Cheap Mentality Quotes

We've searched our database for all the quotes and captions related to Cheap Mentality. Here they are! All 37 of them:

Advice to my younger self: Avoid to a cheap mindset, mentality, desire, belief, emotion, habit, behavior, frivolous thinker, just because they feel you will get lost, doesn't mean you will be.
Santosh Kumar
started writing Stardust in 1994, but mentally timeslipped about seventy years to do it. The mid-1920s seemed like a time when people enjoyed writing those sorts of things, before there were fantasy shelves in the bookshops, before trilogies and books ‘in the great tradition of The Lord of the Rings’. This, on the other hand, would be in the tradition of Lud-in-the-Mist and The King of Elfland’s Daughter. All I was certain of was that nobody had written books on computers back in the 1920s, so I bought a large book of unlined pages, and the first fountain pen I had owned since my schooldays and a copy of Katharine Briggs’s Dictionary of Fairies. I filled the pen and began.
Neil Gaiman (The View from the Cheap Seats: Selected Non-Fiction)
The breakdown of the neighborhoods also meant the end of what was essentially an extended family....With the breakdown of the extended family, too much pressure was put on the single family. Mom had no one to stay with Granny, who couldn't be depended on to set the house on fire while Mom was off grocery shopping. The people in the neighborhood weren't there to keep an idle eye out for the fourteen-year-old kid who was the local idiot, and treated with affection as well as tormented....So we came up with the idea of putting everybody in separate places. We lock them up in prisons, mental hospitals, geriatric housing projects, old-age homes, nursery schools, cheap suburbs that keep women and the kids of f the streets, expensive suburbs where everybody has their own yard and a front lawn that is tended by a gardener so all the front lawns look alike and nobody uses them anyway....the faster we lock them up, the higher up goes the crime rate, the suicide rate, the rate of mental breakdown. The way it's going, there'll be more of them than us pretty soon. Then you'll have to start asking questions about the percentage of the population that's not locked up, those that claim that the other fifty-five per cent is crazy, criminal, or senile. WE have to find some other way....So I started imagining....Suppose we built houses in a circle, or a square, or whatever, connected houses of varying sizes, but beautiful, simple. And outside, behind the houses, all the space usually given over to front and back lawns, would be common too. And there could be vegetable gardens, and fields and woods for the kids to play in. There's be problems about somebody picking the tomatoes somebody else planted, or the roses, or the kids trampling through the pea patch, but the fifty groups or individuals who lived in the houses would have complete charge and complete responsibility for what went on in their little enclave. At the other side of the houses, facing the, would be a little community center. It would have a community laundry -- why does everybody have to own a washing machine?-- and some playrooms and a little cafe and a communal kitchen. The cafe would be an outdoor one, with sliding glass panels to close it in in winter, like the ones in Paris. This wouldn't be a full commune: everybody would have their own way of earning a living, everybody would retain their own income, and the dwellings would be priced according to size. Each would have a little kitchen, in case people wanted to eat alone, a good-sized living space, but not enormous, because the community center would be there. Maybe the community center would be beautiful, lush even. With playrooms for the kids and the adults, and sitting rooms with books. But everyone in the community, from the smallest walking child, would have a job in it.
Marilyn French (The Women's Room)
If you aren’t paranoid before you arrive in this city, give it a few weeks and you will soon notice it creeping in, dripping into your subconscious like a leaky tap. The trick is not to give a flying fuck what anyone thinks about you, and if you are in the right frame of mind this can be an easy trick to perform but if not you’ll soon notice that for a city full of people who do a great Stevie Wonder impersonation when it comes to the homeless and beggars and casual violence towards others, wearing the wrong kind of shoes or a cheap suit brings out a sneering, hateful attitude that can have weaker minded individuals locked in their houses for weeks before harassing their doctors for prescriptions of Prozac and Beta blockers just to make it out the front door.
Garry Crystal (Leaving London)
Yongey Mingyur Rinpoche, a Tibetan Buddhist meditation master and best-selling author, said in his book The Joy of Living: “Ultimately, happiness comes down to choosing between the discomfort of becoming aware of your mental afflictions and the discomfort of being ruled by them.
