Finding Dory Quotes

We've searched our database for all the quotes and captions related to Finding Dory. Here they are! All 100 of them:

Ideally, what should be said to every child, repeatedly, throughout his or her school life is something like this: 'You are in the process of being indoctrinated. We have not yet evolved a system of education that is not a system of indoctrination. We are sorry, but it is the best we can do. What you are being taught here is an amalgam of current prejudice and the choices of this particular culture. The slightest look at history will show how impermanent these must be. You are being taught by people who have been able to accommodate themselves to a regime of thought laid down by their predecessors. It is a self-perpetuating system. Those of you who are more robust and individual than others will be encouraged to leave and find ways of educating yourself — educating your own judgements. Those that stay must remember, always, and all the time, that they are being moulded and patterned to fit into the narrow and particular needs of this particular society.
Doris Lessing (The Golden Notebook)
I am sure everyone has had the experience of reading a book and finding it vibrating with aliveness, with colour and immediacy. And then, perhaps some weeks later, reading it again and finding it flat and empty. Well, the book hasn't changed: you have.
Doris Lessing
When life gets you down do you wanna know what you’ve gotta do? . . . Just keep swimming. Just keep swimming. Just keep swimming, swimming, swimming.
Colleen Hoover (It Ends with Us (It Ends with Us, #1))
Anyone can have a friend, but the one that would walk in a storm to find you is all you will ever need.
Shannon L. Alder
Just keep swimming.
Dory
I don't know why I still find it so hard to accept that words are faulty and by their very nature innacurate
Doris Lessing (The Golden Notebook)
Washington was a typical American. Napoleon was a typical Frenchman, but Lincoln was a humanitarian as broad as the world. He was bigger than his country - bigger than all the Presidents together. We are still too near to his greatness,' (Leo) Tolstoy (in 1908) concluded, 'but after a few centuries more our posterity will find him considerably bigger than we do. His genius is still too strong and powerful for the common understanding, just as the sun is too hot when its light beams directly on us.' (748)
Doris Kearns Goodwin (Team of Rivals: The Political Genius of Abraham Lincoln)
Dear Ellen, "Just keep swimming." Recognize that quote, Ellen? It's what Dory says to Marlin in Finding Nemo. "Just keep swimming, swimming, swimming." I'm not a huge fan of cartoons, but I'll give you props for that one. I like cartoons that can make you laughter, but also make you feel something. After today, think that's my favorite cartoon. Because I've been feeling like drowning lately, and sometimes people need a reminder that they just need to keep swimming.
Colleen Hoover (It Ends with Us (It Ends with Us, #1))
Just keep swimming, just keep swimming
Dory Finding Nemo
It's amazing what you find out about yourself when you write in the first person about someone very different from you.
Doris Lessing
As in the political sphere, the child is taught that he is free, a democrat, with a free will and a free mind, lives in a free country, makes his own decisions. At the same time he is a prisoner of the assumptions and dogmas of his time, which he does not question, because he has never been told they exist. By the time a young person has reached the age when he has to choose (we still take it for granted that a choice is inevitable) between the arts and the sciences, he often chooses the arts because he feels that here is humanity, freedom, choice. He does not know that he is already moulded by a system: he does not know that the choice itself is the result of a false dichotomy rooted in the heart of our culture. Those who do sense this, and who don't wish to subject themselves to further moulding, tend to leave, in a half-unconscious, instinctive attempt to find work where they won't be divided against themselves. With all our institutions, from the police force to academia, from medicine to politics, we give little attention to the people who leave—that process of elimination that goes on all the time and which excludes, very early, those likely to be original and reforming, leaving those attracted to a thing because that is what they are already like. A young policeman leaves the Force saying he doesn't like what he has to do. A young teacher leaves teaching, here idealism snubbed. This social mechanism goes almost unnoticed—yet it is as powerful as any in keeping our institutions rigid and oppressive.
Doris Lessing
Moreover, Lincoln possessed an uncanny understanding of his shifting moods, a profound self-awareness that enabled him to find constructive ways to alleviate sadness and stress. Indeed, when he is compared with his colleagues, it is clear that he possessed the most even-tempered disposition of them all.
Doris Kearns Goodwin (Team of Rivals: The Political Genius of Abraham Lincoln)
A foolhardy lot, we accepted it all, as we always do, never asked: "What is going to happen to us now, with this invention of print?" In the same way, we never thought to ask, "How will our lives, our way of thinking, be changed by the internet, which has seduced a whole generation with its inanities so that even quite reasonable people will confess that, once they are hooked, it is hard to cut free, and they may find a whole day has passed in blogging etc?
Doris Lessing
Just keep Swimming!
Ellen DeGeneres
Often our students see nothing about religious faith except the lowest common denominator. They see nothing but TV evangelists and fools, and it doesn't occur to them that intelligent people might find this religious business worth living their lives by.
Doris Betts
just keep swimming
Dory
To find the best authors,” he boasted, “is like being able to tell good wine without the labels.
Doris Kearns Goodwin (The Bully Pulpit: Theodore Roosevelt, William Howard Taft, and the Golden Age of Journalism)
Remember that for all the books we have in print, are as many that have never reached print, have never been written down-even now, in this age of compulsive reverence for the written word, history, even social ethic, are taught by means of stories, and the people who have been conditioned into thinking only in terms of what is written-and unfortunately nearly all the products of our educational system can do no more than this-are missing what is before their eyes. For instance, the real history of Africa is still in the custody of black storytellers and wise men, black historians, medicine men: it is a verbal history, still kept safe from the white man and his predations. Everywhere, if you keep your mind open, you will find the words not written down. So never let the printed page be your master. Above all, you should know that the fact that you have to spend one year, or two years, on one book, or one author means that you are badly taught-you should have been taught to read your way from one sympathy to another, you should be learning to follow you own intuitive feeling about what you need; that is what you should have been developing, not the way to quote from other people.
Doris Lessing
Tolstoy went on to observe,"This little incident proves how largely the name of Lincoln is worshipped throughout the world and how legendary his personality has become. Now, why was Lincoln so great that he overshadows all other national heroes? He really was not a great general like Napoleon or Washington; he was not such a skillful statesman as Gladstone or Frederick the Great; but his supremacy expresses itself altogether in his peculiar moral power and in the greatness of his character. "Washington was a typical American. Naopoleon was a typical Frenchmen, but Lincoln was a humanitarian as broad as the world. He was bigger than his country--- bigger than all the Presidents t,ogether. We are still too near to his greatness, " Tolstoy concluded, "but after a few centuries more our posterity will find him considerably bigger than we do. His genius is still too strong and too powerful for the common understanding, just as the sun is too hot when it's light beams directly on us.
