Motivated Minds Quotes

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

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Don't be pushed around by the fears in your mind. Be led by the dreams in your heart.
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Roy T. Bennett (The Light in the Heart)
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I must not fear. Fear is the mind-killer. Fear is the little-death that brings total obliteration. I will face my fear. I will permit it to pass over me and through me. And when it has gone past I will turn the inner eye to see its path. Where the fear has gone there will be nothing. Only I will remain.
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Frank Herbert (Dune (Dune, #1))
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The Paradoxical Commandments People are illogical, unreasonable, and self-centered. Love them anyway. If you do good, people will accuse you of selfish ulterior motives. Do good anyway. If you are successful, you will win false friends and true enemies. Succeed anyway. The good you do today will be forgotten tomorrow. Do good anyway. Honesty and frankness make you vulnerable. Be honest and frank anyway. The biggest men and women with the biggest ideas can be shot down by the smallest men and women with the smallest minds. Think big anyway. People favor underdogs but follow only top dogs. Fight for a few underdogs anyway. What you spend years building may be destroyed overnight. Build anyway. People really need help but may attack you if you do help them. Help people anyway. Give the world the best you have and you'll get kicked in the teeth. Give the world the best you have anyway.
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Kent M. Keith (The Silent Revolution: Dynamic Leadership in the Student Council)
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More smiling, less worrying. More compassion, less judgment. More blessed, less stressed. More love, less hate.
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Roy T. Bennett (The Light in the Heart)
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Do not let the memories of your past limit the potential of your future. There are no limits to what you can achieve on your journey through life, except in your mind.
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Roy T. Bennett (The Light in the Heart)
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Stop giving other people the power to control your happiness, your mind, and your life. If you don't take control of yourself and your own life, someone else is bound to try.
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Roy T. Bennett (The Light in the Heart)
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Whatever the mind can conceive and believe, it can achieve.
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Napoleon Hill (Think and Grow Rich: A Black Choice)
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The biggest wall you have to climb is the one you build in your mind: Never let your mind talk you out of your dreams, trick you into giving up. Never let your mind become the greatest obstacle to success. To get your mind on the right track, the rest will follow.
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Roy T. Bennett (The Light in the Heart)
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Discipline Your Mind to Think Positively: Discipline your mind to see the good in every situation and look on the best side of every event.
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Roy T. Bennett (The Light in the Heart)
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Suicide is a form of murder - premeditated murder. It isn't something you do the first time you think of doing it. It takes getting used to. And you need the means, the opportunity, the motive. A successful suicide demands good organization and a cool head, both of which are usually incompatible with the suicidal state of mind.
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Susanna Kaysen (Girl, Interrupted)
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You are essentially who you create yourself to be and all that occurs in your life is the result of your own making.
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Stephen Richards (Think Your way to Success: Let Your Dreams Run Free)
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The discontent and frustration that you feel is entirely your own creation.
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Stephen Richards (Think Your way to Success: Let Your Dreams Run Free)
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However mean your life is, meet it and live it; do not shun it and call it hard names. It is not so bad as you are. It looks poorest when you are richest. The fault-finder will find faults even in paradise. Love your life, poor as it is. You may perhaps have some pleasant, thrilling, glorious hours, even in a poorhouse. The setting sun is reflected from the windows of the almshouse as brightly as from the rich man's abode; the snow melts before its door as early in the spring. I do not see but a quiet mind may live as contentedly there, and have as cheering thoughts, as in a palace.
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Henry David Thoreau (Walden)
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It's a funny thing about life, once you begin to take note of the things you are grateful for, you begin to lose sight of the things that you lack.
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Germany Kent
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You must have a level of discontent to feel the urge to want to grow.
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Idowu Koyenikan (Wealth for All: Living a Life of Success at the Edge of Your Ability)
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People tend to be generous when sharing their nonsense, fear, and ignorance. And while they seem quite eager to feed you their negativity, please remember that sometimes the diet we need to be on is a spiritual and emotional one. Be cautious with what you feed your mind and soul. Fuel yourself with positivity and let that fuel propel you into positive action.
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Steve Maraboli (Unapologetically You: Reflections on Life and the Human Experience)
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Keep in mind that the true measure of an individual is how he treats a person who can do him absolutely no good.
