Equal Reaction Quotes

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and to every action there is always an equal and opposite or contrary, reaction
Isaac Newton
For every action there is an equal and opposite reaction. You receive from the world what you give to the world.
Gary Zukav (The Seat of the Soul)
To every action there is always opposed an equal reaction.
Isaac Newton
For every action there is an equal and opposite reaction. You never know what it’s going to look like on the other side, but you’ll see it eventually if you keep your eyes open.
Miley Cyrus (Miles to Go)
For every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction.
Isaac Newton
In the parallel universe the laws of physics are suspended. What goes up does not necessarily come down, a body at rest does not tend to stay at rest and not every action can be counted on to provoke an equal and opposite reaction. Time, 'too, is different. It may run in circles, flow backward, skip about from now to then. The very arrangement of molecules is fluid: Tables can be clocks, faces, flowers.
Susanna Kaysen (Girl, Interrupted)
In Revenge, as in life, every action has an equal and opposite reaction. In the end the guilty always fall.
Emily Thorne
Maybe I’d already guessed that the physics of us didn’t defy any laws of gravity, and with her, there was always an equal and opposite reaction.
Robyn Schneider (The Beginning of Everything)
it’s like the laws of physics—for every action, there is an opposite and equal reaction. If you go into darkness, the darkness goes into you. You then have to decide what to do with it. How to keep yourself safe from it. How to keep it from hollowing you out.
Michael Connelly (The Late Show (Renée Ballard, #1; Harry Bosch Universe, #30))
with every action theres an equal opposite reaction. With every problem, there’s a solution: just a matter of taking action.
Albert Einstein
After every unladylike action, there must be an equal and opposite reaction. Consider the necessary, analyze the consequences, clean up the mess.
Gail Carriger (Manners & Mutiny (Finishing School, #4))
One must drop all presuppositions and dogmas and rules - for there only lead to stalemate or disaster; one must cease to regard all patients as replicas, and honor each one with individual reactions and propensities; and, in this way, with the patient as one's equal, one's co-explorer, not one's puppet, one may find therapeutic ways which are better than other ways, tactics which can be modified as occasion requires.
Oliver Sacks (Awakenings)
Because everything is interdependent, there are no simple, single causes and effects. Every action creates not just an equal and opposite reaction, but a web of reverberating consequences.
Starhawk (The Earth Path: Grounding Your Spirit in the Rhythms of Nature)
we all collide. It made him think of Newton’s third law of motion: for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction. It was like, when you collided with someone, they would not be in the same position as they used to be. Everyone equally affected one another.
J.R. Lenk (Collide)
do unto others as you would've them do unto you. scientific prove that to be a fact for every action is the opposite as equal reaction. Don't fuck with me, and i won't fuck with you
Eddie Griffin
It occurs to me to dwell on what a microcosm we are of the war as a whole, you and I. An action and an equal and opposite reaction. My viney-hivey elfworld, as you say, versus your techy-mechy dystopia. We both know it’s nothing so simple, any more than a letter’s reply is its opposite. But which egg preceded what platypus? The ends don’t always resemble our means.
Amal El-Mohtar (This Is How You Lose the Time War)
the central rule of the myth: For every feminist action there is an equal and opposite beauty myth reaction.
Naomi Wolf (The Beauty Myth: How Images of Beauty Are Used Against Women—a Feminist Critique on Society's Obsession with Flawless Women)
Another thing is war. I am naturally warlike. Attacking is one of my instincts. Being able to be an enemy, being an enemy — these require a strong nature, perhaps; in any case every strong nature presupposes them. It needs resistances, so it seeks resistance: aggressive pathos is just as integrally necessary to strength as the feeling of revenge and reaction is to weakness. Woman, forinstance, is vengeful: that is a condition of her weakness, as is her sensitivity to other people’s afflictions. — The strength of anattacker can in a way be gauged by the opposition he requires; allgrowth makes itself manifest by searching out a more powerful opponent — or problem: for a philosopher who is warlike challenges problems to duels, too. The task is not to master all resistances, but only those against which one has to pit one’s entire strength, suppleness, and mastery-at-arms — opponents who are equal...
Friedrich Nietzsche (Ecce Homo)
If there’s a physical component to falling in love—the butterflies in your stomach, the roller coaster of your soul—then there’s an equal physical component to falling out of love. It feels like your lungs are sieves, so you can’t get enough air. Your insides freeze solid. Your heart becomes a tiny, bitter pearl, a chemical reaction to one irritating grain of truth.
Jodi Picoult (Sing You Home)
How cruel, that sharing someone else's grief did nothing to alleviate it for them. In physics, there were rules and forces, equal and opposite reactions, a balance. But emotions didn’t obey rules, and though sympathy settled over her like a blanket, it did nothing to help him. … Even her hands, which stole power, strength, and life itself. Were powerless to siphon off any of his suffering.
Emily Thiede (This Vicious Grace (The Last Finestra, #1))
For every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction. Forces always come in pairs.
Nikki Erlick (The Measure)
Scientists say every action initiates an equal and opposite reaction. I say that's just the start. I say every action initiates a most unequal and upredictable chain reaction, that every filament of living becomes part of a larger weave, while remaining identifiable. That every line of latitude requires several stripes of longitude to obtain meaning. That every universe is part of a bigger heaven, a heaven of rhythm and geometry, where a heartbeat is the apex of a triangle.
Ellen Hopkins (Triangles)
This is the problem with horror movies: Everyone knows what's coming next but actions have momentum, every decision an equal and justified reaction. Just because you know you should, doesn't mean that you can, stop.
Cassandra Khaw (Nothing But Blackened Teeth)
Treat me well and I will tell... Treat me bad and I feel sad. Treat me good, change my mood. Treat me sweet and call it quits!
Ana Claudia Antunes (Pierrot & Columbine (The Pierrot´s Love Book 1))
Love should be according to Newton's third law that states: "For every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction.
Stefan Boldisor
As you may already know, post-traumatic stress disorder is extremely complex. Each client has a unique, perhaps virtually unbelievable, set of experiences, and an almost equally set of reactions to those experiences.
Aphrodite Matsakis (Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder: A Complete Treatment Guide)
For every forward action, there is an equally important forward reaction.
Lorii Myers (No Excuses, The Fit Mind-Fit Body Strategy Book (3 Off the Tee, #3))
One answer to the transitory nature of imperial rule, in short, is that there is a Newtonian third law of empires. The exercise of imperial power generates an opposite and equal reaction among those affected by it, until they so reorganize themselves as to blunt the imperial edge.
Peter Heather (Empires and Barbarians: Migration, Development and the Birth of Europe)
The aim of mindfulness is to know suffering fully. It entails paying calm, unflinching attention to whatever impacts the organism, be it the song of a lark or the scream of a child, the bubbling of a playful idea or a twinge in the lower back. You attend not just to the outward stimuli themselves, but equally to your inward reactions to them. You do not condemn what you see as your failings or applaud what you regard as success. You notice things come, you notice them go. Over time, the practice becomes less a self-conscious exercise in meditation done at fixed periods each day and more a sensibility that infuses one’s awareness at all times.
Stephen Batchelor (Confession of a Buddhist Atheist)
Claire dropped Willie on the cobbles and caught the girl by the back of her combies as she spun to escape. It was the work of a moment to turn her over her knee and remind her of Newton’s law that every action has an equal and opposite reaction.
Shelley Adina (Lady of Devices (Magnificent Devices, #1))
There is no religion and no philosophy that can give us a comprehensive answer to the whole of our problems, and the abandonment and isolation of the individual who is given no answer, or only inadequate answers, to his question lead to a situation in which more and more cheap, obvious solutions and answers are sought and provided. As, everywhere and in all departments of life, there are contradictory schools and parties, and an equal number of contradictory answers, one of the most frequent reactions is that modern man ceases to ask questions and takes refuge in a conception that considers only the most obvious, superficial aspects, and becomes skeptical, nihilistic, and egocentric. Or, alternatively, he tries to solve all his problems by plunging headlong into a collective situation and a collective conviction, and seeks to redeem himself in this way.
Erich Neumann (The Fear of the Feminine and Other Essays on Feminine Psychology)
In markets, stupid action does not have equal but severe opposite reaction.
Vijay Kedia
For the victim of anxiety, there is no difference between success and fiasco. His reaction to the one is the same as to the other: both trouble him equally.
Emil M. Cioran (The Trouble With Being Born)
For every action.... There is an equal and opposite reaction... Too Bad for anyone stuck in the middle!
Qwantu Amaru (One Blood)
Every kind word or action has an equal reaction. What you put out comes back to you. Why not make it caring and joyful?
Amy Leigh Mercree (Joyful Living: 101 Ways to Transform Your Spirit and Revitalize Your Life)
If something possesses no capacity for activity whatever, it is nothing; it may be wholly penetrated, but it cannot be touched. Therefore passivity and reaction are everywhere equal.
Wilhelm von Humboldt (Humanist Without Portfolio: An Anthology of the writings of Wilhelm von Humboldt)
See how the wings, striking against the air, sustain the heavy eagle in the thin air on high,” he noted, then added, “As much force is exerted by the object against the air as by the air against the object.”16 Two hundred years later, Newton would state a refined version of this as his third law of motion: “To every action there is always opposed an equal reaction.
Walter Isaacson (Leonardo da Vinci)
If the muscles delivered enough force to bust the bones of prey, they could have also broken the skull bones of the T. rex itself. Basic physics: every action has an equal and opposite reaction. So it wasn’t enough for T. rex to have massive teeth and huge jaw muscles—it also needed a skull that could withstand the tremendous stresses that occurred each time it snapped its jaws shut.
Stephen Brusatte (The Rise and Fall of the Dinosaurs: A New History of a Lost World)
The answer was obvious. Life had no meaning. On the earth, satellite of a star speeding through space, living things had arisen under the influence of conditions which were part of the planet's history; and as there had been a beginning of life upon it so, under the influence of other conditions, there would be an end: man, no more significant than other forms of life, had come not as the climax of creation but as a physical reaction to the environment. Philip remembered the story of the Eastern King who, desiring to know the history of man, was brought by a sage five hundred volumes; busy with affairs of state, he bade him go and condense it; in twenty years the sage returned and his history now was in no more than fifty volumes, but the King, too old then to read so many ponderous tomes, bade him go and shorten it once more; twenty years passed again and the sage, old and gray, brought a single book in which was the knowledge the King had sought; but the King lay on his death-bed, and he had no time to read even that; and then the sage gave him the history of man in a single line; it was this: he was born, he suffered, and he died. There was no meaning in life, and man by living served no end. It was immaterial whether he was born or not born, whether he lived or ceased to live. Life was insignificant and death without consequence. Philip exulted, as he had exulted in his boyhood when the weight of a belief in God was lifted from his shoulders: it seemed to him that the last burden of responsibility was taken from him; and for the first time he was utterly free. His insignificance was turned to power, and he felt himself suddenly equal with the cruel fate which had seemed to persecute him; for, if life was meaningless, the world was robbed of its cruelty. What he did or left undone did not matter. Failure was unimportant and success amounted to nothing. He was the most inconsiderate creature in that swarming mass of mankind which for a brief space occupied the surface of the earth; and he was almighty because he had wrenched from chaos the secret of its nothingness.
W. Somerset Maugham (Of Human Bondage)
(which state, very baldly, that a thing moves in the direction in which it is pushed; that it will keep moving in a straight line until some other force acts to slow or deflect it; and that every action has an opposite and equal reaction)
Bill Bryson (A Short History of Nearly Everything)
I tend to imagine the self-regulating system like little gremlins hoping on the pain side of the balance to counteract the weight on the pleasure side. The gremlins represent the work of homeostasis, the tendency of any living system to maintain physiologic equilibrium. Once the balance is level, it keeps going, tipping an equal and opposite amount to the side of pain. In the 1970s social scientists Richard Solomon and John Corbett called this reciprocal relationship between pleasure and pain "The Opponent Process Theory". Any prolonged or repeated departure from hedonic or adaptive neutrality has a cost. That cost is an after-reaction, that is opposite in value to the stimulus, or as the old saying goes: "What goes up, must come down".
Anna Lembke (Dopamine Nation: Finding Balance in the Age of Indulgence)
To call the belief in substantial human equality a superstition is to insult superstition. It might be unwarranted to believe in leprechauns, but at least the person who holds to such a belief isn’t watching them not exist, for every waking hour of the day. Human inequality, in contrast, and in all of its abundant multiplicity, is constantly on display, as people exhibit their variations in gender, ethnicity, physical attractiveness, size and shape, strength, health, agility, charm, humor, wit, industriousness, and sociability, among countless other features, traits, abilities, and aspects of their personality, some immediately and conspicuously, some only slowly, over time. To absorb even the slightest fraction of all this and to conclude, in the only way possible, that it is either nothing at all, or a ‘social construct’ and index of oppression, is sheer Gnostic delirium: a commitment beyond all evidence to the existence of a true and good world veiled by appearances. People are not equal, they do not develop equally, their goals and achievements are not equal, and nothing can make them equal. Substantial equality has no relation to reality, except as its systematic negation. Violence on a genocidal scale is required to even approximate to a practical egalitarian program, and if anything less ambitious is attempted, people get around it (some more competently than others).
Nick Land (The Dark Enlightenment)
People ask, How did you get in there? What they really want to know is if they are likely to end up in there as well. I can’t answer the real question. All I can tell them is, It’s easy. And it is easy to slip into a parallel universe. There are so many of them: worlds of the insane, the criminal, the crippled, the dying, perhaps of the dead as well. These worlds exist alongside this world and resemble it, but are not in it.… …In the parallel universe the laws of physics are suspended. What goes up does not necessarily come down, a body at rest does not tend to stay at rest; and not every action can be counted on to provoke an equal and opposite reaction. Time, too, is different. It may run in circles, flow backward, skip about from now to then. The very arrangement of molecules is fluid: Tables can be clocks; faces, flowers. These are facts you find out later, though. Another odd feature of the parallel universe is that although it is invisible from this side, once you are in it you can easily see the world you came from. Sometimes the world you came from looks huge and menacing, quivering like a vast pile of jelly; at other times it is miniaturized and alluring, a-spin and shining in its orbit. Either way, it can’t be discounted. Every window on Alcatraz has a view of San Francisco.
Susanna Kaysen (Girl, Interrupted)
We have to accept that any action we take might promote an equal and opposite reaction that we do not want. We have to realize that even the most noble actions or most obviously correct course can have its dark side that we cannot control or reason our way out of. The fighter of the "just war" must understand that her actions will result in the deaths of other humans; many of whom may be innocent. The pacifist who refuses all war must realize that his inaction might likewise result in the deaths of the innocent. There are no actions without contradiction—and yet we must act, for not to act is also a contradictory action with both positive and negative effects.
John Hunter (World Peace and Other 4th-Grade Achievements)
Equally widespread is the opposite doctrine of an “eternal antisemitism” in which Jew-hatred is a normal and natural reaction to which history gives only more or less opportunity. Outbursts need no special explanation because they are natural consequences of an eternal problem. That this doctrine was adopted by professional antisemites is a matter of course; it gives the best possible alibi for all horrors. If
Hannah Arendt (The Origins of Totalitarianism)
(Quoted in Dennis Okholm's Monk Habits for Everyday People) Settle down in your room at a moment when you have nothing else to do. Say "I am now with myself," and just sit with yourself. After an amazingly short time you will most likely feel bored. This teaches us one very useful thing. It gives us insight into the fact that if after ten minutes of being alone with ourselves we feel like that, it is no wonder that others should feel equally bored! Why is this so? It is so because we have so little to offer to our own selves as food for thought, for emotion and for life. If you watch your life carefully you will discover quite soon that we hardly ever live from within outwards; instead we respond to incitement, to excitement. In other words, we live by reflection, by reaction... We are completely empty, we do not act from within ourselves but accept as our life a life which is actually fed in from the outside; we are used to things happening which compel us to do other things. How seldom can we live simply by means of the depth and the richness we assume that there is within ourselves.
Anthony of Sourozh
If Mrs. Coulter saw his reaction, she didn’t show it. She went on: “Look, Will, I don’t know how you came to meet my daughter, and I don’t know what you know already, and I certainly don’t know if I can trust you; but equally, I’m tired of having to lie. So here it is: the truth.
Philip Pullman (The Amber Spyglass (His Dark Materials #3))
Emma has just rung and sarcastically asked me if I was ever planning on asking her out again. After fighting back my initial reaction to answer ‘only if you’re going to put out this time,’ I told her that, in these days of equality, it was her turn to ask me. Which, amazingly enough, she did.
Dougie Brimson (Billy's Log. The Hilarious Diary of One Man's Struggle With Life, Lager and the Female Race)
Speed is more than just how fast you can thrust your foot into the other guy’s stomach. Whether you’re punching, kicking, blocking, or moving your entire body, other factors are of equal importance, and they too must be trained.   ~Perception speed ~Reaction speed ~Movement speed ~Recovery speed
Loren W. Christensen (Solo Training 3: 50 And Older)
One is absolutely forced to make perpetual qualifications and one's own reactions are always canceling each other out. It is this, really, which has driven so many people mad, both white and black. One is always in the position of having to decide between amputation and gangrene. Amputation is swift but time may prove that amputation was not necessary--or one may delay the amputation too long. Gangrene is slow, but it is I,possible to be sure that one is reading one's symptoms right. The idea of going through life as a cripple is more than one can bear, and equally unbearable is the risk if swelling up slowly, in agony, with poison.
James Baldwin (Notes of a Native Son)
To charge someone with love is a great responsibility; there will be an equal yet unexpected reaction.
Malinda Lo (Ash)
When you smile at someone, the person smiles back. According to Newton’s third law of motion, ‘to every action there is an equal and opposite reaction.
