sufficient to find an "intelligent" policy. The war was thus a tragic error in which good intentions were transmuted into bad policies, because of a generation of incompetent and arrogant officials. The war's savagery is also denounced, but that too, is used as a neutral category...Presumably the goals were legitimate - it would have been all right to do the same thing, but more humanely... The "responsible" doves were opposed to the war - on a pragmatic basis. Now it is necessary to reconstruct the system of beliefs according to which the United States is the benefactor of humanity, historically committed to freedom, self-determination, and human rights. With regard to this doctrine, the "responsible" doves share the same presuppositions as the hawks. They do not question the right of the United States to intervene in other countries. Their criticism is actually very convenient for the state, which is quite willing to be chided for its errors, as long as the fundamental right of forceful intervention is not brought into question. ... The resources of imperialist ideology are quite vast. It tolerates - indeed, encourages - a variety of forms of opposition, such as those I have just illustrated. It is permissible to criticize the lapses of the intellectuals and of government advisers, and even to accuse them of an abstract desire for "domination," again a socially neutral category not linked in any way to concrete social and economic structures. But to relate that abstract "desire for domination" to the employment of force by the United States government in order to preserve a certain system of world order, specifically, to ensure that the countries of the world remain open insofar as possible to exploitation by U.S.-based corporations - that is extremely impolite, that is to argue in an unacceptable way.

We both know Dad was my parental trash can, the fatherly receptacle on whom I dumped my emotions. Does she think because she offered me a blanket and chocolate-covered whatever that I'll just hand over the keys to my inner diary? Uh, no. "I know you're eighteen now," she huffs. "I get it, okay? But you don't know everything. And you know what? I don't like secrets." My head spins. The first day of the Rest of My Normal Life is not turning out as planned. I shake my head. "I guess I still don't understand what you're asking me." She stomps her foot. "How long have you been dating him, Emma? How long have you and Galen been an item?" Ohmysweetgoodness. "I'm not dating Galen," I whisper. "Why would you even think that?" "Why would I think that? Maybe you should ask Mrs. Strickland. She's the one who told me how intimate you looked standing there in the hall. And she said Galen was beside himself when you wouldn't wake up. That he kept squeezing your hand." Intimate? I let my backpack slide off my shoulder and onto the floor before I plot to the table and sit down. The room feels like a giant merry-go-round. I am...embarrassed? No. Embarrassed is when you spill ketchup on your crotch and it leaves a red stain in a suspicious area. Mortified? No. Mortified is when you experiment with tanning lotion and forget to put some on your feet, so it looks like you're wearing socks with your flip-flops and sundress. Bewildered? Yep. That's it. Bewildered that after I screamed at him-oh yes, now I remember I screamed at him-he picked up my limp body, carried me all the way to the office, and stayed with me until help arrived. Oh, and he held my hand and sat beside me, too. I cradle my face in my hands, imagining how close I came to going to school without knowing this. How close I came to walking up to Galen, telling him to take his tingles and shove them where every girl's thoughts have been since he got there. I groan into my laced fingers. "I can never face him again," I say to no one in particular. Unfortunately, Mom thinks I'm talking to her. "Why? Did he break up with you?" She sits down next to me and pulls my hands from my face. "Is it because you wouldn't sleep with him?" "Mom!" I screech. "No!" She snatches her hand away. "You mean you did sleep with him?" Her lips quiver. This can't be happening. "Mom, I told you, we're not dating!" Shouting is a dumb idea. My heartbeat ripples through my temples. "You're not even dating him and you slept with him?" She's wringing her hands. Tears puddle in her eyes. One Mississippi...two Mississippi...Is she freaking serious?...Three Mississippi...four Mississippi...Because I swear I'm about to move out... Five Mississippi...six Mississippi...I might as well sleep with him if I'm going to be accused of it anyway... Seven Mississippi...eight Mississippi...Ohmysweetgoodness, did I really just think that?...Nine Mississippi...ten Mississippi...Talk to your mother-now. I keep my voice polite when I say, "Mom, I haven't slept with Galen, unless you count laying on the nurse's bed unconscious beside him. And we are not dating. We have never dated. Which is why he wouldn't need to break up with me. Have I missed anything?" "What were you arguing about in the hall, then?" "I actually don't remember. All I remember is being mad at him. Trust me, I'll find out. But right now, I'm late for school." I ease out of the chair and over to my backpack on the floor. Bending over is even stupider than shouting. I wish my head would just go ahead and fall off already.

The softening of thought began with open-heart ideology: the New Philosophers. It continued with the New Romantics. Then the revival of philosophy in general. Then the euphoria of new enterprise and new business. The social 'naturalism' of neoliberalism. Everywhere face-lifted values have reinstalled themselves, a touching dynamism, a puerile religiosity, in which love resurfaces blithely. A way for the horde to close ranks at the time of the greatest dispersion of the species. Zinoviev doesn't give a damn about the Western intelligentsia, with its subtlety and sophistication. He knows that the massive unintelligible reality on the other side of the iron curtain is more interesting than our dialectical, interactive processes. He draws the power of his irony from the power of stupidity. The gist of what he is saying is that if we have not conquered this stupidity, you are not going to overcome it. And he is only too damned right. Or he is saying this: you are behind us in absolute terms, because we have been through the worst, whereas you still have it to go through. You cannot argue with that. Dissidents? In the case of Sakharov, says Zinoviev, the Western world and the Eastern bloc derive equal benefit from this lamentable situation and are equally responsible for it. You have no hope of converting us for we are a more advanced form, the post-catastrophe social form, the form of survival. You are still in the realm of life, but we are already in the realm of afterlife - survival. In any case, your society is artificial: it goes to any lengths to sustain illusions from which we have already drawn all the possible consequences. Do not hope for communism to evolve, for it is you who quite peaceably will take the same path as we have. You are already a lot like us.

Violet’s not getting out of our sight,” Arion adds. There’s a moment of just staring…like everyone is trying to silently argue. “No one naked in my car,” Mom states when I just stand in my spot, waiting on them to hurry through the push and pull. You really can tell how thick the air is when too many alphas are in the room at one time, but weirdly it never feels this way when it’s just the four of them. Unless punches are thrown. Then it gets a little heavier than normal. Arion pulls on his clothes, and threads whir in the air as I quickly fashion Emit a lopsided toga that lands on his body. Everyone’s gaze swings to him like it’s weird for him and normal for me to be in a toga. Awesome. Damien muffles a sound, Emit arches an eyebrow at me, and Arion remains rigid, staying close to me but never touching me. All of us squeezing into a car together while most of them hate each other…should be fun. The storm finally stops before we board the elevator, and it’s one of those super awkward elevator moments where no one is looking at anyone or saying anything, and everyone is trying to stay in-the-moment serious. We stop on the floor just under us, after the longest thirty-five seconds ever. The doors open, and two men glance around at Emit and I in our matching togas, even though his is the fitted sheet and riding up in some funny places. He looks like a caveman who accidentally bleached and shrank his wardrobe. I palm my face, embarrassed for him. The next couple of floors are super awkward with the addition of the two new, notably uncomfortable men. Worst seventy-nine seconds ever. Math doesn’t add up? Yeah. I’m upset about those extra nine seconds as well. Poor Emit has to duck out of the unusually small elevator, and the bottom of his ass cheek plays peek-a-boo on one side. Damien finally snorts, and even Mom struggles to keep a straight face. That really pisses her off. “You’re seeing him on an off day,” I tell the two guys, who stare at my red boots for a second. I feel the need to defend Emit a little, especially since I now know he overheard all that gibberish Tiara was saying… I can’t remember all I said, and it’s worrying me now that my mind has gone off on this stupid tangent. I trip over the hem of my toga, and Arion snags me before I hit the floor, righting me and showing his hands to my mother with a quick grin. “Can’t just let her fall,” he says unapologetically. “You’re going to have to learn to deal with that,” she bites out. She has a very good point. I don’t trip very often, but things and people usually knock me around a good bit of my life. The two guys look like they want to run, so I hurry to fix this. “Really, it’s a long story, but I swear Emit—the tallest one in the fitted-sheet-toga—generally wears pants…er…I guess you guys call them trousers over here. Anyway, we had some plane problems,” I carry on, and then realize I have to account for the fact we’re both missing clothing. “Then there was a fire that miraculously only burned our clothes, because Emit put all my flames out by smothering me with his body,” I state like that’s exactly what happened. Why do they look so scared? I’m not telling a scary lie. At this point, I’ve just made it worse, and fortunately Damien takes mercy, clamping his hand over my mouth as he starts steering me toward the door before I can make it…whatever comes after worse but before the worst. “Thank you,” sounds more like “Mmdi ooooo,” against his hand, but he gets the gist, as he grins. Mom makes a frustrated sound. “Another minute, and she’d be bragging about his penis size in quest to save his dignity. Did you really want to hear that?” Damien asks her, forcing me to groan against his hand.

Grayson, I’m going to dance on the day that you swing.” “If he swings, I swing with him.” Joss rose to his feet. Gray drilled his brother with a glare. “Joss, no.” Sit down, damn you. Think of our sister. Think of your son. “I’m the captain of the Aphrodite.” Joss’s voice rang through the courtroom. “I’m responsible for the actions of her passengers and crew. If my brother is a pirate, then I’m a pirate, too.” Gray’s heart sank. They would both die now, he and his idiot of a brother. Joss walked to the center of the courtroom, the brass buttons of his captain’s coat gleaming as he strode through a shaft of sunlight. “But I demand a full trial. I will be heard, and evidence will be examined. Logbooks, the condition of the ships, the statements of my crew. If you mean to hang my brother, you’ll have to find cause to hang me.” Fitzhugh’s eyebrows rose to his wig. “Gladly.” “And me.” Gray groaned at the sound of that voice. He didn’t even have to look to know that Davy Linnet was on his feet. Brave, stupid fool of a boy. “If Gray’s a pirate, I’m a pirate, too,” Davy said. “I helped him aim and fire that cannon, that’s God’s truth. If you hang him, you have to hang me.” Another chair scraped the floorboards as its occupant rose to his feet. “And me.” Oh God. O’Shea now? “I boarded the Kestrel. I took control of her helm and helped bind that piece of shite.” The Irishman jutted his chin at Mallory. “Suppose that makes me a pirate, too.” “Very good.” Fitzhugh’s eyes lit with glee. “Anyone else?” Over by the window, Levi stood. His shadow blanketed most of the room. “Me,” he said. “Now, Levi?” Gray pulled at his hair. “Seven years in my employ, you don’t say a single goddamned word, and you decide to speak now?” Bloody hell, now they were all on their feet. Pumping fists, cursing Mallory, defending Gray, arguing over which one of them deserved the distinction of most bloodthirsty pirate. It would have been a heartwarming display of loyalty, if they weren’t all going to die.