Doris Kearns Goodwin (Team of Rivals: The Political Genius of Abraham Lincoln)
Dory can you see anything?" (Marlin) "Ah! Something's got me!" (Dory) "Sorry! That was me." (Marlin) "*gasps* Who's that?!" (Dory) "'Who's that' Who do you think it could be; it's me. (Marlin) "Are... Are you my conscience?" (Dory) "Yeah, Yeah, I'm your conscience. We haven't spoken for a while" (Marlin)
Finding Nemo
Dave put his head down and ate his eggs. He heard his mother leave the kitchen, humming Old MacDonald all the way down the hall. Standing in the yard now, knuckles aching, he could hear it too. Old MacDonald had a farm. And everything was hunky-dory on it. You farmed and tilled and reaped and sowed and everything was just fucking great. Everyone got along, even the chickens and the cows, and no one needed to talk about anything, because nothing bad ever happened and nobody had any secrets because secrets were for bad people, people who climbed in cars that smelled of apples with strange men and disappeared for four days, only to come back home and find everyone they'd known had disappeared, too, been replaced with smiley-faced look-alikes who'd do just about anything but listen to you.
Dennis Lehane (Mystic River)
Hit the ground running; consolidate control; ask questions of everyone wherever you go; manage by wandering around; determine the basic problems of each organization and hit them head-on; when attacked, counterattack; stick to your guns; spend your political capital to reach your goals; and then when your work is stymied or done, find a way out.
Doris Kearns Goodwin (Leadership: In Turbulent Times)
The flames of a new economic evolution run around us, and we turn to find that competition has killed competition, that corporations are grown greater than the State . . . and that the naked issue of our time is with property becoming master, instead of servant.
Doris Kearns Goodwin (The Bully Pulpit: Theodore Roosevelt, William Howard Taft, and the Golden Age of Journalism)
What bug crawled up your ass?" I demanded. "If you mean, why I am upset? I should think that would be obvious!" It took me a second, but I got it. "Oh, come on. You're not still pissed about–you did the same damn thing to me!" He had the utter gall to look offended. "I did nothing of the sort–" I stared at him. "And just how do you figure that? You stripped me butt naked, diddled me over a desk and stole my duffel bag. And my clothes!" Somebody made a choking sound. I glanced up to find the door to the study open, and the old vamp looking scandalized. "Diddled?" Anthony asked, apparently delighted. Mircea closed his eyes.
Karen Chance (Death's Mistress (Dorina Basarab, #2))
In the writing process, the more the story cooks, the better. The brain works for you even when you are at rest. I find dreams particularly useful.... You can only learn to be a better writer by actually writing.
Doris Lessing
In fact, Lincoln and Stanton had already heard similar complaints. After dispatching investigators to look into General Grant’s behavior, however, they had concluded that his drinking did not affect his unmatched ability to plan, execute, and win battles. A memorable story circulated that when a delegation brought further rumors of Grant’s drinking to the president, Lincoln declared that if he could find the brand of whiskey Grant used, he would promptly distribute it to the rest of his generals!
Doris Kearns Goodwin (Team of Rivals: The Political Genius of Abraham Lincoln)
In today’s competitive economy, it’s not enough to simply do your job well. Developing a reputation as an expert in your field attracts people who want to hire you, do business with you and your company, and spread your ideas. It’s the ultimate form of career insurance.
Dorie Clark (Stand Out: How to Find Your Breakthrough Idea and Build a Following Around It)
I have plenty of information now, but I can't get it into words. I'm afraid it's too big a task for me. I wonder if I will find everything in life too big for my abilities. Well, time will tell." Theodore Roosevelt, writing in naval history in his spare time while in law school
Doris Kearns Goodwin (The Bully Pulpit: Theodore Roosevelt, William Howard Taft, and the Golden Age of Journalism)
Well, did anything interesting happen today?' [my father] would begin. And even before the daily question was completed I had eagerly launched into my narrative of every play, and almost every pitch, of that afternoon's contest. It never crossed my mind to wonder if, at the close of a day's work, he might find my lengthy account the least bit tedious. For there was mastery as well as pleasure in our nightly ritual. Through my knowledge, I commanded my father's undivided attention, the sign of his love. It would instill in me an early awareness of the power of narrative, which would introduce a lifetime of storytelling, fueled by the naive confidence that others would find me as entertaining as my father did.
Doris Kearns Goodwin (Wait Till Next Year)
Most of the fish in coral reefs are also trichromats. But since red light is strongly absorbed by water, their sensitivities are shifted toward the blue end of the spectrum. This explains why so many reef fish, like the blue tang that stars in Pixar’s Finding Dory, are blue and yellow. To their version of trichromacy, yellow disappears against corals, and blue blends in with the water. Their colors look incredibly conspicuous to snorkeling humans, because our particular trio of cones excels at discriminating blues and yellows. But the fish themselves are beautifully camouflaged to each other, and to their predators.
Ed Yong (An Immense World: How Animal Senses Reveal the Hidden Realms Around Us)
Please don't go away. Please? No one's ever stuck with me for so long before.
Finding Nemo (2003)
Meanwhile, “safe” jobs, predicated on staying quiet and doing what’s expected of you, are fast disappearing.
Dorie Clark (Stand Out: How to Find Your Breakthrough Idea and Build a Following Around It)
Too often, we forget that our professional lives can, and should, be joyful.
Dorie Clark (Stand Out: How to Find Your Breakthrough Idea and Build a Following Around It)
extreme stress hinders the expansive, associative thinking needed for creative insight (and can lead to burnout over time).
Dorie Clark (Stand Out: How to Find Your Breakthrough Idea and Build a Following Around It)
There I go When my heart all worn by grief Sinketh low. Where my baseless hopes do lie There to find my peace, go I. Sad and slow . . 
Doris Kearns Goodwin (The Bully Pulpit: Theodore Roosevelt, William Howard Taft, and the Golden Age of Journalism)
I find that without a place to work, it is difficult to work. I look forward with the greatest pleasure to the use of my books at night at home.
Doris Kearns Goodwin (The Bully Pulpit: Theodore Roosevelt, William Howard Taft, and the Golden Age of Journalism)
Avoidants often use sex to distance themselves from their partner. It doesn’t necessarily mean they will cheat on their partner, although studies have shown that they are more likely to do so than other attachment types. Phillip Shaver, in a study with then University of California-Davis graduate student Dory Schachner, found that of the three styles, avoidants would more readily make a pass at someone else’s partner or respond to such a proposition. Intriguingly, they also found that avoidant men and women were more likely to engage in less sex if their partner had an anxious attachment style! Researchers believe that in relationships like Marsha and Craig’s, there is less lovemaking because the anxious partner wants a great deal of physical closeness and this in turn causes the avoidant partner to withdraw further. What better way to avoid intimacy than by reducing sex to a bare minimum.
