Identity V Quotes

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

I hate a mystery. I would have let the identity of the Commander’s successor remain a secret, as I have for fifteen years, but tonight’s opportunity was too tempting. With eight drunken Generals sleeping it off, I could have danced on their beds without waking them." - Valek
Maria V. Snyder (Poison Study (Study, #1))
Captain Miller, we know that you are connected with military intelligence, and can obtain classified documents.
Karl Braungart (Lost Identity (Remmich/Miller, #1))
I know this will be a shock as you’ve just arrived, but I have decided to resign. It seems our timing is off.
Karl Braungart (Lost Identity (Remmich/Miller, #1))
Major Yildiz has a contact in Stuttgart who is a high-ranking officer of the US V Corps. He is going to help us.
Karl Braungart (Lost Identity (Remmich/Miller, #1))
You should never act against yourself.
Mya Robarts (The V Girl: A Coming of Age Story)
I was told you are carrying around a USB. Is there classified information on it?
Karl Braungart (Lost Identity (Remmich/Miller, #1))
Let’s not forget—we already have a highly ranked officer secretly working for us at Patch Barracks, V Corps headquarters.
Karl Braungart (Lost Identity (Remmich/Miller, #1))
This assignment is my duty to perform for the US Army. My job is outside your command, my friend. You know my security clearance level remains the same. Copying the SCI is a safety measure, in case there is an electrical glitch. So, I believe we’ve talked enough about this subject. Agree?
Karl Braungart (Lost Identity (Remmich/Miller, #1))
Any ape can reach for a banana, but only humans can reach for the stars.
V.S. Ramachandran (The Tell-Tale Brain: A Neuroscientist's Quest for What Makes Us Human)
Identity is the role you chose to play in the story of the Universe.
Maria V. Shall
It is within science itself, and not in some prior philosophy, that reality is to be identified and described.
Willard Van Orman Quine (Theories and Things)
It is confidence in the men and women who administer the judicial system that is the true backbone of the rule of law. Time will one day heal the wound to that confidence that will be inflicted by today's decision [in Bush v. Gore]. One thing, however, is certain. Although we may never know with complete certainty the identity of the winner of this year's Presidential election, the identity of the loser is pellucidly clear. It is the Nation's confidence in the judge as an impartial guardian of the rule of law.
John Paul Stevens (The Nine: Inside the Secret World of the Supreme Court)
After all, she has gone to visit pieces of her art so many times. But they were only pieces, stripped of context.
V.E. Schwab
This is the story of V and me. Look. Each person has the possibilities of being simultaneously several beings, having several lives. The good family man doesn’t have a sense of responsibility. Simultaneously, he’s my angel. Simultaneously, his family’s a pack of incontinent dogs. In front of men such as him who believe they’re respectable, I love to talk about who they really are, the people they don’t want to know and socially and politically chastise. Look. I have loved and worshiped a pig. This society hates and locks up its madness because they hate and lock up themselves. I know the system of schizophrenia. Nevertheless I loved a pig and couldn’t stop.
Kathy Acker (In Memoriam to Identity)
Finally, those who do not meet the SCID-D-R standard for "distinct identities or personality states," but who do meet the SCID-D-R's other four standards (for DSM-IV's Criterion A and Criterion B) for DID, receive a SCID-D-R diagnosis of DDNOS-1a.
Paul F. Dell (Dissociation and the Dissociative Disorders: DSM-V and Beyond)
He watched her for her reaction, or possibly watched her just to watch, his eyes hooded by his lashes and his mouth impassive. A faceless man—such as the one she had dreamed of since she was a child—his identity not obscured by mist or flying sand or swirling dust, but by a mask he readily employed whenever he wished. As a shutter closed against a gale. Closed against her, no matter the impact of his words. He seemed to speak them against his will, just as he seemed to care for her against his will.
V.S. Carnes
Time of course has showed the question up in all its young illogic. We can justify any apologia simply by calling life a successive rejection of personalities. No apologia I s any more than a romance—half a fiction—in which all the successive identities are taken on and rejected by the writer as a function of linear time are treated as separate characters. The writing itself even constitutes another rejection, another “character” added to the past. So we do sell our souls: paying them away to history in little installments. It isn’t so much to pay for eyes clear enough to see past the fiction of continuity, the fiction of cause and effect, the fiction of a humanized history endowed with “reason.
Thomas Pynchon (V.)
TODAY I THINK MY RELATIONSHIP WITH HELL IS OVER. It was hell, the ancient hell. Hell: I believed that if I loved V enough, we would love each other. All I know is that I’ve been returned to earth violently; I’ve a duty to myself to survive and to see what is. I have to deal with the truth, with nothing else. Did V’s charity to me almost cause my death? I, starving, fed on the dream that V loved me and I lived a lie. So forgive me, You who knows that only truth matters. Yes—this dawn is at best difficult. The blood he let out of my skin, now dried and stiff, hurts me and there’s nothing else in my life but memories of him. Mental war is constant. Nonetheless, this is the eve before the morning. May I accept the influxes of vigor and whatever real tenderness floats by in these barren waters. And when dawn comes, armed with my patience which burns, I shall see the cities of humans which are splendid. The imagination is nothing unless it is made actual.
Kathy Acker (In Memoriam to Identity)
The first commandments concern God, God’s aniconic character, and God’s name (Exod. 20:3–7). But when we consider the identity of this God, we are made immediately aware that the God who will brook no rival and who eventually will rest is a God who is embedded in a narrative; this God is not known or available apart from that narrative. The narrative matrix of YHWH, the God of Israel, is the exodus narrative. This is the God “who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery” (v. 2).
Walter Brueggemann (Sabbath as Resistance: Saying No to the Culture of Now)
The greater the meaning behind your business, the harder it becomes to communicate it to the world.
Gregory V. Diehl (Brand Identity Breakthrough: How to Craft Your Company's Unique Story to Make Your Products Irresistible)
Rather than walking in the flesh, they now “walk by the Spirit” (v. 25), being characterized by a growing desire to obey the Word of God.
John F. MacArthur Jr. (Slave: The Hidden Truth About Your Identity in Christ)
People think, discuss others all the Time as habit will soon lose their identity and will be ignored.Dr.T.V.Rao MD
T.V. Rao
Never say I love you, Until you have courage to merge your Identities !!" ~Skv
Sudhir K V
Vsakdo mora vaditi svojo navzočnost tukaj in zdaj. Da bi se tega naučili, moramo svoj nemirni opičji um vedno znova potegniti nazaj, vsakič, ko odtava v preteklost ali prihodnost. Pozorni moramo biti tudi na to, da ne zidamo gradov v oblakih in ne premišljujemo o namišljenih situacijah in tako odtavamo s pozornostjo.
Phyllis Krystal (TAMING OUR MONKEY MIND: Insight, Detachment, Identity)
Cruelty, yes: it was in the nature of Indian family life. The clan that gave protection and identity, and saved people from the void, was itself a little state, and it could be a hard place, full of politics, full of hatreds and changing alliances and moral denunciations. It was the kind of family life I had known for much of my childhood:...