Tapan Ghosh
For every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction." -Isaac Newton, 1686 from Principia Mathematica Philosophiae Naturalis
Leon Cameron (The Greatest Humans)
Newton’s 3rd law of motion, every action has equal and opposite reaction, it doesn’t just operate in Physical world. In good old days, it used to be called the Theory of Karma.
Kirtida Gautam (#iAm16iCan)
The lessons that we get out of this ride of life is to remember the Third Law of Newton which states that “For every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction.
Kcat Yarza (KCAT CAN: I have a pen that writes)
That Science thing "For every action there is an equal and opposite reaction" Well this is not true if you hit someone much bigger then you.
Chuck Bridges
That was the problem with associating with criminals. It led to Newtonian espionage. Each action produced an equal and opposite reaction and you couldn’t use without being used in turn.
Adrian Tchaikovsky (Shards of Earth (The Final Architecture, #1))
Your sense of paralysis will be intensified if your family and friends are in the habit of pushing and cajoling you. Their nagging should statements reinforce the insulting thoughts already echoing through your head. Why is their pushy approach doomed to failure? It's a basic law of physics that for every action there's an equal and opposite reaction. Any time you feel shoved, whether by someone's hand actually on your chest or by someone trying to boss you around, you will naturally tighten up and resist so as to maintain your equilibrium and balance. You will attempt to exert your self-control and preserve your dignity by refusing to do the thing that you are being pushed to do. The paradox is that you often end up hurting yourself.
David D. Burns
With his last breath, her son had said, “Oh, Mom, it’s so simple.” I believe we make our paths far more difficult than they need to be. Our struggle with and resistance to what is entangles us in constant chaos and frustration—when it’s all so simple. Do unto others as you would have them do unto you. And remember Newton’s third law of motion: For every action there is an equal and opposite reaction. The energy you create and release into the world will be reciprocated on all levels. Our main job in life is to align with the energy that is the source of all energies, and to keep our frequency tuned to the energy of love. This I know for sure. When that is your life’s work, mystery solved—or at least, the mystery no longer mystifies you. It only heightens the rapture, reverence, and grace.
Oprah Winfrey (What I Know For Sure)
As explained by Thomas and Mary Edsall in their insightful book Chain Reaction, a disproportionate share of the costs of integration and racial equality had been borne by lower- and lower-middle-class whites, who were suddenly forced to compete on equal terms with blacks for jobs and status and who lived in neighborhoods adjoining black ghettos. Their children—not the children of wealthy whites—attended schools most likely to fall under busing orders. The affluent white liberals who were pressing the legal claims of blacks and other minorities “were often sheltered, in their private lives, and largely immune to the costs of implementing minority claims.
Michelle Alexander (The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness)
The air currents should take you to the wall in, I don’t know, ten minutes or so, but if you’re really in a hurry, take off your clothes and throw them away from you; for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction.
Daniel Keys Moran (The Long Run: A Tale of the Continuing Time (The Continuing Time, #2))
People's imaginations have continued to work, right up to our own day; hence the incredible crop of fanciful allegations attributing to the Templars every kind of esoteric rite and belief, from the most ancient to the most vulgar, every variety of alchemical or magical knowledge, all kinds of initiation and affiliation rituals, those already in existence at the time and those yet to be conceived—in a word, all the "secrets" devised the slake the thirst for mystery inherent in human nature. This thirst, by a kind of instinctual reaction, seems never to be stronger than in those eras when people appear to reject all mysteries: let us recall that it was in Descartes' own day that trials for witchcraft were most numerous; that it was at the beginning of the rationalistic eighteenth century that Freemasonry was born; that our own scientific twentieth century is equally the century in which sects have proliferated, occultism has undergone a renaissance, and so on.
Régine Pernoud (Templars: Knights of Christ)
Men, it seems, experience the merest breeze of equality as something like a catastrophic hurricane—there’s a similar exaggeration involved when majority groups feel under attack and consider themselves practically overwhelmed as soon as victims of racism show the least sign of standing up for themselves. Apart from resistance to renouncing their privilege (whether as men or as white people), this reaction displays the inability of the dominant to comprehend the experience of the dominated, but perhaps also, despite their indignant protestations of innocence, an appalling guilty conscience, acknowledging something along the lines of: “We are hurting them so badly that, if we give them the tiniest room for maneuver, they will destroy us.
Mona Chollet (In Defense of Witches: The Legacy of the Witch Hunts and Why Women Are Still on Trial)
By the Wyrd!” Dorian laughed. “He’s trained you well already!” He nudged Chaol with his elbow. “From the way you two are blatantly ignoring me, I’d say she could pass for your sister! Though you don’t really look like each other—it would be hard to pass off someone so pretty as your sister.” Celaena was unable to keep a hint of a smile from her lips. Both she and the prince had grown up under strict, unforgiving fathers—well, father figure in her case. Arobynn had never replaced the father she’d lost, nor had he ever tried to. But at least Arobynn had an excuse for being equal parts tyrannical and doting. Why had the King of Adarlan let his son become anything but an identical copy of himself? “There!” Dorian said. “A reaction—thank the gods I’ve amused her.
Sarah J. Maas (Throne of Glass (Throne of Glass, #1))
For every action there is an equal and opposite reaction. When you look into the abyss the abyss looks into you. You know, all the clichés. They're clichés because they're true. You don't go into the darkness without it going into you and taking its piece.
Michael Connelly (A Darkness More Than Night (Harry Bosch, #7; Harry Bosch Universe, #10))
The law of innocence is unwritten. It will not be found in a leather-bound codebook. It will never be argued in a courtroom. It cannot be written into law by the elected. It is an abstract idea and yet it closely aligns with the hard laws of nature and science. In the law of physics, for every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction. In the law of innocence, for every man not guilty of a crime, there is a man out there who is. And to prove true innocence, the guilty man must be found and exposed to the world.
Michael Connelly (The Law of Innocence (The Lincoln Lawyer, #6; Harry Bosch Universe #35))
Really?" I say. "I love reality TV." It's not like I'm unused to this reaction. But part of me feels like her disapproval equals Alex's disapproval, and a sore spot appears along with an urge to press on it. "I don't know how you can watch that stuff," Sarah says.
Emily Henry (People We Meet on Vacation)
I’m sorry,” he said in a soft voice while leaning closer to her, “for taking liberties earlier. I hope I didn’t offend you.” “You kissed me,” she answered, equally quietly, then laughed out loud. “I was a little shocked at first, perhaps, but I’m over it.” “Over it?” His heart sank. Not the reaction he’d hoped. Perhaps he was out of practice. “I rather enjoyed it, if you must know. It has been a long time since I’ve had such a kiss. Nothing like a bold and lingering kiss. How I’ve missed it. Ah, now you look shocked. Good. I’ve had my revenge.
Sherri Browning (Thornbrook Park (Thornbrook Park, #1))
Billy coughed when the door was opened, and when he coughed he shit thin gruel. This was in accordance with the Third Law of Motion according to Sir Isaac Newton. This law tells us that for each reaction there is a reaction which is equal and opposite in direction. This can be useful in rocketry.
Kurt Vonnegut Jr. (Slaughterhouse-Five)
As I pondered the dynamics of love, Newton’s laws and equations came to mind. It was an unusual connection, but suddenly the concept of love made sense through the lens of physics. It occurred to me that when two people connect, their interactions are subject to the same fundamental laws that govern physical objects. For every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction, as described by Newton’s Third Law of Motion. This was the basis of physics, and human behavior seemed to follow the same pattern. If one person makes a choice, the other will respond with an equal and opposite reaction.
Kayla Cunningham (Fated to Love You (Chasing the Comet Book 1))
A mood of outrage and defiance swept the South, not unlike the reaction to emancipation and Reconstruction following the Civil War. Again, racial equality was being forced upon the South by the federal government, and by 1956 Southern white opposition to desegregation mushroomed into a vicious backlash.
Michelle Alexander (The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness)
remember didn't you sneak away from camp to have a moment alone with What you felt stirring across the land . . . it was the equinox . . . green spring equal nights . . . canyons are opening up, at the bottoms are steaming fumaroles, steaming the tropical life there like greens in a pot, rank, dope-perfume, a hood of smell . . . human consciousness, that poor cripple, that deformed and doomed thing, is about to be born. This is the World just before men. Too violently pitched alive in constant flow ever to be seen by men directly. They are meant only to look at it dead, in still strata, transputrefied to oil or coal. Alive, it was a threat: it was Titans, was an overpeaking of life so clangorous and mad, such a green corona about Earth's body that some spoiler had to be brought in before it blew the Creation apart. So we, the crippled keepers, were sent out to multiply, to have dominion. God's spoilers. Us. Counter-revolutionaries. It is our mission to promote death. The way we kill, the way we die, being unique among the Creatures. It was something we had to work on, historically and personally. To build from scratch up to its present status as reaction, nearly as strong as life, holding down the green uprising. But only nearly as strong.
Thomas Pynchon (Gravity’s Rainbow)
Gut reaction against yobbery, the masses and solid Frenchness. But an equally visceral distaste for the elite, for castes, culture and the nomenklatura. Do we have to choose between the moronic masses and the arrogant privileged classes (particularly when they have an odour of demagogic humility about them)? No solution.
Jean Baudrillard (Fragments)
The Southern strategy of the Nixon administration is based upon the same principle as the Compromise of 1876: namely, that Northern Republicans and Southern conservatives share common interests and together can rule this nation. I do not think it is possible to condemn too harshly what the President has done in the South in order to form this alliance. Indeed, I can think of no recent President who has more blatantly sacrificed the ideals of equality and racial justice for his own political ends. Nor is Nixon simply riding the wave of reaction. He is encouraging that reaction, for he knows that he became President because of divisions in the society, and that it is in his interest that these divisions grow wider.
Bayard Rustin (Down the Line: The Collected Writings of Bayard Rustin)
There is one thing a professor can be absolutely certain of: almost every student entering the university believes, or says he believes, that truth is relative. If this belief is put to the test, one can count on the students' reaction: they will be uncomprehending. That anyone should regard the proposition as not self-evident astonishes them, as though he were calling into question 2 + 2 = 4. These are things you don't think about. The students' backgrounds are as various as America can provide. Some are religious, some atheists; some are to the Left, some to the Right; some intend to be scientists, some humanists or professionals or businessmen; some are poor, some rich. They are unified only in their relativism and in their allegiance to equality. And the two are related in a moral inten- tion. The relativity of truth is not a theoretical insight but a moral postulate, the condition of a free society, or so they see it. They have all been equipped with this framework early on, and it is the modern replacement for the inalienable natural rights that used to be the traditional American grounds for a free society.
Allan Bloom (The Closing of the American Mind)
It occurs to me to dwell on what a microcosm we are of the war as a whole, you and I. The physics of us. An action and an equal and opposite reaction. My viny-hivey elfworld, as you say, versus your techy-mechy dystopia. We both know it’s nothing so simple, any more than a letter’s reply is its opposite. But which egg preceded what platypus? The ends don’t always resemble our means.
Amal El-Mohtar (This Is How You Lose the Time War)
Ego or fixed identity doesn’t just mean we have a fixed idea about ourselves. It also means that we have a fixed idea about everything we perceive. I have a fixed idea about you; you have a fixed idea about me. And once there is that feeling of separation, it gives rise to strong emotions. In Buddhism, strong emotions like anger, craving, pride, and jealousy are known as kleshas—conflicting emotions that cloud the mind. The kleshas are our vehicle for escaping groundlessness, and therefore every time we give in to them, our preexisting habits are reinforced. In Buddhism, going around and around, recycling the same patterns, is called samsara. And samsara equals pain. We keep trying to get away from the fundamental ambiguity of being human, and we can’t. We can’t escape it any more than we can escape change, any more than we can escape death. The cause of our suffering is our reaction to the reality of no escape: ego clinging and all the trouble that stems from it, all the things that make it difficult for us to be comfortable in our own skin and get along with one another. If the way to deal with those feelings is to stay present with them without fueling the story line, then it begs the question: How do we get in touch with the fundamental ambiguity of being human in the first place? In fact, it’s not difficult, because underlying uneasiness is usually present in our lives. It’s pretty easy to recognize but not so easy to interrupt. We may experience this uneasiness as anything from slight edginess to sheer terror. Anxiety makes us feel vulnerable, which we generally don’t like. Vulnerability comes in many guises. We may feel off balance, as if we don’t know what’s going on, don’t have a handle on things. We may feel lonely or depressed or angry. Most of us want to avoid emotions that make us feel vulnerable, so we’ll do almost anything to get away from them. But if, instead of thinking of these feelings as bad, we could think of them as road signs or barometers that tell us we’re in touch with groundlessness, then we would see the feelings for what they really are: the gateway to liberation, an open doorway to freedom from suffering, the path to our deepest well-being and joy. We have a choice. We can spend our whole life suffering because we can’t relax with how things really are, or we can relax and embrace the open-endedness of the human situation, which is fresh, unfixated, unbiased. So the challenge is to notice the emotional tug of shenpa when it arises and to stay with it for one and a half minutes without the story line. Can you do this once a day, or many times throughout the day, as the feeling arises? This is the challenge. This is the process of unmasking, letting go, opening the mind and heart.
Pema Chödrön (Living Beautifully: with Uncertainty and Change)
There is a confusing dual structure in the relationship of the individual to history. Even the sensory certainties of suffering follow a predictable order of physical reactions, so that the undeniable reality of their dizziness, queasiness, or nausea can be regarded with equal plausibility as the hysterical symptoms of a transitional period - a hypochondria of the epoch and not of individual people.
Andreas Bernard (Lifted: A Cultural History of the Elevator)
Awareness, no matter how confused it may be, develops from every act of rebellion: the sudden, dazzling perception that there is something in man with which he can identify himself, even if only for a moment. Up to now this identification was never really experienced. Before he rebelled, the slave accepted all the demands made upon him. Very often he even took orders, without reacting against them, which were far more conducive to insurrection than the one at which he balks. He accepted them patiently, though he may have protested inwardly, but in that he remained silent he was more concerned with his own immediate interests than as yet aware of his own rights. But with loss of patience—with impatience—a reaction begins which can extend to everything that he previously accepted, and which is almost always retroactive. The very moment the slave refuses to obey the humiliating orders of his master, he simultaneously rejects the condition of slavery. The act of rebellion carries him far beyond the point he had reached by simply refusing. He exceeds the bounds that he fixed for his antagonist, and now demands to be treated as an equal. What was at first the man's obstinate resistance now becomes the whole man, who is identified with and summed up in this resistance. The part of himself that he wanted to be respected he proceeds to place above everything else and proclaims it preferable to everything, even to life itself. It becomes for him the supreme good. Having up to now been willing to compromise, the slave suddenly adopts ("because this is how it must be . . .") an attitude of All or Nothing. With rebellion, awareness is born.
Albert Camus (The Rebel)
A microscopic egg had failed to divide in time due to a failure somewhere along a chain of chemical events, a tiny disturbance in a cascade of protein reactions. A molecular event ballooned like an exploding universe, out onto the wider scale of human misery. No cruelty, nothing avenged, no ghost moving in mysterious ways. Merely a gene transcribed in error, an enzyme recipe skewed, a chemical bond severed. A process of natural wastage as indifferent as it was pointless. Which only brought into relief healthy, perfectly formed life, equally contingent, equally without purpose. Blind luck, to arrive in the world with your properly formed parts in the right place, to be born to parents who were loving, not cruel, or to escape, by geographical or social accident, war or poverty. And therefore to find it so much easier to be virtuous.
Ian McEwan (The Children Act)
Trials for extortion and malpractice in the provinces continued, which may equally well be a sign of the persistent flouting of the law as of its proper enforcement. Many kinds of day-to-day exploitation of the provincials were simply taken for granted. The emperor Tiberius summed up the basic ethics of Roman rule rather well when he said, in reaction to some excessive profits turned in from the provinces, ‘I want my sheep shorn, not shaven’.
Mary Beard (SPQR: A History of Ancient Rome)
The axioms of physics translate the laws of ethics. Thus, "the whole is greater than its part;" "reaction is equal to action;" "the smallest weight may be made to lift the greatest, the difference of weight being compensated by time;" and many the like propositions, which have an ethical as well as physical sense. These propositions have a much more extensive and universal sense when applied to human life, than when confined to technical use.
Ralph Waldo Emerson (Nature)
to argument, aware of human fallibility and open to the lessons of experience. An understanding that small, open social institutions, if no larger than a café or more overtly political than a park, play an outsized role in creating free minds and securing public safety. A faith in rational debate, rather than inherited ritual, and in reform, rather than either revolution or reaction. A belief in radical change through practial measures. A readiness to act—nonviolently but visibly and sometimes in the face of threatened violence—on behalf of equality. A belief that life should be fair—or fairer, or as fair as seems fair: people’s lives should not be overdetermined by who their parents were or how much money they might have inherited or what shade of skin their genes have woven. A belief that the individual pursuit of eccentric happiness can be married to a common faith in fair procedure.
Adam Gopnik (A Thousand Small Sanities: The Moral Adventure of Liberalism)
That this is not likely to happen is due to a great many reasons, most hidden and powerful among them the Negro’s real relation to the white American. This relation prohibits, simply, anything as uncomplicated and satisfactory as pure hatred. In order really to hate white people, one has to blot so much out of the mind—and the heart—that this hatred itself becomes an exhausting and self-destructive pose. But this does not mean, on the other hand, that love comes easily: the white world is too powerful, too complacent, too ready with gratuitous humiliation, and, above all, too ignorant and too innocent for that. One is absolutely forced to make perpetual qualifications and one’s own reactions are always canceling each other out. It is this, really, which has driven so many people mad, both white and black. One is always in the position of having to decide between amputation and gangrene. Amputation is swift but time may prove that the amputation was not necessary—or one may delay the amputation too long. Gangrene is slow, but it is impossible to be sure that one is reading one’s symptoms right. The idea of going through life as a cripple is more than one can bear, and equally unbearable is the risk of swelling up slowly, in agony, with poison. And the trouble, finally, is that the risks are real even if the choices do not exist.