Tammy Strobel (You Can Buy Happiness (and It's Cheap): How One Woman Radically Simplified Her Life and How You Can Too)
Don’t invalidate or belittle the thoughts and feelings of others just because your reality looks different. Remember, it’s easy to yell instructions from the sideline, but it’s a whole different ballgame when you are on the battlefield. Judgment and advice are cheap, but compassion is priceless.
K.J. Redelinghuys (Unfiltered: Grappling with Mental Illness)
The seriousness of throwing over hell whilst still clinging to the Atonement is obvious. If there is no punishment for sin there can be no self-forgiveness for it. If Christ paid our score, and if there is no hell and therefore no chance of our getting into trouble by forgetting the obligation, then we can be as wicked as we like with impunity inside the secular law, even from self-reproach, which becomes mere ingratitude to the Savior. On the other hand, if Christ did not pay our score, it still stands against us; and such debts make us extremely uncomfortable. The drive of evolution, which we call conscience and honor, seizes on such slips, and shames us to the dust for being so low in the scale as to be capable of them. The 'saved' thief experiences an ecstatic happiness which can never come to the honest atheist: he is tempted to steal again to repeat the glorious sensation. But if the atheist steals he has no such happiness. He is a thief and knows that he is a thief. Nothing can rub that off him. He may try to sooth his shame by some sort of restitution or equivalent act of benevolence; but that does not alter the fact that he did steal; and his conscience will not be easy until he has conquered his will to steal and changed himself into an honest man... Now though the state of the believers in the atonement may thus be the happier, it is most certainly not more desirable from the point of view of the community. The fact that a believer is happier than a sceptic is no more to the point than the fact that a drunken man is happier than a sober one. The happiness of credulity is a cheap and dangerous quality of happiness, and by no means a necessity of life. Whether Socrates got as much happiness out of life as Wesley is an unanswerable question; but a nation of Socrateses would be much safer and happier than a nation of Wesleys; and its individuals would be higher in the evolutionary scale. At all events it is in the Socratic man and not in the Wesleyan that our hope lies now. Consequently, even if it were mentally possible for all of us to believe in the Atonement, we should have to cry off it, as we evidently have a right to do. Every man to whom salvation is offered has an inalienable natural right to say 'No, thank you: I prefer to retain my full moral responsibility: it is not good for me to be able to load a scapegoat with my sins: I should be less careful how I committed them if I knew they would cost me nothing.'
George Bernard Shaw (Androcles and the Lion)
I always imagined rape as this violent scene of a woman walking alone down a dark alley and getting mugged and beaten by some masked criminal. Rape was an angry man forcing himself inside a damsel in distress. I would not carry the trauma of a cliché rape victim. I would not shriek in the midst of my slumber with night terrors. I would not tremble at the sight of every dark haired man or the mention of Number 1’s name. I would not even harbor ill will towards him. My damage was like a cigarette addiction- subtle, seemingly innocent, but everlasting and inevitably detrimental. Number 1 never opened his screen door to furious crowds waving torches and baseball bats. Nobody punched him out in my honor. The Nightfall crowd never socially ostracized him. Even the ex-boyfriend who’d second handedly fused the entire fiasco continued to mingle with him in drug circles. Everybody continued with business as usual. And when I told my parents I lost my virginity against my will, unconscious on a bathroom floor, Carl did not erupt in fury and demand I give him all I knew about his whereabouts so he could greet him with a rifle. Mom blankly shrugged and mumbled, “Oh, that’s too bad,” and drifted into the kitchen as if I’d received a stubbed toe rather than a shredded hymen. Everyone in my life took my rape as lightly as a brief thunderstorm that might have been frightening when it happened, but was easy to forget about. I adopted that mentality as the foundation of my sex life. I would, time and time again, treat sex as flimsily as it started. I would give it away as if it was cheap, second hand junk, rather than a prize that deserved to be earned.