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Ann Landers
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Do not let your negative thoughts have power over you because those thoughts will end up controlling your life. No one can live a positive life with a negative mind.
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Roy T. Bennett (The Light in the Heart)
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Life is like a game of chess. To win you have to make a move. Knowing which move to make comes with IN-SIGHT and knowledge, and by learning the lessons that are acculated along the way. We become each and every piece within the game called life!
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Allan Rufus (The Master's Sacred Knowledge)
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It’s important that what thoughts you are feeding into your mind because your thoughts create your belief and experiences. You have positive thoughts and you have negative ones too. Nurture your mind with positive thoughts: kindness, empathy, compassion, peace, love, joy, humility, generosity, etc. The more you feed your mind with positive thoughts, the more you can attract great things into your life.
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Roy T. Bennett (The Light in the Heart)
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Today we live in a society in which spurious realities are manufactured by the media, by governments, by big corporations, by religious groups, political groups... So I ask, in my writing, What is real? Because unceasingly we are bombarded with pseudo-realities manufactured by very sophisticated people using very sophisticated electronic mechanisms. I do not distrust their motives; I distrust their power. They have a lot of it. And it is an astonishing power: that of creating whole universes, universes of the mind. I ought to know. I do the same thing.
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Philip K. Dick
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Let your creative and imaginative mind run freely; it will take you places you never dreamed of and provide breakthroughs that others once thought were impossible.
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Idowu Koyenikan (Wealth for All: Living a Life of Success at the Edge of Your Ability)
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It's up to you today to start making healthy choices. Not choices that are just healthy for your body, but healthy for your mind.
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Steve Maraboli (Unapologetically You: Reflections on Life and the Human Experience)
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Many times in life, we are held back from achieving our goals because we do not commit ourselves wholeheartedly. With an escape route in mind, we hold ourselves back from giving our all.
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Idowu Koyenikan (All You Need Is a Ball: What Soccer Teaches Us about Success in Life and Business)
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What the mind can conceive and believe, and the heart desire, you can achieve.
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Norman Vincent Peale
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You have the power to heal your life, and you need to know that. We think so often that we are helpless, but we're not. We always have the power of our minds…Claim and consciously use your power.
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Louise L. Hay
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You don't have to be good at something to be liked.
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Stephen Richards
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Life is like a sandwich! Birth as one slice, and death as the other. What you put in-between the slices is up to you. Is your sandwich tasty or sour? Allan Rufus.org
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Allan Rufus
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When you concentrate your energy purposely on the future possibility that you aspire to realize, your energy is passed on to it and makes it attracted to you with a force stronger than the one you directed towards it.
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Stephen Richards (Think Your way to Success: Let Your Dreams Run Free)
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Open your mind before your mouth
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Aristophanes
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When God takes out the trash, don't go digging back through it. Trust Him.
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Amaka Imani Nkosazana (Heart Crush)
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I realized that searching was my symbol, the emblem of those who go out at night with nothing in mind, the motives of a destroyer of compasses.
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Julio CortΓ‘zar
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The dog’s agenda is simple, fathomable, overt: I want. β€œI want to go out, come in, eat something, lie here, play with that, kiss you. There are no ulterior motives with a dog, no mind games, no second-guessing, no complicated negotiations or bargains, and no guilt trips or grudges if a request is denied.
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Caroline Knapp
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Insecure people often falsify the past, in order to make the future pure.
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Shannon L. Alder
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Happiness is a state of mind, a choice, a way of living; it is not something to be achieved, it is something to be experienced.
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Steve Maraboli (Unapologetically You: Reflections on Life and the Human Experience)
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Everything is within your power, and your power is within you.
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Janice Trachtman (Catching What Life Throws at You: Inspiring True Stories of Healing)
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Well, if it can be thought, it can be done, a problem can be overcome,
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E.A. Bucchianeri (Brushstrokes of a Gadfly (Gadfly Saga, #1))
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Secrecy is the keystone to all tyranny. Not force, but secrecy and censorship. When any government or church for that matter, undertakes to say to its subjects, "This you may not read, this you must not know," the end result is tyranny and oppression, no matter how holy the motives. Mighty little force is needed to control a man who has been hoodwinked in this fashion; contrariwise, no amount of force can control a free man, whose mind is free. No, not the rack nor the atomic bomb, not anything. You can't conquer a free man; the most you can do is kill him.