V.S. Naipaul (India: A Million Mutinies Now)
There is no faster way to garner the lasting respect of employees, partners, and consumers than to become the embodiment of an ideal.
Gregory V. Diehl (Brand Identity Breakthrough: How to Craft Your Company's Unique Story to Make Your Products Irresistible)
It doesn’t matter what someone is. Only what they think they are.
V.E. Schwab (A Conjuring of Light (Shades of Magic, #3))
The only real way to know your limits is to just keep testing yourself.
Gregory V. Diehl (Brand Identity Breakthrough: How to Craft Your Company's Unique Story to Make Your Products Irresistible)
Traveling the world on my own terms taught me that human beings make decisions based not on the reality of things, but on the stories that fill their heads about how things are.
Gregory V. Diehl (Brand Identity Breakthrough: How to Craft Your Company's Unique Story to Make Your Products Irresistible)
Nekoč v prihodnosti se bomo znašli v situaciji, ko bomo morali sprejeti vse, kar smo v preteklosti storili drugim, in to velja tako za dobre besede in dejanja kot za ostre in ponižujoče.
Phyllis Krystal (TAMING OUR MONKEY MIND: Insight, Detachment, Identity)
The Supreme Court of the United States has descended from the disciplined legal reasoning of John Marshall and Joseph Story to the mystical aphorisms of the fortune cookie. [Referring to pronouncement by Justice Anthony Kennedy in Obergefell v. Hodges: "The Constitution promises liberty to all within its reach, a liberty that includes certain specific rights that allow persons, within a lawful realm, to define and express their identity."]
Antonin Scalia
Indian poverty is more dehumanizing than any machine; and, more than in any machine civilization, men in India are units, locked up in the straitest obedience by their idea of their dharma. The scientist returning to India sheds the individuality he acquired during his time abroad; he regains the security of his caste identity, and the world is once more simplified. There are minute rules, as comforting as bandages; individual perception and judgement, which once called forth his creativity, are relinquished as burdens, and the man is once more a unit in his herd, his science reduced to a skill. The blight of caste is not only untouchability and the consequent deification in India of filth; the blight, in India that tries to grow, is also the over-all obedience it imposes, its ready-made satisfactions, the diminishing of adventurousness, the pushing away of men of individuality and the possibility of excellence.
V.S. Naipaul (India: A Wounded Civilization)
During slavery they made us hate ourselves for being black as if it was a “Curse” because of the “Curse of Canaan” story.  So as we got older it was the norm to love our slavemasters children.  We watched our children get sold into slavery and we watched them starve.  We nursed their babies while our babies died.  We took care of the master’s house chores and the master’s family while our family was in turmoil.  We watched their children go off to school while our children died in the streets.  We learned to love the image of a “White Saviour” because we were taught that black skin was “ugly” and a “curse”.   We went from watching cartoons with white princesses and princes to watching T.V. sitcoms where whites dominated the cast.  As a result we wanted our hair to look “straight” like the Princesses we saw on T.V. or the girl that was liked by all the boys.  This mental brainwashing was “key” in the process of erasing our “true identity”.
Ronald Dalton Jr. (Hebrews to Negroes 2 - Volume 1)
Božanskost je navzoča v vsakem človeku, in če so razmere ugodne, se bo sama od sebe manifestirala prav tako, kakor skali seme, v katerem se skriva življenje, in zaradi svoje narave zraste v drevo, če ima omogočene razmere za razvijanje svojih zmožnosti.
Phyllis Krystal (TAMING OUR MONKEY MIND: Insight, Detachment, Identity)
Cruelty, yes: it was in the nature of Indian family life. The clan that gave protection and identity, and saved people from the void, was itself a little state, and it could be a hard place, full of politics, full of hatreds and changing alliances and moran denunciations. It was the kind of family life I had known for much of my childhood: an early introduction to the ways of the world, and to the nature of cruelty. It had given me, as I suspected it had given Kala, a taste for the other kind of life, the solitary or less corwded life...
V.S Naipaul
The first of these is what we may call a polarization of sexual differences (V.6), i.e., the elaboration of a particular ratio of masculinity and femininity in line with identity development. Some of our patients suffer more lastingly and malignantly from a state not uncommon in a milder and transient form in all adolescence: the young person does not feel himself clearly to be a member of one sex or the other, which may make him the easy victim of the pressure emanating, for example, from homosexual cliques, for to some persons it is more bearable to be typed as something, anything, than to endure drawn-out bisexual confusion
Erik H. Erikson (Identity: Youth and Crisis (Austen Riggs Monograph Book 7))
Oh, lady, there aren’t words for it. I don’t know—it’s the difference between a pair of roller skates and a Ferrari—ah, there aren’t words.’ ‘I think the lady doth protest too much. You wouldn’t promote such blatant lesbian propaganda if you were sure of yourself and your sexual identity.’ ‘Propaganda? I took a few minutes to try to answer a question you asked me. If you want to see blatant propaganda then look at the ads in the subways, magazines, t.v., everywhere. The big pigs use heterosexuality and women’s bodies to sell everything in this country—even violence. Damn, you people are so bad off you got to have computers to match you up these days.’ Polina began to get angry, but then she took some time to think about what I had laid on her. ‘I never thought of it that way, I mean about advertising and all.’ ‘Well, I sure have. You don’t see ads of women kissing to get you to buy Salem cigarettes, do you?’ She laughed. ‘That’s funny, that’s truly funny. Why the entire world must look different to you.’ ‘It does. It looks destructive, diseased, and corroded. People have no selves anymore (maybe they never had them in the first place) so their home base is their sex—their genitals, who they fuck. It’s enough to make a chicken laugh.’ ‘I—are all homosexuals as perceptive as you?
Rita Mae Brown (Rubyfruit Jungle)
No, non imiterò mai coloro che cancellano le proprie tracce, ripudiano il proprio passato e sono morti, anche se con equilibrismi intellettuali fanno finta di essere vivi. Le mie radici sono laggiù, all’Est, su questo non v’è alcun dubbio. Anche se trovo difficile e spiacevole spiegare chi sono, bisogna pur tentare di farlo.
Czesław Miłosz (Native Realm: A Search for Self-Definition)
The thesis that DID is merely a North American phenomenon has been refuted in the past decade by research reports based on standardized assessment from diverse countries, such as from The Netherlands, Turkey, and Germany (Boon & Draijer, 1993; Gast, Rodewald, Nickel, & Emrich, 2001; S ̧ar et al, 1996). Clinicians and researchers should be careful to avoid categorizing a universal human condition as culture-bound.
Paul F. Dell (Dissociation and the Dissociative Disorders: DSM-V and Beyond)
The SCID-D-R's standard for "distinct identities or personality states" (DSM-IV, p. 487) is: "Persistent manifestations of the presence of different personalities, as indicated by at least four of the following: a) ongoing dialogues between different people; b) acting or feeling that the different people inside of him/her take control of his/her behavior or speech; c) characteristic visual image that is associated with the other person, distinct from the subject; d) characteristic age associated with the different people inside of him/her; e) feeling that the different people inside of him/her have different memories, behaviors, and feelings; f) feeling that the different people inside of him/her are separate from his/her personality and have lives of their own" (Steinberg, 1994, p. 106). [The author believes that it is of considerable importance that none of the SCID-D-R's six criteria for "distinct personalities or personality states" are observable signs; each of the six is a subjective symptom or experience that must be reported to the test administrator. This striking fact supports the contention that assessment of dissociation should be based on subjective symptoms rather than signs (Dell, 2006b. 2009b).]
