“
Remember, Maya: the things we respond to at twenty are not necessarily the same things we will respond to at forty and vice versa. This is true in books and also in life.
”
”
Gabrielle Zevin (The Storied Life of A.J. Fikry)
“
The way I see it, every life is a pile of good things and bad things. The good things don’t always soften the bad things, but vice versa, the bad things don’t always spoil the good things and make them unimportant.
”
”
Frazer Hines
“
Only the Jew knew that by an able and persistent use of propaganda heaven itself can be presented to the people as if it were hell and, vice versa, the most miserable kind of life can be presented as if it were paradise. The Jew knew this and acted accordingly. But the German, or rather his Government, did not have the slightest suspicion of it. During the War the heaviest of penalties had to be paid for that ignorance.
-- Mein Kampf, Chapter 10
”
”
Adolf Hitler (Mein Kampf)
“
The real thing about evil," said the Witch at the doorway, "isn't any of what you said. You figure out one side of it - the human side, say - and the eternal side goes into shadow. Or vice versa. It's like the old saw: What does a dragon in its shell look like? Well no one can ever tell, for as soon as you break the shell to see, the dragon is no longer in its shell. The real disaster of this inquiry is that it is the nature of evil to be secret.
”
”
Gregory Maguire (Wicked: The Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West (The Wicked Years, #1))
“
Life works on strange laws of nature (Karma).
One never knows when a friend turns enemy & vice-versa.
Rely on your Self; self-reliance
”
”
Ravi Shankar
“
You can’t say A is made of B or vice versa. All mass is interaction.
”
”
Richard P. Feynman
“
Some choices are forever....Just because people aren't in our lives anymore, doesn't mean they stop thinking about us and vice versa.
”
”
Wendy Mass (Jeremy Fink and the Meaning of Life)
“
The first step toward wisdom is the realization that the laws of the universe don’t care about you. The next is the realization that this does not imply that life is meaningless, because people care about you, and vice versa.
”
”
Steven Pinker (Enlightenment Now: The Case for Reason, Science, Humanism, and Progress)
“
If I say I’m happy, that means I was sad at some point. If I say he’s attractive, then somebody else is unattractive. Every positive thought even has a seed of a negative thought within it and vice versa, which is why a lot of greatness in life comes out of suffering.
”
”
Eric Jorgenson (The Almanack of Naval Ravikant: A Guide to Wealth and Happiness)
“
The way I see it, every life is a pile of good and bad things. The good things don't always soften the bad things but vice versa, the bad things don't necessarily spoil the good things or make them unimportant.
”
”
The Doctor
“
Horses are of a breed unique to Fantasyland. They are capable of galloping full-tilt all day without a rest. Sometimes they do not require food or water. They never cast shoes, go lame or put their hooves down holes, except when the Management deems it necessary, as when the forces of the Dark Lord are only half an hour behind. They never otherwise stumble. Nor do they ever make life difficult for Tourists by biting or kicking their riders or one another. They never resist being mounted or blow out so that their girths slip, or do any of the other things that make horses so chancy in this world. For instance, they never shy and seldom whinny or demand sugar at inopportune moments. But for some reason you cannot hold a conversation while riding them. If you want to say anything to another Tourist (or vice versa), both of you will have to rein to a stop and stand staring out over a valley while you talk. Apart from this inexplicable quirk, horses can be used just like bicycles, and usually are. Much research into how these exemplary animals come to exist has resulted in the following: no mare ever comes into season on the Tour and no stallion ever shows an interest in a mare; and few horses are described as geldings. It therefore seems probable that they breed by pollination. This theory seems to account for everything, since it is clear that the creatures do behave more like vegetables than mammals. Nomads appears to have a monopoly on horse-breeding. They alone possess the secret of how to pollinate them.
”
”
Diana Wynne Jones (The Tough Guide to Fantasyland)
“
Memory is like fiction; or else it's fiction that's like memory. This really came home to me once I started writing fiction, that memory seemed a kind of fiction, or vice versa. Either way, no matter how hard you try to put everything neatly into shape, the context wanders this way and that, until finally the context isn't even there anymore. You're left with this pile of kittens lolling all over one another. Warm with life, hopelessly unstable. And then to put these things out as saleable items, you call them finished products - at times it's downright embarrassing just to think of it. Honestly, it can make me blush.
”
”
Haruki Murakami (The Elephant Vanishes)
“
I shiver, thinking about how easy it is to be totally wrong about people-- to see one tiny part of them and confuse it for the whole, to see the cause and think it's the effect or vice versa.
”
”
Lauren Oliver (Before I Fall)
“
The real thing about evil… you figure out one side of it - the human side, say - and the eternal side goes into shadow. Or vice versa. The real disaster of this inquiry is that it is the nature of evil to be secret.
”
”
Gregory Maguire (Wicked: The Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West (The Wicked Years, #1))
“
If it had been any different, if I had been born just one minute later, or been in the wrong pace at the right time or vice versa, the life that I've lived and come to love would not exist. And that is a situation that I would not want to consider in the slightest.
”
”
Slash (Slash)
“
A mature person has the integrity to be alone. And when a mature person gives love, he gives without any strings attached to it: he simply gives. And when a mature person gives love, he feels grateful that you have accepted his love, not vice versa. He does not expect you to be thankful for it – no, not at all, he does not even need your thanks. He thanks you for accepting his love.
And when two mature persons are in love, one of the greatest paradoxes of life happens, one of the most beautiful phenomena: they are together and yet tremendously alone, they are together so much so that they are almost one. But their oneness does not destroy their individuality; in fact, it enhances it: they become more individual. Two mature persons in love help each other to become more free. There is no politics involved, no diplomacy, no effort to dominate. How can you dominate the person you love? Just think over it.
Domination is a sort of hatred, anger, enmity. How can you even think of dominating a person you love? You would love to see the person totally free, independent; you will give him more individuality. That’s why I call it the greatest paradox: they are together so much so that they are almost one, but still in that oneness they are individuals. Their individualities are not effaced; they have become more enhanced. The other has enriched them as far as their freedom is concerned.
Immature people falling in love destroy each other’s freedom, create a bondage, make a prison. Mature persons in love help each other to be free; they help each other to destroy all sorts of bondages. And when love flows with freedom there is beauty. When love flows with dependence there is ugliness.
Remember, freedom is a higher value than love. That’s why, in India, the ultimate we call moksha. Moksha means freedom. Freedom is a higher value than love. So if love is destroying freedom, it is not of worth. Love can be dropped, freedom has to be saved; freedom is a higher value. And without freedom you can never be happy, that is not possible. Freedom is the intrinsic desire of each man, each woman – utter freedom, absolute freedom.
So anything that becomes destructive to freedom, one starts hating it. Don’t you hate the man you love? Don’t you hate the woman you love? You hate; it is a necessary evil, you have to tolerate it. Because you cannot be alone you have to manage to be with somebody, and you have to adjust to the other’s demands. You have to tolerate, you have to bear them.