Amir Levine (Attached: The New Science of Adult Attachment and How It Can Help You Find—and Keep—Love)
In 1908, in a wild and remote area of the North Caucasus, Leo Tolstoy, the greatest writer of the age, was the guest of a tribal chief “living far away from civilized life in the mountains.” Gathering his family and neighbors, the chief asked Tolstoy to tell stories about the famous men of history. Tolstoy told how he entertained the eager crowd for hours with tales of Alexander, Caesar, Frederick the Great, and Napoleon. When he was winding to a close, the chief stood and said, “But you have not told us a syllable about the greatest general and greatest ruler of the world. We want to know something about him. He was a hero. He spoke with a voice of thunder; he laughed like the sunrise and his deeds were strong as the rock….His name was Lincoln and the country in which he lived is called America, which is so far away that if a youth should journey to reach it he would be an old man when he arrived. Tell us of that man.” “I looked at them,” Tolstoy recalled, “and saw their faces all aglow, while their eyes were burning. I saw that those rude barbarians were really interested in a man whose name and deeds had already become a legend.” He told them everything he knew about Lincoln’s “home life and youth…his habits, his influence upon the people and his physical strength.” When he finished, they were so grateful for the story that they presented him with “a wonderful Arabian horse.” The next morning, as Tolstoy prepared to leave, they asked if he could possibly acquire for them a picture of Lincoln. Thinking that he might find one at a friend’s house in the neighboring town, Tolstoy asked one of the riders to accompany him. “I was successful in getting a large photograph from my friend,” recalled Tolstoy. As he handed it to the rider, he noted that the man’s hand trembled as he took it. “He gazed for several minutes silently, like one in a reverent prayer, his eyes filled with tears.” Tolstoy went on to observe, “This little incident proves how largely the name of Lincoln is worshipped throughout the world and how legendary his personality has become. Now, why was Lincoln so great that he overshadows all other national heroes? He really was not a great general like Napoleon or Washington; he was not such a skilful statesman as Gladstone or Frederick the Great; but his supremacy expresses itself altogether in his peculiar moral power and in the greatness of his character. “Washington was a typical American. Napoleon was a typical Frenchman, but Lincoln was a humanitarian as broad as the world. He was bigger than his country—bigger than all the Presidents together. “We are still too near to his greatness,” Tolstoy concluded, “but after a few centuries more our posterity will find him considerably bigger than we do. His genius is still too strong and too powerful for the common understanding, just as the sun is too hot when its light beams directly on us.
Doris Kearns Goodwin (仁者无敌:林肯的政治天才)
The young man never seemed to know what idleness was,” marveled Cutler, “and every leisure moment would find the last novel, some English classic or some abstruse book on natural history in his hands.
Doris Kearns Goodwin (The Bully Pulpit: Theodore Roosevelt, William Howard Taft, and the Golden Age of Journalism)
I find myself increasingly shocked at the unthinking and automatic rubbishing of men which is now so part of our culture that it is hardly even noticed. Great things have been achieved through feminism. We now have pretty much equality at least on the pay and opportunities front, though almost nothing has been done on child care, the real liberation. We have many wonderful, clever, powerful women everywhere, but what is happening to men? Why did this have to be at the cost of men? I was in a class of nine- and ten-year-olds, girls and boys, and this young woman was telling these kids that the reason for wars was the innately violent nature of men. You could see the little girls, fat with complacency and conceit while the little boys sat there crumpled, apologising for their existence, thinking this was going to be the pattern of their lives. The teacher tried to catch my eye, thinking I would approve of this rubbish. This kind of thing is happening in schools all over the place and no one says a thing. It has become a kind of religion that you can't criticise because then you become a traitor to the great cause, which I am not. It is time we began to ask who are these women who continually rubbish men. The most stupid, ill-educated and nasty woman can rubbish the nicest, kindest and most intelligent man and no one protests. Men seem to be so cowed that they can't fight back, and it is time they did.
Doris Lessing
Finally, it’s about connecting those followers with one another, magnifying the power of your idea and ensuring that it’s talked about even when you’re not in the room. That’s when you’ve built a movement.
Dorie Clark (Stand Out: How to Find Your Breakthrough Idea and Build a Following Around It)
We have the right to demand that if we find men against whom there is not only suspicion, but almost a certainty that they have had collusion with men whose interests were in conflict with the interests of the public, they shall, at least, be required to bring positive facts with which to prove there has not been such collusion; and they ought themselves to have been the first to demand such an investigation." -Teddy Roosevelt
Doris Kearns Goodwin (The Bully Pulpit: Theodore Roosevelt, William Howard Taft, and the Golden Age of Journalism)
...a family wanting no more than to live without challenge or drama could easily find a quiet street, and "peace," provided they were fortunate enough to live in a comparatively sheltered and favoured geographical area, and provided they were able to make the mental adjustment to relegate war - and its consequences - into something that happened elsewhere and did not affect them; or something that had happened to them, but between such and such dates, and then taken itself off.
Doris Lessing (Re: Colonised Planet 5, Shikasta (Canopus in Argos, #1))
Find time and space in which to think. As Lincoln began to survey the darkening landscape of the war and consider a new strategy regarding slavery, he needed time to reflect upon both the constitutionality and the ramifications of issuing an emancipation order.
Doris Kearns Goodwin (Leadership: In Turbulent Times)
It's true,' replied Doris with a sniff in Bessy's direction to make her sensible of a victory, even if a minor one. 'It is amazing how so many people go insane. One day a man is a normal, friendly husband and the next he suddenly becomes a raging schizoid and slays his wife and himself as well. The result of what cause? Why, perhaps he chanced to find some schoolgirl treasure of another beau who had been his greatest rival and is stunned to discover that she secretly retains this. But usually the matter is not so simple, you know. Next to nothing may happen, jarring awake some sleeping monstrosity in a man's complex mental machinery and turning him from a sane person to a mentally sick individual. It is wholly impossible to say when a man is sane, for' -she tittered- 'scarce one of us is normal.' 'You mean - it might happen to any of us?' 'Of course,' said Doris, charmed by all this interest. 'One moment we are seated here, behaving normally and the next some tiny thing, a certain voice, a certain combination of thoughts may throw out the balance wheel of our intellects and we become potential inmates for asylums the rest of our lives. No, not one of us knows when the world will cease to be a normal, ordinary place. You know, no one ever knows when he goes insane: He supposes it is the world altering, not himself. Rooms become peopled with strange shapes and beings, sounds distort themselves into awful cries and, poof! we are judged insane.' 'Poof -' said Jacob, feeling weak and ill. ("He Didn't Like Cats")
L. Ron Hubbard
Gaten looked closely at me. He brushed dirt from my face, then with make-believe surprise said, “Oh, it is you, Clover.” He grabbed my hand. His strong hand held it tightly. It was a father’s hold. I was safe with him. In the evening twilight we walked hand in hand in search of the very-hard-to-find rain crow.