Paul F. Dell (Dissociation and the Dissociative Disorders: DSM-V and Beyond)
TODAY I THINK MY RELATIONSHIP WITH HELL IS OVER. It was hell, the ancient hell. Hell: I believed that if I loved V enough, we would love each other. All I know is that I’ve been returned to earth violently; I’ve a duty to myself to survive and to see what is. I have to deal with the truth, with nothing else. Did V’s charity to me almost cause my death? I, starving, fed on the dream that V loved me and I lived a lie. So forgive me, You who knows that only truth matters. Yes—this dawn is at best difficult. The blood he let out of my skin, now dried and stiff, hurts me and there’s nothing else in my life but memories of him. Mental war is constant. Nonetheless, this is the eve before the morning. May I accept the influxes of vigor and whatever real tenderness floats by in these barren waters. And when dawn comes, armed with my patience which burns, I shall see the cities of humans which are splendid. The imagination is nothing unless it is made actual.
Kathy Acker (In Memoriam to Identity)
An interesting question is whether symmetry with respect to translation, and indeed reflection and rotation too, is limited to the visual arts, or may be exhibited by other artistic forms, such as pieces of music. Evidently, if we refer to the sounds, rather than to the layout of the written musical score, we would have to define symmetry operations in terms other than purely geometrical, just as we did in the case of the palindromes. Once we do that, however, the answer to the question, Can we find translation-symmetric music? is a resounding yes. As Russian crystal physicist G. V. Wulff wrote in 1908: "The spirit of music is rhythm. It consists of the regular, periodic repetition of parts of the musical composition...the regular repetition of identical parts in the whole constitutes the essence of symmetry." Indeed, the recurring themes that are so common in musical composition are the temporal equivalents of Morris's designs and symmetry under translation. Even more generally, compositions are often based on a fundamental motif introduced at the beginning and then undergoing various metamorphoses.
Mario Livio (The Equation That Couldn't Be Solved: How Mathematical Genius Discovered the Language of Symmetry)
In the U.S. Articles of Confederation, the federal government gave itself the exclusive right to regulate “the trade and managing all affairs with the Indians.” This power was repeated in the 1790 Trade and Intercourse Act, which further refined “trade” and “affairs” to include the purchase and sale of Indian land. The intent of these two pieces of legislation was clear. Whatever powers states were to have, those powers did not extend to Native peoples. Beginning in 1823, there would be three U.S. Supreme Court decisions—Johnson v. McIntosh, Cherokee v. Georgia, Worcester v. Georgia—that would confirm the powers that the U.S. government had unilaterally taken upon itself and spell out the legal arrangement that tribes were to be allowed. 1823. Johnson v. McIntosh. The court decided that private citizens could not purchase land directly from Indians. Since all land in the boundaries of America belonged to the federal government by right of discovery, Native people could sell their land only to the U.S. government. Indians had the right of occupancy, but they did not hold legal title to their lands. 1831. Cherokee v. Georgia. The State of Georgia attempted to extend state laws to the Cherokee nation. The Cherokee argued that they were a foreign nation and therefore not subject to the laws of Georgia. The court held that Indian tribes were not sovereign, independent nations but domestic, dependent nations. 1832. Worcester v. Georgia. This case was a follow-up to Cherokee v. Georgia. Having determined that the Cherokee were a domestic, dependent nation, the court settled the matter of jurisdiction, ruling that the responsibility to regulate relations with Native nations was the exclusive prerogative of Congress and the federal government. These three cases unilaterally redefined relationships between Whites and Indians in America. Native nations were no longer sovereign nations. Indians were reduced to the status of children and declared wards of the state. And with these decisions, all Indian land within America now belonged to the federal government. While these rulings had legal standing only in the United States, Canada would formalize an identical relationship with Native people a little later in 1876 with the passage of the Indian Act. Now it was official. Indians in all of North America were property.
Thomas King (The Inconvenient Indian: A Curious Account of Native People in North America)
If a season like the Great Rebellion ever came to him again, he feared, it could never be in that same personal, random array of picaresque acts he was to recall and celebrate in later years at best furious and nostalgic; but rather with a logic that chilled the comfortable perversity of the heart, that substituted capability for character, deliberate scheme for political epiphany (so incomparably African); and for Sarah, the sjambok, the dances of death between Warmbad and Keetmanshoop, the taut haunches of his Firelily, the black corpse impaled on a thorn tree in a river swollen with sudden rain, for these the dearest canvases in his soul's gallery, it was to substitute the bleak, abstracted and for him rather meaningless hanging on which he now turned his back, but which was to backdrop his retreat until he reached the Other Wall, the engineering design for a world he knew with numb leeriness nothing could now keep from becoming reality, a world whose full despair he, at the vantage of eighteen years later, couldn't even find adequate parables for, but a design whose first fumbling sketches he thought must have been done the year after Jacob Marengo died, on that terrible coast, where the beach between Luderitzbucht and the cemetery was actually littered each morning with a score of identical female corpses, an agglomeration no more substantial-looking than seaweed against the unhealthy yellow sand; where the soul's passage was more a mass migration across that choppy fetch of Atlantic the wind never left alone, from an island of low cloud, like an anchored prison ship, to simple integration with the unimaginable mass of their continent; where the single line of track still edged toward a Keetmanshoop that could in no conceivable iconology be any part of the Kingdom of Death; where, finally, humanity was reduced, out of a necessity which in his loonier moments he could almost believe was only Deutsch-Sudwestafrika's (actually he knew better), out of a confrontation the young of one's contemporaries, God help them, had yet to make, humanity was reduced to a nervous, disquieted, forever inadequate but indissoluble Popular Front against deceptively unpolitical and apparently minor enemies, enemies that would be with him to the grave: a sun with no shape, a beach alien as the moon's antarctic, restless concubines in barbed wire, salt mists, alkaline earth, the Benguela Current that would never cease bringing sand to raise the harbor floor, the inertia of rock, the frailty of flesh, the structural unreliability of thorns; the unheard whimper of a dying woman; the frightening but necessary cry of the strand wolf in the fog.
Thomas Pynchon (V.)