Love, to be really love, has to be being-love, gift-love. Being-love means a state of love. When you have arrived home, when you have known who you are, then a love arises in your being. Then the fragrance spreads and you can give it to others.
How can you give something which you don’t have?
To give it, the first basic requirement is to have it.
”
”
Osho (Tantric Transformation: When Love Meets Meditation (OSHO Classics))
“
After all, the qualities required to be good with horses are the same qualities required to be good at life in general, and vice versa. Chances are
”
”
Mark Rashid (Horsemanship Through Life: A Trainer's Guide to Better Living and Better Riding)
“
I feel this evening that I am too hopelessly and happily corrupted by the richness of London life to ever be right for Dorset, or vice-versa.
”
”
Michael Palin (Halfway To Hollywood: Diaries 1980 to 1988 (Palin Diaries, #2))
“
Work is just a part of our Life, not vice versa. So Live life full time, work work, part time.
”
”
Vikrmn: CA Vikram Verma (Guru with Guitar)
“
A strange mood has seized the almost-educated young. They're on the march, angry at times, but mostly needful, longing for authority's blessing, its validation of their chosen identities. The decline of the West in new guise perhaps. Or the exaltation and liberation of the self. A social-media site famously proposes seventy-one gender options – neutrois, two spirit, bigender…any colour you like, Mr Ford. Biology is not destiny after all, and there's cause for celebration. A shrimp is neither limiting nor stable. I declare my undeniable feeling for who I am. If I turn out to be white, I may identify as black. And vice versa. I may announce myself as disabled, or disabled in context. If my identity is that of a believer, I'm easily wounded, my flesh torn to bleeding by any questioning of my faith. Offended, I enter a state of grace. Should inconvenient opinions hover near me like fallen angels or evil djinn (a mile being too near), I'll be in need of the special campus safe room equipped with Play-Doh and looped footage of gambolling puppies. Ah, the intellectual life! I may need advance warning if upsetting books or ideas threaten my very being by coming too close, breathing on my face, my brain, like unwholesome drugs.
”
”
Ian McEwan (Nutshell)
“
But me-also-thinks my latter-day reaction speaks to the necessity of encountering stories at precisely the right time in our lives. Remember, Maya: the things we respond to at twenty are not necessarily the same things we will respond to at forty and vice versa. This is true in books and also in life.
”
”
Gabrielle Zevin (The Storied Life of A.J. Fikry)
“
Cinema is a very difficult and serious art, it requires sacrificing of yourself. You should belong to it, it shouldn't belong to you. Cinema uses your life, not vice versa.
”
”
Andrei Tarkovsky
“
People must learn that the accumulation of wealth by the successful
conduct of business is the corollary of the improvement of their own standard of
living and vice versa. They must realize that bigness in business is not an evil, but both the cause and effect of the fact that they themselves enjoy all those amenities
whose enjoyment is called the “American way of life.
”
”
Ludwig von Mises (Economic Freedom and Interventionism: An Anthology of Articles and Essays (Liberty Fund Library of the Works of Ludwig von Mises))
“
SO THAT’S MY LIFE—or my life before I stopped sleeping—each day pretty much a repetition of the one before. I used to keep a diary, but if I forgot for two or three days, I’d lose track of what had happened on which day. Yesterday could have been the day before yesterday, or vice versa. I’d sometimes wonder what kind of life this was. Which is not to say that I found it empty. I was—very simply—amazed. At the lack of demarcation between the days. At the fact that I was part of such a life, a life that had swallowed me up so completely. At the fact that my demarcation between the days. At the fact that I was part of such a life, a life that had swallowed me up so completely.
”
”
Haruki Murakami (The Elephant Vanishes)
“
We must uncover our rituals for what they are: completely arbitrary things, tied to our bourgeois way of life; it is
good-and that is the real theater-to
transcend them in the manner of play, by
means of games and irony; it is good to be dirty and bearded, to have long hair,
to look like a girl when one is a boy (and vice versa); one must put "in
play," show up, transform and reverse
the systems which quietly order us about.
”
”
Michel Foucault
“
the things we respond to at twenty are not necessarily the same things we will respond to at forty and vice versa. This is true in books and also in life.
”
”
Gabrielle Zevin (The Storied Life of A.J. Fikry)
“
The life can always change for any of us, and the one who was on the bottom once might turn up on the top when you least expect it, and vice versa.
”
”
Tamuna Tsertsvadze (Gift of the Fox)
“
Since when has leadership been a criterion for sanity? Or vice versa. Hitler was a gifted leader, even Nixon. Exhibit leadership qualities as an adolescent, they pack you off to law school for an anus transplant. If it takes, you go into government.
”
”
Tom Robbins (Still Life with Woodpecker)
“
We're all here to take care of ourselves, and ourselves only. This is how I look at it: if a gunman rampaged through the flats, I'd barricade Mum and me in our place and forget about anyone else on our floor. If the gunman broke into our flat then I'm not entirely sure I'd take a bullet for Mum, or vice versa. When it comes down to it, we're all on our own. Once you realise that, life becomes simpler.
”
”
Leanne Hall (This Is Shyness (This Is Shyness, #1))
“
A film in cinema is what in theatre would be realism—and vice versa.
In cinema—as in life—the text, the words, are refracted in everything
apart from the words themselves. The words mean nothing—
words are water.
”
”
Andrei Tarkovsky (Journal 1970-1986)
“
Just because I’m breathing, doesn’t mean I’m alive; vice versa.
”
”
Rea Lidde (Haven (Clockwork #0.5))
“
My life, my reading, everything about me revolves around the cinema. So for me, cinema is life, and vice-versa
”
”
Sergio Leone
“
How attractive a man is is inversely proportional to how needy he is. The more needy in his life, the less attractive and vice-versa.
”
”
Mark Manson (Models: Attract Women Through Honesty)
“
I chanced upon “The Luck of Roaring Camp” again a couple of years ago and I cried so much you’ll find that my Dover Thrift Edition is waterlogged. Methinks I have grown soft in my middle age. But me-also-thinks my latter-day reaction speaks to the necessity of encountering stories at precisely the right time in our lives. Remember, Maya: the things we respond to at twenty are not necessarily the same things we will respond to at forty and vice versa. This is true in books and also in life.
”
”
Gabrielle Zevin (The Storied Life of A.J. Fikry)
“
A soul mate is someone you spend your entire life knowing. You grow with them, you become a part of who they are and vice versa until there is a point where you don’t know where they end and you begin. Looking
”
”
Kayla Howarth (Resistance (The Institute, #2))
“
Methinks I have grown soft in my middle age. But me-also-thinks my latter-day reaction speaks to the necessity of encountering stories at precisely the right time in our lives. Remember, Maya: the things we respond to at twenty are not necessarily the same things we will respond to at forty and vice versa. This is true in books and also in life. —
”
”
Gabrielle Zevin (The Storied Life of A.J. Fikry)
“
This self-absorbed perspective treats God as a genie who simply exists to serve you in your selfish pursuit of personal fulfillment. But God is not your servant, and if you fall for the idea that life is supposed to be easy, either you will become severely disillusioned or you will live in denial of reality. Never forget that life is not about you! You exist for God’s purposes, not vice versa. Why would God provide heaven on earth when he’s planned the real thing for you in eternity? God gives us our time on earth to build and strengthen our character for heaven.