It was an imprudent idea to begin with.” “I shan’t argue with you on that point.” Rose scoffed at him. “You don’t get to play morally superior with me, Grey. I may have been stupid enough to conspire against you, but you didn’t even recognize someone you’ve known for years! If one of us must be the bigger idiot, I think it must be you!” Oh dear God. She covered her mouth with her hand. What had she just said? Dark arched brows pulled together tightly over stormy blue eyes. “You’re right,” he agreed. “I am an idiot, but only because I allowed this ridiculous ruse past the point when I realized your identity.” Rose froze-like a damp leaf on an icy pond. “You knew?” And yet he continued to pretend…oh, he was worse than she by far. “Of course I knew.” He glowered at her. “Blindfold me and I would know the scent of your skin, the exact color and texture of your skin. Do you not realize that I know the color of your eyes right down to the flecks of gold that light their depths?” Heart pounding, stomach churning in shock, Rose could only stare at him. How could he say such things to her and sound so disgusted? “When?” Her voice was a ragged whisper. “When did you know?” “I suspected before but tried to deny it. The morning after we last met I took one look at your sweet mouth and knew there couldn’t be two women in the world, let alone London with the same delectable bottom lip.” It hurt. Oh, she hadn’t thought hearing him say such wonderful things could hurt so much! She pressed a hand to her chest. “You suspected and yet you made love to me any way.” “Made love?” He snorted. “That’s a girl’s term, Rose. What you and I did…it was something far worse than making trite love.” Worse? How could he malign what had transpired between them. “So you regret it, despite your own choice to continue with the charade.” “What I regret,” he growled, suddenly moving toward her, “is your sudden attack of conscience.” He was mad. She took a step back. “I don’t understand you.” “If only you had managed to keep your guilt where it belonged.” A ravaged smile curved his lips as he shook his head. “We might have continued on, with neither being the wiser, but now we must endure the rest of the Season together, knowing what we can no longer have.” “Then you admit you have feelings for me.” He laughed hollowly. “So many I can scarce discern them all.” It was a hollow victory at best. “If you care for me and I for you, then why can we not reveal our feelings? You have but to ask and I’m yours.

Every Monday and Friday night, leaving us with awful suppers to reheat, our mum didn’t work late shifts at the printworks. She went to an office in Shoreditch. And from there, by radio, by note, by telephone and letters, she exchanged messages with Miss Carter and Mrs. Henderson and Queenie and others like them on what she called ‘humanitarian war work’. She’d never met any of them in person. ‘I can’t tell you any more details. It’s secret work. How you know even this much is really quite beyond me,’ she admitted. ‘I worked most of it out myself,’ I told her. She might’ve hidden it from me all this time, but I wasn’t stupid. ‘Sounds like Sukie did too.’ ‘Your sister spied on me,’ Mum replied bitterly. ‘She stole paperwork, listened in to private conversations. She was very foolish to get caught up in something she knew nothing about.’ ‘She did know about it, though. What Hitler’s doing really got to her. She was desperate to do something about it. All that post from Devon? It wasn’t from Queenie. Those were letters from the lighthouse, written by Ephraim, who feels the same about the Jewish people as Sukie does.’ ‘It was stupid, impulsive behaviour,’ Mum argued, ‘of the sort your sister’s very good at.’ Yet to me she had missed a vital point. ‘You know Sukie wanted to help you, don’t you? She saw how ill you’d got over Dad. By standing in for you on this job, she was making sure you’d get some rest, like the doctor said you should.’ ‘I might’ve known you’d stick up for your sister,’ Mum remarked. ‘But it didn’t help me – it worried me sick!’ ‘It did help thirty-two refugees, though,’ I reminded her. ‘She was lucky she didn’t get arrested straight away.’ Mum went on as if she hadn’t heard me. ‘When I found out that night what she’d done, I was all for going after her, hauling her back and locking her in her bedroom, till this frightful war was over if I had to. But it was too late by then. She was already halfway to France.’ ‘You knew the night she disappeared?’ I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. ‘Why didn’t you tell me?’ ‘And admit that I do undercover work and Sukie was doing it too?’ Mum cried. ‘Good grief, Olive, it’s secret business. It was too dangerous to tell you. There’s a war on, remember!’ ‘People always use that excuse,’ I muttered. It stunned me that Mum had known all this time. But then, hadn’t there been signs? The looks in our kitchen between her and Gloria, the refusal to talk about Sukie, the bundling us off out of the way – to here, the very place Sukie might, with any luck, show up. It was a clever way of making sure we knew the moment she set foot on British soil again.

Kill Yourself Buddhism argues that your idea of who “you” are is an arbitrary mental construction and that you should let go of the idea that “you” exist at all; that the arbitrary metrics by which you define yourself actually trap you, and thus you’re better off letting go of everything. In a sense, you could say that Buddhism encourages you to not give a fuck. It sounds wonky, but there are some psychological benefits to this approach to life. When we let go of the stories we tell about ourselves, to ourselves, we free ourselves up to actually act (and fail) and grow. When someone admits to herself, “You know, maybe I’m not good at relationships,” then she is suddenly free to act and end her bad marriage. She has no identity to protect by staying in a miserable, crappy marriage just to prove something to herself. When the student admits to himself, “You know, maybe I’m not a rebel; maybe I’m just scared,” then he’s free to be ambitious again. He has no reason to feel threatened by pursuing his academic dreams and maybe failing. When the insurance adjuster admits to himself, “You know, maybe there’s nothing unique or special about my dreams or my job,” then he’s free to give that screenplay an honest go and see what happens. I have both some good news and some bad news for you: there is little that is unique or special about your problems. That’s why letting go is so liberating. There’s a kind of self-absorption that comes with fear based on an irrational certainty. When you assume that your plane is the one that’s going to crash, or that your project idea is the stupid one everyone is going to laugh at, or that you’re the one everyone is going to choose to mock or ignore, you’re implicitly telling yourself, “I’m the exception; I’m unlike everybody else; I’m different and special.” This is narcissism, pure and simple. You feel as though your problems deserve to be treated differently, that your problems have some unique math to them that doesn’t obey the laws of the physical universe. My recommendation: don’t be special; don’t be unique. Redefine your metrics in mundane and broad ways. Choose to measure yourself not as a rising star or an undiscovered genius. Choose to measure yourself not as some horrible victim or dismal failure. Instead, measure yourself by more mundane identities: a student, a partner, a friend, a creator. The narrower and rarer the identity you choose for yourself, the more everything will seem to threaten you. For that reason, define yourself in the simplest and most ordinary ways possible. This often means giving up some grandiose ideas about yourself: that you’re uniquely intelligent, or spectacularly talented, or intimidatingly attractive, or especially victimized in ways other people could never imagine.

Just as I was pulling over he started shifting in his seat, and I glanced over to see him pulling a slim black wallet out. Jesus. I pulled over to the curb in front of the square white stone home. “Don’t.” His silence was deafening as he sat there, duffel on his lap, one hand on the car door, and the other holding a slim coffee-colored leather wallet. “I’m giving you a ride as a favor. I don’t want your money,” I explained to him carefully. He started to pull out a bill from his wallet regardless. “Hey, I’m not joking. I don’t want your money.” Kulti started to shove a fifty at me. “Here.” I reached up and cupped his hand, crushing the bill between us. “I don’t want it.” “Take it.” He pushed against me. I pushed back. “No.” “Stop being stubborn and take the money,” Kulti argued, his face exasperated. Well if he thought he was the only one getting aggravated, he was dead wrong. “I said no. I don’t want it. Just get out.” It was his turn to start with the one-word replies. “No.” Screw this. I put some muscle behind it and slowly started pushing our hands back toward him. Well I made it two inches before he realized what I was doing and then began pushing back, only he was stronger and he advanced more than two inches. “Quit it. I’m not joking. Take your money.” I grunted a little, putting more weight into my push, almost futilely. Those green-brown eyes flicked up to with an even look that had annoyance written all over it. “I said I would pay you—“ “I don’t want your money, you hardheaded ass—“ Oh dear God. I stopped pushing the second I realized what I said. It must have been so unexpected that he wasn’t paying attention because the next thing that I knew, he was punching me in the shoulder. It didn’t hurt at all. But for some reason, instinct had me saying “oww” anyway. We both looked like we’d violated the other. Like I’d backstabbed him for saying ‘oww’ and I’m sure I looked at him like I couldn’t believe he had the nerve to hit me. Sure it was an accident, and an accident that didn’t hurt on top of that, but… “I’m sorry,” he said quickly, looking down at his hand like he couldn’t believe what he’d done. I opened my mouth and then I closed it. Reiner Kulti had just punched me in the shoulder. I had driven him home, argued with him over how I didn’t want his money, and then he punched me in the shoulder. I closed my eyes, pinched my nose and burst out laughing. “Get outta here,” I said when I started laughing harder. “I didn’t mean to—“ I threw my head back against the headrest and felt myself shake with how stupid this was. “I know. I know you didn’t. But just get out, it’s fine. I need to get to work before you punch me in the other shoulder.” “This isn’t funny,” he snapped. “It was an accident.” Suddenly I stopped laughing and snapped right back at him, “I know it was, jeez. I was just messing with you.” I gave him a wide-eyed look. “A joke, do you know what that is?” I mean, I’d already gone for calling him a hardheaded ass, and he hadn’t thought twice about it, but that might have been because he’d punched me immediately afterward. “Yes, I know what a joke is,” he grumbled back. Whether it was because I was tired of this shit, his shit or whatever, I found myself caring less and less who he was and how I should probably treat him differently. Maybe not totally, but at least a little bit. “I’m happy to hear that.” I scooped the fifty bucks that had fallen on my lap after the meeting of his fist and my shoulder and tossed it at him. “I really do need to get to work though, so…” I tipped my head in the direction of the door at his side, indifferent to how rude I was being. Did he look confused that I was kicking him out? I think so but he didn’t argue, and he took the wadded-up money and held onto it as he got out of the car. Straightening up, he held the door in one hand and looked inside. “Thank you.” Finally. I blinked at him and nodded. “You’re welcome.” Just like that, he shut the door.

Nothing could be easier, on the face of it, than this stupid scullion work, but it is astonishing hard when one is in a hurry. (...) You are, for example, making toast, when bang! down comes a service lift with an order for tea, rolls, and three different kinds of jam and simultaneously bang! down comes another demanding scrambled eggs, coffee and grapefruit; you run to the kitchen for the eggs and to the dining-room for the fruit, going like lightening so as to be back before your toast burns, and having to remember about the tea and coffee, besides half a dozen other orders that are still pending; and at the same time some waiter is following you and making trouble about a lost bottle of soda-water, and you are arguing with him. It needs more brains than one might think. Mario said, no doubt truly, that it took a year to make a reliable cafetier.