Dori Sanders (Clover: A Novel)
If this were so; it meant the people I knew didn’t belong in the governing class. And the other people did. And I intended to be in the governing class. If they proved too hard for me I would quit, but until I made the effort I would not quit. And find out if I was too weak to hold my own. -Theodore Roosevelt
Doris Kearns Goodwin
Ideally, what should be said to every child, repeatedly, throughout his or her school life is something like this: ‘You are in the process of being indoctrinated. We have not yet evolved a system of education that is not a system of indoctrination. We are sorry, but it is the best we can do. What you are being taught here is an amalgam of current prejudice and the choices of this particular culture. The slightest look at history will show how impermanent these must be. You are being taught by people who have been able to accommodate themselves to a regime of thought laid down by their predecessors. It is a self-perpetuating system. Those of you who are more robust and individual than others will be encouraged to leave and find ways of educating yourself — educating your own judgements. Those that stay must remember, always, and all the time, that they are being molded and patterned to fit into the narrow and particular needs of this particular society.
Doris Lessing
There was never any doubt that the local jury would return a guilty verdict. “In due time, gentlemen of the jury,” Seward concluded, “when I shall have paid the debt of nature, my remains will rest here in your midst, with those of my kindred and neighbors. It is very possible they may be unhonored, neglected, spurned! But, perhaps years hence, when the passion and excitement which now agitate this community shall have passed away, some wandering stranger, some lone exile, some Indian, some negro, may erect over them a humble stone, and thereon this epitaph, ‘He was Faithful!’ ” More than a century afterward, visitors to Seward’s grave at the Fort Hill Cemetery in Auburn would find those very words engraved on his tombstone.
Doris Kearns Goodwin (Team of Rivals: The Political Genius of Abraham Lincoln)
With “not the slightest sign of an end to the strike,” Roosevelt readied a second plan—the creation of a Blue Ribbon Commission to investigate the causes of the strike and make recommendations for both executive and legislative action. Scrambling once again to find warrant for such intervention, he argued he was empowered by his constitutional duty to report to Congress on the state of the Union.
Doris Kearns Goodwin (Leadership: In Turbulent Times)
With McClure’s support, Steffens embarked on an odyssey. For the better part of three years, he called on people in St. Louis, Minneapolis, Pittsburgh, Chicago, Philadelphia, New York, Cleveland, and Madison. “My business is to find subjects and writers, to educate myself in the way the world is wagging, so as to bring the magazine up to date,” he explained to his father. “I feel ready to do something really fine.
Doris Kearns Goodwin (The Bully Pulpit: Theodore Roosevelt, William Howard Taft, and the Golden Age of Journalism)
Liberty produces wealth, and wealth destroys liberty,” Henry Demarest Lloyd wrote in Wealth Against Commonwealth, an influential 1902 indictment of the trusts. “The flames of a new economic evolution run around us, and we turn to find that competition has killed competition, that corporations are grown greater than the State . . . and that the naked issue of our time is with property becoming master, instead of servant.
Doris Kearns Goodwin (The Bully Pulpit: Theodore Roosevelt, William Howard Taft, and the Golden Age of Journalism)
It was a country for young men. “We find ourselves,” the twenty-eight-year-old Lincoln told the Young Men’s Lyceum of Springfield, “in the peaceful possession, of the fairest portion of the earth, as regards extent of territory, fertility of soil, and salubrity of climate.” The founding fathers had crafted a government more favorable to liberty “than any of which the history of former times tells us.” Now it was up to their children to preserve and expand the great experiment.
Doris Kearns Goodwin (Team of Rivals: The Political Genius of Abraham Lincoln)
Most people cannot stand being alone for long. They are always seeking groups to belong to, and if one group dissolves, they look for another. We are group animals still, and there is nothing wrong with that. But what is dangerous is not the belonging to a group, or groups, but not understanding the social laws that govern groups and govern us. When we're in a group, we tend to think as that group does: we may even have joined the group to find "like-minded" people. But we also find our thinking changing because we belong to a group. It is the hardest thing in the world to maintain an individual dissent opinion, as a member of a group. It seems to me that this is something we have all experienced - something we take for granted, may never have thought about. But a great deal of experiment has gone on among psychologists and sociologists on this very theme. If I describe an experiment or two, then anyone listening who may be a sociologist or psychologist will groan, oh God not again - for they have heard of these classic experiments far too often. My guess is that the rest of the people will never have had these ideas presented to them. If my guess is true, then it aptly illustrates general thesis, and the general idea behind these essays, that we (the human race) are now in possession of a great deal of hard information about ourselves, but we do not use it to improve our institutions and therefore our lives. A typical test, or experiment, on this theme goes like this. A group of people are taken into the researcher's confidence. A minority of one or two are left in the dark. Some situation demanding measurement or assessment is chosen. For instance, comparing lengths of wood that differ only a little from each other, but enough to be perceptible, or shapes that are almost the same size. The majority in the group - according to instruction- will assert stubbornly that these two shapes or lengths are the same length, or size, while the solitary individual, or the couple, who have not been so instructed will assert that the pieces of wood or whatever are different. But the majority will continue to insist - speaking metaphorically - that black is white, and after a period of exasperation, irritation, even anger, certainly incomprehension, the minority will fall into line. Not always but nearly always. There are indeed glorious individualists who stubbornly insist on telling the truth as they see it, but most give in to the majority opinion, obey the atmosphere. When put as baldly, as unflatteringly, as this, reactions tend to be incredulous: "I certainly wouldn't give in, I speak my mind..." But would you? People who have experienced a lot of groups, who perhaps have observed their own behaviour, may agree that the hardest thing in the world is to stand out against one's group, a group of one's peers. Many agree that among our most shameful memories is this, how often we said black was white because other people were saying it. In other words, we know that this is true of human behaviour, but how do we know it? It is one thing to admit it in a vague uncomfortable sort of way (which probably includes the hope that one will never again be in such a testing situation) but quite another to make that cool step into a kind of objectivity, where one may say, "Right, if that's what human beings are like, myself included, then let's admit it, examine and organize our attitudes accordingly.
Doris Lessing (Prisons We Choose to Live Inside)
Doris thought life was like a high-speed train where you kept leaving friends and brothers and lovers at stations along the route. Maybe when you died, you walked back down the tracks until you met each of the people you’d lost. You collected them all, brother Logan, mother, father, Lucinda, and you got to find a quiet garden where you sat and watched the sun go down, the huge red-gold Kansas sun sinking behind the waves of wheat, while you sipped a little bit of a martini that your beloved had mixed for you.