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Robert A. Heinlein
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Push yourself to do more and to experience more. Harness your energy to start expanding your dreams. Yes, expand your dreams. Don't accept a life of mediocrity when you hold such infinite potential within the fortress of your mind. Dare to tap into your greatness.
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Robin S. Sharma (The Monk Who Sold His Ferrari: A Fable About Fulfilling Your Dreams and Reaching Your Destiny)
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It is one thing to make a mistake, and quite another thing not to admit it. People will forgive mistakes, because mistakes are usually of the mind, mistakes of judgment. But people will not easily forgive the mistakes of the heart, the ill intention, the bad motives, the prideful justifying cover-up of the first mistake.
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Stephen R. Covey (The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People)
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Every sunrise is priceless and you can experience the richness that life holds only when you live life to the full instead of just being an onlooker.
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Stephen Richards (Think Your way to Success: Let Your Dreams Run Free)
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Without desires and dreams, your thoughts do not matter and you can think whatever you want to.
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Stephen Richards (Think Your way to Success: Let Your Dreams Run Free)
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Create. Not for the money. Not for the fame. Not for the recognition. But for the pure joy of creating something and sharing it.
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Ernest Barbaric
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No one is an unjust villain in his own mind. Even - perhaps even especially - those who are the worst of us. Some of the cruelest tyrants in history were motivated by noble ideals, or made choices that they would call 'hard but necessary steps' for the good of their nation. We're all the hero of our own story.
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Jim Butcher (Turn Coat (The Dresden Files, #11))
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Many people are unhappy and are not experiencing life to its fullest because they’ve closed their hearts to compassion, they are motivated by only what they want and what they think they need. They rarely do anything for anybody else unless they have an ulterior goal in mind. They are self-involved and self-centered.
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Joel Osteen (Your Best Life Now: 7 Steps to Living at Your Full Potential)
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How to win in life: 1 work hard 2 complain less 3 listen more 4 try, learn, grow 5 don't let people tell you it cant be done 6 make no excuses
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Germany Kent
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There is a difference between WISHING for a thing and being READY to receive it. No one is ready for a thing, until he believes he can acquire it. The state of mind must be BELIEF, not mere hope or wish. Open-mindedness is essential for belief.
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Napoleon Hill (Think and Grow Rich)
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The realisation that limitations are imaginary will make you strong and overpowering.
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Stephen Richards (Think Your way to Success: Let Your Dreams Run Free)
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I am a strong and powerful woman. I am proud to be a woman and I celebrate the qualities that I have as a woman. I am not defined by other people’s opinion of who I should be or what I should do as a woman. I determine that, not anyone else. I am not passed up for a position, title, or promotion because I am a woman. I fully deserve all the good things that comes my way. Irrespective of what anyone might think, being a woman places no boundaries or limits on my abilities. I can do anything I set my mind to. I celebrate my womanhood and I am beautiful both inside and out.
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Idowu Koyenikan (Wealth for All: Living a Life of Success at the Edge of Your Ability)
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I regret nothing. No woman with any self-respect would have done less. The question of good and evil will always be one of philosophy's most intriguing problems, up there with the problem of existence itself. I'm not quarreling with your choice of issues, only with your intellectually diminished approach. If evil means to be self-motivated, to live on one's own terms, then every artist, every thinker, every original mind, is evil. Because we dare to look through our own eyes rather than mouth cliches lent us from the so-called Fathers. To dare to see is to steal fire from the Gods. This is mankind's destiny, the engine which fuels us as a race.
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Janet Fitch (White Oleander)
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Be more than motivated, be more than driven, become literally obsessed to the point where people think you're fucking nuts.
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David Goggins (Can't Hurt Me: Master Your Mind and Defy the Odds)
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Never allow your mind to wander untamed like a wild animal that exists on the basis of survival of the fittest. Tame your mind with consistent focus on your goals and desires.
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Stephen Richards (Think Your way to Success: Let Your Dreams Run Free)
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Your comfort zone is a place where you keep yourself in a self-illusion and nothing can grow there but your potentiality can grow only when you can think and grow out of that zone.