Maggie Georgiana Young (Just Another Number)
There's an analogy to be made between our craving for story and our craving for food. A tendency to overeat served our ancestors well when food shortages were a predictable part of life. But now that we modern desk jockeys are awash in cheap grease and corn syrup, overeating is more likely to fatten us up and kill us young. Likewise, it could be that an intense greed for story was healthy for our ancestors but has some harmful consequences in a world where books, MP3 players, TVs, and iPhones make story omnipresent - and where we have, in romance novels and television shows such as Jersey Shore, something like the story equivalent of deep-fried Twinkies. I think the literary scholar Brian Boyd is right to wonder if overconsumimg in a world awash with junk story could lead to something like a "mental diabetes epidemic." Similarly, as digital technology evolves, our stories - ubiquitous, immersive, interactive - may become dangerously attractive. The real threat isn't that story will fade out of human life in the future; its that story will take it over completely.
Jonathan Gottschall (The Storytelling Animal: How Stories Make Us Human)
The organic and inorganic structures supporting human life are changing. Breathtaking technological developments, coupled with rapid advances in medicine, supported a dramatic explosion in the human population worldwide. Increases in human population placed pressure upon the habitat. Lack of foresight and commercial ogres fused to a consumptive consumer mentality fostered a radical reduction in habitat for other creatures and spawned a predictable environmental crisis. Commercial enterprises nimbly renamed the “environmental crisis” the “energy crisis,” effectively downplaying the dramatic cost inflicted upon the ecosystem in the name of preserving cheap energy sources for Americans. We live on the brink of impending disaster. Nonetheless, we must carry on. It is humankind’s greatest challenge to place our self-gratification in check in order to ensure that our species and other creatures survive the violent onslaught raging against the ecosystem. Despite the rapid expansion of new technology, which alters how human beings live and communicate with each other, the fundamental challenge of humanity remains consistent. Every generation must address how to live a purposeful life, one filled with joy and contentment.
Kilroy J. Oldster (Dead Toad Scrolls)
is a city of delightful ease, of freedom and sunshine, of torrid heat. There it does not matter what you do, nor when, nor how you do it. There is none to hinder you, none to watch. Each takes his ease, and is content that his neighbour should do the like. Doubtless people are lazy in Seville, but good heavens! why should one be so terribly strenuous? Go into the Plaza Nueva, and you will see it filled with men of all ages, of all classes, 'taking the sun'; they promenade slowly, untroubled by any mental activity, or sit on benches between the palm-trees, smoking cigarettes; perhaps the more energetic read the bull-fighting news in the paper. They are not ambitious, and they do not greatly care to make their fortunes; so long as they have enough to eat and drink--food is very cheap--and cigarettes to smoke, they are quite happy. The Corporation provides seats, and the sun shines down for nothing--so let them sit in it and warm themselves. I daresay it is as good a way of getting through life as most others.
W. Somerset Maugham
I HATE Unnatural, Abnormal, Disgusting, Sick, Ugly, Unfit, Funny, Idiotic, Stupid, Nonsense, Immature, SICK minded, Narrow Minded, Uncultured, Filthy, Cheap, Superstitious, Ignorant, Perverted, Paraphilic, Illogical Gender Biased/sexist, Stereotypical female sex Objectification based ABNORMAL inappropriate activities and Sexism or Sexist Mentality. And people who practice this Abnormality, they are Unnatural, Abnormal, Disgusting, Sick, Ugly, Unfit, Funny, Idiotic, Stupid, Nonsense, Immature, SICK minded, Narrow Minded, Uncultured, Filthy, Cheap, Superstitious, Ignorant, Perverted, Paraphilic, Illogical Gender Biased/sexist, Stereotypical female sex Objectification based SICK minded humanoid Species But They Are NOT HUMAN. And I Support Solid Male Sex Objectification or Male Sexualization based world or Male Sex Symbol or Male Sexual Image or whatever you say. Because This world is Natural, Normal, Real and Truth. And Male Sex Objectification or Male Sexualization is a Part of The Real Sex. Because Male Beauty and Male Body is a Work of Art and It's A Gift for women From God. And That's The Truth.