I have too many things left unfinished. Questions unanswered. I want to fix things with my pirates, save Klaus, argue some more with Valorean, and listen to Opal berate me for being stupid enough to get caught.

you waste precious time arguing about the past. For what? To make you more miserable. Stupid. If only you could understand how fleeting this life is – you would embrace love with everything you had and fight for it. No matter what.

I don't know whether it was a divine stupidity or a great faith that let them do it. Surely suc a venture is nearly gone from the world. And the families did survive and grow. They had a tool or a weapon that is also nearly gone, or perhaps it is only dormant for a while. It is argued that because the believed thoroughly ina. Just, moral God they could put their faith there and let the smaller securities take care of themselves. But I think that because they trusted themselves and respected themzelvez as individuals, because they knew beyond doubt that they were valuable and potentially moral units - because of this they could give God their own courage and divinity and then receive it back. Such things have disappeared perhaps because men do not trust themselves any more, and when that happens there is nothing else except perhaps to find some strong sure man, even though he may be wrong, and to dangle from his coattails.

It's just as good as in the movies," Sam says. For a moment, I think she means us, and I'm about to argue that it's better and movies are stupid, but then I realize she means the fountains. "It's okay." "Just okay?" She tries to turn in my arms, but I tighten them around her, pulling her back flush with my chest. "Hush. I'm trying to watch this okay water show." When she laughs, I feel like I've hit a home run. Who knew I could be funny? I'm probably not funny anyone but her, but she's the only one who matters. I tuck my chin over the top of her head, and I feel like I'm holding Sam prisoner. She sighs, relaxing into me, happy to have me as her warden. Okay, that metaphor got away from me a little bit. But I don't care. I won't overthink it - that's my new mantra and goal. Sometimes it works. Sometimes I lie in bed, worrying.

More broadly, critical race theorists such as Mills emphasize the role of European colonialism, genocide, and chattel slavery in producing intertwined ideologies of white superiority and scientific racism in order to retroactively justify the (continued) exploitation of people socially defined as “nonwhite.” And here’s the kicker: Mills has convincingly argued that the maintenance of white supremacy involves and requires “cognitive dysfunctions” and warped representations of the social world that conveniently serve the interests of the majority population.14 These distortions and cognitive errors produce “the ironic outcome that whites [are] in general . . . unable to understand the world they themselves have made.” This brings us back to Mills’s rather esoteric phrase: the epistemology of ignorance. The word “epistemology” refers to the study of knowledge and its formation, so an epistemology of ignorance would involve creating “knowledge” based on . . . a profound lack of knowledge or stupidity. Using fancy academic language, Mills is basically saying that whites’ ideas “about race” are fundamentally based on misrepresentations and distortions of social reality, but their “not knowing,” their ignorance, gets routinely repackaged as credible, authoritative

ART didn’t hesitate, or argue. It had gone through the same threat assessment I just had, except faster and a million percent more homicidal. It said, Try not to do anything stupid before I return.

The comparison is neither wrong nor awkward since it can enlighten and fragrance life journey if one understands that as the context of knowledge and insight of education, but not as competitive or complex.” — E.S Quotes by Bertrand Russel and Ehsan Sehgal “Men are born ignorant, not stupid. They are made stupid by education.” — Bertrand Russell “Humans are born with incredible knowledge of the six senses; worldly education is the creation of humans based on the six senses. Education may be untrue, but it does not make anyone stupid.” — Ehsan Sehgal 27–06–2024 Note: Adding the content of ChatGPT will enlighten the comparison of both quotes. “The quotes by Bertrand Russell and Ehsan Sehgal both critique the impact of education on human intellect, but they come from different perspectives and imply distinct understandings of education and human nature. Bertrand Russell: “Men are born ignorant, not stupid. They are made stupid by education.” Russell’s statement reflects a critical view of formal education systems, suggesting that these systems can mislead and dull human intellect rather than cultivate it. Russell was known for his philosophical skepticism towards established norms and institutions, and this quote aligns with his broader critique of how education can sometimes propagate conformity, dogma, and uncritical thinking, rather than fostering genuine understanding and critical reasoning. Ehsan Sehgal: “Humans are born with incredible knowledge of the six senses; worldly education is the creation of humans based on the six senses. Education may be untrue, but it does not make anyone stupid.” Sehgal’s perspective acknowledges an inherent, almost instinctual knowledge in humans, related to their sensory experiences. He seems to argue that while education is a human construct built upon these senses and might be flawed or even incorrect, it does not fundamentally impair human intelligence. Instead of making people stupid, education is portrayed as a potentially misguided but still valuable attempt to structure and expand upon the innate understanding people have through their senses. Comparison: Innate Knowledge vs. Learned Ignorance: Russell: Suggests that ignorance is natural, but stupidity results from flawed education. Sehgal: Suggests that humans are born with an innate form of knowledge and that education, though potentially flawed, doesn’t diminish this intelligence. Critique of Education: Russell: Directly critiques education as capable of making people less intelligent. Sehgal: Critiques the truthfulness of education but separates this from the impact on intelligence. Nature of Human Intellect: Russell: Implies that human intellect can be compromised by poor education. Sehgal: Implies that human intellect remains robust despite the imperfections of education. Both quotes invite reflection on the purpose and effects of education. Russell warns against complacency and the acceptance of flawed educational paradigms, urging reform to foster true critical thinking. Sehgal, while acknowledging the fallibility of educational systems, seems to maintain a more optimistic view of human intellect’s resilience.

And how do we know that?” I riposted. “Because they’ve screwed up so many of them! Secrecy they have plenty of. What they are crucially short of are competence and reliability. If a Soviet Premier were to order a nuclear mine built, he’d be delivered something the size of a Sherman tank, that worked one time out of four… and sure as God made little green horseflies, somebody on the very first penetration team would defect. That’s the problem they’ll never crack: if a man is intelligent enough to be worth sending abroad, they don’t dare let him out of the country.” “They build very good missiles,” she argued. “That suggests they can produce good technology if they want to badly enough.” “Says who? How often do they ever fire one at a target anyone else can monitor? I told you: esoteric weapons are one of my hobbies.” “Well, very good spaceships—that’s the same thing.” “They build shitty spaceships. Ever seen the inside of one? They look like something out of Flash Gordon, or the cab of a steam locomotive. Big knife-switches and levers and dials that’d look natural in a Nikola Tesla exhibit. No computers worth mentioning. After the Apollo-Soyuz linkup, our guys came back raving at the courage of anyone who would ride a piece of junk like that into space.” “The Soviet space program is much more substantial than America’s! It has been since long before Apollo.” “With shitty spaceships. It’s just that they don’t stop building them, the way this stupid country has. Did you ever hear the story about the first Soviet space station crew?” “Died on reentry, didn’t they? Something about an air leak?” “Leonov, the first man ever to walk in space, has been in the identical model reentry vehicle many times. He’s been quoted assaying that the crew of that mission had to have heard the air whistling out, and that any of the three of them could easily have reached out and plugged the leak with a finger. They died of a combination of bad technology and lousy education. You wait and see: if the Soviets ever open the books and let us compare duds and destructs, you’ll find out they had a failure rate much higher than ours. You know those rockets they’ve got now, that everybody admires so much, the ‘big dumb boosters’? They could have beat us to the Moon with those. But of the first eight to leave the launch pad, the most successful survived for seventeen seconds. So they used a different booster for the Moon project, and it didn’t make the nut.

This nigga wanted to argue with these cops while his stupid ass had a trunk full of dope! Like what the fuck was he thinking?

Ivar ignores his elder brother and turns to me. “Were you lucid, Thrain? Did she command you to go riding out into the forest at midnight?” “She did not need to command me,” I grunt. “I do all manner of stupid things whilst being perfectly lucid, as you know.” Ivar laughs at that. “Well, I can’t argue with that.

Philosophers in the Western tradition have paid little attention to comedy, focusing instead on tragedy. This is unfortunate, as comedy is the more appropriate genre for representing humanity. Ours is a ridiculous species, its members displaying every manner of stupidity, willing to harm ourselves and others in the pursuit of trivial ends, all while pretending to believe obvious falsehoods. This is not the appropriate subject matter for tragedy. It is comedy that specializes in exposing and lampooning the ridiculous. I will argue here that a comic representation of humanity has three primary virtues for the misanthropist. First, it accurately represents humanity. Second, it provides a kind of palliative to the terrible truth about humanity that I have defended in previous chapters. Third, comedic genres are permitted wider latitude than more serious genres when it comes to free expression, allowing for especially incisive and honest critique.

Louis Lomax wrote: It was as if Martin had been chiseled out of the black mountain to make an eternal liar out of white people. White people argued that Negroes were stupid; there was Martin with his Ph.D. in his mid-twenties. White people alleged that Negroes were lazy, unable to organize and accomplish an objective; Martin not only was hardworking, but he pulled together an organization that put thousands of people to walking for justice … White people stereotyped Negroes as men of violence, yet Martin mounted the only nonviolent social revolution in Western history. Most of all, Martin’s public speeches combined the wisdom of Socrates, the eloquence of Demosthenes, and the thunder of Isaiah. One could not have created a Black man who could have better filled the nation’s television screens.

Don't argue with stupid people, they just pull you down to their level and beat you with experience.