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Rashedur Ryan Rahman
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Grateful souls focus on the happiness and abundance present in their lives and this in turn attracts more abundance and joy towards them.
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Stephen Richards (Think Your way to Success: Let Your Dreams Run Free)
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The fuck is this shit?" it says. "Can you bloody believe this shit?" "No, honey," I say. "This is absolutely ridiculous." "Aren't you pissed the fuck off?" "Someone really should do something about this." "Why don't we bloody do something about it?" "Yeah, why don't we?" I say. "But how." "Well, we find whatever prick is in charge and give the fucker a piece of our minds, of course."Β 
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Adam Scott Huerta (Motive Black: A novel (Motive Black Series Book 1))
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We are exactly what our history made us to be.
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Stephen Richards (Boost Your Self Esteem)
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A mind of moderate capacity which closely pursues one study must infallibly arrive at great proficiency in that study.
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Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley (Frankenstein)
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Live your life in such a way that you'll be remembered for your kindness, compassion, fairness, character, benevolence, and a force for good who had much respect for life, in general.
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Germany Kent
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Anything which is physically possible can always be made financially possible; money is a bugaboo of small minds.
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Robert A. Heinlein (The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress)
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If you think you are beaten, you are If you think you dare not, you don't, If you like to win, but you think you can't It is almost certain you won't. If you think you'll lose, you're lost For out of the world we find, Success begins with a fellow's will It's all in the state of mind. If you think you are outclassed, you are You've got to think high to rise, You've got to be sure of yourself before You can ever win a prize. Life's battles don't always go To the stronger or faster man, But soon or late the man who wins Is the man WHO THINKS HE CAN!
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Walter D. Wintle
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If you want to be free of the wars of the world, begin by resolving the wars within you. If you want to see the world at peace, create peace within your mind.
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Forrest Curran (Purple Buddha Project: Purple Book of Self-Love)
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6 Ways To Give Your Mind A Break: 1. Stop stressing 2. Stop worrying 3. Give rest to the problems weighing you down 4. Lighten up 5. Forgive yourself 6. Forgive others
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Germany Kent
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The comfort zone is a psychological state in which one feels familiar, safe, at ease, and secure. If you always do what is easy and choose the path of least resistance, you never step outside your comfort zone. Great things don’t come from comfort zones.
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Roy T. Bennett (The Light in the Heart)
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If you are on social media, and you are not learning, not laughing, not being inspired or not networking, then you are using it wrong.
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Germany Kent
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The universe doesn't give you what you want in your mind; it gives you what you demand with your actions.
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Steve Maraboli (Unapologetically You: Reflections on Life and the Human Experience)
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Positive belief in yourself will give you the energy needed to conquer the world and this belief is the power behind all creation.
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Stephen Richards (Think Your way to Success: Let Your Dreams Run Free)
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Imagination is not bound by possibilities. The creative mind will always break the shacklesβ€”making the impossible, possible.
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C. Toni Graham
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Hard work does not go unnoticed, and someday the rewards will follow
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Allan Rufus (The Master's Sacred Knowledge)
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Discipline your mind to see the good in every situation and look on the best side of every event. Discipline your mind to think positively; to see the good in every situation and look on the best side of every event.
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Roy T. Bennett
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Manifesting is a lot like making a cake. The things needed are supplied by you, the mixing is done by your mind and the baking is done in the oven of the universe.
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Stephen Richards (Think Your way to Success: Let Your Dreams Run Free)
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To become a master at any skill, it takes the total effort of your: heart, mind, and soul working together in tandem.
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Maurice Young
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Most of what passes for legitimate entertainment is inferior or foolish and only caters to or exploits people's weaknesses. Avoid being one of the mob who indulges in such pastimes. Your life is too short and you have important things to do. Be discriminating about what images and ideas you permit into your mind. If you yourself don't choose what thoughts and images you expose yourself to, someone else will, and their motives may not be the highest. It is the easiest thing in the world to slide imperceptibly into vulgarity. But there's no need for that to happen if you determine not to waste your time and attention on mindless pap.