Sara Paretsky (Fallout (V.I. Warshawski #18))
The point is, that the function of the novel seems to be changing; it has become an outpost of journalism; we read novels for information about areas of life we don’t know — Nigeria, South Africa, the American army, a coal-mining village, coteries in Chelsea, etc. We read to find out what is going on. One novel in five hundred or a thousand has the quality a novel should have to make it a novel — the quality of philosophy. I find that I read with the same kind of curiosity most novels, and a book of reportage. Most novels, if they are successful at all, are original in the sense that they report the existence of an area of society, a type of person, not yet admitted to the general literate consciousness. The novel has become a function of the fragmented society, the fragmented consciousness. Human beings are so divided, are becoming more and more divided, and more subdivided in themselves, reflecting the world, that they reach out desperately, not knowing they do it, for information about other groups inside their own country, let alone about groups in other countries. It is a blind grasping out for their own wholeness, and the novel-report is a means towards it.
Doris Lessing (The Golden Notebook)
Lincoln’s liberal use of his pardoning power created the greatest tension between the two men (Lincoln and Edwin Stanton, Secretary of War). Stanton felt compelled to protect military discipline by exacting proper punishment for desertions or derelictions of duty, while Lincoln looked for any “good excuse for saving a man’s life.” When he found one, he said, “I go to bed happy as I think how joyous the signing of my name will make him and his family and his friends.” Stanton would not allow himself such leniency. A clerk recalled finding Stanton one night in his office, “the mother, wife, and children of a soldier who had been condemned to be shot as a deserter, on their knees before him pleading for the life of their loved one. He listened standing, in cold and austere silence, and at the end of their heart-breaking sobs and prayers answered briefly that the man must die. The crushed and despairing little family left and Mr. Stanton turned, apparently unmoved, and walked into his private room.” The clerk thought Stanton an unfeeling tyrant, until he discovered him moments later, “leaning over a desk, his face buried in his hands and his heavy frame shaking with sobs. ‘God help me to do my duty; God help me to do my duty!’ he was repeating in a low wail of anguish.” On such occasions, when Stanton felt he could not afford to set a precedent, he must have been secretly relieved that the president had the ultimate authority.
Doris Kearns Goodwin (仁者无敌:林肯的政治天才)
The real things of life were getting a grip on him more and more,” Jacob Riis observed. In an essay on “fellow-feeling,” written a decade and a half later, Roosevelt maintained that empathy, like courage, could be acquired over time. “A man who conscientiously endeavors to throw in his lot with those about him, to make his interest theirs, to put himself in a position where he and they have a common object, will at first feel a little self-conscious, will realize too plainly his aims. But with exercise this will pass off. He will speedily find that the fellow-feeling which at first he had to stimulate was really existent, though latent, and is capable of a very healthy growth.” Indeed, he argued that a “very large part of the rancor of political and social strife” springs from the fact that different classes or sections “are so cut off from each other that neither appreciates the other’s passions, prejudices, and, indeed, point of view.
Doris Kearns Goodwin (Leadership: In Turbulent Times)
ACT I Dear Diary, I have been carrying you around for a while now, but I didn’t write anything before now. You see, I didn’t like killing that cow to get its leather, but I had to. Because I wanted to make a diary and write into it, of course. Why did I want to write into a diary? Well, it’s a long story. A lot has happened over the last year and I have wanted to write it all down for a while, but yesterday was too crazy not to document! I’m going to tell you everything. So where should we begin? Let’s begin from the beginning. I kind of really want to begin from the middle, though. It’s when things got very interesting. But never mind that, I’ll come to it in a bit. First of all, my name is Herobrine. That’s a weird name, some people say. I’m kinda fond of it, but that’s just me I suppose. Nobody really talks to me anyway. People just refer to me as “Him”. Who gave me the name Herobrine? I gave it to myself, of course! Back in the day, I used to be called Jack, but it was such a run-of-the-mill name, so I changed it. Oh hey, while we’re at the topic of names, how about I give you a name, Diary? Yeah, I’m gonna give you a name. I’ll call you… umm, how does Doris sound? Nah, very plain. I must come up with a more creative name. Angela sounds cool, but I don’t think you’ll like that. Come on, give me some time. I’m not used to coming up with awesome names on the fly! Yes, I got it! I’ll call you Moony, because I created you under a full moon. Of course, that’s such a perfect name! I am truly a genius. I wish people would start appreciating my intellect. Oh, right. The story, right, my bad. So Moony, when it all started, I was a miner. Yep, just like 70% of the people in Scotland. And it was a dull job, I have to say. Most of the times, I mined for coal and iron ore. Those two resources were in great need at my place, that’s why so many people were miners. We had some farmers, builders, and merchants, but that was basically it. No jewelers, no booksellers, no restaurants, nothing. My gosh, that place was boring! I had always been fascinated by the idea of building. It seemed like so much fun, creating new things from other things. What’s not to like? I wanted to build, too. So I started. It was part-time at first, and I only did it when nobody was around. Whenever I got some free time on my hands, I spent it building stuff. I would dig out small caves and build little horse stables and make boats and all. It was so much fun! So I decided to take it to the next level and left my job as a miner. They weren’t paying me well, anyway. I traveled far and wide, looking for places to build and finding new materials. I’m quite the adrenaline junkie, I soon realized, always looking for an adventure.
Funny Comics (Herobrine's Diary 1: It Ain't Easy Being Mean (Herobrine Books))
Will wrote frequently to Nellie, describing his daily routine in detail only a lover would not find exhausting.
Doris Kearns Goodwin (The Bully Pulpit: Theodore Roosevelt, William Howard Taft, and the Golden Age of Journalism)
The colonists took advantage of the Aboriginal cultural beliefs to further their own gains. The Nyungar people who once walked tall and proud, now hung their head in sorrow. They had become dispossessed; these teachers and keepers of the traditional Law were prevented from practising it. They had to fight to find ways to return to their secret and sacred sites to perform their dances and other ceremonies that were crucial to their culture and whole way of life. Their pain and suffering remained hidden and repressed, silent and deep. They remembered the corroborrees and songs that they were forbidden to dance and sing unless commanded by government officials. No longer would the corroborrees be shared and danced by scores of feet, kicking up the dust in the moonlight around the glowing fires. Warriors with painted bodies and plumes of feathers on their ochre-covered heads would become faded images, buried in the past. The important dates on their seasonal calendars would be forgotten.
Doris Pilkington (Rabbit-Proof Fence)
But what none of these girls realised was that their fate had already been decided by their new guardians, the Commissioners of the Native Affairs Department. Sadly, in only a couple of weeks from then, Nora and Eva would find that instead of returning north as they hoped, they would be sent further south to work as domestics on dairy farms. This would also be their introduction to exploitation and deception; a hard step along the path of life that would have so many twists and turns. As for returning home to their loved ones, well, that would not happen for many, many years.