For God’s sake, Eve Windham, it was just a kiss under the mistletoe, probably inspired by your papa’s wassail more than anything else.” She had to put her hand on his arm while the feeling of the ground shifting beneath her feet swept over her. “My brothers said it was white rum.” “The occasional tot makes the holiday socializing less tedious. You really do not look well.” The last observation was grudging, almost worried. “I did not mean to swill from your glass, Deene. You should have stopped me.” They had to get to the coach. The night felt like it was closing in, and Deene’s voice—a perfect example of male aristocratic euphony—was swelling and shrinking in the oddest way. “I might have stopped you, except you downed the whole drink before I realized what was afoot, and then you were accosting me in the most passionate—” Eve clutched his arm and swayed into him, breathing shallowly through her mouth. “If you insist on arguing with me, my lord, I will be ill all over these bushes.” “Why didn’t you say so?” He slipped an arm around her waist and promenaded her down the steps. By the time they got to the garden gate, the nausea was subsiding, though Eve was leaning heavily on her escort. She had the notion that the scents of cedar and lavender coming from Deene’s jacket might have helped quiet her stomach. Deene ushered her through the gate, which put them on a quiet, mercifully dark side street. “How often do these headaches befall you?” “Too often. Sometimes I go for months between attacks, sometimes only days. The worst is when it hits on one side, subsides for a day, then strikes on the other.” Deene pulled one of his gloves off with his teeth, then used two fingers to give a piercing, three-blast whistle. “Sorry.” All the while he kept his arm around Eve’s waist, a solid, warm—and quite unexpected—bulwark against complete disability. “The coach will here in moments. Is there anything that helps?” “Absolute quiet, absolute dark, time.” Though her mother used to rub her neck, and that had helped the most. He said nothing more—Deene wasn’t stupid—and Eve just leaned on him. Her grandmother had apparently suffered from these same headaches, though neither Eve’s parents nor her siblings were afflicted. The clip-clop of hooves sounded like so much gunfire in Eve’s head, but it was the sound of privacy, so Eve tried to welcome it. Deene gave the coachy directions to the Windham mansion and climbed in after Eve. “Shall I sit beside you, my lady?” An odd little courtesy, that he would even ask. “Please. The less I move, the less uncomfortable I am.” He settled beside her and looped an arm around her shoulders. Without a single thought for dignity, skirmishes, or propriety, Eve laid her head on his shoulder, closed her eyes, and was grateful. ***

across at her. “Surely you have a plan?” “Um…” Now he felt stupid.  “Everyone has a plan for when the zombies hit.” Rhys didn’t. Fortunately, she didn’t push him on the matter.  “So why do you let your wife keep you away from your son?” “What else can I do? I have to fight it through the courts. I have to do this the right way, and to do that, I have to keep paying my crappy solicitor until they decide they have a case pulled together. Arguing with my ex will only upset Flynn. It’s the right way to do things.” “There’s no right way now.” “Huh?” More screams called out from behind them. The woman pulled her long blonde hair back, slipped a hairband from her wrist, and tied it in a ponytail. “Didn’t you just see what happened back there? This is going to get a whole lot worse before it gets better. You’ve seen the movies, right?”  Fear gripped Rhys’ stomach. “It’s really going to be that bad?” “Didn’t you just see how quickly it spread? This is ground zero. Things are going to get a whole lot fucking worse.” “In that case, I’ve got to get to Flynn. I have to

They’ve gone, love. Stay a moment more. There’s nothing to be gained by haste at this point, and we need to sort this out before we face your family.” Love? Now he called her love? “Let me go. I can’t breathe…” She tried to wrestle free, but he had his hand on the back of her head, his arm around her back. Out in the hallway, the front door didn’t close; it banged shut with the impact of a rifle shot ricocheting through the house… and through the rest of Eve’s blighted, miserable life. “Mama slammed that door, Lucas Denning. Her Grace, the Duchess of Moreland, slammed a door, because of me, because of my stupid, selfish, useless, greedy, stupid, asinine…” There were not words to describe the depth of the betrayal she’d just handed her family. She collapsed against Deene’s chest, misery a dry, scraping ache in her throat. “Eve, many couples anticipate their vows, even a few couples closely associated with the Duchess of Moreland.” The reason in his voice had her hands balling to fists. “I will not marry you.” She could not, not him of all men. That signal fact gave her scattering wits a rallying point. Deene did not argue. When an argument was imperative, he did not argue. His hand stroked slowly over her hair, and as the fighting instinct coursing through Eve’s body struggled to stand against a swamping despair, some part of Eve’s brain made a curious observation: Deene was breathing in a slow, unhurried rhythm, and as a function of the intimacy of their posture, Eve was breathing in counterpoint to him. The same easy, almost restful tempo, but her exhale matched his inhale. “We cannot marry, Deene. I won’t have it. A white marriage was as far as I was willing to go, and then only to the right sort of man, a man who would never seek to… impose conjugal duties on me.” His arms fell away, when Eve would very much have liked them to stay around her. Better he not see her face, better she not have to see his lovely blue eyes going chill and distant. “We need to set you to rights.” His hands on her shirt were deft and impersonal, his fingers barely touching her skin. The detachment in his touch was probably meant to be a kindness, but it… hurt. “Lucas, I cannot think.” “We’ll think this through together. I can guarantee you not a soul will be coming through that door until we decide to pass through it ourselves.” “I hate that you can be so calm.” And—worst

You can't argue with success." "Sure you can," Dahl said, "when it's based on stupidity.

people, everywhere, are prone to two completely contradictory tendencies: on the one hand, a tendency to be playfully creative just for the sake of it; on the other, a tendency to agree with anyone who tells them that they really shouldn't act that way. This latter is what makes the game-ification of institutional life possible. Because if you take the latter tendency to its logical conclusion, all freedom becomes arbitrariness, and all arbitrariness, a form of dangerous, subversive power. It is just one further step to argue that true freedom is to live in an utterly predictable world that is free from freedom of this sort. (p. 201)

some kind of stupid prank?” “I didn't speak to you once after you went out there.” I open my mouth to argue with him, before realizing that the haze of static meant I couldn't be sure it was really his voice. I guess I just assumed, since I thought he was the only person who'd be trying to talk to me. “So who else

Many people, when they hear about hostage negotiation, shake their heads and say, “Why don’t they just shoot the guy?” But those people don’t know the stats. When police launch an assault during a hostage situation, it’s the police who suffer the bulk of the casualties. Fighting may end things quickly, but the research shows it doesn’t end things well. You and I do the same thing in our personal relationships. Things go sideways and often our first response is to fight. Not physical violence, but yelling and arguing vs. discussing and negotiating. Why is this? Philosopher Daniel Dennett says it’s because a “war metaphor” is wired into our brains when it comes to disagreement. When there’s a war, someone is conquered. It’s not a discussion of facts and logic; it’s a fight to the death. No matter who is really right, if you win, I lose. In almost every conversation, status is on the line. Nobody wants to look stupid. So, as Dennett explains, we set up a situation where learning is equivalent to losing.

them out if they make dumb choices. Let them struggle; let them learn; let them take responsibility. They need to figure out the importance of working hard, saving money, being smart. For God’s sake, don’t be a damned fool and then go begging the government to save you.” This is not a stupid argument. I come at the issues differently, of course, as someone who supports a strong social safety net. But this more conservative view represents a considered and consistent position, worthy of respect. Lower-income conservatives are making the same kind of argument that rich liberals are making. They are willing to make monetary sacrifices to answer the call of their fundamental values. For liberals, those values are more about the common good and enlightened self-interest. For conservatives, those values are more about the importance of independence and personal responsibility. But both sides rightfully see their voting behavior as needing to reflect more than just a vulgar calculation about their immediate pocketbook needs. If one side deserves respect, then so does the other.*1 Of course, respecting our opponent’s argument doesn’t mean we have to just accept it and give in. It doesn’t mean we shouldn’t argue passionately about the best approach to taxes or spending—especially in a society as complex as ours, with the stakes as high as they are. In fact, we should disagree and debate. Debate is the lifeblood of democracy, after all. Disagreement is a good thing—even heated disagreement. Only in a dictatorship does everybody have to agree. In a democracy, nobody has to agree. That’s called freedom. It’s the whole point of America. But at the base of too many of our public discussions sits the same destructive assumption: I’m right. And you’re wrong. We proceed on both sides as if our side is grounded in “the Truth” and the other side is always insane and delusional. And some version of this flawed concept has become the default setting throughout American political discourse. It is one thing to say, “I disagree with you because we have different values and priorities.” It’s quite another to say, “I disagree with you because you are an uneducated idiot—a pawn—and a dupe.” The prevalence of the latter set of arguments is why the Democratic Party stinks of elitism. Here’s another liberal favorite: “How can we argue with conservatives? They don’t believe in facts anymore—only ‘alternative facts.’ At least, liberals believe in science. Right-wingers don’t!” I understand the source of liberal exasperation here. Even though any high school student can reproduce the greenhouse-gas effect in a laboratory beaker,

No one could have imagined a place like Havana, Cuba. It is absurdly contradictory, always arguing with itself over whether it is audacious or meek, heroic or stupid, beautiful or abhorrent.

What’s going on?  What news?” I said glancing between the two. Sam gave Clay a sharp look. “You didn’t tell her?” “He’s not talking to me, yet,” I said, wondering what bad news Sam had to share. Sam shook his head at Clay.  “You’ve dug your own hole then, son.”  He focused on me.  “A group of Forlorn have asked Elder Joshua to approach you for an unofficial kind of Introduction.  Joshua approved, but he made it clear they were to keep it brief and then leave, unless any of them had a further request of him.” The meaning of Sam’s words sunk in deep like a vicious bite.  It also explained his less than warm greeting.  He stood in my living room as an Elder on pack business, not as family or a friend.  I struggled to contain my anger. “I thought I was done with that.  We had a deal.”  I crossed my arms and coldly regarded Sam.  “I know I said I was done.” The carefully, composed expression on Sam’s face faltered a bit.  “Honey, there are rules we must follow to keep peace in the pack.  Clay had six months to convince you of his suit.  That time has passed.  That means unMated can once again approach you, with permission.” My mouth popped open.  Six months.  Permission from an Elder.  That’s why they’d stationed Joshua here.  A backup plan because they knew I didn’t want to Claim Clay.  They failed to understand I didn’t want to Claim anyone.  I’d never been free.  I clenched my fists.  My temper boiled. “That’s complete crap,” I gritted out.  “First of all, I didn’t reject anyone.  Second, no one ever told me about this stupid rule.”  My voice rose to a yell, and I took a deep breath and closed my eyes briefly to restrain myself.  When I reopened them, I felt more in control and able to speak calmly.  “You know what?  I don’t care what the pack rules are.  I gave you my word and my time.  Now, I expect you to keep yours.  I worked hard to get here, Sam.  I won’t let anyone take this away from me.”  My hands shook.  That Sam had cared for me in the past and given me a place to call home for two years, kept my tongue marginally civil. “By not completing the Claim, you’ve become eligible again.  Charlene was granted a special consideration because, at that time, we weren’t even sure a Claiming would be possible between a human and a werewolf.  Now that we know it is, you fall under the same rules,” Sam explained calmly, his face again carefully devoid of emotion. “No, I don’t.”  I knew I could stand there and argue all day with Sam, and he wouldn’t budge.  It would always be whatever’s best for the pack with him.  “Is this why Clay was beat up?” Clay made a noise—like a snort of disagreement—behind me. “Feel free to jump in at any time,” I said, turning to arch an eyebrow at him.  He remained mute, but his eyes softened when he looked at me. Sam spoke up from behind me, but I didn’t turn to look at him. “Gabby, it’s the reason he’s been fighting.  He’s not relinquishing his tie to you.  Every time an unMated shows up here, he will challenge that man for his right for an Introduction.  Did Clay get beat up?  Only as a byproduct of handing out beatings.” Clay steadily met my gaze the entire time.  It broke my heart a little to know he was fighting so hard to keep me, and all I’d given him in those six months was a kiss.  Not even spontaneously given, but relinquished as part of a bribe.  I hadn’t rejected him.  I just didn’t want to be forced into a choice.  If I chose to be with Clay, I wanted it to be on our terms. “Why

One of the greatest decorum scenes in movie history graces the climax of 8 Mile, Eminem’s semiautobiography. He gets talked into a competition at a dance club in downtown Detroit where hip-hop artists (orators, if you will) take turns insulting each other. The audience chooses the winner by applause. Eventually, the contest comes down to two people: Eminem and a sullen-looking black guy. (Well, not as sullen as Eminem. Nobody can be that sullen.) Eminem wears proper attire: stupid skullcap, clothes a few sizes too big, and as much bling as he can afford. If he showed up dressed like Cary Grant, he would look terrific—to you and me. But the dance club crowd would find him wildly indecorous. Clothing is the least of his decorum problems, though. He happens to be white, and everyone else in the room is black. Eminem nonetheless manages to devastate his adversary by revealing a nasty little secret: this putative gangbanger attended a prep school! All the poor guy’s hip-hop manners are pointless, because the audience finds them phony.