”
”
Rick Warren (The Purpose Driven Life: What on Earth Am I Here For?)
“
Sure we all need money but what do you really focus on? It is a matter of the heart. If your thoughts are on material and worldly things, no good fruits can come out of it.
Seek the kingdom of God first and the other things shall be added unto you not vice versa.
”
”
Patience Johnson (Why Does an Orderly God Allow Disorder)
“
Remember Maya: the things we respond to at twenty are not necessarily the same things we will respond to at forty and vice versa. This is true in books and also in life.
”
”
Gabrielle Zevin (The Storied Life of A.J. Fikry)
“
(...) as coisas que nos tocam aos vinte não são necessariamente as que nos tocam aos quarenta, e vice-versa. isso é verdade para livros e para a vida.
”
”
Gabrielle Zevin (The Storied Life of A.J. Fikry)
“
Life is a desert of shifting sand dunes. Unpredictable. Erratic. Harmony changes into dissonance, the immediate outlives the profound, esoteric becomes cliched. And vice versa.
”
”
Ella Leya (The Orphan Sky)
“
Art provides us with clues about how to live our lives more fully...about how creating, collecting, and even just appreciating art can make daily living a masterpiece.
”
”
Michael Kimmelman (The Accidental Masterpiece: On the Art of Life and Vice Versa)
“
When you've attained to your hidden within your apparent vice versa, know that you have reached Eternal Time, and Divine Presence. The Communion is in the Breath.
”
”
AainaA-Ridtz (The Sacred Key — Transcending Humanity)
“
Life adapted to the laws of physics, not vice versa.
”
”
Matt Ridley (The Evolution of Everything: How New Ideas Emerge)
“
At the end of the life you have to live your day alone and vice-versa.
”
”
Vikrmn: CA Vikram Verma (Guru with Guitar)
“
Everyone is a business person. You must be in the business of managing your time. Managing your time means managing your life. Good time managers are good life managers, and vice versa.
”
”
Archibald Marwizi (Making Success Deliberate)
“
Remember that work and life coexist. Wellness at work follows you home and vice-versa. The same goes for when you’re not well, fuelled, or fulfilled. Work and life aren’t opposing forces to balance; they go hand-in-hand and are intertwined as different elements of the same person: you.
”
”
Melissa Steginus (Self Care at Work: How to Reduce Stress, Boost Productivity, and Do More of What Matters)
“
Mindfulness isn't necessarily about awakening within. Awakening wisdom teaches me how my exterior and interior life are not separate. What happens in the world is happening within me, and vice versa.
”
”
Gary Gach (Pause, Breathe, Smile: Awakening Mindfulness When Meditation Is Not Enough)
“
The way I see it, life is a pile of good things and bad things. The good things don´t alway soften the bad things but vice versa the bad things don´t necessarily spoil the good things or make them unimportant.
”
”
Stephen Moffat
“
Among Berthier’s many qualities was a diplomatic nature so finely attuned that he somehow managed to persuade his wife, the Duchess Maria of Bavaria, to share a chateau with his mistress Madame Visconti (and vice versa).
”
”
Andrew Roberts (Napoleon: A Life)
“
Private property has made us so stupid and one-sided that an object is only ours when we have it – when it exists for us as capital, or when it is directly possessed, eaten, drunk, worn, inhabited, etc., – in short, when it is used by us. Although private property itself again conceives all these direct realizations of possession only as means of life, and the life which they serve as means is the life of private property – labour and conversion into capital.
In the place of all physical and mental senses there has therefore come the sheer estrangement of all these senses, the sense of having. The human being had to be reduced to this absolute poverty in order that he might yield his inner wealth to the outer world.
The abolition of private property is therefore the complete emancipation of all human senses and qualities, but it is this emancipation precisely because these senses and attributes have become, subjectively and objectively, human. The eye has become a human eye, just as its object has become a social, human object – an object made by man for man. The senses have therefore become directly in their practice theoreticians. They relate themselves to the thing for the sake of the thing, but the thing itself is an objective human relation to itself and to man, and vice versa. Need or enjoyment have consequently lost its egotistical nature, and nature has lost its mere utility by use becoming human use.
”
”
Karl Marx
“
There are people we meet in life who miss being important to us by inches, days, or heartbeats. Another place or time or a different emotional frame of mind and we would willingly fall into their arms; gladly take up their challenge or invitation. But as it is, we encounter them when we are discontent or content and they are not. Whatever they are, we are not and vice versa. Two trains going in different directions that pass for a few powerful moments at full speed, blasting noise and wind but then they are gone. Whatever serious chemistry might have been possible if, isn’t.
”
”
Jonathon Carroll
“
This is our meditation practice as women, calling back the dead and dismembered aspects of ourselves, calling back the dead and dismembered aspects of life itself. The one who re-creates from that which has died is always a double-sided archetype. The Creation Mother is always also the Death Mother and vice versa. Because of this dual nature, or double-tasking, the great work before us is to learn to understand what around and about us and what within us must live, and what must die. Our work is to apprehend the timing of both; to allow what must die to die, and what must live to live.
”
”
Clarissa Pinkola Estés (Women Who Run With the Wolves: Myths and Stories of the Wild Woman Archetype)
“
There comes a time you discover things, step out into Life, Danny. You know? Step away and b-become yourself? You can't bring anyone else to those m-moments. Then after a while, you spend a big part of the r-r-rest of your life trying to find someone to discover what you've become. Where you've gone now. Someone to help you understand all you've b-become and vice-versa.
”
”
J.G. Hayes (Map of the Harbor Islands)
“
To think that you are living life, even though you still haven’t realized nondual awakening, is like thinking that you are eating a mostly sweet, partially bitter—or vice versa—apple, while all you are doing is licking a photocopy of a picture of an apple seed.
”
”
Mokokoma Mokhonoana
“
You perception of a person, place, or thing may not be accurate. Just because it looks good does not mean it is good and vice versa. Always be aware of your surroundings. Pay attention to the people, places, and things around you. Don't allow your misperception to put you in an uncomfortable situation.
”
”
Amaka Imani Nkosazana
“
In truth, the crossing from nature to culture and vice versa has always stood wide open. It leads across an easily accessible bridge: the practising life. People have committed themselves to its construction since they came into existence - or rather, people only came into existence by applying themselves to the building of said bridge. The human being is the pontifical creature that, from its earliest evolutionary stages, has created tradition-compatible connections between the bridgeheads in the bodily realm and those in cultural programes. From the start, nature and culture are linked by a broad middle ground of embodied practices - containing languages, rituals and technical skills, in so far as these factors constitute the universal forms of automatized artificialities. This intermediate zone forms a morphologically rich, variable and stable region that can, for the time being, be referred to sufficiently clearly with such conventional categories as education, etiquette, custom, habit formation, training and exercise - without needing to wait for the purveyors of the 'human sciences', who, with all their bluster about culture, create the confusion for whose resolution they subsequently offer their services.