Nirzhar Hussain
Cheap people don't read. And how ironic when they criticize an author who writes about mental and physical health, because of how much money he makes, or doesn't make, as if that money could pay for their miserable life. Indeed, only expensive people can read such books and make such author rich. But the premise applies to anything else in life. Only value can recognize value. Cheap are always cheap, even towards themselves and the value of their existence.
Robin Sacredfire
Digital media is a cheap, portable, instantaneously accessible means of combatting both the universal psychological pain of being human and the particular psychological pain of being young (or not young) and alone in the world. Internet porn, Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat—these are the new opiates of the masses. New digital media collapses space and time, allowing us to ward off insecurities by remaining in a state of constant communication.
A.N. Turner (Trapped In The Web)
Etiquette is a code of behaviour that delineates expectations for social behaviour if anyone cannot follow that. Please do not comment to make yourself degraded or extremist before others, who have a sense of literature, and honour of all kinds of affection. Your comments should be on the content of the status, not the personal attacks; no one has any right to such attacks. It is a cheap way that reflects your family background, your training and your mentality. If you cannot afford and keep civility, please look forward to a place where you match. I think a word to the wise is enough to understand.
Ehsan Sehgal
Sam’s Club, Trader Joe’s, and other discount stores that sell cheap supplements should not be your source for SAMe. Instead, look at GNC, local natural-food stores, or the Internet. You get what you pay for, and cheap SAMe doesn’t work. If the SAMe you’ve tried in the past wasn’t effective, don’t give up; try a different brand, preferably one recommended by a functional medicine doctor. SAMe is highly unstable and needs to be enteric coated and kept in a moderate-temperature storage facility. To take SAMe, start with 400 mg. on an empty stomach (thirty minutes before or ninety minutes after eating). If you don’t see an improvement in your mental and physical energy, increase your dose by 400 mg. each day—up to 1,200 mg.—until you do. I find it is best to take SAMe all at once, thirty minutes before breakfast. The method allows you to get a substantial morning boost that will often last through the day. You can take SAMe in divided doses if needed, but always on an empty stomach. Don’t take it past 3:00 p.m., as it may interfere with your sleep.
Rodger H. Murphree (Treating and Beating Fibromyalgia & Chronic Fatigue Syndrome, 5th Ed)
A fig for your precious society with its bridge parties, its inane chatter, its cheap mentality; its dances and vulgar banquets; its snobbery and cheap pretension. The humblest library can show you upon a single shelf better society and far more select company than all the drawing-rooms of Europe, America, and South Africa.
E. Norman Torry (Round My Library Fire: A Book about Books)
We’ve been trained to think that “bigger” means “better.” This dangerous mentality has carried over to irresistibly cheap value
Alex Brecher (The BIG Book on the Gastric Sleeve: Everything You Need To Know To Lose Weight and Live Well with the Vertical Sleeve Gastrectomy (The BIG Books on Weight Loss Surgery 2))
We should not err by regarding personal satisfaction, “happiness,” as the criterion for mental health. Mental health must be judged not only by the relative harmony that prevails within the human ego, but by the requirements of a civilized people for the attainment of the highest social values. If a child is “free of neurotic symptoms” but values his freedom from fear so highly that he will never in his lifetime risk himself for an idea or a principle, then this mental health does not serve human welfare. If he is “secure” but never aspires to anything but personal security, then this security cannot be valued in itself. If he is “well adjusted to the group” but secures his adjustment through uncritical acceptance of and compliance with the ideas of others, then this adjustment does not serve a democratic society. If he “adjusts well in school” but furnishes his mind with commonplace ideas and facts and nourishes this mind with the cheap fantasies of comic books, then what civilization can value the “adjustment” of this child? The highest order of mental health must include the freedom of a man to employ his intelligence for the solution of human problems, his own and those of his society. This freedom of the intellect requires that the higher mental processes of reason and judgment should be removed as far as possible from magic, self-gratification, and egocentric motives. The education of a child toward mental health must include training of the intellect. A child’s emotional well-being is as much dependent upon the fullest use of his intellectual capacity as upon the satisfaction of basic body needs. The highest order of mental health must include a solid and integrated value system, an organization within the personality that is both conscience and ideal self, with roots so deeply imbedded in the structure of personality that it cannot be violated or corrupted. We cannot speak of mental health in a personality where such an ethical system does not exist. If we employ such loose criteria as “personal satisfaction” or “adjustment to the group” for evaluating mental health, a delinquent may conceivably achieve the highest degree of personal satisfaction in the pursuit of his own objectives, and his adjustment to the group—the delinquent group—is as nicely worked out as you could imagine. Theoretically,
Selma H. Fraiberg (The Magic Years: Understanding and Handling the Problems of Early Childhood)
The good news is that changing your mindset is essentially free. The bad news (okay, we don’t like that term so forget we even said it, this is more of a “challenge”) is that it takes a lot of practice, repetition, and mental willpower to make it happen.