Statistical discrimination explains why the police in the United States justify stopping black drivers more often. And how the Hindu majoritarian government of the state of Uttar Pradesh recently explained why so many of the people “accidentally” killed by the state police (in what are called “encounter deaths”) are Muslim. There are more blacks and Muslims among criminals. In other words, what looks like naked racism does not have to be that; it can be the result of targeting some characteristic (drug dealing, criminality) that happens to be correlated with race or religion. So statistical discrimination, rather than old-fashioned prejudice—what economists call taste-based discrimination—may be the cause. The end result is the same if you are black or Muslim, though. A recent study on the impact of “ban the box” (BTB) policies on the rate of unemployment of young black men provides a compelling demonstration of statistical discrimination. BTB policies restrict employers from using application forms where there is a box that needs to be checked if you have a criminal conviction. Twenty-three states have adopted these policies in the hope of raising employment among young black men, who are much more likely to have a conviction than others and whose unemployment rate is double the national average.31 To test the effect of these policies, two researchers sent fifteen thousand fictitious online job applications to employers in New Jersey and New York City, just before and right after the states of New York and New Jersey implemented the BTB policy.32 They manipulated the perception of race by using typically white or typically African American first names on the résumés. Whenever a job posting required indicating whether or not the applicant had a prior felony conviction, they also randomized whether he or she had one. They found, as many others before them, clear discrimination against blacks in general: white “applicants” received about 23 percent more callbacks than black applicants with the same résumé. Unsurprisingly, among employers who asked about criminal convictions before the ban, there was a very large effect of having a felony conviction: applicants without a felony conviction were 62 percent more likely to be called back than those with a conviction but an otherwise identical résumé, an effect similar for whites and blacks. The most surprising finding, however, was that the BTB policy substantially increased racial disparities in callbacks. White applicants to BTB-affected employers received 7 percent more callbacks than similar black applicants before BTB. After BTB, this gap grew to 43 percent. The reason was that without the actual information about convictions, the employers assumed all black applicants were more likely to have a conviction. In other words, the BTB policy led employers to rely on race to predict criminality, which is of course statistical discrimination.
Abhijit V. Banerjee (Good Economics for Hard Times: Better Answers to Our Biggest Problems)
…these books have their own integrity, their own identity. It is not about the words in there. You don’t need to read these books. Words are there to confuse you. They are just messing around with your mind. You have to look beyond words. There is a big secret somewhere in these books and I am going to find it. And you know that, but you are afraid to admit it. It is dangerous.
Stevan V. Nikolic (Weekend In Faro)
LIFE" wHat is tHIs? I tHInk itz n0tHIng n0thIng n0thIng I mEt maNy p30pLe in mY LiFe...buT 0nE daY AccIdentLy G0D haVe sh0wn mE a beAutIfuL m0vemEnt buT I waX n0t awAre ab0uT tHIs dat itZ m0rE pAinFuLL . I Can't eXpLaIn in Few W0rdZ .In sh0rt juS waNa saY L0st mY eVerytHing buT aLL g0ex In vAin.....In 0ther xEnce My Life br0keD mE in unLimItED piceS.....buT wHen these past m0vemEnts runz In mY mInd jus FeeLing huRteD & i can't xpLain dat wat i feeL ...
Malik Faisal
However, in the virtual world of social networks, we get attracted to identities that are virtual. We don’t know who is behind them and what their intentions are. Sometimes, they are just predators looking for easy prey. And they are very good at what they do.
Stevan V. Nikolic (Weekend In Faro)
Love is not a weakness, Love is strength, because when a person put himself or herself out there and risk their heart to love someone else, they are risking their soul, and their identity, because being in love and being in a relationship, your identity becomes paired with someone else identity and you become one identity and no longer separate identities and this is what really makes a relationships and love so risky, because over time the one identity no longer is dependent upon the separate identities because they no longer exist by themselves, because they have become one.
Austin V. Songer
give a smile, get a smile, keep a smile
vicki zell (Identity Crisis)
These verses, as v.18 shows, recount the establishment of a covenant between God and Abram. Thus it is fitting that in several respects the account should foreshadow the making of the covenant at Sinai. The opening statement, “I am the LORD who brought you out of Ur of the Chaldeans” (v.7), anticipates a virtually identical opening statement for the Sinaitic covenant (Ex 20:2): “I am the LORD your God, who brought you out of Egypt.” The expression “Ur of the Chaldeans” is a reference back to 11:28 and 31 and grounds the present covenant in a past act of divine salvation from “Babylon,” just as Exodus 20:2 grounds the Sinaitic covenant in an act of divine salvation from Egypt. The coming of God’s presence in the fire and darkness of Sinai (Ex 19:18; 20:18; Dt 4:11) is foreshadowed in Abram’s fiery vision in this chapter (vv.12, 17). In the Lord’s words to Abram (vv.13 – 16), a connection between his covenant and the Sinaitic covenant is established by a reference to the four hundred years of bondage for Abram’s descendants and their subsequent “exodus” “and afterward they will come out,” v.14).
Tremper Longman III (Genesis–Leviticus (The Expositor's Bible Commentary Book 1))
More important, there is a revealing logical lacuna in the positivist's argument, one that will reintroduce us immediately to the nature of revolutionary change. Can Newtonian dynamics really be derived from relativistic dynamics? What would such a derivation look like? Imagine a set of statements, E1, E2,...,En, which together embody the laws of relativity theory. These statements contain variables and parameters representing spatial position, time, rest mass, etc. From them, together with the apparatus of logic and mathematics, is deducible a whole set of further statements including some that can be checked by observation. To prove the adequacy of Newtonian dynamics as a special case, we must add to the E1's additional statements, like (v/c)^2<<1, restricting the range of the parameters and variables. This enlarged set of statements is then manipulated to yield a new set, N1,N2,....,Nm, which is identical in form with Newton's laws of motion, the law of gravity, and so on. Apparently, Newtonian dynamics has been derived from Einsteinian, subject to a few limiting conditions.
Thomas S. Kuhn (The Structure of Scientific Revolutions)
culture—in the U.S. Supreme Court’s ruling in Plessy v. Ferguson. Homer Plessy, a very light-skinned, racially mixed man, had made a planned attempt to challenge Louisiana’s 1890 law requiring segregated streetcars. His lawyer, Albion Tourgee, a northern white Reconstruction official and popular novelist, had argued the case on the grounds that the government did not have the right to determine the racial identities of its citizens. But the Supreme Court decided
Grace Elizabeth Hale (Making Whiteness: The Culture of Segregation in the South, 1890-1940)
When do we find out?" I asked him, my tears now bubbling at the lids. "Find out what?" "Who we are." "We're always making discoveries about that," he said.
V.C. Andrews (Orphans (Orphans, #1-4))
V: What happens to the knowledge of the Jñani ? M: The knowledge dissolves or merges into the Jñani . The Jñani does not dissolve. The states of waking and sleep are absent in a Jñani . He has no name and form. All these remain upto Self-knowledge, but not beyond. All this is very easy, but it appears to be very difficult to comprehend. A rare one can realize it. One has to transcend not just the body, but even one’s consciousness. One goes beyond all knowledge. All these changes happen without any deliberate rejection of the old identities.
Mohan Gaitonde (Nothing is Everything: The Quintessential Teachings Of Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj)
Becoming the best version of yourself is useless if it only comes out when you’re alone, if you’re not able to hang on to your new identity at work, with friends, or on dates, especially since these times are often when we need a hero the most.