James Baldwin (Notes of a Native Son)
If it can be controlled in thermonuclear reactions, it turns out that the energy that can be obtained from 10 quarts of water per second is equal to all of the electrical power generated in the United States. With 150 gallons of running water a minute, you have enough fuel to supply all the energy which is used in the United States today! Therefore it is up to the physicist to figure out how to liberate us from the need for having energy. It can be done.
Richard P. Feynman (The Feynman Lectures on Physics)
Anybody who has done high school physics knows Newton’s Third Law. For every action there is an equal and opposite reaction. You push against a wall; it pushes back against you. I love the poetry hidden in these truths, in the many laws we’ve discovered that underpin the universal fabric. We search for meaning ever hungrier, perhaps even with desperation: the symmetry in the equations freaks us out; for all we know, there is just us on this lonely little marble in the inky void.
Sean J. Halford (Stronger Than Lions)
… There is absolutely no reasonable explanation for racial prejudice. It is all caused by unreasoning emotional reactions and these are gained in early childhood. Let the little child’s mind be poisoned by prejudice of this kind and it is practically impossible to remove these impressions, however many years he may have of teaching by philosophers, religious leaders or patriotic citizens. If segregation is wrong, then the place to stop it is in the first grade and not in graduate colleges.
Richard Kluger (Simple Justice: The History of Brown v. Board of Education and Black America's Struggle for Equality)
An initial counter to a radical scepticism is that magic does not derive from strange whims or deliberate irrationality. Much effort has gone into the construction of a mechanistic universe in Western thought, in which planets or atoms are moved by forces, and living things are characterized by biochemical reactions or sometimes the firing of neurons. Equal effort in other cultures has gone into denying differences between the animate and the inanimate, the living and non-living, the human and non-human.
Chris Gosden (Magic: A History: From Alchemy to Witchcraft, from the Ice Age to the Present)
One organism is able to take in nourishment and assimilate it almost completely into its own nature; another with equal persistence eliminates it with every sign of passionate resistance. Thus Origen on one side, and Tertullian on the other, reacted in diametrically opposite ways to Gnosis. Their reaction is not only characteristic of the two personalities and their philosophical outlook; it is of fundamental significance with regard to the position of Gnosis in the spiritual life and religious currents of that age.1
C.G. Jung (Collected Works of C. G. Jung, Volume 6: Psychological Types (The Collected Works of C. G. Jung))
The woman who comes to know the goddess grows in the understanding of that divine aspect of her feminine nature that is part of the Self, the archetype of wholeness and the regulating center of the personality. She is not contaminated by external circumstances or overly affected by criticism. The woman conscious of the goddess cares for her body with proper nutrition and exercise and enjoys the ceremonies of bathing, cosmetics and dress. This is not just for the superficial purpose of personal appeal, which is related to ego gratification, but out of respect for the nature of the feminine. Her beauty derives from a vital connection to the Self. Such a woman is virginal. This has nothing to do with a physical state, but with an inner attitude. She is not dependent on the reactions of others to define her own being. The virginal woman is not just a counterpart to the male, whether father, lover or husband. She stands as an equal in her own right. She is not governed by an abstract idea of what she "should" be like or "what people will think.
Nancy Qualls-Corbett (The Sacred Prostitute: Eternal Aspect of the Feminine (Studies in Jungian Psychology by Jungian Analysts, 32))
Much, much later. when I am back home and being treated for Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD). I will be enabled to see what was going on in my mind immediately after 11 August. I am still capable of operating mechanically as a soldier in these following days. But operating mechanically as a soldier is now all I am capable of. Martin says he is worried about me. He says I have the thousand-yard stare'. Of course, I cannot see this stare. But by now we both have more than an idea what it means. So, among all the soldiers here, this is nothing to be ashamed of. But as it really does just go with the territory we find ourselves in. it is just as equally not a badge of honour. Martin is seasoned enough to never even think this. but I know of young men back home, sitting in front of war films and war games, who idolise this condition as some kind of mark of a true warrior. But from where I sit, if indeed I do have this stare, this pathetically naive thinking is a crock of shit. Because only some pathetically naive soul who had never felt this nothingness would say something so fucking dumb. You are no longer human, with all those depths and highs and nuances of emotion that define you as a person. There is no feeling any more, because to feel any emotion would also be to beckon the overwhelming blackness from you. My mind has now locked all this down. And without any control of this self-defence mechanism my subconscious has operated. I do not feel any more. But when I close my eyes. I see the dead Taliban looking into this blackness. And I see the Afghan soldier's face staring into it, singing gently as he slips into another world. And I see Dave Hicks's face. shaking gently as he tries to stay awake in this one. With this, I lift myself up, sitting foetal and hugging my knees on my sleeping mat.
Jake Wood (Among You: The Extraordinary True Story of a Soldier Broken By War)
And then she kissed him on the mouth. It was one of those Russian kisses, the sort that are exchanged in that vast, soulful land at high Christian feasts, as a token and seal of love. But even as we record this kiss exchanged between a notoriously “subtle” young man and a charming, slinking, and still equally young woman, we cannot help finding in it a reminder of Dr. Krokowski’s elaborate, if not always unobjectionable way of speaking about love in a gently irresolute sense, so that one was never quite sure whether he meant its sanctified or more passionate and fleshly forms. Are we doing the same thing here, or were Hans Castorp and Clavdia Chauchat doing the same with their Russian kiss? But what would be our readers’ reaction if we simply refused to get to the bottom of that question? In our opinion, it is analytically correct, although—to use Hans Castorp’s phrase—“terribly gauche” and downright life-denying, to make a “tidy” distinction between sanctity and passion in matters of love. What’s this about “tidy”? What’s this about gentle irresolution and ambiguity? Isn’t it grand, isn’t it good, that language has only one word for everything we associate with love – from utter sanctity to the most fleshly lust? The result is perfect clarity in ambiguity, for love cannot be disembodied even in its most sanctified forms, nor is it without sanctity even at its most fleshly. Love is always simply itself, both as a subtle affirmation of life and as the highest passion; love is our sympathy with organic life, the touchingly lustful embrace of what is destined to decay – caritas is assuredly found in the most admirable and most depraved passions. Irresolute? But in God’s good name, leave the meaning of love unresolved! Unresolved – that is life and humanity, and it would betray a dreary lack of subtlety to worry about it.
Thomas Mann (The Magic Mountain)
Now,” Samite continued, “after Essel has just spent time warning you about generalities and how they often don’t apply, I’m going to use some. Because some generalities are true often enough that we have to worry about them. So here’s one: men will physically fight for status. Women, generally, are more clever. The why of it doesn’t matter: learned, innate, cultural, who cares? You see the chest-bumping, the name-calling, performing for their fellows, what they’re really doing is getting the juices flowing. That interval isn’t always long, but it’s long enough for men to trigger the battle juice. That’s the terror or excitation that leads people to fight or run. It can be useful in small doses or debilitating in large ones. Any of you have brothers, or boys you’ve fought with?” Six of the ten raised their hands. “Have you ever had a fight with them—verbal or physical—and then they leave and come back a little later, and they’re completely done fighting and you’re just fully getting into it? They look like they’ve been ambushed, because they’ve come completely off the mountain already, and you’ve just gotten to the top?” “Think of it like lovemaking,” Essel said. She was a bawdy one. “Breathe in a man’s ear and tell him to take his trousers off, and he’s ready to go before you draw your next breath. A woman’s body takes longer.” Some of the girls giggled nervously. “Men can switch on very, very fast. They also switch off from that battle readiness very, very fast. Sure, they’ll be left trembling, sometimes puking from it, but it’s on and then it’s off. Women don’t do that. We peak slower. Now, maybe there are exceptions, maybe. But as fighters, we tend to think that everyone reacts the way we do, because our own experience is all we have. In this case, it’s not true for us. Men will be ready to fight, then finished, within heartbeats. This is good and bad. “A man, deeply surprised, will have only his first instinctive response be as controlled and crisp as it is when he trains. Then that torrent of emotion is on him. We spend thousands of hours training that first instinctive response, and further, we train to control the torrent of emotion so that it raises us to a heightened level of awareness without making us stupid.” “So the positive, for us Archers: surprise me, and my first reaction will be the same as my male counterpart’s. I can still, of course, get terrified, or locked into a loop of indecision. But if I’m not, my second, third, and tenth moves will also be controlled. My hands will not shake. I will be able to make precision movements that a man cannot. But I won’t have the heightened strength or sensations until perhaps a minute later—often too late. “Where a man needs to train to control that rush, we need to train to make it closer. If we have to climb a mountain more slowly to get to the same height to get all the positives, we need to start climbing sooner. That is, when I go into a situation that I know may be hazardous, I need to prepare myself. I need to start climbing. The men may joke to break the tension. Let them. I don’t join in. Maybe they think I’m humorless because I don’t. Fine. That’s a trade I’m willing to make.” Teia and the rest of the girls walked away from training that day somewhat dazed, definitely overwhelmed. What Teia realized was that the women were deeply appealing because they were honest and powerful. And those two things were wed inextricably together. They said, I am the best in the world at what I do, and I cannot do everything. Those two statements, held together, gave them the security to face any challenge. If her own strengths couldn’t surmount an obstacle, her team’s strengths could—and she was unembarrassed about asking for help where she needed it because she knew that what she brought to the team would be equally valuable in some other situation.
Brent Weeks (The Blinding Knife (Lightbringer, #2))
Louis XIV was a very proud and self-confident man. He had such and such mistresses, and such and such ministers, and he governed France badly. The heirs of Louis XIV were also weak men, and also governed France badly. They also had such and such favourites and such and such mistresses. Besides which, certain persons were at this time writing books. By the end of the eighteenth century there gathered in Paris two dozen or so persons who started saying that all men were free and equal. Because of this in the whole of France people began to slaughter and drown each other. These people killed the king and a good many others. At this time there was a man of genius in France – Napoleon. He conquered everyone everywhere, i.e. killed a great many people because he was a great genius; and, for some reason, he went off to kill Africans, and killed them so well, and was so clever and cunning, that, having arrived in France, he ordered everyone to obey him, which they did. Having made himself Emperor he again went to kill masses of people in Italy, Austria and Prussia. And there too he killed a great many. Now in Russia there was the Emperor Alexander, who decided to reestablish order in Europe, and therefore fought wars with Napoleon. But in the year ’07 he suddenly made friends with him, and in the year ’11 quarrelled with him again, and they both again began to kill a great many people. And Napoleon brought six hundred thousand men to Russia and conquered Moscow. But then he suddenly ran away from Moscow, and then the Emperor Alexander, aided by the advice of Stein and others, united Europe to raise an army against the disturber of her peace. All Napoleon’s allies suddenly became his enemies; and this army marched against Napoleon, who had gathered new forces. The allies conquered Napoleon, entered Paris, forced Napoleon to renounce the throne, and sent him to the island of Elba, without, however, depriving him of the title of Emperor, and showing him all respect, in spite of the fact that five years before, and a year after, everyone considered him a brigand and beyond the law. Thereupon Louis XVIII, who until then had been an object of mere ridicule to both Frenchmen and the allies, began to reign. As for Napoleon, after shedding tears before the Old Guard, he gave up his throne, and went into exile. Then astute statesmen and diplomats, in particular Talleyrand, who had managed to sit down before anyone else in the famous armchair1 and thereby to extend the frontiers of France, talked in Vienna, and by means of such talk made peoples happy or unhappy. Suddenly the diplomats and monarchs almost came to blows. They were almost ready to order their troops once again to kill each other; but at this moment Napoleon arrived in France with a battalion, and the French, who hated him, all immediately submitted to him. But this annoyed the allied monarchs very much and they again went to war with the French. And the genius Napoleon was defeated and taken to the island of St Helena, having suddenly been discovered to be an outlaw. Whereupon the exile, parted from his dear ones and his beloved France, died a slow death on a rock, and bequeathed his great deeds to posterity. As for Europe, a reaction occurred there, and all the princes began to treat their peoples badly once again.
Isaiah Berlin (Russian Thinkers)
Maybe the problem was that we hadn’t actually been in a beginning, not starting a chain reaction but still riding out an old one. I was still trying to escape my feelings for Alexei, my guilt about Oliver, hoping Redwood would turn out to be the key that freed me. Maybe he was hoping I was something equally improbable. We think each new romantic prospect, each new lover, is a fresh start, but really we’re just tacking into the wind, each new trajectory determined by the last, plotting a jagged yet unbroken line of reactions through our lives. That was part of the problem: I was always just reacting, always just getting buffeted along, never setting a destination.
Maggie Shipstead (Great Circle)
Today, we’re learning about ripples. Different objects cause different wave and ripple patterns,” the teacher said. “What is the only way to stop a ripple, according to the laws of physics?” “Help it dissipate to its smallest energy state,” a student answered. “Excellent. How do we do that?” “Calm the pond,” Charlie answered. “That’s right. You need to calm the pond somehow. So how do we do that?” “You need to cause something to happen that provides an equal and opposite reaction?” Bernie said, unsure. “Exactly! What happens when you have two forces, equal and opposite, colliding?” “They cancel each other out!” a student at the front of the class called out.
N.A. Leigh (Mr. Hinkle's Verum Ink: the navy blue book (Mr. Hinkle's Verium Ink 1))
The evolutionary process of productive adaption and ascent—the process of seeking, obtaining, and pursuing more and more ambitious goals—does not just pertain to how individuals and society move forward. It is equally relevant when dealing with setbacks, which are inevitable. At some point in your life you will crash in a big way. You might fail at your job or with your family, lose a loved one, suffer a serious accident or illness, or discover the life you imagined is out of reach forever. There are a whole host of ways that something will get you . At such times, you will be in pain and might think that you don’t have the strength to go on. You almost always do, however; your ultimate success will depend on you realizing that fact, even though it might not seem that way at the moment. This is why many people who have endured setbacks that seems devastating at the time ended up happy as (or even happier than) they originally were after they successfully adapted to them. The quality of your life will depend on the choices you make at those painful moments. The faster one appropriately adapts, the better. No matter what you want out of life, your ability to adapt and move quickly and efficiently through the process of personal evolution will determine your success and your happiness. If you do it well, you can cahnge your psychological reaction to it so that what was painful can become something you crave.
Ray Dalio (Principles: Life and Work)
The more the methods of propaganda have been used to produce excitement, the greater will be the reaction, until in the end a quiet life comes to seem the only thing worth having. When, after a period of repose, the population again becomes capable of excitement, it will need a new stimulus, since all the old stimuli have become boring. Hence creeds which are used too intensively are transitory in their effects. In the thirteenth century, men's imaginations were dominated by three great men: the Pope, the Emperor, and the Sultan. The Emperor and the Sultan have disappeared, and the Pope's power is a pale shadow of what it was. In the sixteenth and early seventeeth centuries, the wars between Catholics and Protestants filled Europe, and all large-scale propaganda was in favour of one or other of the two creeds. Yet ultimate victory went to neither party, but, to those who thought the issues between them unimportant. Swift satirised the conflict in his wars of Big-Endians and Little-Endians; Voltaire's Huron, finding himself in prison with a Jansenist, thinks it equally silly of the government to demand his recantation and of him to refuse it. If the world, in the near future, becomes divided between Communists and Fascists, the final victory will go to neither, but to those who shrug their shoulders and say, like Candide, ‘cela est bien dit, mais il faut cultiver notre jardin’. The ultimate limit to the power of creeds is set by boredom, weariness, and love of ease.
Bertrand Russell (Power: A New Social Analysis (Routledge Classics))
Men, it seems, experience the merest breeze of equality as something like a catastrophic hurricane -- there's a similar exaggeration involved when majority groups feel under attack and consider themselves practically overwhelmed as the victims of racism show the least sign of standing up for themselves. Apart from resistance to renouncing their privilege (whether as men or as white people), this reaction displays the inability of the dominant to to comprehend the experience of the dominated, but perhaps also, despite their indignant protestations of innocence, an appallingly guilty conscience, acknowledging something along the lines of: 'We are hurting them so badly that, if we give them the tiniest room for maneuver, they will destroy us.
Mona Chollet (In Defense of Witches: The Legacy of the Witch Hunts and Why Women Are Still on Trial)
The experience of stress has three components. The first is the event, physical or emotional, that the organism interprets as threatening. This is the stress stimulus, also called the stressor. The second element is the processing system that experiences and interprets the meaning of the stressor. In the case of human beings, this processing system is the nervous system, in particular the brain. The final constituent is the stress response, which consists of the various physiological and behavioural adjustments made as a reaction to a perceived threat. We see immediately that the definition of a stressor depends on the processing system that assigns meaning to it. The shock of an earthquake is a direct threat to many organisms, though not to a bacterium. The loss of a job is more acutely stressful to a salaried employee whose family lives month to month than to an executive who receives a golden handshake. Equally important is the personality and current psychological state of the individual on whom the stressor is acting. The executive whose financial security is assured when he is terminated may still experience severe stress if his self-esteem and sense of purpose were completely bound up with his position in the company, compared with a colleague who finds greater value in family, social interests or spiritual pursuits. The loss of employment will be perceived as a major threat by the one, while the other may see it as an opportunity. There is no uniform and universal relationship between a stressor and the stress response. Each stress event is singular and is experienced in the present, but it also has its resonance from the past. The intensity of the stress experience and its long-term consequences depend on many factors unique to each individual. What defines stress for each of us is a matter of personal disposition and, even more, of personal history. Selye discovered that the biology of stress predominantly affected three types of tissues or organs in the body: in the hormonal system, visible changes occurred in the adrenal glands; in the immune system, stress affected the spleen, the thymus and the lymph glands; and the intestinal lining of the digestive system. Rats autopsied after stress had enlarged adrenals, shrunken lymph organs and ulcerated intestines.