Doris Pilkington (Rabbit-Proof Fence)
Before the family could escape the war, Manson said, he had to release a record in response to the Beatles’ White Album, telling the pop stars how to find them. To do that, Manson had to enlist the support of Terry Melcher, a prominent Hollywood record executive and the son of Doris Day. At that time, Melcher was in a relationship with Candice Bergen, an actress who lived with Melcher at the now notorious address of 10050 Cielo Drive.
Hourly History (Charles Manson: A Life From Beginning to End (Biographies of Criminals))
Life is a difficult choice between our loves and our fears. Love is the better use of a life, if you can find the courage for it. Love is hard, brave work, while fear is too easy - it is an early grave of comfy chairs and magazines and wasted heartbeats and hormones.
Doris Haddock (Granny D's American Century)
What is terrible is that after every one of the phases of my life is finished, I am left with no more than some banal commonplace that everyone knows: in this case, that women’s emotions are all still fitted for a kind of society that no longer exists. My deep emotions, my real ones, are to do with my relationship with a man. One man. But I don’t live that kind of life, and I know few women who do. So what I feel is irrelevant and silly…I am always coming to the conclusion that my real emotions are foolish, I am always having, as it were, to cancel myself out. I ought to be like a man, caring more for my work than for people; I ought to put my work first, and take men as they come, or find an ordinary comfortable man for bread and butter reasons—but I won’t do it, I can’t be like that…
Doris Lessing (The Golden Notebook)
Largely to gain Nellie’s approbation, Will began to carry a book as a matter of course. “Trollope is a great favorite of mine because of the realistic every day tone which one finds in every line he writes,” he told her. “His heroes have failings human character is heir to, and we like them none the less on that account.
Doris Kearns Goodwin (The Bully Pulpit: Theodore Roosevelt, William Howard Taft, and the Golden Age of Journalism)
Doris Mortman said, “Until you make peace with who you are, you’ll never be content with what you have.”9 Until you understand that you are God’s masterpiece, made in His image, you’ll never be content with the features He’s given you. Do you believe you are a happenstance mixture of your parents’ genes, or do you believe you were intentionally woven and knitted together by God with a specific design in mind? What we believe about our origin greatly affects what we believe about our destiny. You want to know the best beauty secret ever? You won’t find it in a spa, at the cosmetic counter at the mall, or in a makeover article in a magazine. You will find it in the Word of God. We become more and more beautiful every time we sit at Jesus’s feet. “We, who with unveiled faces contemplate the Lord’s glory, are being transformed into his image with ever-increasing glory, which comes from the Lord, who is the Spirit” (2 Corinthians 3:18).
Sharon Jaynes (Enough: Silencing the Lies That Steal Your Confidence)
What are you talking about Capt., what did they find out?” “Steve your fridge was full of Cyanide powder in everything they could put it in. As well it’s a good thing you ordered all new tires. They removed a bomb from your trunk. It could have injured you seriously or killed you. You fellas have a few angry enemies. Jordon, your place wasn’t much safer, again Cyanide in your foods, and Nitro tucked into your couch. You guys had the CSI’s and the Bomb squads very busy.
Doris Nickles (Smith and Weston: Crime Case Tales)
When life gets you down you know what you got to do, Just keep swimming , Just keep swimming" Dory from "Finding Nemo.
Finding Nemo
Even with all of this plot to be dispensed, the songs do rise organically out of the script. Doris’s first entrance, in head-to-toe buckskin, finds her astride a stagecoach, belting out the very catchy Sammy Fain/Paul Francis Webster song “The Deadwood Stage (Whip Crack Away).” The rollicking tune and exuberant Day vocal match the physical staging of the song, and character is revealed. Similarly, later in the film there is a lovely quiet moment when Calamity, Bill, the lieutenant, and Katie all ride together in a wagon (with Calamity driving, naturally) to the regiment dance, softly singing the lilting “Black Hills of Dakota.” These are such first-rate musical moments that one is bound to ask, “So what’s the problem?” The answer lies in Day’s performance itself. Although Calamity Jane represents one of Day’s most fondly remembered performances, it is all too much by half. Using a low, gravelly voice and overly exuberant gestures, Day, her body perpetually bent forward, gives a performance like Ethel Merman on film: She is performing to the nonexistent second balcony. This is very strange, because Day is a singer par excellence who understood from her very first film, at least in terms of ballads, that less is more on film. Her understated gestures and keen reading of lyrics made every ballad resonate with audiences, beginning with “It’s Magic” in Romance on the High Seas. Yet here she is, fourteen films later, eyes endlessly whirling, gesturing wildly, and spending most of her time yelling both at Wild Bill Hickok and at the citizens of Deadwood City. As The New York Times review of the film held, in what was admittedly a minority opinion, “As for Miss Day’s performance, it is tempestuous to the point of becoming just a bit frightening—a bit terrifying—at times…. David Butler, who directed, has wound her up tight and let her go. She does everything but hit the ceiling in lashing all over the screen.” She is butch in a very cartoonlike manner, although as always, the tomboyish Day never loses her essential femininity (the fact that her manicured nails are always evident helps…). Her clothing and speech mannerisms may be masculine, but Day herself never is; it is one of the key reasons why audiences embraced her straightforward assertive personality. In the words of John Updike, “There’s a kind of crisp androgynous something that is nice—she has backbone and spunk that I think give her a kind of stiffness in the mind.
Tom Santopietro (Considering Doris Day: A Biography)
Dear Ellen, “Just keep swimming.” Recognize that quote, Ellen? It’s what Dory says to Marlin in Finding Nemo. “Just keep swimming, swimming, swimming.
Colleen Hoover (It Ends with Us (It Ends with Us, #1))
lady who smashed me. She reaches into her giant purse and searches around inside for a really long time. I hear lots of rattling around in there. A candy wrapper falls to the floor. Finally, she finds what she’s looking for. A dollar bill. “Here, take a dollar, and you’ll forget all about your
Abby Hanlon (Dory Fantasmagory: Head in the Clouds)
my unofficial role was to be available to listen to the president when he wanted to talk. Evenings would often find us in the little sitting room next to the Oval Office. There, Johnson liked to relax with a drink and talk… and talk and talk. Perhaps because I had joined the White House staff shortly after
Doris Kearns Goodwin (An Unfinished Love Story: A Personal History of the 1960s)
Study 22: Learner language and proficiency level George Yule and Doris Macdonald (1990) investigated whether the role that different proficiency-level learners play in a two-way communication task led to differences in their interactive behaviour. They set up a task that required two learners to communicate information about the location of different buildings on a map and the route to get there. One learner, referred to as the ‘sender’, had a map with a delivery route on it, and this speaker’s job was to describe the delivery route to the ‘receiver’ so that he or she could draw the delivery route on a similar map. The task was made more challenging by the fact that there were minor differences between the two maps. To determine whether there would be any difference in the interactions according to the relative proficiency of the 40 adult participants, different types of learners were paired together. One group had high-proficiency learners in the ‘sender’ role and low-proficiency learners in the ‘receiver’ role; the other group had low-proficiency ‘senders’ paired with high-proficiency ‘receivers’. When low-proficiency learners were senders, interactions were considerably longer and more varied than when high-proficiency learners were the senders. The explanation for this was that high-proficiency senders tended to act as if the lower-level receiver had little contribution to make in the completion of the task. As a result, the lower-level receivers were almost forced to play a passive role and said very little. When lower-level learners were the senders however, much more negotiation for meaning and a greater variety of interactions between the two speakers took place. Based on these findings, Yule and Macdonald suggest that teachers should sometimes place more advanced students in less dominant roles in paired activities with lower-level learners.