Emily V. Gordon (Super You: Release Your Inner Superhero)
What evokes persecution is precisely that which challenges a worldview, that which up-ends a symbolic universe. It is somewhat threatening to other first-century Jews to regard your community as the true Temple, and perhaps it is just as well to keep such ideas within the walls of an enclosed community in the desert; but since the belief, as held in Qumran, involves an intensification of Torah, the vicarious purification of the Land, the fierce defence of the race, and the dream of an eventually rebuilt and purified physical Temple in Jerusalem itself, one can imagine Pharisees debating it vigorously but not seeking authority from the chief priests to exterminate it. It embodied, after all, too many of the central worldview-features. The equivalent belief as held within Christianity seems to have had no such redeeming features. No new Temple would replace Herod’s, since the real and final replacement was Jesus and his people. No intensified Torah would define this community, since its sole definition was its Jesus-belief.28 No Land claimed its allegiance, and no Holy City could function for it as Jerusalem did for mainline Jews; Land had now been transposed into World, and the Holy City was the new Jerusalem, which, as some Jewish apocalyptic writers had envisaged, would appear, like the horses and chariots of fire around Elisha, becoming true on earth as it was in heaven.29 Racial identity was irrelevant; the story of this new community was traced back to Adam, not just to Abraham, and a memory was preserved of Jesus’ forerunner declaring that Israel’s god could raise up children for Abraham from the very stones.30 Once we understand how worldviews function, we can see that the Jewish neighbours of early Christians must have regarded them, not as a lover of Monet regards a lover of Picasso, but as a lover of painting regards one who deliberately sets fire to art galleries—and who claims to do so in the service of Art.31
N.T. Wright (New Testament People God V1: Christian Origins And The Question Of God)
No doubt Gervase Fen or Peter Wimsey would immediately have grasped the vital clue revealing the identity of the murderer. But to me it looked like wreckage.
Sara Paretsky (Bitter Medicine (V.I. Warshawski, #4))
views on these issues are all too often based entirely on the affirmation of specific personal values (“I am for immigration because I am a generous person,” “I am against immigration because migrants threaten our identity as a nation”). And when they are bolstered by anything, it is by made-up numbers and very simplistic readings of the facts. Nobody really thinks very hard about the issues themselves. This is really quite disastrous,
Abhijit V. Banerjee (Good Economics for Hard Times: Better Answers to Our Biggest Problems)
This image-restoring calling comes with, and requires, a new family: the church. No one can restore the image alone—only a people can do that, mirroring the original creation of human beings as male and female, the divine communion foreshadowed in the words ‘let us make,’ and the revelation of God as three in one. Whatever our family of origin, the church becomes our ‘first family,’ bound together in the creative love of the one from whom every family takes its name (Ephesians 3 v 15). And the church is especially for those who, in the twists and turns of a broken world, have lost their human family—widows, orphans, refugees, strangers. They above all are our brothers and sisters, our companions in discovering our new identity in Christ. Our image-restoring calling cannot happen without the church—without each other.” [17]
Daniel Darling (The Dignity Revolution: Reclaiming God's Rich Vision for Humanity)
Lesson Focus God shows compassion where he wills. • God is responsive to small steps in the right direction. • God’s compassion is not earned and never deserved. Lesson Application God sometimes shows compassion on us by giving us a second chance when we don’t deserve it. • We respond to God’s Word by taking steps in the right direction. • We recognize that God’s compassion is great. Biblical Context The book of Jonah is about how people respond to the Lord and how the Lord responds to them. Both the sailors and the Ninevites, though pagans, were responsive to what they saw the Lord doing. Jonah, a prophet who should have known better, was the least responsive and had to be taught a lesson about God’s compassion. Interpretational Issues in the Story Jonah’s prophetic mission (Jonah 3:4). Jonah was sent to denounce Nineveh, not to save it. His word to them was a word of judgment. He did not even name Yahweh and he did not confront them with their offenses, instruct them as to what they ought to do, or offer any hope for them to avoid the judgment. If the text does not offer this information, we cannot read those things between the lines and assume that they occurred. Great fish (Jonah 1:17). Nothing in the text indicates the species of the creature, and while a whale cannot be ruled out (they would not have distinguished sea-dwelling mammals from fish), the text is vague. Fish as rescue, not punishment (Jonah 2:6, 9). Jonah’s prayer demonstrates that he saw the fish as deliverance, not judgment. He was drowning, and the Lord used the fish to save his life. Jonah’s prayer (Jonah 2:4, 7–9). Jonah offered no repentance and did not ask forgiveness when he prayed inside the fish. He assumed that since the Lord had saved him from death, he had been restored to favor. He spoke ill of those who worship idols, which apparently included the sailors (whose response had been far better than his own) as if he was insisting, “At least I’m not a pagan idol-worshiper!” He made no mention of his disobedience and indicated no willingness to go to Nineveh. The vows he referred to (v. 9) would have involved sacrifices of thanksgiving at the temple for his rescue. This prayer was a farce, and Jonah was still unchanged (as the rest of the book demonstrates). Ninevite response (Jonah 3:5). The Ninevites believed what Jonah said, but that does not mean they converted to his God. He never even told them the identity of his God, and there is no indication that they got rid of their idols or understood the law. They repented, but any Assyrian would have done so under these circumstances. If they had been convinced that some god was angry at them and about to destroy them, they would have sought to appease that god. That is how they took Jonah’s warning. In the ancient world people believed that there were all sorts of powerful gods, but they only worshiped the ones they believed had power over their lives. Jonah was informing them that a God they had not recognized had noticed them and was going to act against them, and they were grateful for this information. Likely they checked Jonah’s message against their omens and afterward were eager to respond. Sackcloth (Jonah
John H. Walton (The Bible Story Handbook: A Resource for Teaching 175 Stories from the Bible)
Among those who would block the right of rape victims to choice, none is more determined than David C. Reardon,48 founder of the Elliott Institute. There is no eponymous Elliott; the institute’s website explains that the name was selected to sound official and impartial. Starting in the early 1980s, some pro-life advocates opposed abortion even for rape victims on the basis that it could lead to a condition they named ‘postabortion syndrome’,49 characterised by depression, regret and suicidality – a condition formulated as evidence that the Supreme Court had been wrong, in Roe v. Wade, when it averred that abortion was a safe procedure. The ultimate goal of the Elliott Institute is to generate legislation that would allow a woman to seek civil damages against a physician who has ‘damaged her mental health’ by providing her with an elective abortion. On the topic of impregnated survivors of rape and incest, Reardon states in his book Victims and Victors, ‘Many women report that their abortions felt like a degrading form of “medical rape.”50 Abortion involves a painful intrusion into a woman’s sexual organs by a masked stranger.’ He and other anti-abortion partisans often quote the essay ‘Pregnancy and Sexual Assault’ by Sandra K. Mahkorn, who suggests that the emotional and psychological burdens of pregnancy resulting from rape ‘can be lessened with proper support’.51 Another activist, George E. Maloof, writes, ‘Incestuous pregnancy offers a ray of generosity to the world,52 a new life. To snuff it out by abortion is to compound the sexual child abuse with physical child abuse. We may expect a suicide to follow abortion as the quick and easy way to solving personal problems.