Gabor Maté (When the Body Says No: The Cost of Hidden Stress)
Visitors to the exhibit were instructed to place a finger on a sensor that detected their pulse; the readout of the sensor was visible only to Ainley. “Please tell me when your heart beats,” she would say to each patron who stepped forward. An elderly couple who stopped by the booth had very different reactions to Ainley’s request. “How on earth would I know what my heart is doing?” the woman asked incredulously. Her husband turned and stared at her, equally dumbfounded. “But of course you know,” he exclaimed. “Don’t be so stupid, everyone knows what their heartbeat is!” “He had always been able to hear his heart, and she had never been able to hear hers,” Ainley observed in an interview, smiling at the memory. “They had been married for decades, but they had never talked of or even recognized this difference between them.
Annie Murphy Paul (The Extended Mind: The Power of Thinking Outside the Brain)
Kelly McGonigal, a health psychologist at Stanford University, warned about the dangers of stress for a full decade before she realized that maybe it was her advice, rather than stress itself, that was sending people to their graves faster. “I’m converting a stimulus [stress] that could be strengthening people into a source of disease.” With a breakthrough in her thinking, and some powerful new research, McGonigal made a complete turnaround. Turns out, stress might just be our friend. Just as you put stress on a muscle to make it stronger (by lifting weights or running), emotional stress can make us physically and psychologically stronger too. McGonigal now highlights new research showing that when you change your mind about stress, you can literally change your body’s physical reaction to it. In an eight-year study, adults who experienced a “lot of stress” and who believed stress was harmful to their health had a 43% increase in their risk of dying. (That sure stressed me out.) However, people who experienced an equal amount of stress but did not view stress as harmful were no more likely to die! McGonigal says that physical signs of stress (a pounding heart, faster breathing, breaking out in a sweat) aren’t necessarily physical evidence of anxiety or signs that we aren’t coping well with pressure. Instead, we can interpret them as indications that our body is energized and preparing us to meet the next challenge. The bottom line is, science has now proven that how you think about stress matters—the story you attach to stress. Telling yourself it’s good for you instead of harmful could mean the difference between a stress-induced heart attack at 50 or living well into your 90s.
Anthony Robbins (MONEY Master the Game: 7 Simple Steps to Financial Freedom (Tony Robbins Financial Freedom))
Subtracting a day of rest each week has had a profound effect on our lives. How could it not? One day a week adds up. Fifty-two days a year times an average life span is equal to more than eleven years. Take away eleven years of anything in a lifetime, and there will be a change. This is a law of the universe: for every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction. Subtract over a decade of sleep, work, or education, and the entire character of one’s existence is altered. Multiply eleven years times a third of a billion Americans, and you are looking for a lost continent of time. Unfortunately, in our society, it’s not Monday that got mislaid; it’s our Sabbath, our day of rest. If there is to be any hope for recovering the Sabbath, we must first admit that something is missing. Despite reassurances of convenience, safety, and choice, America has been conned.
Matthew Sleeth (24/6: A Prescription for a Healthier, Happier Life)
You’ll notice here in Greenland that the women are very strong, not only physically strong, but in all respects: in politics, business, education level and everything,” she says, adding that roughly half the island’s parliament is female. “Our bishop is a woman, most mayors are women and so forth. There’s never been a fight for gender equality in Greenland. Women have always been powerful in our society. Our God was female, and when the Christians came to Greenland [in the eighteenth century] and said ‘our God is mighty and great and he looks like us,’ our first reaction was: a He? Because not only are our women smarter and more pretty than men, they also give birth, they give life, and when there are problems in society, the women are the ones who are fighting to be sure the society survives. The Inuit language has no difference between he or she, or between mankind and animal,” she adds. “They’re all equal.
Colin Woodard (American Nations: A History of the Eleven Rival Regional Cultures of North America)
Instead, knowledge of past wars establishes only wide parameters of what we can legitimately expect from new ones. The scale of logistics and the nature of technology changes, but themes, emotions, and rhetoric remain constant over the centuries, and thus generally predictable. Athens’s disastrous 415 B.C. expedition against Sicily, the largest democracy in the Greek world, may not prefigure our war in Iraq. (A hypothetical parallel to democratic Athens’s preemptive attack on the neutral, distant, far larger, and equally democratic Syracuse in the midst of an ongoing though dormant war with Sparta would be America’s dropping its struggle with al-Qaeda to invade India). But the story of the Sicilian calamity and the changing Athenian public reaction to it, as reported and analyzed by the historian Thucydides, do instruct us on how consensual societies can clamor for war—yet soon become disheartened and predicate their support only on the perceived pulse of the battlefield.
Victor Davis Hanson (The Father of Us All: War and History, Ancient and Modern)
What about people who want to use me, manipulate or control me? Am I to surrender to them?   They are cut off from Being, so they unconsciously attempt to get energy and power from you. It is true that only an unconscious person will try to use or manipulate others, but it is equally true that only an unconscious person can be used and manipulated. If you resist or fight unconscious behavior in others, you become unconscious yourself. But surrender doesn’t mean that you allow yourself to be used by unconscious people. Not at all. It is perfectly possible to say “no” firmly and clearly to a person or to walk away from a situation and be in a state of complete inner nonresistance at the same time. When you say “no” to a person or a situation, let it come not from reaction but from insight, from a clear realization of what is right or not right for you at that moment. Let it be a nonreactive “no,” a high-quality “no,” a “no” that is free of all negativity and so creates no further suffering.
Eckhart Tolle (The Power of Now: A Guide to Spiritual Enlightenment)
I never felt able to describe my emotional reactions when I first came face to face with indisputable evidence of Nazi brutality and ruthless disregard of every shred of decency. I have never at any other time experienced an equal sense of shock. I visited every nook and cranny of the camp because I felt it my duty to be in a position from then on to testify at first hand about these things in case there ever grew up at home the belief or assumption that "the stories of Nazi brutality were just propaganda." Some members of the visiting party were unable to go through the ordeal. I not only did so but as soon as I returned to Patton's headquarters that evening I sent communications to both Washington and London, urging the two governments to send instantly to Germany a random group of newspaper editors and representative groups from the national legislatures. I felt that the evidence should be immediately placed before the American and British publics in a fashion that would leave no room for cynical doubt.
Dwight D. Eisenhower
To control the release of energy by a nuclear reactor, ‘control rods’ are used. RBMK control rods are long, thin cylinders, composed mostly of neutron-absorbing boron carbide to hinder the reaction. The tips of each rod are made of graphite to prevent cooling water (which is also a neutron absorber) from entering the space the rod’s boron had occupied as it is withdrawn from the core, in order for that section to have a greater impact upon reactivity when reinserted. Chernobyl’s 211 control rods descend down into the core from above as necessary, and are aided in their role by an extra 24 special shortened ‘absorber rods’. These absorber rods ensure an even distribution of power across the entire width of the core by inserting upwards from below. The more control rods that are inserted into the reactor core, and the further they penetrate, the lower the levels of power will be. Conversely, fewer rods equals more power. Every control rod can be inserted together, penetrating as near or as far as the operator wishes, or they can be disconnected and inserted in groups, depending on requirements.77
Andrew Leatherbarrow (Chernobyl 01:23:40: The Incredible True Story of the World's Worst Nuclear Disaster)
THE EGO IS NOT PERSONAL On a collective level, the mind-set “We are right and they are wrong” is particularly deeply entrenched in those parts of the world where conflict between two nations, races, tribes, religions, or ideologies is long-standing, extreme, and endemic. Both sides of the conflict are equally identified with their own perspective, their own “story,” that is to say, identified with thought. Both are equally incapable of seeing that another perspective, another story, may exist and also be valid. Israeli writer Y. Halevi speaks of the possibility of “accommodating a competing narrative,”3 but in many parts of the world, people are not yet able or willing to do that. Both sides believe themselves to be in possession of the truth. Both regard themselves as victims and the “other” as evil, and because they have conceptualized and thereby dehumanized the other as the enemy, they can kill and inflict all kinds of violence on the other, even on children, without feeling their humanity and suffering. They become trapped in an insane spiral of perpetration and retribution, action and reaction.
Eckhart Tolle (A New Earth: Awakening to Your Life's Purpose)
The combination of loss aversion and narrow framing is a costly curse. Individual investors can avoid that curse, achieving the emotional benefits of broad framing while also saving time and agony, by reducing the frequency with which they check how well their investments are doing. Closely following daily fluctuations is a losing proposition, because the pain of the frequent small losses exceeds the pleasure of the equally frequent small gains. Once a quarter is enough, and may be more than enough for individual investors. In addition to improving the emotional quality of life, the deliberate avoidance of exposure to short-term outcomes improves the quality of both decisions and outcomes. The typical short-term reaction to bad news is increased loss aversion. Investors who get aggregated feedback receive such news much less often and are likely to be less risk averse and to end up richer. You are also less prone to useless churning of your portfolio if you don’t know how every stock in it is doing every day (or every week or even every month). A commitment not to change one’s position for several periods (the equivalent of “locking in” an investment) improves financial performance.
Daniel Kahneman (Thinking, Fast and Slow)
If you’re hoping for a good meal, you’ve come to the wrong place. Miss Cameron has already attempted to sacrifice herself on the altar of domesticity this morning, and we both narrowly escaped death from her efforts. I’m cooking supper,” he finished, “and it may not be much better.” “I’ll try my hand at breakfast,” the vicar volunteered good-naturedly. When Elizabeth was out of earshot, Ian said quietly, “How badly is the woman hurt?” “It’s hard to say, considering that she was almost too angry to be coherent. Or it might have been the laudanum that did it.” “Did what?” The vicar paused a moment to watch a bird hop about in the rustling leaves overhead, then he said, “She was in a rare state. Quite confused. Angry, too. On the one hand, she was afraid you might decide to express your ‘tender regard’ for Lady Cameron, undoubtedly in much the way you were doing it when I arrived.” When his gibe evoked nothing but a quirked eyebrow from his imperturbable nephew, Duncan sighed and continued, “At the same time, she was equally convinced that her young lady might try to shoot you with your own gun, which I distinctly understood her to say the young lady had already tried to do. It is that which I feared when I heard the gunshots that sent me galloping up here.” “We were shooting at targets.” The vicar nodded, but he was studying Ian with an intent frown. “Is something else bothering you?” Ian asked, noting the look. The vicar hesitated, then shook his head slightly, as if trying to dismiss something from his mind. “Miss Throckmorton-Jones had more to say, but I can scarcely credit it.” “No doubt it was the laudanum,” Ian said, dismissing the matter with a shrug. “Perhaps,” he said, his frown returning. “Yet I have not taken laudanum, and I was under the impression you are about to betroth yourself to a young woman named Christina Taylor.” “I am.” His face turned censorious. “Then what excuse can you have for the scene I just witnessed a few minutes ago?” Ian’s voice was clipped. “Insanity.” They walked back to the house, the vicar silent and thoughtful, Ian grim. Duncan’s untimely arrival had not bothered him, but now that his passion had finally cooled he was irritated as hell with his body’s uncontrollable reaction to Elizabeth Cameron. The moment his mouth touched hers it was as if his brain went dead. Even though he knew exactly what she was, in his arms she became an alluring angel.
Judith McNaught (Almost Heaven (Sequels, #3))
Pigs come here to feed on the garbage heap for two reasons really, the first half because they can do no other work, frustrated men soon to develop sadistic mannerisms; and the second half, sadists out front, suffering under the restraints placed upon them by an equally sadistic-vindictive society. The sadist knows that to practice his religion upon the society at large will bring down upon his head their sadistic reaction. Killing is great fun, but not at the risk of getting killed (note how they squeak and pull out their hair over losing even one). But the restraints come off when they walk through the compound gates. Their whole posture goes through a total metamorphosis. Inflict pain, satisfy the power complex, and get a check. How can the sick administer to the sick. In the well-ordered society prisons would not exist as such. If a man is ill he should be placed in a hospital, staffed by the very best of technicians. Men would never be separated from women. These places would be surfeited with equipment and meaningful programs, even if it meant diverting funds from another, or even from all other sectors of the economy. It’s socially self-destructive to create a monster and loose him upon the world.
George L. Jackson (Soledad Brother: The Prison Letters of George Jackson)
Talmy points out how the mindset behind force dynamics is very different from our best understanding of force and momentum from Newtonian physics. The force-dynamic model in language singles out one entity and conceives of another as impinging on it, whereas in physics neither object in an interaction is privileged. Language conceives of the agonist as having an inner impulse toward motion or rest, whereas physics treats an object as simply continuing at its current velocity. Language distinguishes motion and rest as qualitatively distinct tendencies, whereas physics treats rest as a velocity that happens to be zero. Language treats the antagonist as exerting a force that is stronger than the intrinsic tendency of the agonist. In Newtonian physics, an action and its reaction are opposite and equal, so a pair of touching objects that are at rest, or are moving at a constant velocity, must exert equal forces on each other (if one force were stronger, the two would accelerate in that direction). In language, things can just happen, without stated causes-The book toppled off the shelf; The sidewalk cracked-whereas in physics every event has a lawful antecedent. And in physics, the distinction between causing, blocking, permitting, and helping plays no obvious role.
Steven Pinker (The Stuff of Thought: Language as a Window into Human Nature)
And you're thinking I just tossed out some casual phrase that you've heard from dozens of guys? Or maybe one in particular,who mattered enough to turn you into a cynic?" At the intensity of his tone she looked up. "Yeah.Something like that.After all, McCord,your reputation precedes you. You're not exactly shy with women. I'm sure you've used plenty of lines like that to get what you want." His eyes,steady on hers,were hot and fierce. His voice was equally fierce. "I'll admit that when I first saw you, my initial reaction was purely physical. A healthy combination of testosterone and lust.What guy could look at you and not feel what I felt? You're beautiful, and bright and independent.And did I mention beautiful?" That brought a smile to her eyes. "But the more I got to know you,the more I realized you weren't just a pretty package.I started learning that you were someone special.Someone I wanted to treat very carefully." "And now?" "I'm still battling lust." There was that grin,sending an arrow straight through her heart. "But there's more here.Much more." He stared at her mouth with naked hunger. "I've waited a long time for this,but now I'm going to have to kiss you.And when I do,I can't promise to stop." She stood very still,heart pounding. "How do you know I'll ask you to?" "Careful.Because unless you tell me to stop,you have to know where this is heading..." In reply she stood on tiptoe to brush her mouth to his,stopping his words. Stopping his heart. He drew in a deep breath and drew her a little away to stare into her eyes. "I hope you meant that." "With all my heart." "Thank God." He dragged her against him and covered her lips with his.Inside her mouth he whispered, "Because, baby,I mean this." She'd waited so long.So long.And it was worth all the time she'd spent waiting and wondering.Here was a man who knew how to kiss a woman and make her feel like the only one in the universe. This kiss was so hot,so hungry, she felt the rush of desire from the top of her head all the way to her toes.And still it spun on and on until she became lost in it. He changed the angle of the kiss and took it deeper until Marilee could feel her flesh heating, her bones melting like hot wax. She wanted to be sensible,to move slowly, but her mind refused to cooperate. With a single kiss her brain had been wiped clear of every thought but one.She wanted this man.Wanted him now.Desperately. When at last they came up for air, she put a hand to his chest. "I need a minute to catch my breath." "Okay." A second later he dragged her close. "Time's up." Her laughter turned into a sigh as he ran nibbling kisses down her throat until the blood was drumming in her temples.
R.C. Ryan (Montana Destiny (McCords, 2))
Here I will mention one more strange thing; but whether this peculiarity was owing to my shadow at all, I am not able to assure myself. I came to a village, the inhabitants of which could not at first sight be distinguished from the dwellers in our land. They rather avoided than sought my company, though they were very pleasant when I addressed them. But at last I observed, that whenever I came within a certain distance of any one of them, which distance, however, varied with different individuals, the whole appearance of the person began to change; and this change increased in degree as I approached. When I receded to the former distance, the former appearance was restored. The nature of the change was grotesque, following no fixed rule. The nearest resemblance to it that I know, is the distortion produced in your countenance when you look at it as reflected in a concave or convex surface—say, either side of a bright spoon. Of this phenomenon I first became aware in rather a ludicrous way. My host's daughter was a very pleasant pretty girl, who made herself more agreeable to me than most of those about me. For some days my companion-shadow had been less obtrusive than usual; and such was the reaction of spirits occasioned by the simple mitigation of torment, that, although I had cause enough besides to be gloomy, I felt light and comparatively happy. My impression is, that she was quite aware of the law of appearances that existed between the people of the place and myself, and had resolved to amuse herself at my expense; for one evening, after some jesting and raillery, she, somehow or other, provoked me to attempt to kiss her. But she was well defended from any assault of the kind. Her countenance became, of a sudden, absurdly hideous; the pretty mouth was elongated and otherwise amplified sufficiently to have allowed of six simultaneous kisses. I started back in bewildered dismay; she burst into the merriest fit of laughter, and ran from the room. I soon found that the same undefinable law of change operated between me and all the other villagers; and that, to feel I was in pleasant company, it was absolutely necessary for me to discover and observe the right focal distance between myself and each one with whom I had to do. This done, all went pleasantly enough. Whether, when I happened to neglect this precaution, I presented to them an equally ridiculous appearance, I did not ascertain; but I presume that the alteration was common to the approximating parties. I was likewise unable to determine whether I was a necessary party to the production of this strange transformation, or whether it took place as well, under the given circumstances, between the inhabitants themselves.