”
”
Peter Sloterdijk (Du mußt dein Leben ändern)
“
What we really need to do, to design, is look at the extremes. The weakest, or the person with arthritis, or the athlete, or the strongest, the fastest person, because if we understand what the extremes are, the middle will take care of itself.” In other words, the extremes inform the mean, but not vice versa.
”
”
Timothy Ferriss (The 4-Hour Chef: The Simple Path to Cooking Like a Pro, Learning Anything, and Living the Good Life)
“
when married, that we’re tied together in all aspects. What one partner might do affects the other. Whether good or bad. One move tugs on the other and vice versa. That’s why when we’re making our way through life, we need to be aware that our every move is tied to our loved one. We need to be conscious of that.
”
”
Meghan Quinn (Till Summer Do Us Part)
“
Birthdays are a time when one stock takes, which means, I suppose, a good spineless mope: I scan my horizon and can discern no sail of hope along my own particular ambition. I tell you what it is: I'm quite in accord with the people who enquire 'What is the matter with the man?' because I don't seem to be producing anything as the years pass but rank self indulgence. You know that my sole ambition, officially at any rate, was to write poems & novels, an activity I never found any difficulty fulfilling between the (dangerous) ages of 17-24: I can't very well ignore the fact that this seems to have died a natural death. On the other hand I feel regretful that what talents I have in this direction are not being used. Then again, if I am not going to produce anything in the literary line, the justification for my selfish life is removed - but since I go on living it, the suspicion arises that the writing existed to produce the life, & not vice versa. And as a life it has very little to recommend it: I spend my days footling in a job I care nothing about, a curate among lady-clerks; I evade all responsibility, familial, professional, emotional, social, not even saving much money or helping my mother. I look around me & I see people getting on, or doing things, or bringing up children - and here I am in a kind of vacuum. If I were writing, I would even risk the fearful old age of the Henry-James hero: not fearful in circumstance but in realisation: because to me to catch, render, preserve, pickle, distil or otherwise secure life-as-it-seemed for the future seems to me infinitely worth doing; but as I'm not the entire morality of it collapses. And when I ask why I'm not, well, I'm not because I don't want to: every novel I attempt stops at a point where I awake from the impulse as one might awake from a particularly-sickening nightmare - I don't want to 'create character', I don't want to be vivid or memorable or precise, I neither wish to bathe each scene in the lambency of the 'love that accepts' or be excoriatingly cruel, smart, vicious, 'penetrating' (ugh), or any of the other recoil qualities. In fact, like the man in St Mawr, I want nothing. Nothing, I want. And so it becomes quite impossible for me to carry on. This failure of impulse seems to me suspiciously like a failure of sexual impulse: people conceive novels and dash away at them & finish them in the same way as they fall in love & will not be satisfied till they're married - another point on which I seem to be out of step. There's something cold & heavy sitting on me somewhere, & until something budges it I am no good.
”
”
Philip Larkin (Philip Larkin: Letters to Monica)
“
Many ideas and habits we thought we had because we were good or bad, smart or dumb, crazy or sane—or because our parents were—are simply the result of subtle distinctions between brains. If my brain works differently from your brain, then some things that are easy for me may be hard for you and vice versa without either of us being stupid, lazy, or crazy.
”
”
Cindy Glovinsky (Making Peace with the Things in Your Life: Why Your Papers, Books, Clothes, and Other Possessions Keep Overwhelming You—and What to Do About It)
“
Remember, Maya: the things we respond to at twenty are not necessarily the same things we will respond to at forty and vice versa. This is true in books and also in life. —
”
”
Gabrielle Zevin (The Storied Life of A.J. Fikry)
“
Det vi tar till oss som tjugoåringar är inte nödvändigtvis samma saker som vi tar till oss som fyrtioåringar och vice versa. Detta gäller både böcker och livet i allmänhet (s. 51).
”
”
Gabrielle Zevin (The Storied Life of A.J. Fikry)
“
the things we respond to at twenty are not necessarily the same things we will respond to at forty and vice versa. This is true in books and also in life. —
”
”
Gabrielle Zevin (The Storied Life of A.J. Fikry)
“
What we define ourselves us can sometimes bring forth the best images of ourselves--or vice versa, will create some of the worst restrictions we place on our lives.
”
”
Andrew Kendall (The Dark Dictionary: A Guide to Help Eradicate Your Darkness, Restore Your Light, and Redefine Your Life.)
“
As people think they subsequently feel and vice versa.
”
”
Hussam Atef Elkhatib (Moralities for Life: Thoughts and Behaviors Justified)
“
At my age, one realizes that time is a cruel and fickle master, for the more you want it, the faster it appears to vanish, and vice versa: the more you want to escape it, the more stagnant it becomes. We are its slaves—or its puppets, if you prefer—and it moves or paralyzes us at its whim. Today, for instance, I would like to reach the end of this story, so I wish I could have more time—that time would slow down. You, on other hand, might want this old man you’ve just met to be quiet so that you can put on your music or think about something else, so perhaps your journey is taking forever. But let me tell you what I know, what I’ve concluded: it doesn’t matter whether time passes slowly or quickly. What you can be sure of is that, in the end, all you want is to have more. More of those lazy afternoons when nothing happens, despite your best efforts to the contrary. More of those annoying arms that picked you up to stop you doing something crazy. More tellings-off from the mother who you thought was a nag. More glimpses, even, of your father hurrying somewhere, always busy. More soft embraces from the wife who loved you all your life, and more trusting looks from your children’s young eyes.
”
”
Sofía Segovia (The Murmur of Bees)
“
Yesterday could have been the day before yesterday, or vice versa. I’d sometimes wonder what kind of life this was. Which is not to say that I found it empty. I was—very simply—amazed. At the lack of demarcation between the days. At the fact that I was part of such a life, a life that had swallowed me up so completely. At the fact that my footprints were being blown away before I even had the chance to turn and look at them.
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Haruki Murakami (The Elephant Vanishes)
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I realize that at every moment, sadness follows the happiness and vice versa sometimes because of which I have never gained the gist of one individually as the other has stalked and tracked another. Sad. Happy. Sad
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Bhavik Sarkhedi
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The Sick Woman begins to see that life is wilder, more chaotic, harsher and more loving, paradoxical, and downright strange than she was ever taught. She discovers for herself the power of moon and the tides, the shifting of the stars and the seasons, the haze of pollen and shift in air pressure and how they impact her dreams, her moods, her body processes. She learns that she is not an independent automaton but a wild being woven of life and death, a chaos of magic, not a machine of logic. She learns that the outer impacts the inner in myriad ways. And vice versa. She learns that she is simultaneously weaker and yet more powerful than she ever knew. She is dangerous with this knowledge which does not appear in the medical books and bibles except as anomalies. She’s singing from the wrong hymn sheet and messing up the patina of perfection that the patriarchy is aiming for. In a display of a million marching soldiers with polished boots, gleaming medals and straight legs, there is the sick woman, bare breasted, hair loose, scars showing, shameless, dancing to her own tune.
