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Welcome to a new year at Hogwarts! Before we begin our banquet, I would like to say a few words. And here they are: Nitwit! Blubber! Oddment! Tweak!
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J.K. Rowling (Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone (Harry Potter, #1))
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A philosopher is a blind man in a dark room looking for a black cat that isn't there. A theologian is the man who finds it.
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H.L. Mencken
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A relationship is likely to last way longer, if each partner convinces or has convinced themselves that they do not deserve their partner, even if that is not true.
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Mokokoma Mokhonoana
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Some people avoid thinking deeply in public, only because they are afraid of coming across as suicidal.
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Mokokoma Mokhonoana
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The only thing known to go faster than ordinary light is monarchy, according to the philosopher Ly Tin Wheedle. He reasoned like this: you can't have more than one king, and tradition demands that there is no gap between kings, so when a king dies the succession must therefore pass to the heir instantaneously. Presumably, he said, there must be some elementary particles -- kingons, or possibly queons -- that do this job, but of course succession sometimes fails if, in mid-flight, they strike an anti-particle, or republicon. His ambitious plans to use his discovery to send messages, involving the careful torturing of a small king in order to modulate the signal, were never fully expanded because, at that point, the bar closed.
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Terry Pratchett (Mort (Discworld, #4; Death, #1))
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Some of us were brought into this troubled world primarily or only to increase our fathers’ chances of not being left by our mothers, or vice versa.
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Mokokoma Mokhonoana (The Use and Misuse of Children)
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A poet or philosopher should have no fault to find with his age if it only permits him to do his work undisturbed in his own corner; nor with his fate if the corner granted him allows of his following his vocation without having to think about other people.
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Arthur Schopenhauer (The Art of Literature)
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To be a philosopher, just reverse everything you have ever been told...and have a sense of humor doing it.
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Criss Jami (Killosophy)
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A premature death does not only rob one of the countless instances where one would have experienced pleasure, it also saves one from the innumerable instances where one would have experienced pain.
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Mokokoma Mokhonoana
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The most upsetting thing about Society’s attitude towards disabled people is that many millions of disabled people became disabled while trying to please Society, the very same bitch that secretly regards them as subhuman.
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Mokokoma Mokhonoana (The Use and Misuse of Children)
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If we had to earn our age by thinking for ourselves at least once a year, only a handful of people would reach adulthood.
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Mokokoma Mokhonoana
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Life is a process during which one initially gets less and less dependent, independent, and then more and more dependent.
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Mokokoma Mokhonoana
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Let your eyes talk, mouth listens and ear sleeps.
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Santosh Kalwar
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To be, or not to be: what a question!
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E.A. Bucchianeri (Faust: My Soul Be Damned for the World)
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Some people will hate you for not loving them.
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Mokokoma Mokhonoana
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We are way less likely to love someone just because they love us than we are to hate someone just because they hate us.
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Mokokoma Mokhonoana
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Some people hate people who are overconfident, only because their overconfidence reminds them of their underconfidence.
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Mokokoma Mokhonoana
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Most sane human beings who are over the age of six usually act or react not as per what they genuinely feel or really think but in accordance with the expectations of those around them.
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Mokokoma Mokhonoana (The Use and Misuse of Children)
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Patriotism is the narcissism of countries.
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Mokokoma Mokhonoana (The Use and Misuse of Children)
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Not everyone who talks less or keeps quiet whenever they are with or around you does that because they find you interesting or knowledgeable; some people do that because they find you boring or ignorant.
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Mokokoma Mokhonoana
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Adults who use big words in order to seem intelligent are annoying, especially those who are not intelligent.
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Mokokoma Mokhonoana
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The world economy would collapse if a significant number of people were to realize and then act on the realization that it is possible to enjoy many if not most of the things that they enjoy without first having to own them.
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Mokokoma Mokhonoana (The Use and Misuse of Children)
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Some people are only funny when they try to be serious.
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Nassim Nicholas Taleb (The Bed of Procrustes: Philosophical and Practical Aphorisms (Incerto Book 4))
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Most men would no longer enjoy conversing with most women if they stopped bringing their vaginas along.
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Mokokoma Mokhonoana
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The fact that the person who you are sleeping with is also sleeping with another person or other people does not necessarily mean that he or she does not love you. And the fact that you are the only person who someone is sleeping with does not necessarily mean that he or she loves you.
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Mokokoma Mokhonoana
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In reality most human beings are not, to most human beings, more important than money.
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Mokokoma Mokhonoana (The Use and Misuse of Children)
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In some cases, you can tell how somebody is being treated by their own boss from the way they are treating someone to whom they are a boss.
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Mokokoma Mokhonoana
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I don’t even pretend to believe I know everything; I just believe in arguments God told me I had a pretty good chance of winning, while I was traveling through hell.
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Shannon L. Alder
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Among other possibilities, money was invented to make it possible for a foolish man to control wise men; a weak man, strong men; a child, old men; an ignorant man, knowledgeable men; and for a dwarf to control giants.
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Mokokoma Mokhonoana (The Use and Misuse of Children)
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Death devours not only those who have been cooked by old age; it also feasts on those who are half-cooked and even those who are raw.
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Mokokoma Mokhonoana (The Use and Misuse of Children)
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Death would not surprise us as often as it does, if we let go of the misbelief that newborns are less mortal than the elderly.
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Mokokoma Mokhonoana
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If we were not impressed by job titles, suits, and jargon, we would demand that financial advisors show us their personal bank statements before they tell us what we could or should do with our own money.