George MacDonald (Phantastes)
We react constantly through life. Breathing, noticing, thinking, swallowing, feeling, and moving are all reactions. Most reactions are not really observed because they are commensurate with their stimuli, but a triggered reaction stands out because it is out of sync with what is actually taking place. When we are triggered, we have unresolved pain from the past that is expressed in the present. The present is not seen on its own terms. The real experience of the present is denied. Although reacting to the past in the present may make sense within the triggered person’s logic system, it can have detrimental effects on those around them who are not the source of the pain being expressed, but are being punished nonetheless. They are acting in the present, but are being made accountable for past events they did not cause and cannot heal. The one being falsely blamed is also a person, and this burden may hurt their life. The person being triggered is suffering, but they often make other people suffer as well. There is narcissism to Supremacy, but there is also a narcissism to Trauma, when a person cannot see how others are being affected. Although the triggered person may be made narcissistic and self-involved by the enormity of their pain, both parties are in fact equally important. And it is the job of the surrounding communities to insist on this.
Sarah Schulman (Conflict Is Not Abuse: Overstating Harm, Community Responsibility, and the Duty of Repair)
And he felt it. Rogal Dorn had been feeling it for days, weeks, building up, up, up, rising over him like a black fog, dragging at his limbs, clogging his mind, making him question every decision he made, every order he gave. He hadn’t had any respite at all, of any kind, for three months. Three months! His sharpness was going now, his reactions were slower. A billion functionaries depending on him for everything, reaching out to him, suffocating him with their endless demands, pleas for help, for guidance. A billion eyes, on him, all the time. And he’d fought, too. He’d fought. He’d fought primarchs, brothers he’d once thought of as equals or betters. He’d seen the hatred in Perturabo’s eyes, the mania in Fulgrim’s, stabbing at him, poisoning him. Every duel, every brief foray into combat, had chipped a bit more off, had weakened the foundations a little further. Fulgrim had been the worst. His brother’s old form, so pleasing to the eye, had gone, replaced by bodily corruption so deep he scarcely had the words for it. That degradation repulsed him almost more than anything else. It showed just how far you could fall, if you lost your footing in reality completely. You couldn’t show that repulsion. You couldn’t betray the doubt, or give away the fatigue. You couldn’t give away so much as a flicker of weakness, or the game was up, so Dorn’s face remained just as it always had been – static, flinty, curt. He kept his shoulders back, spine straight. He hid the fevers that raged behind his eyes, the bone-deep weariness that throbbed through every muscle, all for show, all to give those who looked up to him something to cling on to, to believe in. The Emperor, his father, was gone, silent, locked in His own unimaginable agonies, and so everything else had crashed onto his shoulders. The weight of the entire species, all their frailties and imperfections, wrapped tight around his mouth and throat and nostrils, choking him, drowning him, making him want to cry out loud, to cower away from it, something he would never do, could never do, and so he remained where he was, caught between the infinite weight of Horus’ malice and the infinite demands of the Emperor’s will, and it would break him, he knew, break him open like the walls themselves, which were about to break now too, despite all he had done, but had it been enough, yes it had, no it could not have been, they would break, they must not break… He clenched his fist, curling the fingers up tight. His mind was racing again. He was on the edge, slipping into a fugue state, the paralysis he dreaded. It came from within. It came from without. Something – something – was making the entire structure around him panic, weaken, fail in resolve. He was not immune. He was the pinnacle – when the base was corrupted, he, too, eventually, would shatter.
Chris Wraight (Warhawk (The Siege of Terra, #6))
Healthy skepticism is good. It saves us from being too naive or too cynical. But it is impossible to preserve democracy when the well of trust runs completely dry. The freedoms enshrined in the Bill of Rights and the checks and balances in our Constitution were designed to prevent the self-inflicted wounds we face today. But as our long history reveals, those written words must be applied by people charged with giving life to them in each new era. That’s how African Americans moved from being slaves to being equal under the law and how they set off on the long journey to be equal in fact, a journey we know is not over. The same story can be told of women’s rights, workers’ rights, immigrants’ rights, the rights of the disabled, the struggle to define and protect religious liberty, and to guarantee equality to people without regard to their sexual orientation or gender identity. These have been hard-fought battles, waged on uncertain, shifting terrain. Each advance has sparked a strong reaction from those whose interests and beliefs are threatened. Today the changes are happening so fast, in an environment so covered in a blizzard of information and misinformation, that our very identities are being challenged. What does it mean to be an American today? It’s a question that will answer itself if we get back to what’s brought us this far: widening the circle of opportunity, deepening the meaning of freedom, and strengthening bonds of community. Shrinking the definition of them and expanding the definition of us.
Bill Clinton (The President Is Missing)
For example, highly religious and highly secular people score the same on tests of conscientiousness, coming out higher than those in the third group. In experimental studies of obedience (usually variants on the classic research of Stanley Milgram examining how willing subjects are to obey an order to shock someone), the greatest rates of compliance came from religious “moderates,” whereas “extreme believers” and “extreme nonbelievers” were equally resistant. In another study, doctors who had chosen to care for the underserved at the cost of personal income were disproportionately highly religious or highly irreligious. Moreover, classic studies of the people who risked their lives to save Jews during the Holocaust documented that these people who could not look the other way were disproportionately likely to be either highly religious or highly irreligious.[38] Here is our vitally important reason for optimism, about how the sky won’t necessarily fall if people come to stop believing in free will. There are people who have thought long and hard about, say, what early-life privilege or adversity does to the development of the frontal cortex, and have concluded, “There’s no free will and here’s why.” They are a mirror of the people who have thought long and hard about the same and concluded, “There’s still free will and here’s why.” The similarities between the two are ultimately greater than the differences, and the real contrast is between them and those whose reaction to questions about the roots of our moral decency is “Whatever.
Robert M. Sapolsky (Determined: A Science of Life without Free Will)
In the absence of expert [senior military] advice, we have seen each successive administration fail in the business of strategy - yielding a United States twice as rich as the Soviet Union but much less strong. Only the manner of the failure has changed. In the 1960s, under Robert S. McNamara, we witnessed the wholesale substitution of civilian mathematical analysis for military expertise. The new breed of the "systems analysts" introduced new standards of intellectual discipline and greatly improved bookkeeping methods, but also a trained incapacity to understand the most important aspects of military power, which happens to be nonmeasurable. Because morale is nonmeasurable it was ignored, in large and small ways, with disastrous effects. We have seen how the pursuit of business-type efficiency in the placement of each soldier destroys the cohesion that makes fighting units effective; we may recall how the Pueblo was left virtually disarmed when it encountered the North Koreans (strong armament was judged as not "cost effective" for ships of that kind). Because tactics, the operational art of war, and strategy itself are not reducible to precise numbers, money was allocated to forces and single weapons according to "firepower" scores, computer simulations, and mathematical studies - all of which maximize efficiency - but often at the expense of combat effectiveness. An even greater defect of the McNamara approach to military decisions was its businesslike "linear" logic, which is right for commerce or engineering but almost always fails in the realm of strategy. Because its essence is the clash of antagonistic and outmaneuvering wills, strategy usually proceeds by paradox rather than conventional "linear" logic. That much is clear even from the most shopworn of Latin tags: si vis pacem, para bellum (if you want peace, prepare for war), whose business equivalent would be orders of "if you want sales, add to your purchasing staff," or some other, equally absurd advice. Where paradox rules, straightforward linear logic is self-defeating, sometimes quite literally. Let a general choose the best path for his advance, the shortest and best-roaded, and it then becomes the worst path of all paths, because the enemy will await him there in greatest strength... Linear logic is all very well in commerce and engineering, where there is lively opposition, to be sure, but no open-ended scope for maneuver; a competitor beaten in the marketplace will not bomb our factory instead, and the river duly bridged will not deliberately carve out a new course. But such reactions are merely normal in strategy. Military men are not trained in paradoxical thinking, but they do no have to be. Unlike the business-school expert, who searches for optimal solutions in the abstract and then presents them will all the authority of charts and computer printouts, even the most ordinary military mind can recall the existence of a maneuvering antagonists now and then, and will therefore seek robust solutions rather than "best" solutions - those, in other words, which are not optimal but can remain adequate even when the enemy reacts to outmaneuver the first approach.
Edward N. Luttwak
STAY AN ORIGINAL WORK OF ART In this short lifetime, Why not be -- True to your own voice, Your own story, Your own truths, Your own style, Beat and drum -- Instead of reflect the words, Songs and march of another? Why not use your soul's own Unique language, Instead of constantly try to toot something Not true, suitable or intended For your own instrument, Painting, Song, Or story? Why create an image you cannot produce? And if you can create a brilliant mask, How long will you really be able to hide your true soul Behind it Until its colors and plastic Begin to fade and melt with Time? Do not speak about truth when there is no truth in you. Do not speak about being yourself when you are trying hard to be someone else. Do not keep crying about your pain when you you have no shame creating pain in others. Do not step on truth, or someone else's truth, or someone who fights for truth -- And think there will be no repercussions; For there is more danger in silence, And for every action there will always be a reaction Of opposite or equal measure. Treasure integrity, Treasure your own story and truths. How will people remember you when you want to be an imitation? How will people remember your voice when you want to sound like another? Be so different that everybody will remember you. Be yourself because an original is worth more than a copy. Be true to yourself or your heart will never forgive you; For once you silence the music from your own instrument, Your true purpose and intended path will begin to fade. There is no greater crime Than ignoring your conscience And the truths intended For you to live, learn, And share. So Stay TRUE to YOU In everything You do. That itself is the purest And truest Art.
Suzy Kassem (Rise Up and Salute the Sun: The Writings of Suzy Kassem)
STAY AN ORIGINAL WORK OF ART In this short lifetime, Why not be -- True to your own voice, Your own story, Your own truths, Your own style, Beat and drum -- Instead of reflect the words, Songs and march of another? Why not use your soul's own Unique language, Instead of constantly try to toot something Not true, suitable or intended For your own instrument, Painting, Song, Or story? Why create an image you cannot produce? And if you can create a brilliant mask, How long will you really be able to hide your true soul Behind it Until its colors and plastic Begin to fade and melt with Time? Do not speak about truth when there is no truth in you. Do not speak about being yourself when you are trying hard to be someone else. Do not keep crying about your pain when you you have no shame creating pain in others. Do not step on truth, or someone else's truth, or someone who fights for truth -- And think there will be no repercussions; For there is more danger in silence, And for every action there will always be a reaction Of opposite or equal measure. Treasure integrity, Treasure your own story and truths. How will people remember you when you want to be an imitation? How will people remember your voice when you want to sound like another? Be so different that everybody will remember you. Be yourself because an original is worth more than a copy. Be true to yourself or your heart will never forgive you; For once you silence the music from your own instrument, Your true purpose and intended path will begin to fade. There is no greater crime Than ignoring your conscience And the truths intended For you to live, learn, And share. So Stay TRUE to YOU In everything You do. That itself is the purest And truest Art. Suzy Kassem, "Stay An Original Work of Art" Copyright 1993, The Spring For Wisdom
Suzy Kassem (Rise Up and Salute the Sun: The Writings of Suzy Kassem)
As respects its isolation and its indifference to the basic requirements of all organic activity, the pecuniary power complex discloses a startling resemblance to a newly discovered center in the brain-that which is called the pleasure center. So far as is known, this pleasure center performs no useful function in the organism, unless it should prove that in some still obscure way it plays a part in more functional pleasure reactions. But in laboratory monkeys this localized center can be penetrated by electrodes which permit a micro-current to stimulate the nervous tissue in such a fashion that the flow of current-and hence the intensity of pleasure-can be regulated by the animal himself. Apparently the stimulation of this pleasure center is so rewarding that the animal will continue to press the current regulator for an indefinite length of time, regardless of every other impulse or physiological need, even that for food, and even to the point of starvation. The intensity of this abstract stimulus produces something like a total neurotic insensibility to life needs. The power complex seems to operate on the same principle. The magical electronic stimulus is money. What increases the resemblance between this pecuniary motivation and that of the cerebral pleasure center is that both centers, unlike virtually all organic reactions, recognize no quantitative limits. What has always been true of money, among those susceptible to its influence, applies equally to the other components of the power complex: the abstraction replaces the concrete reality, and therefore those who seek to increase it never know when they have had enough. Each of these drives, for power, for goods, for fame, for pleasure, may-it goes without saying-have as useful a part to play in the normal economy of a community as in the human body itself. It is by their detachment, their isolation, their quantitative over-concentration, and their mutual re-enforcement that they become perverse and life-corroding.
Lewis Mumford (The Pentagon of Power (The Myth of the Machine, Vol 2))
Then, as if he’d figured out what produced the maximum reaction in her, he switched back to Chopin. Just like that night in her childhood, the music slipped past her defenses and produced a deep contraction inside her, equal parts pain and pleasure. It went deeper still, until the tears began to rise, and she could only sit there, crying, trying to display only her expressionless left side so he wouldn’t notice. She’d been numb and it had felt good. Okay, not good. But safe. Manageable. He kept playing, soulful, stirring pieces that seemed chosen for their ability to pierce her heart deeper, deeper. She was crying audibly now, and he stopped and regarded her impassively. It couldn’t have been more awkward. She worked to compose herself and only then did she look up and meet his eyes. “Well,” he said, “I think it’s safe to say that dance is not done with you yet.” She stared at him in disbelief. “You did this on purpose. Tried to provoke a reaction.” “I suppose I did.” What a horrible, disreputable person he was. No wonder Misha had seemed anxious about having him around this weekend. “That was a pretty shitty thing to do.” “Not at all,” he replied. “I was just helping you see where you stand with your art. You need it. It nourishes you. That’s not going to go away just because you’re sidelined for a year or two.” “Two years?” She wasn’t sure which appalled her more, his words or his casual attitude. “Whatever. Point being, you’re still a dancer. It couldn’t be more obvious. That gorgeous body of yours, the way it moves. The way you’re sitting there now, all swept away by the music. You’re a dancer. You can’t not be one. Ever.” The truth of this, the twin emotions of fragile hope and crushing despair, crashed into her. He was right. And right then, the truth hurt. Now that the numbness was gone, it all hurt. The tears rose up again and spilled out. She heard Misha come in through the front door. David looked anxious. “Look, Dena. I just want to make sure you’re looking at the issue clearly.” Misha
Terez Mertes Rose (Outside the Limelight (Ballet Theatre Chronicles, #2))
Between the extreme limits of this series would find a place all the forms of prestige resulting from the different elements composing a civilisation -- sciences, arts, literature, &c. -- and it would be seen that prestige constitutes the fundamental element of persuasion. Consciously or not, the being, the idea, or the thing possessing prestige is immediately imitated in consequence of contagion, and forces an entire generation to adopt certain modes of feeling and of giving expression to its thought. This imitation, moreover, is, as a rule, unconscious, which accounts for the fact that it is perfect. The modern painters who copy the pale colouring and the stiff attitudes of some of the Primitives are scarcely alive to the source of their inspiration. They believe in their own sincerity, whereas, if an eminent master had not revived this form of art, people would have continued blind to all but its naïve and inferior sides. Those artists who, after the manner of another illustrious master, inundate their canvasses with violet shades do not see in nature more violet than was detected there fifty years ago; but they are influenced, "suggestioned," by the personal and special impressions of a painter who, in spite of this eccentricity, was successful in acquiring great prestige. Similar examples might be brought forward in connection with all the elements of civilisation. It is seen from what precedes that a number of factors may be concerned in the genesis of prestige; among them success was always one of the most important. Every successful man, every idea that forces itself into recognition, ceases, ipso facto, to be called in question. The proof that success is one of the principal stepping-stones to prestige is that the disappearance of the one is almost always followed by the disappearance of the other. The hero whom the crowd acclaimed yesterday is insulted to-day should he have been overtaken by failure. The re-action, indeed, will be the stronger in proportion as the prestige has been great. The crowd in this case considers the fallen hero as an equal, and takes its revenge for having bowed to a superiority whose existence it no longer admits.
Gustave Le Bon (سيكولوجية الجماهير)
This evolutionary process of productive adaptation and ascent—the process of seeking, obtaining, and pursuing more and more ambitious goals—does not just pertain to how individuals and society move forward. It is equally relevant when dealing with setbacks, which are inevitable. At some point in your life you will crash in a big way. You might fail at your job or with your family, lose a loved one, suffer a serious accident or illness, or discover the life you imagined is out of reach forever. There are a whole host of ways that something will get you. At such times, you will be in pain and might think that you don’t have the strength to go on. You almost always do, however; your ultimate success will depend on you realizing that fact, even though it might not seem that way at the moment. This is why many people who have endured setbacks that seemed devastating at the time ended up as happy as (or even happier than) they originally were after they successfully adapted to them. The quality of your life will depend on the choices you make at those painful moments. The faster one appropriately adapts, the better.24 No matter what you want out of life, your ability to adapt and move quickly and efficiently through the process of personal evolution will determine your success and your happiness. If you do it well, you can change your psychological reaction to it so that what was painful can become something you crave. 1.8 Weigh second- and third-order consequences. By recognizing the higher-level consequences nature optimizes for, I’ve come to see that people who overweigh the first-order consequences of their decisions and ignore the effects of second- and subsequent-order consequences rarely reach their goals. This is because first-order consequences often have opposite desirabilities from second-order consequences, resulting in big mistakes in decision making. For example, the first-order consequences of exercise (pain and time spent) are commonly considered undesirable, while the second-order consequences (better health and more attractive appearance) are desirable. Similarly, food that tastes good is often bad for you and vice versa. Quite often the first-order consequences are
Ray Dalio (Principles: Life and Work)
I remember that as I sat there, my initial reaction was: flummoxed. Pray to God to heal a baby’s defective heart? Really? But doesn’t God, being omniscient, already know that this baby’s heart is defective? And doesn’t God, being omnipotent, already have the ability to heal the baby’s heart if he wants to? Isn’t the defective heart thus part of God’s plan? What good is prayer, then? Do these people really think that God will alter his will if they only pray hard enough? And if they don’t pray hard enough, he’ll let the baby die? What kind of a God is that? Such coldly skeptical thoughts percolated through my fifteen-year-old brain. But they soon fizzled out. As I sat there looking at the crying couple, listening to the murmur of prayers all around me, my initial skepticism was soon supplanted by a sober appreciation and empathetic recognition of what I was witnessing and experiencing. Here was an entire body of people all expressing their love and sympathy for a young couple with a dying baby. Here were hundreds of people caringly, genuinely, warmly pouring out their hearts to this poor unfortunate man, woman, and child. The love and sadness in the gathering were palpable, and I “got” it. I could see the intangible benefit of such a communal act. There was that poor couple at the front of the church, crying, while everyone around them was showering them with support and hope. While I didn’t buy the literal words of the pastor, I surely understood their deeper significance: they were making these suffering people feel a bit better. And while I didn’t think the congregation’s prayers would realistically count for a hill of beans toward actually curing that baby, I was still able to see that it was a serenely beneficial act nonetheless, for it offered hope and solace to these unlucky parents, as well as to everyone else present there in that church who was feeling sadness for them, or for themselves and their own personal misfortunes. So while I sat there, absolutely convinced that there exists no God who heals defective baby hearts, I also sat there equally convinced that this mass prayer session was a deeply good thing. Or if not a deeply good thing, then at least a deeply understandable thing. I felt so sad for that young couple that day. I could not, and still cannot, fathom the pain of having a new baby who, after only a few months of life, begins to die.