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Lucy H. Pearce (Medicine Woman: Reclaiming the Soul of Healing)
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We must know that when we invite people into our lives, we are not just inviting people; but we are inviting experiences into our lives, as well. The time that we will spend with the people that we welcome in, will be the time spent on creating experiences in our lives. We are not really taught this. We are not taught that attached to a person is a world, and in that world our feelings and thoughts will mingle with the feelings and thoughts of the other person. Ultimately, we shape our lives depending upon our choices of the people we take in, and also depending upon the people that we couldn't choose. People are so much more than just lumps of bones, skin, and feelings. When they said one person can change the whole world, what that means is that if you change the life of one person, you are already changing one whole world. And vice versa. So be careful. Be brave, but be careful.
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C. JoyBell C.
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A healthy attitude to eating I am concerned about the current victimisation of food. The apparent need to divide the contents of our plates into heroes and villains. The current villains are sugar and gluten, though it used to be fat, and before that it was salt (and before that it was carbs and . . . oh, I’ve lost track). It is worth remembering that today’s devil will probably be tomorrow’s angel and vice versa. We risk having the life sucked out of our eating by allowing ourselves to be shamed over our food choices. If this escalates, historians may look back on this generation as one in which society’s decision about what to eat was driven by guilt and shame rather than by good taste or pleasure. Well, not on my watch. Yes, I eat cake, and ice cream and meat. I eat biscuits and bread and drink alcohol too. What is more, I eat it all without a shred of guilt. And yet, I like to think my eating is mindful rather than mindless. I care deeply about where my food has come from, its long-term effect on me and the planet. That said, I eat what you might call ‘just enough’ rather than too much. My rule of thumb – just don’t eat too much of any one thing.
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Nigel Slater (A Year of Good Eating: The Kitchen Diaries III)
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As in the inflammations and fevers of physical illness, what looks like trouble may be the very process by which healing takes place. As we become better able to endure life’s slings and arrows, our coping mechanisms mature, and vice versa.
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George E. Vaillant (Triumphs of Experience: The Men of the Harvard Grant Study)
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She’s twenty-one and just by her hairstyle you can tell she’s saving IT for the man she will marry. It’s short at the sides and high on top, with a sideburn-length curl in front each ear. Look around you next time you’re out strolling, there’s hordes of them like her. They all wore braces when they were kids, played a lot of sports, were considered tom-boys, spent endless hours worrying about pimples, black-heads and acne, and wanted only one thing out of life-- get married and be a loving motherto both their children and their husband. In the meantime, they work at meaningful jobs like teaching and nursing until the Right Man comes along.
They’re the reason Canadian men are amongst the most neurotic, childish and apathetic males on the Western continent. They need the challenge of a mature woman in order to bring out their maturity, and instead they’re offered mamas. Yet it isn’t the girls’ fault. After all they’re only being what men want them to be, what they think men want them to be. And vice-versa. Both sexes being what they think the other wants them to be and neither one really knowing because they’ve never asked their opposite what they would like, and this total absence of communication being the root cause of this great void between modern man and woman
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Juan Antonio Butler (The Garbageman)
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You and I, my dear reader, may drop into this condition one day: for have not many of our friends attained it? Our luck may fail: our powers forsake us: our place on the boards be taken by better and younger mimes—the chance of life roll away and leave us shattered and stranded. Then men will walk across the road when they meet you—or, worse still, hold you out a couple of fingers and patronize you in a pitying way—then you will know, as soon as your back is turned, that your friend begins with a "Poor devil, what imprudences he has committed, what chances that chap has thrown away!" Well, well—a carriage and three thousand a year is not the summit of the reward nor the end of God's judgment of men. If quacks prosper as often as they go to the wall—if zanies succeed and knaves arrive at fortune, and, vice versa, sharing ill luck and prosperity for all the world like the ablest and most honest amongst us—I say, brother, the gifts and pleasures of Vanity Fair cannot be held of any great account, and that it is probable . . . but we are wandering out of the domain of the story.
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William Makepeace Thackeray (Vanity Fair)
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The outcome of a mistake determines it was a mistake or not, because the problem with them is often times you don't know if you are making one.
Most people actually think they are the genius of the century while only being the fool of a millennia.
Also vice versa..!
-Emit Eht
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Ratna Srivastava (Emit Eht)
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I used to believe that I could do everything and be everywhere. I could work longer hours, make the dead line, cook delicious meals, play with the kids, get enough sleep, focus on my health. And I can absolutely can do all these things. But not at the same time. Not on the same day.
Realizing that was a delightful freedom. Letting go of that notion of constant balance was releasing a breath I didn't realize I'd been holding.
You mean I don't have to be everything to everyone all the time? I don't have to keep all the balls in the air all the time? I can change balls? I can choose different balls?
Balance is finding the correct weight for every area of life and understanding that the correctness of that weight will change over time. Balance is fluid and flexible. Balance is alive and aware. Balance is intention.
This idea of balance- a correctness rather than an equalness has taught me some of the most important lessons of my life.
- I can not be everything to everyone
- I can not be in all places at once.
- Saying yes to one thing means saying no to another.
- Saying no to one thing means I can say yes to another.
- Perfection doesn't exist. Let it go.
- I can not change people
- I have to stop comparing myself to others. They aren't me. I'm not them.
- I will never finish the laundry
- I can't control everything
- Bad things happen to good people and vice versa.
- My kids aren't me.
- Being all in a moment means I'm all out of another.
- Envy and jealousy are different things.
- Achievements never look like I thought they were going to.
- Being kind to others is addictive.
- I can't always be self- possessed.
- Sometimes I need a cheerleader.
- I like being part of a community.
- Asking for help is hard, but necessary.
Embrace the wobbly balance.
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Brooke McAlary (Slow: Simple Living for a Frantic World)
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We know that our language is incapable of recalling even the pale reflection of those strange and perished states. The same would be true of this entire journal if it had to be the notation of what I was. I shall therefore make it clear that it is meant to indicate what I am today, as I write it. It is not a quest of time gone by, but a work of art whose pretext−subject is my former life. It will be a present fixed with the help of the past, and not vice versa. Let it be therefore understood that the facts were what I say they were, but the interpretation that I give them is what I am—now.