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Epictetus (The Art of Living: The Classical Manual on Virtue, Happiness and Effectiveness)
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What we perceive about ourselves is greatly a reflection of how we will end up living our lives.
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Stephen Richards (Boost Your Self Esteem)
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War is an ugly thing, but not the ugliest of things: the decayed and degraded state of moral and patriotic feeling which thinks that nothing is worth a war, is much worse. When a people are used as mere human instruments for firing cannon or thrusting bayonets, in the service and for the selfish purposes of a master, such war degrades a people. A war to protect other human beings against tyrannical injustice; a war to give victory to their own ideas of right and good, and which is their own war, carried on for an honest purpose by their free choice, β€” is often the means of their regeneration. A man who has nothing which he is willing to fight for, nothing which he cares more about than he does about his personal safety, is a miserable creature who has no chance of being free, unless made and kept so by the exertions of better men than himself. As long as justice and injustice have not terminated their ever-renewing fight for ascendancy in the affairs of mankind, human beings must be willing, when need is, to do battle for the one against the other.
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John Stuart Mill (Principles of Political Economy (Great Minds Series))
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The journey is made up of the most genuine and honest wonders of the mind, but also includes unfathomable sorrow and despair; yet, this is what makes up a journey as well as the human experience in entirety.
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Forrest Curran
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For what prevents us from saying that the happy life is to have a mind that is free, lofty, fearless and steadfast - a mind that is placed beyond the reach of fear, beyond the reach of desire, that counts virtue the only good, baseness the only evil, and all else but a worthless mass of things, which come and go without increasing or diminishing the highest good, and neither subtract any part from the happy life nor add any part to it? A man thus grounded must, whether he wills or not, necessarily be attended by constant cheerfulness and a joy that is deep and issues from deep within, since he finds delight in his own resources, and desires no joys greater than his inner joys.
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Seneca (The Stoic Philosophy of Seneca: Essays and Letters)
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With the notion that we can open up our world by opening our minds, realize that home is the land that is least explored, and that adventure is a notion not determined by location, but is ultimately a state of mind.
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Forrest Curran
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Participate in your dreams today. There are unlimited opportunities available with this new day. Take action on those wonderful dreams you've had in your mind for so long. Remember, success is something you experience when you act accordingly.
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Steve Maraboli (Unapologetically You: Reflections on Life and the Human Experience)
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How would your life be different if...You were conscious about the food you ate, the people you surround yourself with, and the media you watch, listen to, or read? Let today be the day...You pay attention to what you feed your mind, your body, and your life. Create a nourishing environment conducive to your growth and well-being today.
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Steve Maraboli (The Power Of One)
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I woke up early and took the first train to take me away from the city. The noise and all its people. I was alone on the train and had no idea where I was going, and that’s why I went there. Two hours later we arrived in a small town, one of those towns with one single coffee shop and where everyone knows each other’s name. I walked for a while until I found the water, the most peaceful place I know. There I sat and stayed the whole day, with nothing and everything on my mind, cleaning my head. Silence, I learned, is some times the most beautiful sound.
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Charlotte Eriksson
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People always ask me "Son what does it take To reach out and touch your dreams?" To them I always say Are you hungry? Are you thirsty? Is it a fire that burns you up inside? How bad do you want it? How bad do you need it? Are you eating, sleeping, dreaming With that one thing on your mind? How bad do you want it? How bad do you need it? Cause if you want it all You've got to lay it all out on the line
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Tim McGraw (Tim McGraw: Like You Were Dying- Piano / Vocal / Chords)
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Hell is not a place, but a state of mind born from stress. Hell holds our insecurities, our fears, and it is ultimately the domicile of the devil within. The devil breathes and thrives in the fragment of our hearts that we dare not visit; yet, we can only make peace with ourselves by diving into the pits of hell and having an honest conversation with the devil himself.
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Forrest Curran (Purple Buddha Project: Purple Book of Self-Love)
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The most incredible architecture Is the architecture of Self, which is ever changing, evolving, revolving and has unlimited beauty and light inside which radiates outwards for everyone to see and feel. With every in breathe you are adding to your life and every out breathe you are releasing what is not contributing to your life. Every breathe is a re-birth.