Andrew Solomon (Far From The Tree: Parents, Children and the Search for Identity)
The DSM-V offers a comprehensive set of criteria to define narcissism: A. Significant impairments in personality functioning manifest by: 1. Impairments in self functioning (a or b): a. Identity: Excessive reference to others for self-definition and self-esteem regulation; exaggerated self-appraisal may be inflated or deflated, or vacillate between extremes; emotional regulation mirrors fluctuations in self-esteem. b. Self-direction: Goal-setting is based on gaining approval from others; personal standards are unreasonably high in order to see oneself as exceptional, or too low based on a sense of entitlement; often unaware of own motivations. AND 2. Impairments in interpersonal functioning (a or b): a. Empathy: Impaired ability to recognize or identify with the feelings and needs of others; excessively attuned to reactions of others, but only if perceived as relevant to self; over- or underestimate of own effect on others. b. Intimacy: Relationships largely superficial and exist to serve self-esteem regulation; mutuality constrained by little genuine interest in others experiences and predominance of a need for personal gain. B. Pathological personality traits in the following domain: 1. Antagonism, characterized by: a. Grandiosity: Feelings of entitlement, either overt or covert; self-centeredness; firmly holding to the belief that one is better than others; condescending toward others. b. Attention seeking: Excessive attempts to attract and be the focus of the attention of others; admiration seeking. C. The impairments in personality functioning and the individual’s personality trait expression are relatively stable across time and consistent across situations. D. The impairments in personality functioning and the individual’s personality trait expression are not better understood as normative for the individual’s developmental stage or sociocultural environment. E. The impairments in personality functioning and the individual’s personality trait expression are not solely due to the direct physiological effects of a substance (e.g., a drug of abuse, medication) or a general medical condition (e.g., severe head trauma).7
Chuck DeGroat (When Narcissism Comes to Church: Healing Your Community From Emotional and Spiritual Abuse)
Should the parents know what’s going on? In England the court has said that it should be assumed that parental involvement will be helpful (which means that it is in the girl’s best interests) (R (Axon) v Secretary of State for Health (2006)), but that this assumption can be displaced. The American Medical Association has given more or less identical advice: see Opinion 5.055: Confidential Care for Minors: 1996. It’s easy to understand why the assumption of disclosure is readily displaced: girls would often be discouraged from seeking medical help if they thought that their parents would be told.
Charles Foster (Medical Law: A Very Short Introduction)
As an entrepreneur, value creation will always be your first line of defense against business failure. Specific
Gregory V. Diehl (Brand Identity Breakthrough: How to Craft Your Company's Unique Story to Make Your Products Irresistible)
Maybe you already think you have a pretty good handle on the business environment you’ve had to work with so far. Maybe your present level of information and abilities has been enough to sustain your personal brand or small business until now. But circumstances never stay the same for long. An entrepreneur, to thrive for any length of time, must be adaptable to the new environments he will eventually find himself in. If nothing ever changes, it simply means he is not growing. In the end, we are all either growing or dying. Your
Gregory V. Diehl (Brand Identity Breakthrough: How to Craft Your Company's Unique Story to Make Your Products Irresistible)
Josiah’s gaze narrowed in Santa’s direction. “How did he know our names?” “He must be from around here.” “I don’t live here.” He sounded more surprised than upset. “You’re one of Marietta’s most famous former residents. Most people know who you are.” Ellie touched the top of his hand to reassure him. “Or maybe he’s the real Santa, and you’ll find a special gift under the tree on Christmas morning.” “More like an identity theft notification,” Josiah joked.
Melissa McClone (A Christmas Homecoming (Bar V5 Dude Ranch #5))
There is a holistic approach to global travel that will fundamentally change you as a person.
Gregory V. Diehl (Travel as Transformation: Conquer the Limits of Culture to Discover Your Own Identity)
To operate as oneself is to create a specific kind of change in the pursuit of one’s own satisfaction. Armed with that principle, every day is a chance to grow the scale of its implementation.
Gregory V. Diehl (Travel as Transformation: Conquer the Limits of Culture to Discover Your Own Identity)
The world is a book of many pages waiting to be read. The self is a library of ancient tomes written in languages you cannot fully understand. You grow accustomed with the characters you find on the first shelf and never get to know what remains on the vast arena of you.
Gregory V. Diehl (Travel as Transformation: Conquer the Limits of Culture to Discover Your Own Identity)
Do whatever is difficult until it is no longer difficult. Let yourself grow into all the ways you are capable of being.
Gregory V. Diehl (Travel as Transformation: Conquer the Limits of Culture to Discover Your Own Identity)
Ipseity Though the sun is bright, it doesn't fill me with warmth, doesn't cheer me into a smile. Clearly, being in a field of sunflowers has not made me one.
A.V.S Pranavi (The Kaleidoscope Called Life)
In a peasant society, where familial relations provided one’s basic identity, it was shocking in the extreme. In first-century Jewish culture, for which the sense of familial and racial loyalty was a basic symbol of the prevailing worldview, it cannot but have been devastating.135 Jesus was proposing to treat his followers as a surrogate family. This had a substantial positive result: Jesus intended his followers to inherit all the closeness and mutual obligations that belonged with family membership in that close-knit, family-based society. It also carried fairly clear negative consequences in that society: to be a member of one family meant sitting loose to membership in any other. Hence the remarkable demands for Jesus’ followers to ‘hate’ father, mother, siblings, spouse and children—and even their own selves.136 This was not just extraordinarily challenging at a personal level; it was deeply subversive at a social, cultural, religious and political level, as we shall see in due course.
N.T. Wright (Jesus Victory of God V2: Christian Origins And The Question Of God)
In the final scene of the film V for Vendetta (2006), thousands of unarmed Londoners wearing Guy Fawkes masks march towards Parliament; without orders, the military allows the crowd to pass into Parliament, and the people take over. As Finch asks Evey for V’s identity, she replies: ‘He was all of us.’ OK, a nice ecstatic moment, but I am ready to sell my mother into slavery in order to see V for Vendetta, Part 2: what would have happened the day after the victory of the people; how would they (re)organize daily life?
Slavoj Žižek (The Courage of Hopelessness: A Year of Acting Dangerously)
By the 1980s, Gorbachev’s efforts to reinvigorate the idea of a “single culture of the Soviet people, socialist in content, diverse in its national forms, internationalist in spirit” faltered against the fact that nationalism had acquired meaningful content to Soviet citizens in a way that socialist internationalism had not.49 For seventy years, the carrot of Soviet-style “internationalism” and the stick of Soviet repression had squelched demands for independence while promoting nationalism in other ways. This combination had prevented the breakup of the multinational empire, which otherwise would probably have collapsed after World War I, along with Austria-Hungary and the Ottoman Empire. With repression now eased, “openness” and “restructuring” were about to launch the Soviet Union, too, into a new world of identity politics. Moscow found itself faced with the choice between “nativized” elites, who were corrupt but loyal to Soviet “internationalism,” and alternative leaders in the republics, who were nationalists and not loyal to the Soviet Union.
Carter V. Findley (The Turks in World History)
The court opinion in Americans For Prosperity Foundation v. Bonta invalidated California’s blatantly unconstitutional requirement that all charities operating in the state disclose the identity and address
James O’Keefe (American Muckraker: Rethinking Journalism for the 21st Century)
has long been known that the Verein Deutsche Sprache e.V. (German Language Association) published “linguistic policy guidelines” in order to shield the German language from the influence of “Anglo-American linguistic and cultural assets” leading to a “loss of identity on the part of the peoples and popular groups concerned.”30 The association has made it its mission to eliminate the GermanEnglish hybrid “Denglisch” inside Germany. It has gained in followers and is beginning to make some inroads beyond the right-radical and conservative circles that one would assume to be its most proximate purview.