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Jean Genet (The Thief's Journal)
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me-also-thinks my latter-day reaction speaks to the necessity of encountering stories at precisely the right time in our lives. Remember, Maya: the things we respond to at twenty are not necessarily the same things we will respond to at forty and vice versa. This is true in books and also in life. —
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Gabrielle Zevin (The Storied Life of A.J. Fikry)
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Your perception of a person, place, or thing may not be accurate. Just because it looks good does not mean it is good and vice versa. Always be aware of your surroundings. Pay attention to the people, places, and things around you. Don't allow your misperception to put you in an uncomfortable situation
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Amaka Imani Nkosazana
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Mechanical stress on the bone produced a piezoelectric signal from the collagen. The signal was biphasic, switching polarity with each stress-and-release. The signal was rectified by the PN junction between apatite and collagen. This coherent signal did more than merely indicate that stress had occurred. Its strength told the cells how strong the stress was,and its polarity told them what direction it came from. Osteogenic cells where the potential was negative would be stimulated to grow more bone, while those in the positive area would close up shop and dismantle their matrix. If growth and resorption were considered as two aspects of one process, the electrical signal acted as an analog code to transfer information about stress to the cells and trigger the appropriate response.Now we knew how stress was converted into an electrical signal. We had discovered a transducer, a device that converts other forces into electricity or vice versa.
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Robert O. Becker (The Body Electric: Electromagnetism and the Foundation of Life)
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If it is written in the books of providence", the sorceress said after a while, “that Geralt will find Ciri, then it will happen. Regardless of whether the witcher sets off into the mountains or sits in Toussaint. Predestination overtakes humans. Not vice versa. Do you understand that? Do you understand, Mr. Regis Terzieff-Godefroy?"
"Better than you think, Miss Vigo.” The vampire turned the sausage link in his fingers. "However, you must excuse me, I do not accept that predestination is in some book, written by the hand of a great Demiurge, or the will of heaven, or the unalterable judgment of any providence. Rather, it is the result of many seemingly unconnected facts, events, and actions. I tend to agree with you that the predestination overtakes humans...and not only humans. However, I accept much less the view that it could not also be reversed. Because this view is a convenient fatalism. It is a paean to apathy and baseness on a feather bed and the charming warmth of a woman’s womb. In short, to live in a dream. Life, Miss Vigo may be a dream, may end in a dream ... But it's a dream that you must actively dream. Therefore, Miss Vigo, the road awaits us."
"Go ahead." Fringilla stood up, almost as violent as Milva had recently. "As you wish! Snow, cold, and predetermination await you on the passes. And the atonement that you so urgently seem to need. Go ahead! But the witcher is staying here. In Toussaint! With me!"
"I believe," the vampire replied calmly, "You are mistaken, Miss Vigo. The dream you dream with the witcher is, I confess with a bow, magical and beautiful. However, any dream that we dream for too long becomes a nightmare. And from it we awake with a scream.
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Andrzej Sapkowski (Pani Jeziora (Saga o Wiedźminie, #5))
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When a pregnant woman experiences stress, the brain of a female fetus will become more male and vice versa. This also appears to be an adaptive response. A girl will be able to cope better in later life if she’s robust and competitive, while a boy who isn’t macho is less likely to get into conflict with alpha males in that stressful environment.
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D.F. Swaab (We Are Our Brains: A Neurobiography of the Brain, from the Womb to Alzheimer's)
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Let me paraphrase what Paul is saying here: Jesus married the Church - Christians, you and me, us. The Church is His literal bride. He laid His life down for the Church. And Paul writes that husbands should love their wives in the same way that Jesus loved The Church, and vice-versa.
What a daunting task.
But what is made clear in this passage is that marriage was designed to display the love that Jesus has for the Church, His bride. It’s the closest thing we can get to tasting the kind of love that He has for us - a sacrificing love, a serving love, a selfless love.
Do you see what this means?
Marriage isn’t really about us.
It’s not.
It’s about God.
It’s about the Gospel.
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Ryan Cole (Dating: I Think We've Missed The Point)
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I also find Mill’s words to be of use when considering relationships. Often we want our friends, partners and people we love to be like us, because that allows us to feel validated and accepted. It is a powerful thing to find people in this world who share our values and instincts. But it is also important to celebrate the differences between our partners and us. Would we really want to be in a relationship where the other person reminds us every day of ourselves? Wouldn’t it just be like having rich chocolate cake every day? Do we even especially like people who are very much like us? Don’t we find ourselves cynical of their motives, believing we can see right through them? Love seems to come without a template. We may think we know what we want in a partner and then one day find ourselves in love for very different reasons. In the same way that differing, developed individuals contribute to Mill’s view of society and make it worth belonging to, so too the differences between people in a relationship can be precisely the substance of what makes it valuable. And then, rather than falling for that old fallacy of entering into a relationship thinking you will ‘change’ the other person to more comfortably reflect your values, you might see the qualities that separate them from you as precisely the features to celebrate. These qualities can complement our own: our laid-back approach to life can be challenged by the more active, dynamic ambition we might see in a partner, or vice versa. When the time comes, it will be useful to have them in mind as a role model. And to echo Mill: as our partners develop their own unique qualities, they can become of more value to themselves and therefore to the relationship as a whole.
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Derren Brown (Happy: Why More or Less Everything is Absolutely Fine)
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Truth and reality are two different things. Truth is nothing more or less than an expression of reality as you perceive it, while reality being something totally independent of, and indifferent to how you express, or even, perceive it. People differ only in their reference to reality; and this difference is not without its own implications. Certain interpretations have more value in certain situations, and vice versa. Any number of opposite propositions may be true simultaneously, but their truth value will ultimately decide their worth. From which angle to look at reality at a certain time, is a wisdom philosophy is not designed to endow. It can only help you refine your perception. In order to choose and change your mode of perception, you perhaps need Will.
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Raheel Farooq
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This is what makes the subatomic world unique. It possesses not just physical qualities, but also energetic qualities. In truth, matter on a subatomic level exists as a momentary phenomenon. It’s so elusive that it constantly appears and disappears, appearing into three dimensions—in time and space—and disappearing into nothing—into the quantum field, in no space, no time— transforming from particle (matter) to wave (energy), and vice versa. But where do particles go when they vanish into thin air? [...]
Quantum experiments demonstrated that electrons exist simultaneously in an infiniite array of possibilities or probabilities in an invisible field of energy. But only when an observer focuses attention on any location of any one electron does that electron appear. In other words, a particle cannot manifest in reality—that is, ordinary space-time as we know it—until we observe it.
Quantum physics calls this phenomenon “collapse of the wave function” or the “observer effect.” We now know that the moment the observer looks for an electron, there is a specific point in time and space when all probabilities of the electron collapse into a physical event. With this discovery, mind and matter can no longer be considered separate; they are intrinsically related, because subjective mind produces measurable changes on the objective, physical world. [...]
If your mind can influence the appearance of an electron, then theoretically it can influence the appearance of any possibility. [...]
How would your life change if you learned to direct the observer effect and to collapse infinite waves of probability into the reality that you choose? Could you
get better at observing the life you want?