We are not perfect. We are going to argue sometimes & have our problems but I'm never going to stop loving you. We are in this together. I think of you so often you have no idea. Just imagine a boy praying to god most of the time that he gets marry to you. I instatly smile when i see a message from you. To be honest, you are the only one who motivates me to become a better person and show me the potential i don't see in me. you know your eyes gives me chill in my core when i look into them. I feel insecure sometimes because i am afraid of losing you. I just want to spend the rest of my life with someone who makes me mile, laugh, feel special, and supports me.Stay with me, I promise to make you smile everyday with my weird jokes and random kisses. I promise to hold your hand when you need someone to walk with you through the storm. I promise to share my food with you, give you good massages and laugh at your stupid jokes. I will listen when you tell me about how horrible your day was when you come home. I promise to hold you in my arms when you feel like your whole world is crashing down. I will make you see that there are a million reasons why you should stay with me. I LOVE YOU... I love the way you love me. I love the way you call me Yours.. I love the way you care for me. I love the way you treat me. I just love the way who you are. I LOVE YOU....

[S]ome teachers are tempted to adapt to the increasing passive support for jihadi identity politics evident among pupils. This is especially true in parts of France. One French teacher recalled a student who had refused [to] keep the one minute's silence for Hebdo victims by saying, 'I'm not Charlie; I think the terrorists did the right thing'. The teacher's response was telling: 'Children have the right to say silly things, to even say offensive things'. That's true. This is a book defending that right. But arguing for free speech and political tolerance is not an excuse for this sort of cultural cringe in the face of abhorrent ideas. We need to confront pupils who say stupid things, yet too often these sorts of views are indulged: 'So you favor Caliphate and and think 9/11 is a Zionist plot? That's an interesting idea. Any other views?'.

This text is a dramatic battlefield. Nietzsche tries to argue for rejecting the Crucifixion in general terms, referring to the stupidity of all persecutors “in the history of the world” (my italics). Obviously, since he was talking about Christians, he intended to refer to the persecutions of the early Christians but he would

Rather stupid creatures, aren't they?' he said to draw her eyes back to this. 'No. I find them quite - admirable, in fact.' 'How so?' She gave him a frown, as though doubting the sincerity of his interest. The hesitance was new to her, and it grated him, for it suggested an unpleasant history - one in which her youthful confidence had been eroded, gradually, by men who took no interest in her thoughts. 'Go on,' he said. 'Do you mean to follow Mandeville, and argue that bees show how self-interest and vice might profit the world?' She laughed. 'Oh, no. I was thinking far less philosophically. Besides, Mandeville wrongs the poor bees in his verse. They are quite Christian in their industry, don't you think? Unceasing in their duties. And yet - one cannot say their docility signifies stupidity, or any dullness of sentiment. When one of their own is threatened, they rouse in unison to defend him. Even the lowliest drone might count on his brethren's support, and I think - I think there is great virtue, great comfort, in such brotherhood.' [...] 'You are no drone, Nora. And unthinking loyalty is no virtue by my account.' Her mouth flattened. She locked eyes with him for a hard second. 'Do not imagine my loyalty is unthinking.

Foucault himself argued that liberal democracy was the worst form of tyranny. The Enlightenment that Westerners imagined had freed them had in fact enslaved them in insidious ways that Westerners were too stupid to see – with the exception of French philosophers.

Many years later, when I began training as a plastic surgeon, I understood something that I had not that day in the kitchen arguing for Thalia to leave Tinos for the boarding school. I learned that the world didn’t see the inside of you, that it didn’t care a whit about the hopes and dreams, and sorrows, that lay masked by skin and bone. It was as simple, as absurd, and as cruel as that. My patients knew this. They saw that much of what they were, would be, or could be hinged on the symmetry of their bone structure, the space between their eyes, their chin length, the tip projection of their nose, whether they had an ideal nasofrontal angle or not. Beauty is an enormous, unmerited gift given randomly, stupidly. And so I chose my specialty to even out the odds for people like Thalia, to rectify, with each slice of my scalpel, an arbitrary injustice, to make a small stand against a world order I found disgraceful, one in which a dog bite could rob a little girl of her future, make her an outcast, an object of scorn.

Go, Breeze,” someone yelled. But another voice yelled, “Quit showing off, stupid mutant.” Brianna stopped dead. Her dress settled back into place. “Who said that?” Zil. The same jerk who had picked on Jack over the phones. “Me,” Zil said, stepping forward. “And don’t bother trying to look tough. I’m not scared of you, freak.” “You should be,” Brianna hissed. Suddenly there was Dekka, up off her chair, hand extended between Brianna and Zil. “No,” she said in her deep voice. “None of that.” Quinn joined her. “Dekka’s right, we can’t be having fights and stuff here. Sam will shut this place down.” “Maybe we should have two different clubs,” a seventh grader named Antoine said. “You know, one for freaks and one for normals.” “Man, what is the matter with you?” Quinn demanded. “I don’t like her acting like she’s so cool, is all,” Zil said, stepping beside Antoine. “You should be on our side, Quinn. Everyone knows you’re a normal,” another kid, Lance, said. “Well…kind of normal. You’re still Quinn.

Stop arguing with people. Let go of your anger. It doesn't matter who wins arguments, who was right or wrong. Nobody really wins, especially in stupid political disputes. Arguing and anger are just another kind of war, and trust me, war is terrible." "So your mission... is to forgive someone." p.236

I want to start everything in New, what's the bad point?? I don't want to have problems with people which we can be friends or nothing, but not argue as before. What's the purpose what did you gain??? Points?? Money?? PS3??? Xbox??? Nothing just useless and making troubles with people, if we must discuss something let's to be about the fucking Bulgarian Schools, talk about them, I hate them as much as you hate them, I hate the Bulgarian as much as you hate them, I hate the fucking teachers in the fucking schools with which just have fucking problems. How can somebody joke with your spelling or with your mistakes for months???? ... What more to tell you??? That I'm sorry that I'm a Bulgarian guy, because I'm sorry, I can't live with this fucking people, what do they created??? Nothing just staying home and jerkoff non-stop, very creative! And guest what happened??? Here come the "?" people which are terrorists in france and have killed a lot of people and here will be planed the same....,what more only the thought that somebody has graduated from the best school existed in Bulgaria and to have fails with the writing like making so easy mistakes that nobody will make ever, to make mess on the sheets and many other things and this on very important day. A day in which you choose the president or the pre-minister or some kind like this, which is important. I'm very sorry that I'm Bulgarian guy, I don't want to be the cases are this, I want to be an American or a guy from Great Britain, but whatever to be, but to know this language. All people use it, and we are the only people which or some others as one User said that France and Germany are also with the worst English in case that Germany words are like English, but little fucked like spelled and written different like Sänger - singer songster schreiben WOw, this is really fucked just look how arae spelled how are written little like joking with English, aren't they??? If they aren't okay, that's your opinion _ I don't have something against it! If there was chance to be other race no matter what American guy or whatever ot to change my country ot my native language I will do it. If there is chance to and learn English, I go and learnt it without giving and shit about the fucking Bulgarian, I won't call my parents, friends and everything, just everything will be mainly for learning English the best way as possible. I fill fucked there are people which can't read, english, to don't talk about bulgarian, all day I'm seeing how mass media brain washes. I don't see how can be improved Bulgaria it's a fail I know why Adolf Hitler wanted to destroyed it and why Churchill Wanted also, I'm not sure about Churchill, but for HItler I'm sure that he wanted to kill us because of that, whatever you understand me what level we are as nation. I hate the fucking Bulgarian people what to learn from them to joke with people badly??? Very Creative??? To jerkoff all time and to don't give a damn shit about the things around the world?? Or to be with friends which can't think or people which are so much stupid that I'm sorry about them... Whatever, read it if you want if you don't want don't read it, but first check it before you block me. Thank you I appreciate your reading!

Why are you crying?” She didn’t answer. He watched her swallow down something, eyes still closed and he waited. And still, she offered no enlightenment. “Gabrielle, why are you crying?” Women were so fickle. She had no issue expressing herself any other time. He watched her inhale a breath through her nose, watched her chest rise and fall and then she opened her eyes and looked up at him like an insubordinate student; but still her lips didn’t part. Power tried to maintain composure, but ‘why the fuck are you crying and fucking answer me now’ was on the tip of his tongue and ready to spill. “Gabrielle, why are you-” “Because I cry!” Power’s lids widened a bit as she leaped to her feet with that, then they returned to normal size. “I cry! It’s what I do. I cry, okay?” She flailed her arms and paced the tiny space with the words. “I go all day – waking up, making breakfast, smiling, and taking shit from my boss, serving customers and arguing with dead beat dads, and…and… and barely making PTA meetings, putting off church fund contribution begging-ass folk, and checking homework, and…and making dinner, and stomaching I found the love of my life stories from Glo, and fighting off a crack head mother…worrying about a stupid, reckless teenager who I want the best for, and loving a son, and scraping and…and scouring everything I have to pay stupid bills and I can never catch up! Something’s always due, something’s always…broke! Something is always needed.