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Allan Rufus (The Master's Sacred Knowledge)
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Although the future is indiscernible, we often feel the need to plan for what cannot be planned, and attempt to react to things that never happened. Our overemphasis in the future is a mere illusion, which often makes us foolishly blind to the beauty of the present moment, and is the root of creating the worst case scenarios and the what- if situations that plague the mind.
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Forrest Curran
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Therefore it is unnecessary for a prince to have all the good qualities I have enumerated, but it is very necessary to appear to have them. And I shall dare to say this also, that to have them and always to observe them is injurious, and that to appear to have them is useful; to appear merciful, faithful, humane, religious, upright, and to be so, but with a mind so framed that should you require not to be so, you may be able and know how to change to the opposite.
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NiccolΓ² Machiavelli (The Prince)
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...when we love God, we naturally run to Him-frequently and zealously. Jesus didn't command that we have a regular time with Him each day. Rather, He tells us to 'love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.' He called this the 'first and greatest commandment' (Matt. 22:37-38). The results are intimate prayer and study of His Word. Our motivation changes from guilt to love.
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Francis Chan (Crazy Love: Overwhelmed by a Relentless God)
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The Lotus in Buddhism is a sacred symbol that represents purity and resurrection as attributes that develop through a spiritual awakening of the self. With humble beginnings in swamplands, the Lotus flower exquisitely blooms, pure and untainted, from this murky world it thrives in. The Lotus flower represents a higher state of mind, a strong spirit cultivated far from the suffering and temptations of this muddied world that personifies beauty through the present moment.
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Forrest Curran (Purple Buddha Project: Purple Book of Self-Love)
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Breathe in, breathe out. All the blessings of the universe that we may overlook are contained in the entirety of a breath. Breathe in, breathe out. Each breath is the sun flowering our earth, fresh water filling our oceans, and the blue skies clearing our minds. Infinite emotions are contained within every breath, and by the breath we can always realize the beauty within it all. Breathe in, breathe out.
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Forrest Curran (Purple Buddha Project: Purple Book of Self-Love)
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Suicide is a form of murderβ€” premeditated murder. It isn’t something you do the first time you think of doing it. It takes some getting used to. And you need the means, the opportunity, the motive. A successful suicide demands good organization and a cool head, both of which are usually incompatible with the suicidal state of mind. It’s important to cultivate detachment. One way to do this is to practice imagining yourself dead, or in the process of dying. If there’s a window, you must imagine your body falling out the window. If there’s a knife, you must imagine the knife piercing your skin. If there’s a train coming, you must imagine your torso flattened under its wheels. These exercises are necessary to achieving the proper distance. The debate was wearing me out. Once you've posed that question, it won't go away. I think many people kill themselves simply to stop the debate about whether they will or they won't. Anything I thought or did was immediately drawn into the debate. Made a stupid remarkβ€”why not kill myself? Missed the busβ€”better put an end to it all. Even the good got in there. I liked that movieβ€”maybe I shouldn’t kill myself. In reality, it was only part of myself I wanted to kill: the part that wanted to kill herself, that dragged me into the suicide debate and made every window, kitchen implement, and subway station a rehearsal for tragedy.
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Susanna Kaysen
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From then on, I brainwashed myself into craving discomfort. If it was raining, I would go run. Whenever it started snowing, my mind would say, Get your fucking running shoes on. Sometimes I wussed out and had to deal with it at the Accountability Mirror. But facing that mirror, facing myself, motivated me to fight through uncomfortable experiences, and, as a result, I became tougher. And being tough and resilient helped me meet my goals.
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David Goggins (Can't Hurt Me: Master Your Mind and Defy the Odds)
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If we're doing this for ten hours, I'm going to need a little incentive to stay motivated." Patch hooked his elbow around my neck and dragged me into a kiss. "Every time you strip my sword, I owe you a kiss. How's that sound?" I bit my lip to keep from giggling. "That sounds really dirty." Patch waggled his eyebrows. "Look whose mind just rolled into the gutter. Two kisses per strip. Any objections?" I pulled on an innocent face. "None whatsoever.
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Becca Fitzpatrick (Finale (Hush, Hush, #4))
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When we fail to tend to the fragilities of a flower as we become distracted by the noise of our minds, our plant is essentially dying. The quintessence of dying in the sense that we are failing to be mindful of the present moment, for life is the paradox of both living and dying concurrently. Just as we are living each moment, we are dying with every moment, and the essence of living is within each breath that ultimately comprises life as a whole.