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Joe Dispenza (Breaking the Habit of Being Yourself: How to Lose Your Mind and Create a New One)
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...there are enormous regions where I have never been, and what one has not known is what one has not been. An anxiety to start running, go into a house, into that store, jump on a train, devour all of Jouhandeau, know German... What is defective is felt more as an intuitive poverty than as a mere lack of experience. It really doesn't afflict me not having read all of Jouhandeau, at most the melancholy feeling of too short a life for so many libraries, etc. The lack of experience is inevitable, if I read Joyce I am automatically sacrificing another book and vice versa, etc. The feeling of lack is sharper in... zones for detention of your eyes, your smell, your taste, and you can't get beyond that limit when you think you've caught anything fully, just like an iceberg the thing has a small piece outside and shows it to you, and the enormous rest of it is beyond our limits and that's why the Titanic went down.
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Julio Cortázar (Hopscotch)
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Anxiety (loneliness or “abandonment anxiety” being its most painful form) overcomes the person to the extent that he loses orientation in the objective world. To lose the world is to lose one's self, and vice versa; self and world are correlates. The function of anxiety is to destroy the self-world relationship, i.e., to disorient the victim in space and time and, so long as this disorientation lasts, the person remains in the state of anxiety. Anxiety overwhelms the person precisely because of the preservation of this disorientation. Now if the person can reorient himself—as happens, one hopes, in psychotherapy—and again relate himself to the world directly, experientially, with his senses alive, he overcomes the anxiety. My slightly anthropomorphic terminology comes out of my work as a therapist and is not out of place here. Though the patient and I are entirely aware of the symbolic nature of this (anxiety doesn’t do anything, just as libido or sex drives don’t), it is often helpful for the patient to see himself as struggling against an “adversary.” For then, instead of waiting forever for the therapy to analyze away the anxiety, he can help in his own treatment by taking practical steps when he experiences anxiety such as stopping and asking just what it was that occurred in reality or in his fantasies that preceded the disorientation which cued off the anxiety. He is not only opening the doors of his closet where the ghosts hide, but he often can also then take steps to reorient himself in his practical life by making new human relationships and finding new work which interests him.
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Rollo May (Love and Will)
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The faces we see in the mirrors are not really ours. Just reflections. We can find our true selves only in the faces of the Other. The absolutists, they venerate purity, we hybridity. They wish to reduce everyone down to a single identity. We strive for the opposite: to multiply everyone into a hundred belongings, a thousand beating hearts. If I am a human, I should be big enough to feel for people everywhere. Look at history. Observe life. It evolves from simplicity to complexity. Not vice versa, that would be devolution. Our brains are wired for twists and turns.
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Elif Shafak
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Europe's/Western World's greatness came from a Man (but not a single "philosophy" or "religion" was systematically venerable), and vice-versa for China. We, who live in a world of post-post-post tendencies (which denotes a total lack of beauty in action and attitude, a total inadequacy for anything but self-promotion according to humanistic tendencies/fashions), have the great yet melancholic virtue of combining pre-existing forms (I like to think the most venerable) in a world devoid of any spirit (mainly by regarding death as a catastrophe instead of Death as a uniting principle of life, of beauty and of transcendental meaning).
Hitler was the swansong of Mankind. Hardcore modernity called for a last and timeless titan. As Nietzsche once said, all great music is always a swansong (do not agree with his examples, but one has to be able to go beyond the evident). Mankind will always live as if it were an ETERNAL, IMMORTAL race, and individual death will be the only one available, cowardly recognized as a CATASTROPHE (disconnection of one's essence, primordial fate). Oblivious to oblivion itself, nothing of value will ever be accomplished (TAO). Let them be. Mankind has moved from truth each step of it's journey, because each step away from conscious death.
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Anonymous
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Always the teacher, Quigley emphasized the study of tools of analysis to develop a useful epistemology. In epistemology he always retained his belief in the scientific method.6 Quigley’s explanation of scientific method as an analytical tool in the social sciences is original with him only in that he recognized the real limitations of the physical sciences, as opposed to the scientific extremism of Langlois and Seignobos. The scientific method Quigley subscribed to consists of gathering evidence, making a hypothesis, and testing the hypothesis. The laws arising from the use of scientific method in both the physical and social sciences are idealized theories reflecting observed phenomena only approximately, but Quigley felt laws must be based on observation and must be amended to account for any observed anomalies. After these laws were scientifically constructed, Quigley used them as conceptual paradigms to explain historical phenomena through comparison, in contrast to rationally derived laws of the theorists which will not adapt to anomalies of observation. “Theory must agree with phenomena, not vice versa.” 7 Thus, Quigley puts the historian at ease with scientific methods by explaining that physical laws have as many exceptions as the historicists claim historical laws do.
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Carroll Quigley (Carroll Quigley: Life, Lectures and Collected Writings)
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[Bisexuality] is seen as threatening the homosexual/heterosexual and male/female dichotomies, or binarisms, which underpin our gender and sexual identities to such a large extent. In the case of the first three stereotypes, there is a refusal even to acknowledge the existence of bisexuality. It is simply wished out of existence. You can either be homosexual or heterosexual but anything else is just a phase, just playacting, not real. As Udis-Kessler argues [‘Challenging the Stereotypes’, in Rose and Stevens (eds), Bisexual Horizons: Politics, Histories, Lives. 1996. London: Lawrence and Wishart, pp. 45-57], this reflects an ideology of essentialism which dismisses the idea that sexuality may be fluid, not fixed, and that its forms can change over a person’s lifetime. This ideology assumes that there is a ‘true’ sexuality which we are working our way towards and that bisexuality is not really ‘true’ or ‘serious’ because it is a transition towards that other state… As Udis-Kessler points out, transitions are not a rehearsal for life. Life is a series of transitions: points of arrival become new points of departure, and vice versa. So why should we assume that the way we experienced our sexuality ten or twenty years ago is necessarily less ‘true’ or important than the way we experience it now, or that the way we experience it now will necessarily be the same in ten or twenty years time? Obviously this applies not only to bisexuality, but it is an argument which those - including some lesbian and gay activists - who accuse bisexuality of being a sort of ‘false consciousness’ seldom get to grips with… lesbians and gay men, anxious to create safe spaces where they are not subject to homophobic rejection or oppression, may (consciously or unconsciously) seek to exclude bisexuals[…].Unfortunately, as soon as this happens, as with every oppressed or stigmatised group, it can lead to others being oppressed or stigmatised in turn.