Andrei S. Markovits (Uncouth Nation: Why Europe Dislikes America (The Public Square Book 5))
Občas jsou v životě prostě chvíle, kdy si člověk uvědomí, jaké malichernosti řešil a jak málo na nich záleží. A mezi ně patří i sna­ha zalíbit se druhým a potlačovat přitom sebe samého. Strašná hlou­post.
Alena Štraubová (Léto mezi řádky)
there have been at least twenty other twentieth-century trials dubbed the “trial of the century,” all captivating based on the nature of the crimes or the identity of the defendants or victims. But only one involved a former president of the United States testifying in his own defense for over a week, and with testimony that would expose the underbelly of seedy political backdoor deal making and even profiteering. Barnes v. Roosevelt also didn’t involve just any former president taking the witness stand. Teddy Roosevelt was one of the most charismatic and entertaining presidents that the nation had, and has, ever seen.
Dan Abrams (Theodore Roosevelt for the Defense: The Courtroom Battle to Save His Legacy)
V mezopotamské diaspoře vzniklo velké a silné hnutí snažící se o udržení vědomí vlastní identity, která by přetrvala i poté, co Židé ztratili své hlavní opěrné body, tj. krále a chrám/kult. Sjednocující hnutí, započaté deuteronomickou reformou, pokračovalo dále. Prvky víry, jež byly dříve druhotné, získávaly na významu: obřízka a zachovávání soboty jako výraz příslušnosti k židovskému národu, snad v této době se začíná vyvíjet synagoga jako alternativní místo náboženského setkávání, i když se plně rozvinula až mnohem později.
Adam Mackerle (Než budete číst Bibli podruhé)
People who live within a certain culture will defend it to the end, no matter how out of touch their beliefs. It forms their identity, and letting go of even the smallest part, no matter how obvious it is the right thing to do, can take hundreds of years. Just look at chopsticks.
V. Moody (Welcome to Monsterland (How To Avoid Death On A Daily Basis #4))
mystery thrown over the whole, until atlast all the incidents and attendant circumstances are explained and the reader finds himself relieved from all embarrassments and impediments. There are interpersed throughout the book fine pieces of humour, lively flashes of wit and imagination, and shrewd observations on the ways of the world and the inner workings of the human mind. Love, loyalty and patriotism are represented in the highest form and in the end rise as oil above water. The rebels are killed one after another and Marthanda Varma ascends the throne and finally makes over the country to God Padmanabhaswami. Parameswaran Pillay is made chamberlain and Ramayyer becomes an important officer of the State. The country is peaceful, contented and happy. Ananthapadmanabhan at last reveals his identity and is wedded to the ideal heroine. With the exception of the unfortunate Subhadra, everyone gets his due and the whole story is brought to a happy, though abrupt, termination. The author wields an admirable style and shows wide acquaintance with Malayalam literature. But from the point of view of the popular reader, the chief defect of the book is perhaps the lavish imagery which adorns its pages; and in the free use of Sanskrit words. Mr. Raman Pillay, is, in our opinion, hardly surpassed by any modern Malayalam prose writer. The result
C.V. Raman Pillai (മാര്‍ത്താണ്ഡവര്‍മ്മ | Marthandavarma)
I lost all sense of identity—I didn’t recognize myself or the way my body and mind were reacting. It should have been humiliating, but instead I felt cherished.
L.V. Lane (Deviant Control (The Controllers #3))
Otherwise they were dressed identically, and their outfits definitely belonged in a nightmare. They wore matching white slacks and gold buccaneer shirts with V-necks that showed way too much chest hair. A dozen sheathed daggers lined their rhinestone belts. Their shoes were open-toed sandals, proving that – yes, indeed – they had snakes for feet. The straps wrapped around the serpents’ necks. Their heads curled up where the toes should be. The snakes flicked their tongues excitedly and turned their gold eyes in every direction, like dogs looking out of the window of a car. Maybe it had been a long time since they’d had shoes with a view.
Rick Riordan (The Mark of Athena (Heroes of Olympus, #3))
A protected group or protected class is a group of people qualified for special protection by a law, policy, or similar authority. In the United States, the term is frequently used in connection with employees and employment. U.S. federal law protects individuals from discrimination or harassment based on the following nine protected classes: sex, race, age, disability, color, creed, national origin, religion, or genetic information (added in 2008). Many state laws also give certain protected groups special protection against harassment and discrimination, as do many employer policies. Although it is not required by federal law, state law and employer policies may also protect employees from harassment or discrimination based on marital status or sexual orientation. The following characteristics are "protected" by United States federal anti-discrimination law: Race – Civil Rights Act of 1964 Religion – Civil Rights Act of 1964 National origin – Civil Rights Act of 1964 Age (40 and over) – Age Discrimination in Employment Act of 1967 Sex – Equal Pay Act of 1963 and Civil Rights Act of 1964 Sexual orientation and gender identity as of Bostock v. Clayton County – Civil Rights Act of 1964 Pregnancy – Pregnancy Discrimination Act Familial status – Civil Rights Act of 1968 Title VIII: Prohibits discrimination for having or not having children Disability status – Rehabilitation Act of 1973 and Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990 Veteran status – Vietnam Era Veterans' Readjustment Assistance Act of 1974 and Uniformed Services Employment and Reemployment Rights Act Genetic information – Genetic Information Nondiscrimination Act Individual states can and do create other classes for protection under state law.
Wikipedia: Protected group
You and I share identity with the hypothetical suicidal man just as we share identity with the adulterous and murderous king of Psalm 51. Our only hope is one thing-God's "steadfast love" and his "abundant mercy" (v. 1). We cannot look to our education, or family, or ministry track record, or our theological knowledge, or our evangelistic zeal, or our faithful obedience. We have one hope; it is the hope to which this ancient psalm looks. Here is that hope in the words of a wonderful old hymn, "Jesus Paid It All":
Paul David Tripp (Whiter Than Snow: Meditations on Sin and Mercy)
The profession of faith that never evidences itself in righteous behavior is a “dead” faith ( James 2:17), being no better than that of the demons (v. 19). This is not to say that true believers never stumble. Certainly they do. Yet the pattern of their lives is one of continual repentance and increasing godliness as they grow in sanctification and Christlikeness.
John F. MacArthur Jr. (Slave: The Hidden Truth About Your Identity in Christ)
Much of what we are exists in the mysterious realm called memory. Our identities reside there. Without memories, what are we? Virtually nothing.
B.V. Larson (Technomancer (Unspeakable Things, #1))
When God covers our sin, we are given deliverance. When we cover our sin through denial or excuse- making, God’s hand is heavy upon us. And God’s heavy hand is a blessing! It is a sign of his love that he does not leave us in deception: “For day and night Your hand was heavy upon me” (v. 4). When we admit or toy with our sin, God’s hand is heavy. When we confess our sin, God’s hand moves to bear us up: “I said, ‘I will confess my transgression to the Lord,’ and you forgave the iniquity of my sin” (v. 5, ESV).