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Forrest Curran
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You were born a winner, a warrior, one who defied the odds by surviving the most gruesome battle of them all - the race to the egg. And now that you are a giant, why do you even doubt victory against smaller numbers and wider margins? The only walls that exist are those you have placed in your mind. And whatever obstacles you conceive, exist only because you have forgotten what you have already achieved.
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Suzy Kassem (Rise Up and Salute the Sun: The Writings of Suzy Kassem)
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At times we will be asked to let go of things that we have always wanted to keep for ourselves, or things that we would never have thought that we would to have to let go of, such as the loss of a loved one or the betrayal of a dear friend. A tree never hesitates to shake off her leaves during fall, and so we must take another lesson given to us by the nature: let go when it is time. Although such losses can be difficult and painful, rise above this suffering. Focus within your mind, the image of the Lotus prospering above mud. We are the lotus; rise above.
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Forrest Curran (Purple Buddha Project: Purple Book of Self-Love)
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Freedom from stress, freedom from anxiety, freedom from depression; freedom is autonomy from all that stagnates growth in this ever complex and noisy world. By the fear of being in the unknown, we often overlook and forget the serene view of being on the raft: the glowing virgin stars, the gentle ways that the waves moves, and the endless possibilities that exist under the sun. The fundamental principle of freedom is to be lost and our state of mind never differs too far from this analogy of being stranded in the middle of the ocean.
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Forrest Curran (Purple Buddha Project: Purple Book of Self-Love)
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Lovers' reading of each other's bodies (of that concentrate of mind and body which lovers use to go to bed together) differs from the reading of written pages in that it is not linear. It starts at any point, skips, repeat itself, goes backward, insists, ramifies in simultaneous and divergent messages, converges again, has moments of irritation, turns the page, finds its place, gets lost. A direction can be recognized in it, a route to an end, since it tends toward a climax, and with this end in view it arranges rhythmic phases, metrical scansions, recurrence of motives. But is the climax really the end? Or is the race toward that end opposed by another drive which works in the opposite direction, swimming against moments, recovering time?
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Italo Calvino (If on a Winter’s Night a Traveler)
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It was a very ordinary day, the day I realised that my becoming is my life and my home and that I don't have to do anything but trust the process, trust my story and enjoy the journey. It doesn't really matter who I've become by the finish line, the important things are the changes from this morning to when I fall asleep again, and how they happened, and who they happened with. An hour watching the stars, a coffee in the morning with someone beautiful, intelligent conversations at 5am while sharing the last cigarette. Taking trains to nowhere, walking hand in hand through foreign cities with someone you love. Oceans and poetry. It was all very ordinary until my identity appeared, until my body and mind became one being. The day I saw the flowers and learned how to turn my daily struggles into the most extraordinary moments. Moments worth writing about. For so long I let my life slip through my fingers, like water. I'm holding on to it now, and I'm not letting go.
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Charlotte Eriksson (Empty Roads & Broken Bottles: in search for The Great Perhaps)
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Man cannot survive except through his mind. He comes on earth unarmed. His brain is his only weapon. The mind is an attribute of the individual. The basic need of the creator is independence. The reasoning mind cannot work under any form of compulsion. It cannot be curbed, sacrificed or subordinated to any consideration whatsoever. It demands total independence in function and in motive. To a creator, all relations with men are secondary. No man can live for another. He cannot share his spirit just as he cannot share his body. But the second-hander has used altruism as a weapon of exploitation and reversed the base of mankind's moral principles. Men have been taught every precept that destroys the creator. Men have been taught dependence as a virtue.