Nick Meyer (Dirt Cheap Weight Loss: 101 Tips for Losing Weight on a Budget)
We hardly need to be reminded that we are living in an age of confusion. A lot of us have traded in our beliefs for bitterness and cynicism, or for a heavy package of despair, or even a quivering portion of hysteria. Opinions can be picked up cheap in the marketplace, while such commodities as courage and fortitude and faith are in alarmingly short supply. Around us all-now high like a distant thunderhead, now close upon us with the wet choking intimacy of a London fog-there is an enveloping cloud of fear. There is a physical fear, the kind that drives some of us to flee our homes and burrow into the ground in the bottoms of a Montana valley like prairie dogs to try to escape, if only for a little while, the sound and fury of the A-bombs or the hell bombs or whatever may be coming. There is a mental fear, which provokes others of us to see the images of witches in a neighbor’s yard and stampedes us to burn down his house. And there is a creeping fear of doubt-doubt of what we have been taught, of the validity of so many things we have long since taken for granted to be durable and unchanging. It has become more difficult than ever to distinguish black from white, good from evil, right from wrong. What truths can a human being afford to furnish the cluttered nervous room of his mind with when he no real idea how long a lease he has on his future. It is to try to meet the challenge of such questions that we have prepared these broadcasts. It has been a difficult task and a delicate one. Except for those who think in terms of pious platitudes or dogma or narrow prejudice-and those thoughts we aren’t interested in-people don’t speak their beliefs easily or publicly.
Edward Morrow
and plays on your vulnerabilities — you are not smart or strong or tall enough. Does it claim to be rich in a nutrient or have extra doses of a nutrient? Iron, fibre, protein, vitamin D? Textbook nutritionism (read previous chapter or ask your parents about it once they have read it). Is it giving you a free toy for buying the product or a chance to win an iPhone or an all-expenses paid foreign trip? Illegal in a lot of countries where governments are active in protecting children from the cheap and unethical marketing practices of food companies. Does your favourite movie star or cricketer endorse the product? Truth be told, you are only engaged as a brand ambassador of junk food when you have a fit and agile body. Essentially, it means that you have had the mental and physical discipline to stay away from the very food that you are endorsing. And to tell you a secret, the celebs won’t even consume it on the day of the shoot; they
Rujuta Diwekar (Notes for Healthy Kids)
A gluten based diet for the masses was born out of the Industrial Revolution’s development of cheap mass produced factory foods with long shelf lives.
Steven Magee (Hypoxia, Mental Illness & Chronic Fatigue)
You'll notice, for example, that phony psychics and religious faith-healers tend to prey on the lower classes. The same goes for cheap superstitions and get-rich-quick scams. Look over the selection of supermarket tabloids and notice how they appeal to the seedy interests and bread-and-circuses.
Michael T. Stevens (The Art Of Psychological Warfare: How To Skillfully Influence People Undetected And How To Mentally Subdue Your Enemies In Stealth Mode)
Popov Vodka is so cheap there are potato chunks and miniature Russian peasants floating in it. But it does the trick.