Rosaria Champagne Butterfield (Openness Unhindered: Further Thoughts of an Unlikely Convert on Sexual Identity and Union with Christ)
This important theme of Abraham’s deep trust in God’s promise and faithfulness helped shape Israel’s own self-understanding and identity. So it’s not surprising to hear Moses’s words to Israel at Sinai: “Do not be afraid; for God has come in order to test [the Hebrew verb is nasah] you, and in order that the fear [yir’ah] of Him may remain with you, so that you may not sin” (Exod. 20:20). These two key verbs link back to Genesis 22. Abraham was tested by God (Gen. 22:1) and through this ordeal demonstrated his fear of God (v. 12). Abraham’s obedience is intended to serve as a model for Israel and to inspire Israel’s obedience and solidify their relationship with (“fear of”) God.5
Paul Copan (Is God a Moral Monster?: Making Sense of the Old Testament God)
What Happened to Our Hearts Beloved, I urge you as sojourners and exiles to abstain from the passions of the flesh, which wage war against your soul. (1 Peter 2 v 11) Inside every heart, there’s a war; and the heart is both the victim and the culprit. Why? Because every person’s heart is inhabited by sinful desires, and produces sinful desires. There is an ongoing battle within the heart in which unhelpful desires wage war with our conscience. Bitterness. Anger. Envy. Greed. We cannot trust our feelings or all the passions that reside within us simply because we feel them. Our hearts are not pure—far from it: The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately sick; who can understand it? (Jeremiah 17 v 9) The nature of deception is to convince us that our hearts will not be satisfied unless we indulge what our hearts desire. But our hearts lead us astray in countless ways. Envy robs people of joy and contentment, sours friendships, and can lead to compromising morality in order to “get ahead.” Envy does not produce flourishing or joy in people. Indulging envy only results in misery for yourself and others. But none of us think this way as envy rages on. In the moment, the wrath and bitterness of envy assuages the sense of loss and jealousy residing within each of us. Not every impulse we experience should be indulged. We should be suspicious about “listening to our hearts.” Actually, everyone knows this is true. Prisons are full of people who acted in accord with their feelings—and who have been told by society that they shouldn’t. Every time a therapist tells a patient to view themselves more positively, they are accepting that there are feelings that are unhelpful to someone’s fulfillment. Our hearts’ desires can be at war with what is actually good for our hearts. The real question is: which desires should be fed, and which should be starved?
Andrew T. Walker (God and the Transgender Debate: What does the Bible actually say about gender identity?)
My problem in replying to you is that Velikovsky always tosses with a two-headed coin. If ordinary orientalists like myself simply leave him aside & get on with real work, he complains of their disdain (& the public are left unprotected). If, conversely, orientalists like myself (who happen to be burdened with several thousands more facts than Velikovsky even dreams of) actually dare to stand up & expose him, then of course he snidely implies that we are some sort of closed caucus with interests at stake. It’s always “heads you lose, tails I win”…. Would you, I reflectively wonder, publish a book that insisted on the identity of Harold Wilson and Harold of Hastings, of Napoleon, Bismarck & Charlemagne, and on the role of your firm as secret HQ of the IRA, all as absolutely genuine historical fact, with “proofs” (e.g., all aunts in France are large, because tante is the feminine for tant)? Because that is, comparatively, the level of historical fraud that V. represents.
Kenneth A. Kitchen (The Pseudoscience Wars: Immanuel Velikovsky and the Birth of the Modern Fringe)
Can the splitting of representations explain multiplicity? Not at all, for two reasons.20 First, a split is into two, not many. The splitting of self and object representations manifest polarity: self-object, good-bad, male-female, friend-foe, and so on, whereas alters generally don't (though they may). Second, hosts and alters are intentional subjects or agents, entities capable of uttering "I." Indeed, one may profitably regard alter as short for alter ego, literally "other I." A given "I" has intentional objects that are its respective self and object representations. In other words, a split representation, even of the self, is an object of thought, not a thinker, not a subject or agent or "I.
Donald B. Beree (Dissociation and the Dissociative Disorders: DSM-V and Beyond)
People fear what they cannot categorize, which is another way of saying what they don’t understand. You will feel lost for a time without a solid category to belong to. Don’t let that fool you into choosing a premature identity. There is no single way to be a traveler, an artist, a scholar, a superhero, or a philosopher. You accept other people’s definitions when you are too weak to make your own.
Gregory V. Diehl (Travel as Transformation: Conquer the Limits of Culture to Discover Your Own Identity)
Freedom is choosing for yourself what problems you want to place within your sphere of attachment to solve. You alone are the arbiter of what deserves space in your life, or what is worth facing stress over. If you must have problems, make them problems worth having. Choose your attachments wisely. Figure out for yourself what is worth fighting and dying for – a principle bigger than yourself.
Gregory V. Diehl (Travel as Transformation: Conquer the Limits of Culture to Discover Your Own Identity)
I understand now why it was impossible for me to go back to my old life. I also know why it was impossible for the influences of that life to come with me to the new one. There was no reference for the path I was on. I watched them get snatched up, one by one, by the overwhelming influence of their culture, hardening themselves into part of a larger group identity in which I had no place. I realized then that people can only learn whatever fits their existing presuppositions. New ideas must match what they are prepared to consider. Opening the mind to new possibilities is painful. Removing old, deeply rooted ideas is psychologically damaging.
Gregory V. Diehl (Travel as Transformation: Conquer the Limits of Culture to Discover Your Own Identity)
To spend your life as anything other than what you are is madness. It’s the madness that leads to the multitude of social problems forever plaguing our world – things like war, poverty, crimes, and slavery in all its forms. To save yourself and our world, you only need to abandon the chaotic thinking of culture that has led us astray for so long. When you are finally free, you will want to stop the spread of this madness any further. The cycle begins again with every new generation, and your children will be no exception if you don’t change things now.
Gregory V. Diehl (Travel as Transformation: Conquer the Limits of Culture to Discover Your Own Identity)
Beginning the journey is easy. Recognizing its conclusion is much more elusive. There is no finish line to cross and no contest to win. The game stays in play as long as you exist. People cannot accept that there is no big end to personal development. They lust after some perfect state of enlightenment, which is a fictional characteristic we project when we need a hero to look up to, no matter how high we ascend. The concept of enlightenment prevents us from ever mastering our inherited limitations. Instead, we should aspire to become ideal forces for our authentic values through our actions.
Gregory V. Diehl (Travel as Transformation: Conquer the Limits of Culture to Discover Your Own Identity)
When you’ve figured out your role, you’ve got the difficult task of expressing it as congruent with the cultures of the world. You’ve got to take what is valuable to you and find a place for it in the hearts of others.
Gregory V. Diehl (Travel as Transformation: Conquer the Limits of Culture to Discover Your Own Identity)
Deeply imagine what you would spend your time doing if you never had to do anything at all. You must be brave enough to answer why you don’t spend all your time doing that. An honest answer now will set the trajectory for the rest of your life.
Gregory V. Diehl (Travel as Transformation: Conquer the Limits of Culture to Discover Your Own Identity)