Stupid?” said his dad. Norm was beginning to wonder whether he should butt in. Because this conversation was clearly going nowhere fast. Was this really what happened when you got old? You ended up arguing about flipping aftershave? And cheese? It was like some nightmarish vision of the future. “Beast Pour Homme?” said Norm’s dad. Norm’s

Anyway, back to the arguing. I guess he was some big deal when they lived in San Francisco. One time I heard her say something about the money she’d given him, so he wouldn’t have to go to jail. Another time I heard her tell him she should have left him a long time ago. He told her the only reason she’d stayed with him was because he’d been stupid enough to marry her when she was knocked up. He said he was pretty sure it wasn’t his kid, but he’d been too young and dumb to find out if it really was his. He said it was a good thing she’d lost it, because if it hadn’t looked like him, he would have thrown her and the kid out.” “Wow,” Liz said. “That does not sound like a happy

Margot deliberated for a minute, lips pursed and eyes narrowed behind her lenses. “All right. But choose wisely. I’ll judge you if you pick something stupid like Candy Land.” “Hey! I love Candy Land,” Elle argued. “Who here can say they don’t have a little bit of a crush on Queen Frostine?” Everyone stared at her. “Fine, no Candy Land.” Elle sank back into the couch, pouting.

Never argue with stupid people, they will drag you down to their level and beat you with experience.

Mathison opened his mouth then shut it. Arguing with a private was a good way to get dragged into the gutter of stupidity and beat to death with inexperience.

Well, I like sincere people,” Shallan said, raising her cup. “It’s delightful how surprised they look when you push them down the stairs.” “Now, that’s unkind. You shouldn’t push people down the stairs for being sincere. You push people down the stairs for being stupid.” “What if they’re sincere and stupid?” “Then you run.” “I quite like arguing with them instead. They do make me look smart, and Vev knows I need the help.…” “No, no. You should never debate an idiot, Shallan. No more than you’d use your best sword to spread butter.

Afterward the philosopher demonstrates to us the necessity of abstracting all personality from the exercises which combine for the attainment of common sense. “There is,” said he, “an obstacle against which all stupid people stumble; it is the act of reasoning under the influence of passion. “Those who have not decided to renounce this method of arguing will never be able to give a just decision. “There are self-evident facts, which certain people refuse to admit, because this statement of the truth offends their sympathies or impedes their hatreds, and they force themselves to deny the evidence, hoping thus to deceive others regarding it “But truth is always the strongest and they soon become the solitary dupes of their own wilful blindness.

The social psychologist Claude Steele demonstrated the power of what he calls “stereotype threat” in the U.S. context: Women do better on math tests when they are explicitly told that the stereotype that women are worse in math does not apply to this particular test; African Americans do worse on tests if they have to start by indicating their race on the cover sheet.33 Following Steele’s work, two researchers from the World Bank had lower-caste children in the Indian state of Uttar Pradesh compete against high-caste children in solving mazes.34 They found that the low-caste children compete well against the high-caste children as long as caste is not salient, but once low-caste children are reminded that they are low castes competing with high-caste children (by the simple contrivance of asking them their full names before the game starts), they do much worse. The authors argue that this may be driven in part by a fear of not being evaluated fairly by the obviously elite organizers of the game, but it could just as well be the internalization of the stereotype. A child who expects to find school difficult will probably blame herself and not her teachers when she can’t understand what is being taught, and may end up deciding she’s not cut out for school—“stupid,” like most of her ilk—and give up on education altogether, daydreaming in class or, like Shantarama’s children, just refusing to go

WOULD YOU LIKE TO SIT?” Alvar asked when Sophie didn’t respond to his greeting. “I hear you’ve been unwell.” He stood and offered her his chair, and Sophie noticed that he’d put on weight since his Tribunal, already looking a little less frail. His hair was also trimmed and neatly combed, and his embroidered tunic looked like it had been tailored just for him. Other than the gruesome scars, he looked like the Alvar Sophie first remembered meeting—the charming older brother home to visit his perfect family. “She wasn’t unwell,” Fitz snapped. “Your little friends tried to kill her—and you already knew that. Stop pretending like you’re so innocent.” “I had nothing to do with that attack,” Alvar said calmly. “This time,” Fitz argued. “So sit back down—no one wants your stupid chair.

Keynes’ analysis of the investment process thus paralleled his understanding of democracy. Uncertainty about the future—not irrationality or stupidity—makes crowds prone to calamity in both finance and politics, particularly under conditions of significant anxiety. Markets are no more self-correcting than a mob hailing a demagogue. To work at all, they must be structured, guided, and managed. They might even have to be replaced. In A Treatise on Money, Keynes had argued that money was inherently political—the creation of the state. He was now extending that observation to markets themselves.

At a time when actual governance in Europe was as broken and fragmented as it could possibly be, its intellectuals were busying themselves arguing about the exact division of powers within a single, grand, unified, imaginary system of cosmic administration.

You could have broken it,' Alis snarled, those sharp teeth mere inches from my face. 'All you had to do was say that you loved him- say that you loved him and mean it with your whole useless human heart, and his power would have been freed. You stupid, stupid girl.' No wonder Lucien had resented me and yet still tolerated my presence- no wonder he'd been so bitterly disappointed when I left, had argued with Tamlin to let me stay longer. 'I'm sorry,' I said, my eyes burning. Alis snorted. 'Tell that to Tamlin. He had only three days after you left before the forty-nine years were over. Three days, and he let you go.

Charlie leaned toward Termite and said, “Pal, don’t let Monk wink at you. He spent time in a monastery with about a hundred other men dressed in robes and . . . well, you know what they say.” Termite looked at Davis. “No kidding?” Davis nodded but never took his eyes off his burgers, which were getting close to perfect. “About two hours outside of Seville, up in the mountains.” Charlie’s little wink and comment did two things: it got me out of having to brush off Davis, and it gave Davis an intro. In a sense, Charlie was watching my back. I wondered if he’d do that if he knew the whole truth. “A monastery,” Termite repeated. “Why’d you want to do something stupid like that?” Davis turned and chewed on his answer before he spoke it. “I was arguing with God.” Charlie spoke up. “Which is a lot harder when you don’t speak for five years.” Termite looked confused. “He took a vow of silence,” I explained. Termite’s eyes grew big, he looked at the floor, at all of us, then back at Davis. “You didn’t say a single word to another

Sometimes responding, or how we respond, proves what we are responding to disprove.

Intellectual Fascism – 2/3 Take, by way of illustration, two well-educated, presumably liberal, intelligent people in our culture who are arguing with each other about some point. What, out of irritation and disgust, is one likely to call the other? A "filthy black," a "dirty Jew bastard," or a "black-eyed runt"? Heavens, no. But a "stupid idiot," a "nincompoop," a "misinformed numbskull"? By all means, yes. And will the note of venom, of utter despisement that is in the detractor's voice, be any different from that in the voice of the out-and-out fascist with his racial, religious, and political epithets? Honestly, now: will it? Suppose the individual against whom a well-educated, presumably liberal, intelligent person aims scorn actually is stupid, or misinformed. Is this a crime? Should he, perforce, curl up and die because he is so afflicted? Is she an utterly worthless, valueless blackguard for not possessing the degree of intelligence and knowledge that her detractor thinks she should possess? And yet - let us be ruthlessly honest with ourselves, now! - isn't this exactly what the presumably liberal person is saying and implying - that the individual whose traits she dislikes doesn't deserve to live? Isn't this what we (for it is not hard to recognize our own image here, is it?) frequently are alleging when we argue with, criticize, and judge others in our everyday living? The facts, in regard to higher-order fascism, are just as clear as those in regard to lower-order prejudice. For just as everyone in our society cannot be, except through the process of arbitrary genocide or "eugenic" elimination, Aryan, or tall, or white, so cannot everyone be bright, or artistically talented, or successful in some profession. In fact, even if we deliberately bred only higher intelligent and artistically endowed individuals to each other, and forced the rest of the human race to die off, we still would be far from obtaining a race of universal achievers: since, by definition, topflight achievement can only be attained by a relatively few leaders in most fields of endeavour, and is a "relative" rather than an "absolute" possibility. The implicit goals of intellectual fascism, then, are, at least in today's world, impractical and utopian. Everyone cannot be endowed with artistic or intellectual genius; only a small minority can be. And if we demand that all be in that minority, to what are we automatically condemning those who clearly cannot be? Obviously: to being blamed and despised for their "deficiencies"; to being lower-class citizens; to having self-hatred and minimal self-acceptance. Even this, however, hardly plumbs the inherent viciousness of intellectual fascism. For whereas lower-order or politico-economic fascism at least serves as a form of neurotic defensiveness for those who uphold its tenets, higher-order fascism fails to provide such defences and actually destroys them. Thus, politico-social fascists believe that others are to be despised for not having certain "desirable" traits - but that they are not to be applauded for having them. From a psychological standpoint, they compensate for their own underlying feelings of inadequacy by insisting that they are super-adequate and those who are not like them are subhumans. Intellectual Fascists start out with a similar assumption but more often than not get blown to bits by their own homemade explosives. For although they can at first assume that they are bright, talented, and potentially achieving, they must eventually prove that they are. Because, in the last analysis, they tend to define talent and intelligence in terms of concrete achievement, and because outstanding achievement in our society is mathematically restricted to a few, they rarely can have real confidence in their own possession of the values they have "arbitrarily deified".

What’s remarkable about this prospect is that the wall is an utterly stupid idea. Even if you’re bitterly opposed to immigration, legal or otherwise, spending tens of billions of dollars on an ostentatious physical barrier is neither a necessary nor an effective way to stop immigrants from coming.

First, arguing with me is pretty much a waste of time, because I am too stubborn and stupid to know when I’ve lost an argument.

All of a sudden I had this thought about perspective. But I'm not sure how to say it so it makes sense. Like, what if there was a farmer in the field and I could talk to him somehow, like by cell phone. And I said the fence posts were racing by and he said no, they were standing still. Wouldn't that be a stupid thing to argue about? But we do that all the time, argue with each other about what things are or what we think we see, and maybe that's the problem all along. Like we're not standing in the same place, or at least we're not moving at the same speed, so maybe it's all about perspective. I'm probably not explaining it right at all. I just decided that life was like a farmer standing in a field and a kid racing down the road on a Kawasaki, arguing about whether the fence posts are rushing by or standing still. Each thinking the other is crazy or blind or both, neither willing to give up until the other sees the light.

Never argue against a stupid person. You will always lose.” “Two things are infinite: the universe and human stupidity; and I'm not sure about the universe.”~Albert Einstein “Be who you are and say what you feel because those who mind don’t matter and those who matter don’t mind.”~Bernard M. Baruch “Be yourself; everyone else is already taken.”~Oscar wild “To be yourself in a world that is constantly trying to make you something else is the greatest accomplishment.”~Ralph Waldo Emerson

If you think about the Buddhist tradition, for instance, they argue that as an adult, often you’re sort of stuck in your own mind with its goals and immediate desires and rumination, and you can’t get out and get in tune with the outside world. I think that’s very much a difference between adults and children, that kind of narrow focus on “Here are my needs and wants, and what can I do to get them fulfilled?” Traditionally, people had argued that children were egocentric in that way, but I think the evidence is that it’s grown-ups who are like that. And assholes in particular. One definition of assholes is that they’re people who are so narrowly focused on their own goals and the things that they want, they can’t be tuned in to anything that’s going on in the world outside them.