Phil Zuckerman (Living the Secular Life: New Answers to Old Questions)
Our democracy cannot survive its current downward drift into tribalism, extremism, and seething resentment. Today it’s “us versus them” in America. Politics is little more than blood sport. As a result, our willingness to believe the worst about everyone outside our own bubble is growing, and our ability to solve problems and seize opportunities is shrinking. We have to do better. We have honest differences. We need vigorous debates. Healthy skepticism is good. It saves us from being too naive or too cynical. But it is impossible to preserve democracy when the well of trust runs completely dry. The freedoms enshrined in the Bill of Rights and the checks and balances in our Constitution were designed to prevent the self-inflicted wounds we face today. But as our long history reveals, those written words must be applied by people charged with giving life to them in each new era. That’s how African Americans moved from being slaves to being equal under the law and how they set off on the long journey to be equal in fact, a journey we know is not over. The same story can be told of women’s rights, workers’ rights, immigrants’ rights, the rights of the disabled, the struggle to define and protect religious liberty, and to guarantee equality to people without regard to their sexual orientation or gender identity. These have been hard-fought battles, waged on uncertain, shifting terrain. Each advance has sparked a strong reaction from those whose interests and beliefs are threatened. Today the changes are happening so fast, in an environment so covered in a blizzard of information and misinformation, that our very identities are being challenged. What does it mean to be an American today? It’s a question that will answer itself if we get back to what’s brought us this far: widening the circle of opportunity, deepening the meaning of freedom, and strengthening bonds of community. Shrinking the definition of them and expanding the definition of us. Leaving no one behind, left out, looked down on. We must get back to that mission. And do it with both energy and humility, knowing that our time is fleeting and our power is not an end in itself but a means to achieve more noble and necessary ends. The American dream works when our common humanity matters more than our interesting differences and when together they create endless possibilities. That’s an America worth fighting—even dying—for. And, more important, it’s an America worth living and working for.
Bill Clinton (The President Is Missing)
Between 2003 and 2008, Iceland’s three main banks, Glitnir, Kaupthing and Landsbanki, borrowed over $140 billion, a figure equal to ten times the country’s GDP, dwarfing its central bank’s $2.5 billion reserves. A handful of entrepreneurs, egged on by their then government, embarked on an unprecedented international spending binge, buying everything from Danish department stores to West Ham Football Club, while a sizeable proportion of the rest of the adult population enthusiastically embraced the kind of cockamamie financial strategies usually only mooted in Nigerian spam emails – taking out loans in Japanese Yen, for example, or mortgaging their houses in Swiss francs. One minute the Icelanders were up to their waists in fish guts, the next they they were weighing up the options lists on their new Porsche Cayennes. The tales of un-Nordic excess are legion: Elton John was flown in to sing one song at a birthday party; private jets were booked like they were taxis; people thought nothing of spending £5,000 on bottles of single malt whisky, or £100,000 on hunting weekends in the English countryside. The chief executive of the London arm of Kaupthing hired the Natural History Museum for a party, with Tom Jones providing the entertainment, and, by all accounts, Reykjavik’s actual snow was augmented by a blizzard of the Colombian variety. The collapse of Lehman Brothers in late 2008 exposed Iceland’s debts which, at one point, were said to be around 850 per cent of GDP (compared with the US’s 350 per cent), and set off a chain reaction which resulted in the krona plummeting to almost half its value. By this stage Iceland’s banks were lending money to their own shareholders so that they could buy shares in . . . those very same Icelandic banks. I am no Paul Krugman, but even I can see that this was hardly a sustainable business model. The government didn’t have the money to cover its banks’ debts. It was forced to withdraw the krona from currency markets and accept loans totalling £4 billion from the IMF, and from other countries. Even the little Faroe Islands forked out £33 million, which must have been especially humiliating for the Icelanders. Interest rates peaked at 18 per cent. The stock market dropped 77 per cent; inflation hit 20 per cent; and the krona dropped 80 per cent. Depending who you listen to, the country’s total debt ended up somewhere between £13 billion and £63 billion, or, to put it another way, anything from £38,000 to £210,000 for each and every Icelander.
Michael Booth (The Almost Nearly Perfect People: Inside the Nordic miracle - the truth behind the world’s happiest nations.)
Consider, for example, a cichlid fish known as Haplochromis burtoni that comes from the lakes of East Africa.9 In this species, only a small number of males secure a breeding territory, and they are not discreet about their privileged social status. In contrast to their drably beige nonterritorial counterparts, territorial males sport bold splashes of red and orange, and intimidating black eye stripes. The typical day for a territorial male involves a busy schedule of unreconstructed masculinity: fighting off intruders, risking predation in order to woo a female into his territory, then, having inseminated her by ejaculating into her mouth, immediately setting off in pursuit of a new female. Add to this the fact that territorial males boast significantly larger testes and have higher circulating levels of testosterone than submissive nonterritorial males, and a T-Rex view of the situation seems almost irresistible. These high-T fish are kings indeed, presumably thanks to the effects of all that testosterone on their bodies, brain, and behavior. With a large dose of artistic license, we might even imagine the reaction were a group of feminist cichlid fish to start agitating for greater territorial equality between the sexes. It’s not discrimination, the feminist fish would be told, in tones of regret almost thick enough to hide the condescension, but testosterone. But even in the cichlid fish, testosterone isn’t the omnipotent player it at first seems to be. If it were, then castrating a territorial fish would be a guaranteed method of bringing about his social downfall. Yet it isn’t. When a castrated territorial fish is put in a tank with an intact nonterritorial male of a similar size, the castrated male continues to dominate (although less aggressively). Despite his flatlined T levels, the status quo persists.10 If you want to bring down a territorial male, no radical surgical operations are required. Instead, simply put him in a tank with a larger territorial male fish. Within a few days, the smaller male will lose his bold colors, neurons in a region of the brain involved in gonadal activity will reduce in size, and his testes will also correspondingly shrink. Exactly the opposite happens when a previously submissive, nonterritorial male is experimentally maneuvered into envied territorial status (by moving him into a new community with only females and smaller males): the neurons that direct gonadal growth expand, and his testes—the primary source of testosterone production—enlarge.11 In other words, the T-Rex scenario places the chain of events precisely the wrong way around. As Francis and his colleagues, who carried out these studies, conclude: “Social events regulate gonadal events.”12
Cordelia Fine (Testosterone Rex: Myths of Sex, Science, and Society)
My identity as Jewish cannot be reduced to a religious affiliation. Professor Said quoted Gramsci, an author that I’m familiar with, that, and I quote, ‘to know thyself is to understand that we are a product of the historical process to date which has deposited an infinity of traces, without leaving an inventory’. Let’s apply this pithy observation to Jewish identity. While it is tempting to equate Judaism with Jewishness, I submit to you that my identity as someone who is Jewish is far more complex than my religious affiliation. The collective inventory of the Jewish people rests on my shoulders. This inventory shapes and defines my understanding of what it means to be Jewish. The narrative of my people is a story of extraordinary achievement as well as unimaginable horror. For millennia, the Jewish people have left their fate in the hands of others. Our history is filled with extraordinary achievements as well as unimaginable violence. Our centuries-long Diaspora defined our existential identity in ways that cannot be reduced to simple labels. It was the portability of our religion that bound us together as a people, but it was our struggle to fit in; to be accepted that identified us as unique. Despite the fact that we excelled academically, professionally, industrially, we were never looked upon as anything other than Jewish. Professor Said in his book, Orientalism, examined how Europe looked upon the Orient as a dehumanized sea of amorphous otherness. If we accept this point of view, then my question is: How do you explain Western attitudes towards the Jews? We have always been a convenient object of hatred and violent retribution whenever it became convenient. If Europe reduced the Orient to an essentialist other, to borrow Professor Said’s eloquent language, then how do we explain the dehumanizing treatment of Jews who lived in the heart of Europe? We did not live in a distant, exotic land where the West had discursive power over us. We thought of ourselves as assimilated. We studied Western philosophy, literature, music, and internalized the same culture as our dominant Christian brethren. Despite our contribution to every conceivable field of human endeavor, we were never fully accepted as equals. On the contrary, we were always the first to be blamed for the ills of Western Europe. Two hundred thousand Jews were forcibly removed from Spain in 1492 and thousands more were forcibly converted to Christianity in Portugal four years later. By the time we get to the Holocaust, our worst fears were realized. Jewish history and consciousness will be dominated by the traumatic memories of this unspeakable event. No people in history have undergone an experience of such violence and depth. Israel’s obsession with physical security; the sharp Jewish reaction to movements of discrimination and prejudice; an intoxicated awareness of life, not as something to be taken for granted but as a treasure to be fostered and nourished with eager vitality, a residual distrust of what lies beyond the Jewish wall, a mystical belief in the undying forces of Jewish history, which ensure survival when all appears lost; all these, together with the intimacy of more personal pains and agonies, are the legacy which the Holocaust transmits to the generation of Jews who have grown up under its shadow. -Fictional debate between Edward Said and Abba Eban.
R.F. Georgy (Absolution: A Palestinian Israeli Love Story)
Other ideas, particularly the popular image of “God punishing Jesus,” envisaged as a separate, noncovenantal abstract transaction, have come in to take the place of that all-important theme. Many distortions have resulted not only through that teaching but also, ironically, through teachings that, in reaction against the distorted view, have themselves proposed equally unsatisfactory alternatives.
N.T. Wright (The Day the Revolution Began: Reconsidering the Meaning of Jesus's Crucifixion)
In Edmondson’s hospital studies, the teams with the highest levels of psychological safety were also the ones with leaders most likely to model listening and social sensitivity. They invited people to speak up. They talked about their own emotions. They didn’t interrupt other people. When someone was concerned or upset, they showed the group that it was okay to intervene. They tried to anticipate how people would react and then worked to accommodate those reactions. This is how teams encourage people to disagree while still being honest with one another and occasionally clashing. This is how psychological safety emerges: by giving everyone an equal voice and encouraging social sensitivity among teammates.
Charles Duhigg (Smarter Faster Better: The Secrets of Being Productive in Life and Business)
Feelings are like physics. Force generated creates an equal and opposite reaction. Intense passion put into something creates a result equally as passionate
Kim Holden (Franco (Bright Side, #3))
Hypothesis 1: Spiritual Energy Hypothesis 2: Reaction to God’s Light Role of Light of Christ The Light of Christ generates spiritual light within every person. The Light of Christ proceeds from a central location (Kolob) and shines on every person equally. Role of Holy Ghost The Holy Ghost provides spiritual energy that fuels the generation of spiritual light. The Holy Ghost purifies the bond between spirit and body and enhances its interaction with the Light of Christ. How we radiate spiritual light Spiritual energy from the Holy Ghost leads to radiation from the Light of Christ within us. The Light of Christ is reflected, or causes luminescence (i.e., is transformed into spiritual light), from our spirit/body. Effect of our righteousness Our righteousness reduces our resistance to the spiritual energy from the Holy Ghost; thus, we radiate more spiritual light. Our righteousness strengthens our connection to and purification from the Holy Ghost; thus, we radiate more spiritual
Aaron D. Franklin (The Spiritual Physics of Light: How We See, Feel, and Know Truth)
Ultimately, party realignment over civil rights stands as one of the central arcs of 20th century political history. The Democratic Party's evolution from being a defender of slavery, segregation, and white supremacy to a champion of civil rights represented a massive revolution in the political scheme, one that prompted an equally significant reaction, as the Republican Party retreated from its roots in racial liberalism to embrace and exploit the politics of white grievance.
Kevin M. Kruse (Myth America: Historians Take On the Biggest Legends and Lies About Our Past)
Take, for example, a young man who had a distant, narcissistic mother. As an infant or child, he experienced her coldness as abandonment, and to be abandoned must mean he was somehow unworthy of her love. Or similarly, a new sibling on the scene caused his mother to give him much less attention, which he equally experienced as abandonment. Later in life, in a relationship, a woman might hint at disapproval of some trait or action of his, all of which is part of a healthy relationship. This will hit a trigger point—she is noticing his flaws, which, he imagines, precedes her abandonment of him. He feels a powerful rush of emotion, a sense of imminent betrayal. He does not see the source of this; it is beyond his control. He overreacts, accuses, withdraws, all of which leads to the very thing he feared—abandonment. His reaction was to some reflection in his mind, not to the reality. This is the height of irrationality.
Robert Greene (The Laws of Human Nature)
I never got used to the different reactions Jude and I provoked from other people. Often enough, I was congratulated for finding a mature man, as if this spoke highly of me and my intelligence, while Jude received looks that suggested he was too much of a child for women his own age--which was patronizing to me also since, by then, I perceived us to be equals. Of course, I have lived enough years by now to have seen this kind of thing many times over: the husband who leaves his wife for a university girl or a teenager, the family abandoned. It happened to my grandmother. It has even happened to friends of mine. As my mother would say, it starts so much younger than you think. Still, the truth was that it worked both ways--that for whatever sense of youth I restored to Jude, I was attracted to the years of experience he had over me and the knowledge they might hold of things I hadn't yet had time to learn.
Madelaine Lucas (Thirst for Salt)
The idea of reward and punishment also springs from this law. Whatever we sow, we must reap. It cannot be otherwise. [...] If a person spends all his life in evil-thinking and wrongdoing, then it is useless for him to look for happiness hereafter; because our hereafter is not a matter of chance, but follows as the reaction of our present action. [...] We should, however, never lose sight of the fact that all these ideas of reward and punishment exist in the realm of relativity or finiteness. No soul can ever be doomed eternally through his finite evil deeds; for the cause and effect must always be equal. Thus we can see through our common sense that the theory of eternal perdition and eternal heaven is impossible and illogical, since no finite action can create an infinite result. Hence according to Vedanta, the goal of mankind is neither temporal pleasure nor pain, but Mukti or absolute freedom ; and each soul is consciously or unconsciously marching towards this goal through the various experiences of life and death.
Paramananda
The degree to which I was unable to control my energy while performing equaled the degree to which I was learning to hide my true reactions when I wasn’t.
Andrew McCarthy (Brat: An '80s Story)
At this point I should pause for a moment to mention the universe does not care at all who is the attacker and who is the defender in any given situation. If you generate some momentum or some energy, the universe is not going to say, “Good for you. I will now damage your opponent with it.” The universe just takes whatever you generate and spends it in the easiest possible manner. If it is easier to move your opponent back after you punch him with a high-momentum strike, he will move back, but if it is easier to move yourself back after the punch (if he is up against a brick wall), you will push yourself back instead. The same thing goes for energy. If it is easier to compress tissue in your opponent’s body, you will, but if it is easier to spend that energy breaking your own hand (if you punch a brick wall), your hand will suffer the damages. This complete indifference from the universe shows up all the time in physics, including Newton’s third law of motion, which states every action has an equal and opposite reaction. This indifference means your ability to transfer energy and momentum into your opponent depends on how well grounded you are, as well as how compressible you are.
Jason Thalken (Fight Like a Physicist: The Incredible Science Behind Martial Arts (Martial Science))
Lauer then asked the rest of the group: “Ladies, you complained to the U.S. Soccer Federation in the past. What’s been their response when you talk about these equal pay issues?” “You know, Matt, I’ve been on this team for a decade and a half,” said Hope Solo. “I’ve been through numerous CBA negotiations and, honestly, not much has changed. We continue to be told we should be grateful just to have the opportunity to play professional soccer and to be paid for doing it.” Officials from U.S. Soccer braced themselves for the appearance. The Today show had reached out to head of communications Neil Buethe the night before to get a statement. Lauer read the statement on air: “While we have not seen this complaint and can’t comment on the specifics of it, we are disappointed about this action. We have been a world leader in women’s soccer and are proud of the commitment we have made to building the women’s game in the United States over the past 30 years.” With the short heads-up, the federation arranged a conference call with a small, select group of trusted reporters to take place after the Today show aired. They sent information to those reporters showing how the men’s team brought in more revenue and more value to the federation. The men’s team had higher gate receipts and higher TV ratings, which made the men more attractive to sponsors, the federation said. Sunil Gulati—the U.S. Soccer president who had avoided some of the very public fights of his predecessors with the women’s national team—told reporters he was surprised by the filing. “I’m cordial with Sunil, and this wasn’t to spite him,” Lloyd says now. “We just knew we had to step up as a leadership group to make things better for the future. The only way that was going to happen was if we spoke our minds.” Meanwhile, the reaction to the Today show appearance was already spreading quickly on social media—and it was largely in the favor of the women. After all, a record audience had watched them win the World Cup not even a year earlier. Many fans surely assumed the women were being treated like champions. “The
Caitlin Murray (The National Team: The Inside Story of the Women who Changed Soccer)
I’d known this for a while, but the concept had finally solidified in my mind this year during physics class when we’d learned about Newton’s third law: For every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction. It applied to life and hopes and dreams and expectations too.