Patsy M. Lightbown (How Languages are Learned)
However, as I have learned over the years, when one’s boo seems all so tickety and one’s dory is so replete its verging on the hunky, I usually find that… And here I suppose I’ll no doubt be accused of reverting to type once more… Life tends to come along and callously swing a heavy booted foot towards one’s goolies…
Ian Atkinson (Life's a Bastard Then You Die, Part 1)
I’m going to write and . . . it’s not to create ideas that are going to be collecting dust on a bookshelf, but to have an impact on the world.
Dorie Clark (Stand Out: How to Find Your Breakthrough Idea and Build a Following Around It)
Most recognized experts achieved success not because of some special genius, but because they learned how to put disparate elements together and present ideas in a new and meaningful way.
Dorie Clark (Stand Out: How to Find Your Breakthrough Idea and Build a Following Around It)
Sometimes you have to experiment with a lot of ideas and see which one sticks. If you’re unsure, let the market decide.
Dorie Clark (Stand Out: How to Find Your Breakthrough Idea and Build a Following Around It)
Reading is a gateway to knowledge and creativity that enables people to create characters. Reading is not only a hobby but an essential habit to develop the intellectual field. It is a pleasure that is acquired through practice and so it is very important that parents encourage the children to have this habit. The various themes of children's books make most children interested in certain story. You can find stories aimed at different ages and tastes, so all the little kids are able to find a wide variety of books that interest them.
doris hankamer
But if you show up and get involved, put out beacons (whether it’s blog posts, starting an organization, or speaking about an issue), and are open about your challenges, you dramatically increase the odds that others will find you and value your contribution.
Dorie Clark (Stand Out Networking: A Simple and Authentic Way to Meet People on Your Own Terms (A Penguin Special from Portfolio))
If I had had a daughter, I always knew what I would tell her. First of all, I would try to counter all outdated stereotypical claptrap that girls are commonly told about their sex--that women are valued far more for their sexual characteristics than their character and brains--and encourage her to be a truly independent person. Only knowing who she is herself will she be able to find find her own life's work and make good decisions in choosing a partner and having children.
Doris Anderson (Rebel Daughter : An Autobiography)
I would not be at all surprised to find out....personal feelings about our situation in time, seldom in accordance with fact, so that we are always taken by surprise by 'ageing', may be an indication of a different lifespan, in the past - but that this past, in biological terms, is quite recent, and so we have not come to terms with it psychologically.
Doris Lessing
Ella finds this story inside herself: A woman, loved by a man who criticizes her throughout their long relationship for being unfaithful to him and for longing for the social life which his jealousy bars her from and for being ‘a career woman’. This woman who, throughout the five years of their affair in fact never looks at another man, never goes out, and neglects her career becomes everything he has criticized her for being at that moment when he drops her. She becomes promiscuous, lives only for parties and is ruthless about her career, sacrificing her men and her friends for it. The point of the story is that this new personality has been created by him; and that everything she does — sexual acts, acts of betrayal for the sake of her career, etc., are with the revengeful thought: There, that’s what you wanted, that’s what you wanted me to be. And, meeting this man again after an interval, when her new personality is firmly established, he falls in love with her again. This is what he always wanted her to be; and the reason why he left her was in fact because she was quiet, compliant and faithful. But now, when he falls in love with her again, she rejects him and in bitter contempt: what she is now is not what she ‘really’ is. He has rejected her ‘real’ self. He has betrayed a real love and now loves a counterfeit. When she rejects him, she is preserving her real self, whom he has betrayed and rejected. Ella does not write this story. She is afraid that writing it might make it come true.
Doris Lessing (The Golden Notebook)
We’ll be watching to see if there is room for those new molars,” he said. “Richie may need braces soon.” Mom didn’t say anything. She was back where no one could reach her. Did she even hear him? Well, I heard. Braces! They’d have to find me first. I hoped Dr. Dory couldn’t swim. I already knew that my mother had never been in anything deeper or colder than bathtub water.
Brenda Z. Guiberson (Turtle People)
Dory said, 'Just keep swimming.' But I've learned that if you find yourself overboard, you should just bring your knees into your chest and float to conserve energy. So my resilience tip is that floating works for me. There is wisdom in knowing when to rest and to cease from striving...that is if you want to survive.
Hayley Solich
Avoidants often use sex to distance themselves from their partner. It doesn’t necessarily mean they will cheat on their partner, although studies have shown that they are more likely to do so than other attachment types. Phillip Shaver, in a study with then University of California-Davis graduate student Dory Schachner, found that of the three styles, avoidants would more readily make a pass at someone else’s partner or respond to such a proposition.