Her eyes narrowed. “You’re going to let me name it, aren’t you?” “Pffft, I can name my golem.” “No, you can’t! The name will be stupid!” “Y-your name is stupid!” he said quite maturely. The little girl rolled her green eyes so hard, they could’ve rolled out of her head. “No, your name is stupid!” “No.” He drew himself up to his full height. “Your name is stupi⁠—” “By the sapphire sea, really?” Khalik’s deep voice came from the entrance to the room. “This is how you two argue when no one is around? And here I thought you were crafting wonders.

I’ll argue to the death against stupid legislation, but some rules exist for a reason.

Intellectual Bully: “Don’t try and stand up to me. I will make you look stupid and out-argue you if you try. In, fact I can run circles around you in any argument.

You shouldn’t think of me as your responsibility,” she finally said. He gave her a rather superior glance. “I told you I would find you a new position.” “But—” “What could there possibly be to discuss?” “Nothing,” she grumbled. “Nothing at all.” Clearly, it was no use arguing with him just then. “Good.” He leaned back contentedly against his pillows. “I’m glad you see it my way.” Sophie stood. “I should be going.” “To do what?” She felt rather stupid as she said, “I don’t know.” He grinned. “Have fun with it, then.” Her hand tightened around the handle of the serving spoon. “Don’t do it,” he warned. “Do what?” “Throw the spoon.” “I wouldn’t dream of it,” she said tightly. He laughed aloud. “Oh, yes you would. You’re dreaming of it right now. You just wouldn’t do it.” Sophie’s hand was gripping the spoon so hard it shook. Benedict was chuckling so hard his bed shook. Sophie stood, still holding the spoon. Benedict smiled. “Are you planning to take that with you?” Remember your place, Sophie was screaming at herself. Remember your place. “Whatever could you be thinking,” Benedict mused, “to look so adorably ferocious? No, don’t tell me,” he added. “I’m sure it involves my untimely and painful demise.” Slowly and carefully, Sophie turned her back to him and put the spoon down on the table. She didn’t want to risk any sudden movements. One false move and she knew she’d be hurling it at his head. Benedict raised his brows approvingly. “That was very mature of you.” Sophie turned around slowly. “Are you this charming with everyone or only me?” “Oh, only you.” He grinned. “I shall have to make sure you take me up on my offer to find you employment with my mother. You do bring out the best in me, Miss Sophie Beckett.” “This is the best?” she asked with obvious disbelief. “I’m afraid so.” Sophie just shook her head as she walked to the door. Conversations with Benedict Bridgerton could be exhausting. “Oh, Sophie!” he called out. She turned around. He smiled slyly. “I knew you wouldn’t throw the spoon.” What happened next was surely not Sophie’s fault. She was, she was convinced, temporarily and fleetingly possessed by a demon. Because she absolutely did not recognize the hand that shot out to the small table next to her and picked up a stump of a candle. True, the hand appeared to be connected quite firmly to her arm, but it didn’t look the least bit familiar as it drew back and hurled the stump across the room. Straight at Benedict Bridgerton’s head. Sophie didn’t even wait to see if her aim had been true. But as she stalked out the door, she heard Benedict explode with laughter. Then she heard him shout out, “Well done, Miss Beckett!” And she realized that for the first time in years, her smile was one of pure, unadulterated joy. -Sophie & Benedict

I think I arrived just in time,” Leo announced a second before he grabbed a swinging Jeoff. Leo plopped Arabella’s brother onto the couch. “Stay or I’ll sit on you.” A wise man— some of the time— Jeoff didn’t budge. “You were told,” Hayder taunted. “Don’t make me duct tape your mouth again.” Count on Leo to take the wind out of Hayder’s sail. Few people argued with the massive man. Nor did anyone ever tell him to leave, even if Hayder really wished both Leo and Jeoff would go so he could resume the interesting moment he’d shared with Arabella just before all hell broke loose. Alas, judging by Arabella’s guarded expression, that sensual moment was gone. He’d have to find another way to recapture it. But first he needed to convince Jeoff to let her stay, as well as get Leo to depart— without enforcing an omega-calming moment— and have Arabella lose the rounded shoulders as they fought over her. Poor baby. How overwhelming this must be for her. How upsetting. And partially his fault. Shit. Ignoring the others, Hayder dropped to his knees in front of her. “I’m sorry, baby. Don’t get upset. I promise to behave. After all, it’s normal your brother would want to protect you, and I shouldn’t have beaten the hell out of him for it.” “I think it was the other way around, cat,” Jeoff muttered. “Shhh!” Leo said in a loud whisper. “He’s apologizing. Don’t ruin it.” Arabella’s gaze briefly met Hayder’s. “It’s okay.” “No, it’s obviously not. I can see you’re disturbed. You know I didn’t mean for that to happen. I never meant to upset you.” “I’m not upset about the fight.” Her lips twitched into a small smile. “Boys will be boys, my mom used to say. I’m just sorry to cause all this trouble. Jeoff’s right. I shouldn’t be here.” “Ha. Told you so.” Jeoff crowed in triumph. “And I shouldn’t be with his pack either. With this danger hanging over me, I should flee the country and keep my problems away from all of you.” Leave? He meant to say no, but his lion spoke first. More like rawr-ed. And in reply? She sneezed. A few times as a matter of fact. “What’s wrong with you?” Jeoff asked his sister. “Stupid allergies,” she grumbled. Jeoff snickered. “You still suffering from those? That’s hilarious. And yet the cat thinks you’re true mates?” “She’s mine, and a little sneeze and spit won’t change that.” “Is he completely insane?” Jeoff muttered. “Utterly, but the doctors say he’s not a danger to himself or the pride. But I wouldn’t push him. And given these two are talking about the future, a future that isn’t ours to decide, we should leave them to work things out,” Leo politely suggested. “But—” Jeoff never got a chance to finish that thought because Leo had spoken. And when Leo spoke, he acted. “No buts. You. Come.” Leo grabbed a hold of Arabella’s brother, tossed him over a shoulder, and marched him out with a tossed, “Don’t you screw anything up with the girl. I’d hate to have to come back and teach you a lesson.

Suicide It's ironic that suicide, an act of cowardice, requires you overcome the all powerful instinct of self-preservation ~ and thereby it's transformed into an act of bravery. On the other hand, the survivors would argue, an act of stupidity ~ which many acts of bravery ultimately are.

I never argued with people who underestimated me. If the accent and the muscles and the movies made people think I was stupid, it worked to my advantage.

Many years later, when I began training as a plastic surgeon, I understood something that I had not that day in the kitchen arguing for Thalia to leave Tinos for the boarding school. I learned that the world didn’t see the inside of you, that it didn’t care a whit about the hopes and dreams, and sorrows, that lay masked by skin and bone. It was as simple, as absurd, and as cruel as that. My patients knew this. They saw that much of what they were, would be, or could be hinged on the symmetry of their bone structure, the space between their eyes, their chin length, the tip projection of their nose, whether they had an ideal nasofrontal angle or not. Beauty is an enormous, unmerited gift given randomly, stupidly.

I could have explained that I wanted to walk without Doofus and get some air. But it would be pretty unusual—one might even go so far as to say unheard of—for me to take a hike on a winter night when I was exhausted from boarding all day. I could also come right out and tell both of them that Nick had fallen on the slopes today and I wanted to check on him. But then Mom would suggest I take the car to his house. And then I could never pull off the charade that I just happened by his mansion while walking my dog. Besides, it was the principle of the thing—the very idea that Josh saw I wanted to walk Doofus and he was going out of his way to foil me, like a normal little brother. This made me angry. Did he want Nick to die on the floor of his bathroom from an overdose of mentholated rub? Did he want me to spend the last eighty years of my lifespan in a convent? Maybe he was mad that I was trying to sneak out of the house wearing his jeans for the third day in a row. “I am taking Doofus for another walk,” I said clearly, daring him to defy me. “That would not be good for Doofus.” Josh folded his arms. “Mom, that would not be good for Doofus.” Oh! Dragging Mom into this was low. Not to mention Doofus. “Since when is going for a walk not good for a dog?” I challenged Josh. “He’s an old dog!” Josh protested. “He’s four!” I pointed out. “That’s twenty-eight in dog years! He’s practically thirty!” “Strike!” Mom squealed amid the noise of electronic pins falling. Then she shook her game remote at both of us in turn. “I’m not stupid, you know. And I’m not as out of it as you assume. I know the two of you are really arguing about something else. It’s those jeans again, isn’t it?” She nodded to me. “I should cut them in half and give each of you a leg. Why does either of you want to wear jeans with ‘boy toy’ written across the seat anyway?” “I thought that was the fashion,” Josh said. “Grandma wears a pair of sweatpants with ‘hot mama’ written across the ass.” “That is different,” Mom hissed. “She wears them around the kitchen.” I sniffed indignantly. “I said,” I announced, “I am going for a walk with my dog. My beloved canine and I are taking a turn around our fair community. No activity could be more wholesome for a young girl and her pet. And if you have a problem with that, well! What is this world coming to? Come along, dear Doofus.” I stuck my nose in the air and stalked past them, but the effect was lost. Somewhere around “our fair community,” Mom and Josh both had lost interest and turned back to the TV. Or so I thought. But just as I was about to step outside, Josh appeared in the doorway between the kitchen and the mud room. “What the hell are you doing?” he demanded. I said self-righteously, “I am taking my loyal canine for a w—” “You’re going to Nick’s, aren’t you?” he whispered. “Do you think that’s a good idea? I heard you yelled at him for no reason at the half-pipe, right before he busted ass.” I swallowed. Good news traveled fast. “So?” “So, why are you going over there? Best case scenario, you make out with him again and then have another fight.” Good news about everything traveled fast.

There is nothing more stupid than arguing with stupidity.