Penny Reid (Beard with Me (Winston Brothers, #6))
White apathy is a form of white centering, as it is more focused on how tiring and overwhelming antiracism is for people with white privilege over how harmful and abusive racism is to BIPOC. The response of #AllLivesMatter or #BlueLivesMatter to #BlackLivesMatter, not understanding that the social justice movement would not have to exist if all lives were treated as if they mattered equally. The reaction of white fragility when BIPOC
Layla F. Saad (Me and White Supremacy: Combat Racism, Change the World, and Become a Good Ancestor)
Between the extremes of rejectionism and apologetics we have guarded our fragile egos; we have found it all too easy to rely on impulsive reactions, while evading the imperative of moral probity. We claim equality but deny it; we attack democracy but claim it, we brag about women's dignity but violate it; we praise freedom of speech but ignore it; we depend on the West but attack it; and we claim victories but live in defeat.
Khaled Abou El Fadl (The Search for Beauty in Islam: A Conference of the Books)
A lot of what we may call our “ideals” is actually this kind of knee-jerk combative reaction against change. Again, this reflex is different from perceiving an injustice, articulating places where that injustice causes inequality or suffering, and agitating for change. (For example, Martin Luther King Jr. based his civil-rights agitation on an appeal to equal rights. James Earl Ray, who killed Dr. King, was under no actual threat; his actions were based on fear of change and reflexive self-righteousness.)
Martha Beck (The Way of Integrity: Finding the Path to Your True Self)
The biography of John Wesley is surely unique. Here is a man born in the first decade of his century, who sees it through into the last; a man so far in reaction from the tendencies of his age that he seems a living commentary on them, yet so much the child of his age that you cannot think of him as fitting in with any other. A High Churchman in his youth, he makes for himself in the unsympathetic surroundings of Oxford an enclave of primitive observance and of ascetic living; such is his personal influence that he seems destined, if that were possible, to shake Oxford out of its long dream. Dis aliter visum; he undergoes an experience of conversion before his lifetime has reached its mid-point. A sensational conversion; the finished product of the schools becomes the disciple of a foreign visitor to our shores, by no means his match in intellect. Thenceforward, he must fight by other methods, and for the most part with other companions, that battle against irreligion to which he has dedicated his youth. He has made his own soul, but the battle is not yet over; he finds himself in conflict with the men who had been his closest comrades in arms, and who still share his own beliefs but exaggerate their emphasis in a degree which he thinks dangerous. A man who once seemed likely to do great things for the Church of England, yet whose influence, on the whole, was to damage her position in the eyes of his contemporaries; a man, nevertheless, who lived to see something of the old bitterness against him die down, whose age was cheered by public recognition at once welcome, unsought, and unexpected. So far, however, there is nothing unique about John Wesley. A careful reperusal of the foregoing paragraph will show that it all applies equally to the career of Cardinal Newman. Wesley and Newman-you might think that some elfin fate had arranged this odd consent between the stars of the two men, just so as to throw into relief the vast difference there was between them. Newman, so sensitive, so warm in his attachments, so revealing in This content downloaded from his literary confidences, Wesley, so unruffled by opposition, so half-hearted in his familiarities, so circumspect in his admissions; Newman, the recluse, Wesley, a lifelong vagabond in the service of his gospel; Newman, painstaking in his judgements, fastidious in his style, Wesley, leaping to infallible conclusions and throwing them at you with the first words that came to hand; Newman, such a child of the Renaissance, Wesley, so fundamentally a Puritan. And, deeper down, Newman the apostle of religious authority, Wesley, a cheerful experimentalist who in all the hesitations of a lifetime never asked himself by what right he ruled, or on what basis of intellectual certainty he believed.
Ronald Knox (Enthusiasm: A Chapter in the History of Religion)
Whilst people keep repeating "its paradise"... Everything causes an equal and opposite reaction. So instead, why not try saying "here is a big compost heap (Gehenna)"; then the world might become a better place, rather then worse.
wizanda
He also exposed them to a steady stream of Jeffisms: about one-way and two-way doors; how double the experimentation equals twice the innovation; how “data overrules hierarchy” and there are “multiple paths to yes”—an Amazonian notion that an employee with a new idea who gets a negative reaction from one manager should be free to shop it to another, lest a promising concept get smothered in infancy.
Brad Stone (Amazon Unbound: Jeff Bezos and the Invention of a Global Empire)
Nobody knows of a way to make cement without going through this process. It’s a chemical reaction—limestone plus heat equals calcium oxide plus carbon dioxide—and there’s no way around it. It’s a one-to-one relationship. Make a ton of cement, and you’ll get a ton of carbon dioxide.
Bill Gates (How to Avoid a Climate Disaster: The Solutions We Have and the Breakthroughs We Need)
We live in a backwards popsicle. The more you desire a positive, the less positive you obtain. Every action has an equal and opposite reaction, like every thought has an equal and opposite reaction. If you want your popsicle to taste delicious—(because I sure do)—then why would you surrender to a song about the unknown? Everyone has a negative leech inside their mind, so why not identify with negativity to be boundless at the ability to look at the popsicle? (Fuck, I love popsicles). If identifying with negativity rains and floods neutral ions of positivity into your consciousness, can you let anxiety in your mind to say, “Hey?
Briggs
The blind side of any struggle should be embraced because every action has within the seeds of equal or unanticipated reaction.
Oliver Harper, LPC
There are two rooted spiritual realities out of which grow all kinds of democratic conception or sentiment of human equality. There are two things in which all men are manifestly unmistakably equal. They are not equally clever or equally muscular or equally fat, as the sages of the modern reaction (with piercing insight) perceive. But this is a spiritual certainty, that all men are tragic. And this again, is an equally sublime spiritual certainty, that all men are comic. No special and private sorrow can be so dreadful as the fact of having to die. And no freak or deformity can be so funny as the mere fact of having two legs. Every man is important if he loses his life; and every man is funny if he loses his hat, and has to run after it... These, I say, are two roots of democratic reality. But they have in more civilized literature, a more civilized embodiment or form. In literature such as that of the nineteenth century the two elements appear somewhat thus. Tragedy becomes a profound sense of human dignity. The other and jollier element becomes a delighted sense of human variety. The first supports equality by saying that all men are equally sublime. The second supports equality by observing that all men are equally interesting.
G.K. Chesterton (Charles Dickens: A Critical Study)
NEWTON’S FIRST LAW OF EMOTION For Every Action, There Is an Equal and Opposite Emotional Reaction
Mark Manson (Everything Is F*cked: A Book About Hope)
If right now our emotional reaction to seeing a certain person or hearing certain news is to fly into a rage or to get despondent or something equally extreme, it’s because we have been cultivating that particular habit for a very long time. But as my teacher Chögyam Trungpa Rinpoche used to say, we can approach our lives as an experiment. In the next moment, in the next hour, we could choose to stop, to slow down, to be still for a few seconds. We could experiment with interrupting the usual chain reaction, and not spin off in the usual way. We don’t need to blame someone else, and we don’t need to blame ourselves. When we’re in a tight spot, we can experiment with not strengthening the aggression habit and see what happens.
Pema Chödrön (Taking the Leap: Freeing Ourselves from Old Habits and Fears)
cause every action has an equal and opposite reaction,
Mateo Askaripour (Black Buck)
(12) About “Infecting” (一、うつらかすと云事) All things can be infectious. Drowsiness is infectious, as is yawning. Even time is communicable. In large-scale strategy, if you sense that the enemy is agitated and hesitant, pretend not to notice and take your time. Seeing this reaction, the enemy will drop their guard. With your mind set free, attack mercilessly the instant the enemy has been infected by your inaction. With individual combat, loosen your body and spirit and, as your opponent inadvertently follows suit, seize the initiative to attack powerfully and quickly. There is a similar tactic, “making the enemy drunk.” You contaminate his mind by exhibiting listlessness, hesitancy or weakness. Be sure to explore this strategy thoroughly. (13) About “Eliciting Agitation” (一、むかつかすると云事) There are many ways in which one can become agitated, such as being within an inch of danger. A second way is when faced with an impossible task. The third way is through surprise. Study this. In large-scale strategy, it is important to know how to evoke irritation in the enemy. By suddenly assaulting with vim and vigor when they least expect it, and not giving them a chance to recoup, you can seize the initiative and finish them off in their moment of indecision. For individual combat, trick the enemy by moving slowly at first and then suddenly attack him with force. It is imperative to not let up, crushing him according to the movement of his body and the fluctuations of his mind. Learn this method well. (14) About “Invoking Fear” (一、おびやかすと云事) Many things can invoke fear. Fear is aroused when the unexpected happens. With large-scale strategy, fear can be conjured in the enemy not only by what they see. Fear can be incited by bellowing, making something small seem greater in size, or by unexpectedly assaulting their flank. Victory is gained by taking advantage of the enemy’s muddled cadence prompted by a moment of terror. In the case of individual combat, it is important to beat your opponent by doing something unexpected with your body, sword or voice to startle him. Study this well. (15) About “Blending” (一、まぶるると云事) When you clash with the advancing enemy and an impasse has been reached, this is the time to become one with him through “blending.” From within the tussle you must find an opportunity to win. In both large- and small-scale strategy, when the engagement languishes because both are fighting with equal force, blend with the enemy so that it is impossible to make a distinction. From there you can find an opening and to seize victory, winning strongly. Study this tactic in detail.
Alexander Bennett (The Complete Musashi: The Book of Five Rings and Other Works)
We're living in an unparalleled time in human evolution. Many of us are not here to procreate or pursue lifelong relationships, but to experience life-changing trauma that ignites our life's purpose. We are cogs in a collective machine, applying sociopolitical counterweights on either side to maintain a tight and dynamic equilibrium. Our role is to minimise pain and ensure a smooth "right-left" slalom into the soft collapse of current systems, because a fear-induced sharp deviation to the left or right could provoke an equally harsh reaction from the opposite side, resulting in a harsh collapse, restart and lots of pain.
Dr H
Now he grimaced. "I don't know. It sounds like a chick..." He stopped abruptly. "A chick show, huh?" she said, raising an eyebrow. "You know what I meant," he muttered. "What the hell am I going to do, watch a show with 'hot guys' all being angsty?" "Just watch it," she said. "What, right now?" Determined, and equal parts irritated and amused by his reaction, she nudged him to the couch. "It'll take, what, forty minutes? Don't be a baby.
Cathy Yardley (Level Up (Fandom Hearts, #1))
While aesthetic richness has prevailed in Indian spiritual life form ancient times, there has also been a parallel puritanical aspect among Indian people. This puritanism was prevalent in various traditions of monks, and evolved into the systems of Buddhism and Jainism. Monks of these two religious paths prohibited the use of objects that were pleasing to the senses, and prescribed forcible control of the mind and senses, suppression of the emotions and instincts, and renunciation of worldly enjoyments. Those monks who became experts in this austere type of penance often developed supernatural psychic powers like telepathy and hypnotism. Even though Patanjali denounced the attainment of such powers (siddhis) as being impediments to liberation (Yogasutra, IV.36-37) still they tended to have considerable influence on people from all walks of life. Brahmanic thinkers were inflienced as well, but wisely accommodated the ideals and practices of these monks by placing them into the renunciatory and seclusionary periods of a practitioner’s later lifetime (the third and fourth stages which follow the student and householder stages). Tantric theologians did not accept puritanism. Instead they propagated a spiritual path that focused on the simultaneous attainment of enjoyment (bhukti), and liberation (mukti). They accepted both of them as the goal of human life, and developed philosophies and methods that could be followed equally by both monks and householders. They did not approve of any form of forcible control or repression of the mind, emotions, and senses, but rather emphasized that such practices could create adverse reactions that might simply deepen a practitioner’s bondage. — B. N. Pandit, Specific Principles of Kashmir Shaivism (3rd ed., 2008), p. 118.
Balajinnatha Pandita (Specific Principles of Kashmir Saivism [Hardcover] [Apr 01, 1998] Paṇḍita, BalajinnaÌ"tha)
When you and I set out to create anything—art, commerce, science, love—or to advance in the direction of a higher, nobler version of ourselves, we uncork from the universe, ineluctably, an equal and opposite reaction. That reaction is Resistance. Resistance is an active, intelligent, protean, malign force—tireless, relentless, and inextinguishable—whose sole object is to stop us from becoming our best selves and from achieving our higher goals.
Anonymous
All prayer is responding to God. In all cases God is the initiator—“hearing” always precedes asking. God comes to us first or we would never reach out to him.92 Yet all prayers are not alike or equally effective in relating to God. The clearer our understanding of who God is, the better our prayers. Instinctive prayer is like an emergency flare in reaction to a general sense of God’s reality. Prayer as a spiritual gift is a genuine, personal conversation in reply to God’s specific, verbal revelation.
Timothy J. Keller (Prayer: Experiencing Awe and Intimacy with God)
The formula proposed, as I told you, is energy equals the mass times the speed of light squared, and light is very fast indeed. So that with only a little matter, if any of its energy were released into the world…' She shook her head. 'Of course the strong force means that would never happen. But we continue to investigate this element alactin, that the Travancori physicists call Hand of Tara. I suspect its heartknot is unstable, and Piali is beginning to agree with me. Clearly it is very full of the jinni, both yin and yang, in such a fashion that to me it is acting like a droplet of water held together by surface tension, but so big that the surface tension is just barely holding it, and it stretches out like a water drop in the air, deforming this way and that, but held together, just, except for sometimes, when it stretches too far for surface tension, the strong force in this case, and then the natural repulsion between the jinni makes a heartknot split in two, becoming atoms of lead, but releasing some of its bound power as well, in the form of rays of invisible energy. That's what we are seeing on the photographic plates you help with. It's quite a bit of energy, and that's just one heartknot breaking. What we have been wondering what we have been forced to consider, given the nature of the phenomenon – is, if we gathered enough of these atoms together, and broke even one heartknot apart, would the released qi break a lot more of them at the same time, more and more again all at the speed of light, in a space this big,' holding her hands apart. 'If that might not set off a short chain reaction,' she said.
Kim Stanley Robinson (The Years of Rice and Salt)
Newton’s Law of Motion is a law of maya: “To every action there is always an equal and contrary reaction; the mutual actions of any two bodies are always equal and oppositely directed.” Action and reaction are thus exactly equal. “To have a single force is impossible. There must be, and always is, a pair of forces equal and opposite.
Paramahansa Yogananda (Autobiography of a Yogi: (With Pictures) (Unabridged Start Publishing LLC))
Listen - on the tenth night the peg was pulled out of the hasp on Billy's boxcar door, and the door was opened. Billy Pilgrim was lying at an angle on the corner-brace, self-crucified, holding himself there with a blue and ivory claw hooked over the sill of the ventilator. Billy coughed when the door was opened, and when he coughed he shit think gruel. This was in accordance with the Third Law of Motion according to Sir Isaac Newton. This law tells us that for every action there is a reaction which is equal and opposite in direction. This can be useful in rocketry.
Kurt Vonnegut Jr. (Slaughterhouse-Five)
Whether you like it or not, every action has an equal and opposite reaction in this world.
Jessie Lane (Secret Maneuvers (Ex Ops, #1))
In particular, raising blood sugar will increase the production of what are known technically as reactive oxygen species and advanced glycation end-products, both of which are potentially toxic. The former are generated primarily by the burning of glucose (blood sugar) for fuel in the cells, in a process that attaches electrons to oxygen atoms, transforming the oxygen from a relatively inert molecule into one that is avid to react chemically with other molecules. This is not an ideal situation biologically. One form of reactive oxygen species is those known commonly as free radicals, and all of them together are known as oxidants, because what they do is oxidize other molecules (the same chemical reaction that causes iron to rust, and equally deleterious). The object of oxidation slowly deteriorates. Biologists refer to this deterioration as oxidative stress. Antioxidants neutralize reactive oxygen species, which is why antioxidants have become a popular buzzword in nutrition discussions. The
Gary Taubes (Good Calories, Bad Calories: Challenging the Conventional Wisdom on Diet, Weight Control, and Disease)
Indeed, the prevalence of abortion among Protestant women (versus mostly immigrant Catholics) is widely considered by historians to be one of the main reasons that physicians, worried that immigrant Catholics were outreproducing their mainly Protestant social group, led the campaign to criminalize abortions in the late 1800s. Other reasons cited include an upsurge in belief among physicians that the embryo is human life with a full moral status throughout pregnancy, a reaction to the campaign for female equality, concerns about the safety of the abortion procedure, and an attempt to consolidate control of medical practice. Nevertheless,
Jonathan Dudley (Broken Words: The Abuse of Science and Faith in American Politics)
Learning a language and using it is a skill that we all have. It's just a part of daily life, no different from walking or eating. Like with those basic skills, language learning shouldn't be a cause of stress. If you got stressed out from taking a walk, that would be abnormal. Stress when speaking is equally abnormal. The argument that 'stress is normal to start with' is unfounded; after all, we all learn to speak our native tongue with no stress at all. It's more likely that a negative reaction is caused by the situation, not from speaking. You should avoid these types of situations - repeated exposure to this kind of stress will stunt your progress and you'll lose your motivation.
Denis Ivanov (Learning Russian Marathon: How to Speak Russian in 10 Years)
Even the laws of physics sounded asinine coming from her mouth. “Like, for every action, there’s, like, an equal and opposite reaction, like, you know?
Nicole Archer (Road-Tripped (Ad Agency, #1))
The weakening of our democratic norms is rooted in extreme partisan polarization—one that extends beyond policy differences into an existential conflict over race and culture. America’s efforts to achieve racial equality as our society grows increasingly diverse have fueled an insidious reaction and intensifying polarization. And if one thing is clear from studying breakdowns throughout history, it’s that extreme polarization can kill democracies.
Steven Levitsky (How Democracies Die)
Every period of racial progress in this country is followed by a period of retrenchment. That’s what the election was about. It’s like in physics—every action has an equal and opposite reaction.