Amir Levine (Attached: The New Science of Adult Attachment and How It Can Help You Find—and Keep—Love)
She came across as charming and efficient, but problems erupted as soon as she started. Two of my best people threatened to quit, so I took her off the project.” I could barely watch as she laughed and yakked like an intimate friend of both Ian’s and Baldacchio’s. On tonight of all nights, the opening of Abraham’s exhibition. I had to wonder, was she here because of me? Everyone in the business knew he’d been my teacher and mentor. Was I completely paranoid? I would’ve loved to pursue the topic of Minka’s shortcomings and find out how in the world she’d finagled a job at the Covington in the first place, but Abraham’s friend Doris interrupted us just then, grabbing Abraham’s arm and giving it a vigorous shake. “Now, what were you yelling about, old man?” she said. I almost snorted. “Doris Bondurant,” Abraham said formally, “I’d like to introduce my former assistant and now my greatest competition, Brooklyn Wainwright. Brooklyn, this is my old friend Doris Bondurant.” “Watch who you’re calling old, buster,” she said, and elbowed Abraham in
Kate Carlisle (Homicide in Hardcover (Bibliophile Mystery, #1))
We watched Finding Nemo and when that part came up where Marlin was looking for Nemo and he was feeling really defeated, Dory said to him, “When life gets you down do you wanna know what you’ve gotta do?… Just keep swimming. Just keep swimming. Just keep swimming, swimming, swimming.” Atlas grabbed my hand when Dory said that. He didn’t hold it like a boyfriend holds his girlfriend’s hand. He squeezed it, like he was saying that was us. He was Marlin and I was Dory, and I was helping him swim. “Just keep swimming,” I whispered to him. —Lily Dear Ellen,
Colleen Hoover (It Ends with Us (It Ends with Us, #1))
We watched Finding Nemo and when that part came up where Marlin was looking for Nemo and he was feeling really defeated, Dory said to him, “When life gets you down do you wanna know what you’ve gotta do?… Just keep swimming. Just keep swimming. Just keep swimming, swimming, swimming.” Atlas grabbed my hand when Dory said that. He didn’t hold it like a boyfriend holds his girlfriend’s hand. He squeezed it, like he was saying that was us. He was Marlin and I was Dory, and I was helping him swim. “Just keep swimming,” I whispered to him. —Lily
Colleen Hoover (It Ends with Us (It Ends with Us, #1))
Gandalf answered angrily: "I brought him, and I don't bring things that are of no use. Either you help me to look for him, or I go and leave you here to get out of the mess as best you can yourselves. If we can only find him again, you will thank me before all is over. Whatever did you want to go and drop him for Dori?
J.R.R. Tolkien (The Hobbit, or There and Back Again (The Lord of the Rings, #0))
e, Tessa lifted her eyes from Doris and looked up to the ceiling. “I’ll get to you, Skylar. No matter what it takes, I’ll find a way.” Tessa pushed the oxygen mask back onto Doris’s face, then stroked her hair tenderly. “There’s nothing to be afraid of, Doris. Everyone you’ve ever lost will be waiting for you in the tunnel of light. It’s the most beautiful place you’ve ever seen.” There was a blissful expression on Doris’s face. “Yes. I know.
Marc Klein (The In Between)
in the summer of 2016, pegged to the release of the movie Finding Dory, Pixar listed a night on a chic floating raft in the Great Barrier Reef designed to bring winners as close as possible to the natural habitat of Dory and Nemo.
Leigh Gallagher (The Airbnb Story: How Three Ordinary Guys Disrupted an Industry, Made Billions . . . and Created Plenty of Controversy)
Well, the cure for the sort of condition I am in is work. I shall write another novel. But the trouble is, with the last one there was never a point when I said: I shall write a novel. I found I was writing a novel. Well, I must put myself in the same state of mind—a kind of open readiness, a passive waiting. Then perhaps one day I’ll find myself writing.
Doris Lessing (The Golden Notebook)
When I look at you, I can feel it. When I look at you I’m home
finding dory
Roosevelt’s leadership style was, in actuality, governed by just such a series of simple dictums and aphorisms: Hit the ground running; consolidate control; ask questions of everyone wherever you go; manage by wandering around; determine the basic problems of each organization and hit them head-on; when attacked, counterattack; stick to your guns; spend your political capital to reach your goals; and then when your work is stymied or done, find a way out.
Doris Kearns Goodwin (Leadership: In Turbulent Times)
Leaders in every field, Roosevelt later wrote, “need more than anything else to know human nature, to know the needs of the human soul; and they will find this nature and these needs set forth as nowhere else by the great imaginative writers, whether of prose or of poetry.
Doris Kearns Goodwin (Leadership: In Turbulent Times)
Find ways to save face.
Doris Kearns Goodwin (Leadership: In Turbulent Times)
he methodically distinguishes two types of success—whether in the arts, in battle, or in politics. The first success, he argues, belongs to the man “who has in him the natural power to do what no one else can do, and what no amount of training, no perseverance or will power, will enable an ordinary man to do.” He cites the poet who could write the “Ode on a Grecian Urn,” the president who could “deliver the Gettysburg Address,” and Lord Nelson at Trafalgar as manifestations of genius, examples of men assigned extraordinary gifts at birth. The second and more common type of success, he maintains, is not dependent on such unique inborn attributes, but on a man’s ability to develop ordinary qualities to an extraordinary degree through ambition and the application of hard, sustained work. Unlike genius, which can inspire, but not educate, self-made success is democratic, “open to the average man of sound body and fair mind, who has no remarkable mental or physical attributes,” but who enlarges each of those attributes to the maximum degree. He suggests that it is “more useful to study this second type,” for with determination, anyone “can, if he chooses, find out how to win a similar success himself.” It is clear from the start of Roosevelt’s story of his leadership journey that he unequivocally aligns himself with this second type of success.
Doris Kearns Goodwin (Leadership: In Turbulent Times)
PEOPLE LIVING IN THE WEST, in societies that we describe as Western, or as the free world, may be educated in many different ways, but they will all emerge with an idea about themselves that goes something like this: I am a citizen of a free society, and that means I am an individual, making individual choices. My mind is my own, my opinions are chosen by me, I am free to do as I will, and at the worst the pressures on me are economic, that is to say I may be too poor to do as I want. This set of ideas may sound something like a caricature, but it is not so far off how we see ourselves. It is a portrait that may not have been acquired consciously, but is part of a general atmosphere or set of assumptions that influence our ideas about ourselves. People in the West therefore may go through their entire lives never thinking to analyze this very flattering picture, and as a result are helpless against all kinds of pressures on them to conform in many kinds of ways. The fact is that we all live our lives in groups—the family, work groups, social, religious and political groups. Very few people indeed are happy as solitaries, and they tend to be seen by their neighbours as peculiar or selfish or worse. Most people cannot stand being alone for long. They are always seeking groups to belong to, and if one group dissolves, they look for another. We are group animals still, and there is nothing wrong with that. But what is dangerous is not the belonging to a group, or groups, but not understanding the social laws that govern groups and govern us. When we’re in a group, we tend to think as that group does: we may even have joined the group to find “like-minded” people. But we also find our thinking changing because we belong to a group. It is the hardest thing in the world to maintain an individual dissident opinion, as a member of a group. It seems to me that this is something we have all experienced—something we take for granted, may never have thought about. But a great deal of experiment has gone on among psychologists and sociologists on this very theme. If I describe an experiment or two, then anyone listening who may be a sociologist or psychologist will groan, oh God not again—for they will have heard of these classic experiments far too often. My guess is that the rest of the people will never have heard of these experiments, never have had these ideas presented to them. If my guess is true, then it aptly illustrates my general thesis, and the general idea behind these essays, that we (the human race) are now in possession of a great deal of hard information about ourselves, but we do not use it to improve our institutions and therefore our lives.
Doris Lessing (Prisons We Choose to Live Inside)
Doris
Mobo Reader (Love Always Finds A Way 11: An Unsettled State Of Mind)