Moshe Kasher (Kasher in the Rye: The True Tale of a White Boy from Oakland Who Became a Drug Addict, Criminal, Mental Patient, and Then Turned 16)
Crazy Prices, as its name suggests, was a shop whose branding might seem slightly, or perhaps wildly, insensitive nowadays. Its titular conceit was that the store’s contents were so bafflingly discounted, so preposterously inexpensive, that they raised very real questions about the mental health of the proprietors. Their staff, and possibly their customers, were also implicated in this contagion of madness, branded throughout their locations with bulging eyes and outstretched tongues. These prices, they implied, were so dribblesomely inscrutable that even to glance in their direction posed a very real risk of derangement. These prices weren’t merely cheap, you understand, they were crazy, and any attempt to comprehend them was as pointless as considering the chasmic, gnawing depth of infinity itself. ‘You must understand,’ their day-glo ads seemed to say, ‘if you step inside, you may never recover from these prices.
Séamas O'Reilly (Did Ye Hear Mammy Died?)
Producers may have solved the problem for Brandt, but not for Jack, who was convinced that Columbia had taken a turn for the worse under Harry. Jack, whose filmmaking had consisted almost entirely of one- and two-reelers, decided his brother had become a liability: Either Harry’s extravagancies had to be curbed or Harry had to go—at least as production head. Jack did not understand that product does not come cheap, nor do stars and writers. Mentally, Jack was back at CBC—before CBC moved forward and became Columbia. Jack also knew that if he was to do anything about Harry, he had to find an ally other than Brandt, who, in fall 1931, had become little more than a figurehead.
Bernard F. Dick (The Merchant Prince of Poverty Row: Harry Cohn of Columbia Pictures)
The stunning problem with mindset is sometimes the rich are cheap while the poor are expensive.
Martin Uzochukwu Ugwu
As I sat on the back of his bike, Anh Bao pointed out local sex workers he recognized as they walked out of a bar with their arms wrapped around Viet Kieu men. He had gotten to know these women when he parked his bike outside the bar around closing time to offer cheap rides home to the women who had been unable to secure a client for the evening. Over the course of nearly three hours spent cycling the city, I took everything in—making mental notes of things I would later enter into my research. Anh Bao was a storyteller; and as we stopped outside each place, I propped on his bike laughing as he made up dramatic scenarios about the kinds of love affairs that occurred in each segment of the sex industry.
Kimberly Kay Hoang
We hardly need to be reminded that we are living in an age of confusion. A lot of us have traded in our beliefs for bitterness and cynicism, or for a heavy package of despair, or even a quivering portion of hysteria. Opinions can be picked up cheap in the marketplace, while such commodities as courage and fortitude and faith are in alarmingly short supply. Around us all-now high like a distant thunderhead, now close upon us with the wet choking intimacy of a London fog-there is an enveloping cloud of fear. There is a physical fear, the kind that drives some of us to flee our homes and burrow into the ground in the bottoms of a Montana valley like prairie dogs to try to escape, if only for a little while, the sound and fury of the A-bombs or the hell bombs or whatever may be coming. There is a mental fear, which provokes others of us to see the images of witches in a neighbor’s yard and stampedes us to burn down his house. And there is a creeping fear of doubt-doubt of what we have been taught, of the validity of so many things we have long since taken for granted to be durable and unchanging. It has become more difficult than ever to distinguish black from white, good from evil, right from wrong. What truths can a human being afford to furnish the cluttered nervous room of his mind with when he no real idea how long a lease he has on his future. It is to try to meet the challenge of such questions that we have prepared these broadcasts. It has been a difficult task and a delicate one. Except for those who think in terms of pious platitudes or dogma or narrow prejudice-and those thoughts we aren’t interested in-people don’t speak their beliefs easily or publicly
Edward R. Murrow (This I Believe: The Personal Philosophies of One Hundred Thoughtful Men and Women)
We hardly need to be reminded that we are living in an age of confusion. A lot of us have traded in our beliefs for bitterness and cynicism, or for a heavy package of despair, or even a quivering portion of hysteria. Opinions can be picked up cheap in the marketplace, while such commodities as courage and fortitude and faith are in alarmingly short supply. Around us all-now high like a distant thunderhead, now close upon us with the wet choking intimacy of a London fog-there is an enveloping cloud of fear. There is a physical fear, the kind that drives some of us to flee our homes and burrow into the ground in the bottoms of a Montana valley like prairie dogs to try to escape, if only for a little while, the sound and fury of the A-bombs or the hell bombs or whatever may be coming. There is a mental fear, which provokes others of us to see the images of witches in a neighbor’s yard and stampedes us to burn down his house. And there is a creeping fear of doubt-doubt of what we have been taught, of the validity of so many things we have long since taken for granted to be durable and unchanging. It has become more difficult than ever to distinguish black from white, good from evil, right from wrong. What truths can a human being afford to furnish the cluttered nervous room of his mind with when he no real idea how long a lease he has on his future. It is to try to meet the challenge of such questions that we have prepared these broadcasts. It has been a difficult task and a delicate one. Except for those who think in terms of pious platitudes or dogma or narrow prejudice-and those thoughts we aren’t interested in-people don’t speak their beliefs easily or publicly.