Hillary Rodham Clinton (What Happened)
I've talked about how important it is for us to be able to step into the shoes and mind of the unknown killer. Through our research and experience, we've found it is equally important—as painful and harrowing as it might be—to be able to put ourselves in the place of the victim. Only when we have a firm idea of how the particular victim would have reacted to the horrible things that were happening to her or him can we truly understand the behavior and reactions of the perpetrator.
John E. Douglas (Mind Hunter: Inside the FBI's Elite Serial Crime Unit)
On the other hand, if we try to hold on to peace due to the fear of losing it, stress will enter the picture. Soon, we will briefly touch on the principle of karma as well as Newton’s third law of physics that says, “For every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction.” The next experience will put all this to the test so you can prove or disprove these concepts for yourself.
Julie T. Lusk (Yoga Nidra for Complete Relaxation and Stress Relief)
Fools are those who do not understand, every action has an equal and opposite reaction. Take your actions carefully to avoid unwanted results
Mayur Ramgir
The apparent strengths of the forces in any field theory depend on two kinds of numerical parameter: the masses (if any) of the particles like W and Z particles that transmit the forces, and certain intrinsic strengths (also known as coupling constants) that characterize the likelihood for particles like photons or gluons or W and Z particles to be emitted and reabsorbed in particle reactions. The masses arise from spontaneous symmetry breaking, but the intrinsic strengths are numbers that appear in the underlying equation of the theory. Any symmetry that connects the strong with the weak and electromagnetic forces, even if spontaneously broken, would dictate that the intrinsic strengths of the electroweak and strong forces should (with suitable conventions for how they are defined) all be equal. The apparent differences between the strengths of the forces would have to be attributed to the spontaneous symmetry breaking that produces differences in the masses of the particles that transmit the forces, in much the same way that the differences between the electromagnetic and weak forces arise in the standard model from the fact that the electroweak symmetru breaking gives the W and Z particles very large masses, while the photon is left massless. But it is clear that the intrinsic strengths of the strong nuclear force and the electromagnetic force are not equal; the strong nuclear force, as its name suggests, is much stronger than the electromagnetic force, even though both of these forces are transmitted by massless particles, the gluons and photons.
Steven Weinberg (Dreams of a Final Theory: The Scientist's Search for the Ultimate Laws of Nature)
For every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction.
Barbara Nickless (Blood on the Tracks (Sydney Rose Parnell, #1))
Somehow he released her hand and pulled his free. He wrapped his arms around her and hauled her against him so her entire body pressed against his. The man was a rock. Big, unyielding and warmed by the sun. She wanted to snuggle even closer. She wanted to rip off her clothes and give the goats something to talk about. She wanted-- He licked her lower lip. The unexpected moist heat made her gasp as fire raced through her. Every singed nerve ending vibrated with need for more. The masculine, slightly piney scent of him surrounded her. Operating only on instinct, she parted her lips to allow him entry. She had a single heartbeat to brace herself for the power of his tongue touching hers. Then he swept inside and blew her away. It was like being inside the space shuttle on take-off. Phoebe might not have any personal experience with space flight, but she could imagine. The powerful force between them left her weak and clinging to his broad shoulders. She trembled and needed and ached with equal intensity. His tongue brushed against hers again. He tasted of coffee and mint and something wonderfully sensual and sweet. His mouth seemed designed for kissing. Maybe it was all that non-conversation. Maybe talking too much undermined a man’s ability to kiss. She didn’t know and didn’t care. All that mattered was the way he stroked her, touched her, teased her. He cupped her head with one hand and ran his other up and down her back. If only this moment would never end. But it did. A sharp bark from somewhere in the distance brought Phoebe back to earth with a rude thunk. She suddenly became aware of being pressed up against a really good-looking stranger, kissing in front of a goat pen. Apparently Zane got a similar wake-up call, because he stepped back at the same second she did. At least the man was breathing hard. She would hate to think she was the only one who had been affected. “Okay, then,” she said when she realized that all feelings to the contrary, she still could breathe. Zane continued to stare at her. She swallowed. “Did you want to say something?” Anything would be fine. Just any old reaction. As long as he wasn’t going to say it was all a mistake. That would really annoy her. Or maybe she was making a big deal out of nothing. Maybe he kissed lots of women out here by the goat pens. “I have to get back to work. Can you find your way to the house?” She blinked at him. That was it? Okay. Fine. As long as she didn’t try to walk on legs that were still trembling, she could pretend nothing had happened. “Sure,” she muttered. “No problem.” He nodded, then bent down and picked up his hat. She frowned. When exactly had that fallen off? He straightened, opened his mouth, then closed it. She wasn’t even surprised when he turned and left without saying a word. It was just so typical. When she was alone, Phoebe tried to work up a case of righteous indignation. When that didn’t work, she went for humor. If nothing else, she had to give Maya credit for the promised distraction. Oh. She also had to remember that as soon as she found out what constituted a treat on the baby-goat food hit list, she would be sure to send a thank-you gift.
Susan Mallery (Kiss Me (Fool's Gold, #17))
The moon has risen. She sits now, at the same spot where she saw the eagle, waiting, waiting for something to come and take her. Have you ever waited for IT? Wondering whether it will come from outside or inside? Finally past the futile guesses at what might happen...now and then re-erasing brain to keep it clean for the Visit...yes wasn't it close to here? remember didn't you sneak away from camp to have a moment alone with What you felt stirring across the land...it was the equinox...green spring equal nights...canyons are opening up, at the bottoms are steaming fumaroles, steaming the tropical life there like greens in a pot, rank, dope-perfume, a hood of smell...human consciousness, that poor cripple, that deformed and doomed thing, is about to be born. This is the World just before men. Too violently pitched alive in constant flow ever to be seen by men directly. They are meant only to look at it dead, in still strata, transputrefied to oil or coal. Alive, it was a threat: it was Titans, was an overpeaking of life so clangorous and mad, such a green corona about Earth's body that some spoiler HAD to be brought in before it blew the Creation apart. So we, the crippled keepers, were sent out to multiply, to have dominion. God's spoilers. Us. Counter-revolutionaries. IT IS OUR MISSION TO PROMOTE DEATH. The way we kill, the way we die, being unique among the Creatures. It was something we had to work on, historically and personally. To build from scratch up to its present status as reaction, nearly as strong as life, holding down the green uprising. But only nearly as strong.
Thomas Pynchon
The language lesson: A+B+C does not necessarily equal C+B+A. The order of presentation determines the reaction.
Frank Luntz (Words That Work: It's Not What You Say, It's What People Hear)
Mr. Bronson,” the little girl chirped innocently, “why did you sleep with two women at your party?” Stunned, Holly realized that Rose had overheard her earlier conversation with Maude. Maude paused in the act of filling the child's plate, the fine china slipping from her hands and clattering on the sideboard. Elizabeth choked on a mouthful of food, somehow managed to swallow and concealed her crimson face with a napkin. When she was able, she glanced at Holly with eyes brimming with equal parts of dismay and mirth, and spoke in a strangled murmur. “Excuse me—my right shoe is pinching—I believe I'll change into another pair.” She fled the scene hastily, leaving the rest of them to stare at Bronson. Of all of them, Bronson was the only one who showed no visible reaction, save for a thoughtful quirk of his mouth. He must have been a very, very good card player, Holly thought. “At times the guests become very tired at my parties,” Bronson said to the child, his tone matter-of-fact. “I was merely helping them to rest.” “Oh, I see,” Rose said brightly. Holly managed to find her voice. “I believe my daughter is finished with her breakfast, Maude.” “Yes, milady.” The maid rushed forward in a panic to gather up the child and quit the mortifying scene. “But Mama,” Rose protested, “I haven't even—” “You may take your plate to the nursery,” Holly said firmly, seating herself as if nothing untoward had occurred. “Right this minute, Rose. I want to discuss something with Mr. Bronson.” “Why don't I ever get to eat with the big people?” the child asked sullenly, accompanying Maude from the room.
Lisa Kleypas (Where Dreams Begin)
In physic,s every action has an equal an opposite reaction. In relationships, every action has an unanticipated and unpredictable reaction
Darren Knott
holes that contract? Doesn’t that mean black holes go against nature?” Carrie Barclay liked to play Devil’s Advocate for no other reason than to drive her teachers crazy. She got a sadistic thrill out of finding holes in her teachers’ lessons and many of them went home exhausted to a bottle of wine. Birbeck, on the other hand, knew Carrie’s game and occasionally liked to play it. “Actually, quite the opposite,” he answered. “The fact that black holes behave in opposition to the nature of the Universe only proves the Universe’s proclivity for expansion. It is their opposition that makes them completely natural. The Universe is filled with opposites. Up and down, in and out, light and dark. Remember the first Newtonian law of physics, ‘Every action …’” “‘… has an equal and opposite reaction,’” answered the entire class in monotone unison. Jade looked around at her new classmates, surprised at their Pavlovian response.
Dylan White (Apparition (The Apparition Series, #1))
ACCORDING TO NEWTON’S THIRD law of motion, every action has an equal and opposite reaction. This holds true for the physical sciences, but in the field of policy reforms and political moves, while every action leads to a reaction, the reaction is not equal to the action. In some cases, the reaction is greater than the action and in others it is the reverse.
Kingshuk Nag (Atal Bihari Vajpayee: A Man for All Seasons)
We do know that in physics, every action has an equal and opposite reaction.
Lee Vickers (Bodies of Light)
Every action has an equal and opposite reaction.
Lee Vickers (Bodies of Light)
For every action there is an equal and opposite re-action. A repercussion.
Brownell Landrum (Repercussions: DUET stories Volume IV - Adult Version)
cliche but accurate: Kick a football, then ask it whether it meant to fly. All action demands an equal and opposite reaction. You can't blame an object battered by inertial forces; you can't blame me, bouncing through the pinball machine of life.
Robin Wasserman (Girls on Fire)
When we trust that we live in an abundant universe and allow ourselves to give freely, we raise our frequency, strengthen our faith, and feel awesome, thereby putting ourselves in flow and the position to receive abundant amounts in return. When we’re in fear, we hold on to what we’ve got because we don’t trust that there’s more. We pinch off the energy, we’re scared to share, and we focus on, and create more of, the very thing we’re hoping to avoid, which is lack. We live in a universe of give and receive, breathe and exhale, live and die, suck and awesome. Each side depends on the other, and each is relative to the other—every action has an equal and opposite reaction—so the more you give, the more you receive. And vice versa. You
Jen Sincero (You Are a Badass®: How to Stop Doubting Your Greatness and Start Living an Awesome Life)
Newton's third law of reciprocal action says for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction that all forces are interactions all forces come in pairs Physics and You spells it out says if body A exerts a force on body B then body B will exert a force of the same magnitude on body A push and pull I think maybe this is what happened with Lisa and you, Ruth - body A and body B
Holly Thompson (Orchards)
I’m surprised you’re here.” Her mouth curved upward. “I warned you I’d be joining you.” He ignored the heat that spread inside him at the sight of her smile. “That’s just it.” Her smile grew wider. “A politician who keeps his word—what a remarkable aberration in the species.” “How could I have forgotten that keen wit of yours?” he marveled. “Yeah, I’m full of surprises. Might want to remember that.” Then, throwing caution to the wind, he let his eyes roam slowly over her, lingering. She’d have to be blind not to see the hunger in them. Which she clearly wasn’t. She retreated a step. He followed, his longer legs closing the distance, until his body almost brushed hers. That cool composer of Lily’s was unraveling, no matter how hard she struggled to pretend otherwise. The signs were there, in the fine trembling of her limbs, in the flush that stole over her porcelain smooth cheeks. Fierce satisfaction filled Sean at her involuntary reaction. He dipped his head until his lips hovered, a soft whisper away. “Lily?” “Yes?” There was a husky catch to her voice. Sean’s fingers reached up and traced the rosy bloom on her cheek. Was it the sweet flush of desire that made her skin so soft? he wondered, his eyes and fingers memorizing every detail, every sensation. God, he’d die for a taste of her. But Sean denied himself the pleasure. He raised his head, putting distance between himself and his greatest temptation, and forced himself to lower his hand. At the loss of contact, Lily’s head jerked, as if coming out of a trance. Sean stepped back before she could flay him alive. “You’re looking a little pink, Lily. I’ve got some zinc oxide in my bag. I’d be happy to put some on you. Especially on those hard to reach places.” He gave her a casual smile and pulled his sunglasses from the breast pocket of his T-shirt, ignoring the violent thudding of his heart against the cotton fabric. His hands shook, too, racked with tremors of need. Somehow, he managed to settle his shades across the slightly crooked bridge of his nose, before shoving them deep into his pocket, out of sight. Damn Sean and his effect on me, Lily swore silently. He had only to bestow the paltriest of caresses and she nearly swooned. Even more galling was the fact that she was equally helpless before Sean’s verbal taunts. The thought of Sean’s hands, slick with lotion, gliding over her body in long, sweeping caresses had her pulse racing. Lily’s voice was filled with contempt—never mind that it was self-directed—as she spoke. “You know, you and John Granger should get to know each other. You could compare notes on really great pickup lines. By the way, Sean, your nose? Does it trouble you still? I hope so.
Laura Moore (Night Swimming: A Novel)
when other-motivated people (no previous SM desires or fantasies) are offered a safe chance to experience it, their reaction will put them into one of three groups with about equal frequency.
Jay Wiseman (SM 101: A Realistic Introduction)
Wanting to get out of pain is the pain; it is not the “reaction” of an “I” distinct from the pain. When you discover this, the desire to escape “merges” into the pain itself and vanishes. Discounting aspirin for the moment, you cannot remove your head from a headache as you can remove your hand from a flame. “You” equals “head” equals “ache.” When you actually see that you are the pain, pain ceases to be a motive, for there is no one to be moved. It becomes, in the true sense, of no consequence. It hurts—period.
Alan W. Watts (The Wisdom of Insecurity)
Mass Mobilization of Youth Despite the well-founded dissatisfaction of the younger generation with the kind of life offered by the bloated affluence of megatechnic society, their very mode of rebellion too often demonstrates that the power system still has them in its grip: they, too mistake indolence for leisure and irresponsibility for liberation. The so-called Woodstock Festival was no spontaneous manifestation of joyous youth, but a strictly money-making enterprise, shrewdly calculated to exploit their rebellions, their adulations, and their illusions. The success of the festival was based ont he tropismic attraction of 'Big Name' singers and groups (the counter-culture's Personality Cult!), idols who command colossal financial rewards from personal appearances and the sales of their discs and films. With its mass mobilization of private cars and buses, its congestion of traffic en route, and its large-scale pollution of the environment, the Woodstock Festival mirrored and even grossly magnified the worst features of the system that many young rebels profess to reject, if not to destroy. The one positive achievement of this mass mobilization, apparently, was the warm sense of instant fellowship produced by the close physical contact of a hundred thousand bodies floating in the haze and daze of pot. Our present mass-minded, over-regimented, depersonalized culture has nothing to fear from this kind of reaction-equally regimented, equally depersonalized, equally under external control. What is this but the Negative Power Complex, attached by invisible electrodes to the same pecuniary pleasure center.
Lewis Mumford (The Pentagon of Power (The Myth of the Machine, Vol 2))
Augustine altered this in the late fourth and early fifth centuries. In reaction against a popular view that lives are determined by either a good god or an evil god who are equal or nearly equal in power (Manichaeism), Augustine insisted that things occur in accordance with the will of one God alone: the Creator God of the Bible. Augustine’s views have been extremely influential throughout church history. Some theologians pushed his view of providence so far that they denied that humans are free (e.g., Gottshalk in the ninth century), but most continued to affirm human freedom while also insisting that God controls all things. This position is called compatibilism, for it insists that belief in human freedom is compatible with the belief that God controls everything. The
Gregory A. Boyd (Across the Spectrum: Understanding Issues in Evangelical Theology)
In particular, the three-dimensional shape of a protein gives it a hand-in-glove fit with other equally specified and complex molecules or with simpler substrates, enabling it to catalyze specific chemical reactions or to build specific structures within the cell. Because of its three-dimensional specificity, one protein cannot usually substitute for another.
Stephen C. Meyer (Signature in the Cell: DNA and the Evidence for Intelligent Design)
Newton's third law says for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction.' And that's what I’m looking for. My opposite, and my equal.” ~ Gavin Slater
Heidi Joy Tretheway
They woke together, the stirring of one causing an equal reaction in the other. Lily thought maybe this was what it meant to be man and wife in every sense. Cade's dark hand lay splayed across her pale abdomen as if safeguarding their child, and his large body curled protectively around hers. She felt more secure than she ever had in her life. Perhaps this was what love was all about. She had certainly never expected to find a man who would hold her and love her as Cade had last night even when she was at her ugliest. Any man who did that had to care for her to some degree. That was all she needed to feed her hopes. If he could truly care for her above and beyond what they had in bed, she would do everything within her power to make him happy.
Patricia Rice (Texas Lily (Too Hard to Handle, #1))
You will find throughout all nature the law of action and reaction, of rest and motion. These two must balance, then there will be harmony and equilibrium. You are here to let the life principle flow through you rhythmically and harmoniously. The intake and the outgo must be equal. The impression and the expression must be equal. All your frustration is due to unfulfilled desire.
Joseph Murphy (The Power of your Subconscious Mind and Other Works)
Duality is the poison that keeps the player in the game, for the circle must complete itself, it is the law of nature, as within, so without. Neutrality is a state of perfect harmony, a level playing field without winners and losers. Neutrality is not without action and, it merely requires equal action and reaction. Only with neutrality can the circle not complete itself and the game can finally end – the players will now be able to find the answers deep within themselves without needing to win or lose the game. For their minds will be set free, duality will be broken and the circle will no longer be able to complete itself.
Janine Helene (Heaven Bearers: The New Age of Deception)