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Ayn Rand (The Fountainhead)
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When we retire at night, we constructively review our day. Were we resentful, selfish, dishonest or afraid? Do we owe an apology? Have we kept something to ourselves which should be discussed with another person at once? Were we kind and loving toward all? What could we have done better? Were we thinking of ourselves most of the time? Or were we thinking of what we could do for others, of what we could pack into the stream of life? But we must be careful not to drift into worry, remorse or morbid reflection, for that would diminish our usefulness to others. After making our review we ask God’s forgiveness and inquire what corrective measures should be taken. On awakening let us think about the twenty-four hours ahead. We consider our plans for the day. Before we begin, we ask God to direct our thinking, especially asking that it be divorced from self-pity, dishonest or self-seeking motives. Under these conditions we can employ our mental faculties with assurance, for after all God gave us brains to use. Our thought-life will be placed on a much higher plane when our thinking is cleared of wrong motives. In thinking about our day we may face indecision. We may not be able to determine which course to take. Here we ask God for inspiration, an intuitive thought or a decision. We relax and take it easy. We don’t struggle. We are often surprised how the right answers come after we have tried this for a while. What used to be the hunch or the occasional inspiration gradually becomes a working part of the mind. Being still inexperienced and having just made conscious contact with God, it is not probable that we are going to be inspired at all times. We might pay for this presumption in all sorts of absurd actions and ideas. Nevertheless, we find that our thinking will, as time passes, be more and more on the plane of inspiration. We come to rely upon it. We usually conclude the period of meditation with a prayer that we be shown all through the day what our next step is to be, that we be given whatever we need to take care of such problems. We ask especially for freedom from self-will, and are careful to make no request for ourselves only. We may ask for ourselves, however, if others will be helped. We are careful never to pray for our own selfish ends. Many of us have wasted a lot of time doing that and it doesn’t work. You can easily see why.
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Bill Wilson
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Now, for example, people with freckles aren’t thought of as a minority by the nonfreckled. They aren’t a minority in the sense we’re talking about. And why aren’t they? Because a minority is only thought of as a minority when it constitutes some kind of a threat to the majority, real or imaginary. And no threat is ever quite imaginary. Anyone here disagree with that? If you do, just ask yourself, What would this particular minority do if it suddenly became the majority overnight? You see what I mean? Well, if you don’t – think it over! β€œAll right. Now along come the liberals – including everybody in this room, I trust – and they say, β€˜Minorities are just people, like us.’ Sure, minorities are people – people, not angels. Sure, they’re like us – but not exactly like us; that’s the all-too- familiar state of liberal hysteria in which you begin to kid yourself you honestly cannot see any difference between a Negro and a Swede….” (Why, oh why daren’t George say β€œbetween Estelle Oxford and Buddy Sorensen”? Maybe, if he did dare, there would be a great atomic blast of laughter, and everybody would embrace, and the kingdom of heaven would begin, right here in classroom. But then again, maybe it wouldn’t.) β€œSo, let’s face it, minorities are people who probably look and act and – think differently from us and hay faults we don’t have. We may dislike the way they look and act, and we may hate their faults. And it’s better if we admit to disliking and hating them than if we try to smear our feelings over with pseudo liberal sentimentality. If we’re frank about our feelings, we have a safety valve; and if we have a safety valve, we’re actually less likely to start persecuting. I know that theory is unfashionable nowadays. We all keep trying to believe that if we ignore something long enough it’ll just vanish…. β€œWhere was I? Oh yes. Well, now, suppose this minority does get persecuted, never mind why – political, economic, psychological reasons. There always is a reason, no matter how wrong it is – that’s my point. And, of course, persecution itself is always wrong; I’m sure we all agree there. But the worst of it is, we now run into another liberal heresy. Because the persecuting majority is vile, says the liberal, therefore the persecuted minority must be stainlessly pure. Can’t you see what nonsense that is? What’s to prevent the bad from being persecuted by the worse? Did all the Christian victims in the arena have to be saints? β€œAnd I’ll tell you something else. A minority has its own kind of aggression. It absolutely dares the majority to attack it. It hates the majority–not without a cause, I grant you. It even hates the other minorities, because all minorities are in competition: each one proclaims that its sufferings are the worst and its wrongs are the blackest. And the more they all hate, and the more they’re all persecuted, the nastier they become! Do you think it makes people nasty to be loved? You know it doesn’t! Then why should it make them nice to be loathed? While you’re being persecuted, you hate what’s happening to You, you hate the people who are making it happen; you’re in a world of hate. Why, you wouldn’t recognize love if you met it! You’d suspect love! You’d think there was something behind it – some motive – some trick…
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Christopher Isherwood (A Single Man)