Edward Morrow
Cheap mentality can't afford my trust.
Brajesh Kumar Singh
You will know from your friends and their conversation. Many people pretend to be civilized and having a sober status, but actually, they are the most ordinary, uncivilized, and street people. Only low and cheap mentality people bear such sort of friends.
Ehsan Sehgal
Paul once tried to explain how the two of them had become what they were. ‘John, because of his upbringing and his unstable family life, had to be hard, witty, always ready for the cover-up, ready for the riposte, ready with the sharp little witticism. Whereas with my rather comfortable upbringing, a lot of family, a lot of people, very northern, “Cup of tea, love?”, my surface grew to be easy-going. Put people at their ease. Chat to people, be nice, it’s nice to be nice … Mentally, no one could say much to hurt me, whereas with John: his dad wasn’t home, so it was “Where’s yer dad, you bastard?” And his mother lived with somebody and that was called “living in sin” in those days, so there was another cheap shot against him. John had a lot to guard against, and it formed his personality; he was a very guarded person … He had massive hang-ups from his upbringing.
Craig Brown (One Two Three Four: The Beatles in Time)
The firmament that is New York is greater than the sum of its constituent parts. It is a city and it is also a creature, a mentality, a disease, a threat, an electromagnet, a cheap stage set, an accident corridor. It is an implausible character, a monstrous vortex of contradictions, an attraction-repulsion mechanism so extreme no one could have made it up. New York, which has been called the capital of the twentieth century, as Paris was that of the nineteenth, would seem on the face of it to be founded on progress, on change, on the bulldozing of what has faded to make way for the next thing, the thing after that, the future. The lure of the new is built right into its name; it is the part of the name that actually registers, since the “York,” a commemoration of a colonial lineage, carries no resonance and exists only as a vestige. New York is incarnated by Manhattan (the other boroughs, noble, useful, and significant though they may be, are merely adjuncts), and Manhattan is a finite space that cannot be expanded but only continually resurfaced and reconfigured. Manhattan is a wonderland of real estate speculation, a hot center whose temperature cannot but increase as population increases and desirability remains several paces ahead of capacity. The myth of Manhattan, therefore, is cast in the future tense. It does not hark back to a heroic past, lacks its Romulus and Remus (except in the image of that transaction between Peter Minuit and the Canarsies, which is simply the first clever deal, the primordial ground-floor entry). New York has no truck with the past. It expels its dead.
Lucy Sante (Low Life: Lures and Snares of Old New York)
You will know from your friends and their conversations. Many people pretend to be civilized and have a sober status, but actually, they are the most ordinary, uncivilized, and street people. Only low and cheap mentality people bear such sort of friends.
Ehsan Sehgal
My contention is that placebos need to be slightly absurd to work.fn1 All three elements that seem to make Red Bull such a potent mental hackfn2 make no sense from a logical point of view. People want cheap, abundant and nice-tasting drinks, surely? And yet the success of Red Bull proves that they don’t. Something about these three illogicalities may well be essential to its unconscious appeal, or to its potency as a placebo. If we are to subconsciously believe that a drink has medicinal or psychotropic powers, perhaps it can’t taste conventionally nice.
Rory Sutherland (Alchemy: The Surprising Power of Ideas That Don't Make Sense)