But even if, as Johnson argues, power and dominance serve no meaningful purpose, they always incur costs. In biology, the cost can be painfully visible. During courtship, the argus cock pheasant spreads his large secondary wing feathers, which are decorated with beautiful eye spots; the bigger they are, the more they stimulate the female. And the longer the feathers, the more progeny the cock will produce. So the more beautiful cocks produce more descendants. That should be a competitive advantage. But the evolution of the argus pheasant has run itself into a blind alley because the most gorgeous cock has feathers so huge and unwieldy that they may cause him to be eaten by a predator, because he can’t fly away fast enough. Oskar Heinroth, the teacher of Konrad Lorenz, commented: ‘Next to the wings of the argus pheasant, the hectic life of western civilized man is the most stupid product of intra-specific selection!

from the sofa. The princess came in. She had changed her gown for a house dress as fresh and elegant as the other. Prince Andrew rose and politely placed a chair for her. “How is it,” she began, as usual in French, settling down briskly and fussily in the easy chair, “how is it Annette never got married? How stupid you men all are not to have married her! Excuse me for saying so, but you have no sense about women. What an argumentative fellow you are, Monsieur Pierre!” “And I am still arguing with your husband. I can’t understand why he wants to go to the war,” replied Pierre, addressing the princess

Nicky looked at Edward. “She’s having one of those what-if-killing-feels-really-good, doesn’t-that-make-me-a-bad-person moments.” Edward nodded as if that made perfect sense. “Then it feels good. We can’t really control what flips our switch; don’t judge it, Anita, and just accept it.” I wanted to argue, but it would have been beyond stupid to argue with the two sociopaths in my life. “Why do I have moral quandary questions with the two of you?” “Because you don’t really have moral quandaries about violence, Anita, but you’re afraid of being judged for enjoying it, so you only bring it to the two people in your life who won’t judge you.” I wanted to argue with Edward, but I couldn’t. “Well, fuck.

Normally Trapp would just sit back and let the opponents argue, but I think he was offended by her use of the word fixed. She had just called him stupid and lucky. Worse, she blamed his supposedly lucky play on his blindness.

There! You see!” said the Ape. “It’s all arranged. And all for your own good. We’ll be able, with the money you earn, to make Narnia a country worth living in. There’ll be oranges and bananas pouring in—and roads and big cities and schools and offices and whips and muzzles and saddles and cages and kennels and prisons—Oh, everything.” “But we don’t want all those things,” said an old Bear. “We want to be free. And we want to hear Aslan speak himself.” “Now don’t you start arguing,” said the Ape, “for it’s a thing I won’t stand. I’m a Man: you’re only a fat, stupid old Bear. What do you know about freedom? You think freedom means doing what you like. Well, you’re wrong. That isn’t true freedom. True freedom means doing what I tell you.” “H-n-n-h,” grunted the Bear and scratched its head; it found this sort of thing hard to understand.

I’m going to be so nervous tomorrow,” Ashley confessed, linking her arm through Miranda’s. “What if our whole class hates it?” “Then I’ll say I told you so,” Parker replied. Roo, Gage, and Etienne had moved several feet ahead to argue something about the script. Hanging back, Parker tried to swallow, but winced at the effort. “Anybody got anything stronger than cough syrup?” When no one responded, he pointed to his BMW parked along the opposite curb. “You know what? As sad as I know this will make you, ladies, I’m going home and to bed. Alone.” “Parker--” “Oh, yeah, right--I’ve got that stupid article in my car. Go on ahead. I’ll give it to Miranda.” “Parker, do you really feel that terrible?” “Christ, Ashley, my throat’s like raw hamburger. Is that terrible enough for you believe me?” The suspicion on Ashley’s face turned to guilt, and Miranda felt just as bad. They both knew Parker had gotten sick trying to save them. Maybe he wasn’t faking so much after all.

Not for the first time, an argument had broken out over breakfast at number four, Privet Drive. Mr. Vernon Dursley had been woken in the early hours of the morning by a loud, hooting noise from his nephew Harry’s room. “Third time this week!” he roared across the table. “If you can’t control that owl, it’ll have to go!” Harry tried, yet again, to explain. “She’s bored,” he said. “She’s used to flying around outside. If I could just let her out at night —” “Do I look stupid?” snarled Uncle Vernon, a bit of fried egg dangling from his bushy mustache. “I know what’ll happen if that owl’s let out.” He exchanged dark looks with his wife, Petunia. Harry tried to argue back but his words were drowned by a long, loud belch from the Dursleys’ son, Dudley. “I

I must argue, Wilk mandated a stupid, vindictive, and harmful visitation plan for me and the kids.

Of course not! I’m stressed because the popcorn machine just lost it, and I didn’t know how to fix it! And I should know how to fix it.” I step back, surprised. I don’t think I’ve ever heard Amira yell before. Sure, we’ve argued and had our spats over the years, but she’s never really had an outburst like this. At least, not in front of me. “Sorry.” Amira’s voice is low. She hangs her head, and I know she’s feeling embarrassed. “That was a lot.” I shrug. “I’ve had my fair share of meltdowns before. It’s nothing I can’t handle.” Amira snorts at that. “Oh, I know about your meltdowns. Remember when you got a ninety-nine on that art project, and Ms. Bloom said it was because there was ‘no such thing as perfection’ when it came to art.” “Which was ridiculous,” I say. “I stayed up for hours working on that stupid papier-mâché mask, and Taylor painted it for me, so I know it was, in fact, perfection.” “Wow, I can’t believe you confessed to cheating.” Amira clutches a hand to her chest dramatically, and I roll my eyes. “I did not cheat; I outsourced the final step of my project to someone who actually has skills. And I helped her with the English essay that week. It was an even exchange.” “Sure, sure, whatever you say, cheater.

You shouldn’t say that. My sister says it’s a bad word,” the boy says. “She also said anyone with a cock who isn’t me should be castrated.” He stumbles over the word. “Well, your sister is stupid.” Ronan sticks his tongue out. “I happen to have a very nice cock⁠—” “You’re stupid!” The kid sticks his tongue out, and they argue. “Ronan, stop arguing with a six-year-old,

Of course not! I'm stressed because the popcorn machine just lost it, and I didn't know how to fix it! And I should know how to fix it.’ I step back, surprised. I don't think I've ever heard Amira yell before. Sure, we've argued and had our spats over the years, but she's never really had an outburst like this. At least, not in front of me. ‘Sorry.’ Amira's voice is low. She hangs her head, and I know she's feeling embarrassed. ‘That was a lot.’ I shrug. ‘I've had my fair share of meltdowns before. It's nothing I can't handle.’ Amira snorts at that. ‘Oh, I know about your meltdowns. Remember when you got a ninety-nine on that art project, and Ms. Bloom said it was because there was 'no such thing as perfection' when it came to art.’ ‘Which was ridiculous,’ I say. ‘I stayed up for hours working on that stupid papier-mâché mask, and Taylor painted it for me, so I know it was, in fact, perfection.’ ‘Wow, I can't believe you confessed to cheating.’ Amira clutches a hand to her chest dramatically, and I roll my eyes. ‘I did not cheat; I outsourced the final step of my project to someone who actually has skills. And I helped her with the English essay that week. It was an even exchange.’ ‘Sure, sure, whatever you say, cheater.

the ocean and the SeaWings and her royal parents. But she couldn’t argue about it with the SkyWing listening, and the others were already nodding. All of them were ready to follow anxious, overly cautious Starflight yet again. And none of them thought she’d done the right thing by attacking this SkyWing, even though it was to save their stupid scales. As they lifted into the sky, she cast a longing look over her shoulder at the ocean. Soon, she thought. Soon I’ll be with my own dragons.

I need to emphasize that Carpathia failed. A lot of the tags and comments have a tinge of...despair, or guilt, or wistfulness about things like this happening so rarely. Or inadequacy, or just being overwhelmed or unhappy about not being in a position to step up in a comparable way. And I want to gently bring up the fact that this is still the sinking of the Titanic. They did not get there in time. They did not save the ship. It can be argued that they may not have even saved a single human life; we have no way of knowing. This was still a horrific maritime disaster mired in arrogance and incompetence and a lack of care. If the response to this story shows anything, it shows this: it matters that they tried. Even though they got there too late, even though the ship still sank. It matters that they tried. The difference between making the best reasonable speed after confirming the seriousness of the situation, and the miracle they pulled off — it matters. It makes all the difference. Even if it made no difference at all. Not one of you read this and concluded that I was stupid for caring so much when the Titanic still sank and all those people still died. You don't have to fix the world. You'll likely be cold and sick and miserable and testy and scared, and unprepared, and in over your head, and entirely too small to be of any real use. It feels stupid, passing out blankets and coffee in the middle of an ice field knowing what just happened. It's hard to feel anything but useless when all you can do is tap a wireless transmitter and promise help that you know will come too late. It matters that they fought for those people. It matters that they cared, and it matters that they tried. It matters that they didn't stop. If it didn't matter, you wouldn't have read this far.

It’s always the same story anytime I’m online. People arguing about stupid shit. Others doing way too much for attention. Twitter is a political sideshow of fake accounts and trolls. Facebook is the source for stolen statuses for engagement. TikTok is my baby.

People argue, and they say stupid things, and sometimes we have to be able to forgive them for those things because we know it's more important to move forward.

Are you going to make a single moment of this easy on me?” The words should sound annoyed, but there’s a smile on his lips. I shake my head. “Probably not. It’s not my specialty.” He stares at me for long moments, and I try to decode whatever he’s thinking before his smile widens further. “Good.” “Good?” He nods, then takes a step back. “Wouldn’t want to win you so easily.” “Excuse me?” I ask, appalled but also trying to ignore the butterflies in my belly. Stupid, idiotic, gullible butterflies. “It’ll be much sweeter, winning you over my way.” “You are so not going to win me over, Nathan Donovan.” “Keep telling yourself that, dollface.” I open my mouth to argue, to yell something to tell him what a pompous, presumptuous ass he is before he steps back and tips his head to the cottage. “Go inside, Jules. It’s cold out here.

I wasn’t going to argue with him, but he was stupid if he thought I wouldn’t come back. If she wanted me here, I’d be back every damn night to check on her.

You can see, feel, and experience all those things directly in front of you, and you still don't, can't, know all there is to know. Non-believers tend to argue that God is not scientific, and not enough scientific evidence is provided for Him. But Noone even knows all there is to know about our planet. Isn't it arrogant and pompous for someone to say that God doesn't exist just because they can't see Him? You can't possibly see all the trees on your planet, but that doesn't mean they don't exist. How stupid people are to think that our awareness is bigger than the universe just because we believe it so. Millenia of people since the beginning of time have all believed in something greater than them. Who are we to say all our ancestors since the beginning of time are wrong? St. Ansley of Canterbury said that the belief in a higher power should be enough to prove that one exists.

I mean if you argue respectfully. If you approach an argument trying to see the other person’s perspective. If you both truly listen and take the time to understand each other’s side. That’s what matters. I read once that a show of contempt for your partner is a death knell for a marriage. If you love each other and you approach every argument truly looking for a solution, you’ll find one. The trick is to start with the belief that the other person is well intentioned—it makes it easier to listen when you’d rather slam the door in their stupid face.