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Richard Dunphy (Sexual Politics: An Introduction)
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So consequent were we in the liberation of human beings from the shackles of industrial exploitation that we sent about ten million people to do forced labour in the Arctic regions and the jungles of the East, under conditions similar to those of antique galley slaves. So consequent that, to settle a difference of opinion, we know only one argument: death, whether it is a matter of submarines, manure, or the party line to be followed in Indo-China. Our engineers work with the constant knowledge that an error in calculation may take them to prison or the scaffold; the higher officials in our administration ruin and destroy their subordinates, because they know that they will be held responsible for the slightest slip and be destroyed themselves; our poets settle discussions on questions of style by denunciations to the Secret Police, because the expressionists consider the naturalistic style counter-revolutionary, and vice versa. Acting consequentially in the interests of the coming generations, we have laid such terrible privations on the present one that its average length of life is shortened by a quarter. In order to defend the existence of the country, we have to take exceptional measures and make transition-stage laws, which are in every point contrary to the aims of the Revolution.
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Arthur Koestler (Darkness at Noon)
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The Colbertian use of tariffs furthermore skewed trade so that high customs barriers in Italy meant that raw silk from Piedmont which used to go to Lombardy was instead sent to Lyons; Dutch producers had to pay duties on goods sold in France, but not vice versa, and so on.44 It was economic imperialism in action, which could hardly fail to stoke resentment in France’s satellite states. Napoleon had managed greatly to increase confidence in France’s finances and in her ability to honour her government’s bonds, but even so they never managed to match Britain’s in this period. At his best, he was forced to borrow at higher rates than Britain at its worst.
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Andrew Roberts (Napoleon: A Life)
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However, the main endeavor must always be to let particular observations precede general ideas, and not vice versa, as is usually and unfortunately the case; as though a child should come feet foremost into the world, or a verse be begun by writing down the rhyme! The ordinary method is to imprint ideas and opinions, in the strict sense of the word, prejudices, on the mind of the child, before it has had any but a very few particular observations. It is thus that he afterwards comes to view the world and gather experience through the medium of those ready-made ideas, rather than to let his ideas be formed for him out of his own experience of life, as they ought to be.
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Arthur Schopenhauer (Studies in Pessimism (Essays of Arthur Schopenhauer))
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Thank God for pain.
Most of life's blessings, in my experience, are potential curses. And vice versa. So it is with physical pain.
Acute short term physical pain, whether mild or severe, is virtually always a blessing. It is a signal that something is wrong with the body, something that needs attention. Without that signals our lives would quite quickly become devastated.
But pain is useful ONLY as a signal that something is wrong, be it a broken ankle, a burn or a cinder in the eye. Once the problem is diagnosed and is being appropriately treated, there is no reason for the signal to continue. Pain has lost its utility. If the pain does continue, the blessing has become a curse.
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M. Scott Peck
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Perhaps the heritability of IQ implies something entirely different, something that once and for all proves that Galton’s attempt to discriminate between nature and nurture is misconceived. Consider this apparently fatuous fact. People with high IQ s, on average, have more symmetrical ears than people with low IQ s. Their whole bodies seem to be more symmetrical: foot breadth, ankle breadth, finger length, wrist breadth and elbow breadth each correlates with IQ. In the early 1990s there was revived an old interest in bodily symmetry, because of what it can reveal about the body’s development during early life. Some asymmetries in the body are consistent: the heart is on the left side of the chest, for example, in most people. But other, smaller asymmetries can go randomly in either direction. In some people the left ear is larger than the right; in others, vice versa. The magnitude of this so-called fluctuating asymmetry is a sensitive measure of how much stress the body was under when developing, stress from infections, toxins or poor nutrition. The fact that people with high IQs have more symmetrical bodies suggests that they were subject to fewer developmental stresses in the womb or in childhood. Or rather, that they were more resistant to such stresses. And the resistance may well be heritable. So the heritability of IQ might not be caused by direct ‘genes for intelligence’ at all, but by indirect genes for resistance to toxins or infections – genes in other words that work by interacting with the environment. You inherit not your IQ but your ability to develop a high IQ under certain environmental circumstances. How does one parcel that one into nature and nurture? It is frankly impossible.
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Matt Ridley (Genome: The Autobiography of a Species in 23 Chapters)
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There has been an enduring misunderstanding that needs to be cleared up. Turing’s core message was never “If a machine can imitate a man, the machine must be intelligent.” Rather, it was “Inability to imitate does not rule out intelligence.” In his classic essay on the Turing test, Turing encouraged his readers to take a broader perspective on intelligence and conceive of it more universally and indeed more ethically. He was concerned with the possibility of unusual forms of intelligence, our inability to recognize those intelligences, and the limitations of the concept of indistinguishability as a standard for defining what is intelligence and what is not. In section two of the paper, Turing asks directly whether imitation should be the standard of intelligence. He considers whether a man can imitate a machine rather than vice versa. Of course the answer is no, especially in matters of arithmetic, yet obviously a man thinks and can think computationally (in terms of chess problems, for example). We are warned that imitation cannot be the fundamental standard or marker of intelligence. Reflecting on Turing’s life can change one’s perspective on what the Turing test really means. Turing was gay. He was persecuted for this difference in a manner that included chemical castration and led to his suicide. In the mainstream British society of that time, he proved unable to consistently “pass” for straight. Interestingly, the second paragraph of Turing’s famous paper starts with the question of whether a male or female can pass for a member of the other gender in a typed conversation. The notion of “passing” was of direct personal concern to Turing and in more personal settings Turing probably did not view “passing” as synonymous with actually being a particular way.
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Tyler Cowen (Average Is Over: Powering America Beyond the Age of the Great Stagnation)
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Having studied workplace leadership styles since the 1970s, Kets de Vries confirmed that language is a critical clue when determining if a company has become too cultish for comfort. Red flags should rise when there are too many pep talks, slogans, singsongs, code words, and too much meaningless corporate jargon, he said. Most of us have encountered some dialect of hollow workplace gibberish. Corporate BS generators are easy to find on the web (and fun to play with), churning out phrases like “rapidiously orchestrating market-driven deliverables” and “progressively cloudifying world-class human capital.” At my old fashion magazine job, employees were always throwing around woo-woo metaphors like “synergy” (the state of being on the same page), “move the needle” (make noticeable progress), and “mindshare” (something having to do with a brand’s popularity? I’m still not sure). My old boss especially loved when everyone needlessly transformed nouns into transitive verbs and vice versa—“whiteboard” to “whiteboarding,” “sunset” to “sunsetting,” the verb “ask” to the noun “ask.” People did it even when it was obvious they didn’t know quite what they were saying or why. Naturally, I was always creeped out by this conformism and enjoyed parodying it in my free time. In her memoir Uncanny Valley, tech reporter Anna Wiener christened all forms of corporate vernacular “garbage language.” Garbage language has been around since long before Silicon Valley, though its themes have changed with the times. In the 1980s, it reeked of the stock exchange: “buy-in,” “leverage,” “volatility.” The ’90s brought computer imagery: “bandwidth,” “ping me,” “let’s take this offline.” In the twenty-first century, with start-up culture and the dissolution of work-life separation (the Google ball pits and in-office massage therapists) in combination with movements toward “transparency” and “inclusion,” we got mystical, politically correct, self-empowerment language: “holistic,” “actualize,” “alignment.
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Amanda Montell (Cultish: The Language of Fanaticism)