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Mokokoma Mokhonoana
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Many if not most slaves would have each readily jumped, and many if not most slaves would each readily jump, at the opportunity to be a master, if such an opportunity presents or had presented itself.
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Mokokoma Mokhonoana (The Use and Misuse of Children)
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Bigheadedness is usually a symptom of small-mindedness.
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Mokokoma Mokhonoana
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To some believers, being on the pill or using a condom is a nonverbal way of telling God to go to hell.
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Mokokoma Mokhonoana (The Use and Misuse of Children)
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A seemingly simple task like taking a bath or wearing a condom feels like multitasking to someone who suffers from hemiplegia or has only one hand.
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Mokokoma Mokhonoana
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It should be noted that Tress would have made an excellent philosopher. In fact, she had already determined that philosophy wasn’t as valuable as she’d assumed—something that takes most great philosophers at least three decades to realize.
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Brandon Sanderson (Tress of the Emerald Sea)
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The last time everyone loved or at least liked everyone was when the world had a population of about 4.
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Mokokoma Mokhonoana (The Use and Misuse of Children)
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The average adult has had sex innumerable times more than they have formed an opinion of their own.
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Mokokoma Mokhonoana (The Use and Misuse of Children)
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Being rich or famous is the only profound thing that some people have ever said.
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Mokokoma Mokhonoana
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Millions of business people are each constantly forced to choose between their desire to not be a bad person and their desire to be a good business person, that is to say, to make as much money as they possibly can by maximizing their revenue while minimizing the cost of producing whatever it is that they sell.
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Mokokoma Mokhonoana (The Use and Misuse of Children)
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I’d given him bits and pieces of my peculiar life, but colored softer and funnier than they had been. I’d painted my dad as Don Quixote in a semi, on a quest for philosophical truths and the best cup of coffee in the nation.
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Laurie Halse Anderson (The Impossible Knife of Memory)
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Many a survivor of a plane crash who is or was against cannibalism and had never eaten human flesh once found themselves in a situation where they had to either eat human flesh, or go the way of all flesh.
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Mokokoma Mokhonoana (The Use and Misuse of Children)
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Most human beings strongly believe that money is way less important than the life of a human being, but in reality five hundred, fifty, or even five dollars are way more important to the lives of most human beings than the lives of most human beings.
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Mokokoma Mokhonoana
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Greed is a contagious mental illness without which civilization as we know it would not have been possible.
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Mokokoma Mokhonoana (The Use and Misuse of Children)
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There is nothing morally wrong with buying stolen goods, unless you know that they were stolen.
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Mokokoma Mokhonoana (The Use and Misuse of Children)
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Not a few millions of parents strongly hope that their own children will step in by instantly becoming their own parents’ foster parents, if and when the parents reach their second childhood.
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Mokokoma Mokhonoana (The Use and Misuse of Children)
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I mean really, how could an artistic individual stay grounded in the nitty-gritty of how many minutes per pound meat has to stay in the oven when trying to fathom the creative philosophy behind the greatest artistic minds of the world?
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E.A. Bucchianeri (Brushstrokes of a Gadfly (Gadfly Saga, #1))
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Many a parent, sad to say, has used their child as an opportunity for them, the parent, to do, through their child, something or some of the things that they, the parent, did not do or did not do successfully.
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Mokokoma Mokhonoana (The Use and Misuse of Children)
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For their never-ending endeavours to obtain or retain wealth, countries desperately need companies, because they—unlike most human beings—have the means of production, and human beings, because they—unlike all companies—have the means of reproduction.
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Mokokoma Mokhonoana (The Use and Misuse of Children)
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Some people are each holding on to a lover of theirs who no longer loves them and/or who they no longer love, only because they do not want to have a reason or another reason to be jealous of the person who would eventually be their lover if they let go of them.
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Mokokoma Mokhonoana
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We, in the interest of the so-called progress, have been persuaded to leave the production and at times the cooking of our food to companies whose owners and employees make a living by exploiting our busyness or laziness and our innate hunger to continue living.
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Mokokoma Mokhonoana (The Use and Misuse of Children)
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Most of us cling to life as if our existence were a result of our deed or choice.
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Mokokoma Mokhonoana
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Although they probably know that some children were used and some children are used as miners, most adults are ignorant of the chocolate industry’s use of minors.
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Mokokoma Mokhonoana (The Use and Misuse of Children)
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Love is as we will it to be." ~ Amunhotep El Bey
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Amunhotep Chavis El Bey (The Quotations Book of life and Death)
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Good man and bad man with money goes a long ways." ~ Amunhotep El Bey
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Amunhotep Chavis El Bey (The Quotations Book of life and Death)
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Most human beings would have never been pained by the death of a human being if they had never seen a human being or pretending to be pained by that.
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Mokokoma Mokhonoana
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Without a sense of humour one's wisdom is but a rumour.
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Fakeer Ishavardas
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There is something stunningly narrow about how the Anthropic Principle is phrased. Yes, only certain laws and constants of nature are consistent with our kind of life. But essentially the same laws and constants are required to make a rock. So why not talk about a Universe designed so rocks could one day come to be, and strong and weak Lithic Principles? If stones could philosophize, I imagine Lithic Principles would be at the intellectual frontiers.
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Carl Sagan (Pale Blue Dot: A Vision of the Human Future in Space)
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Loneliness tortures many if not most of the elderly more intensely and more frequently than it torments many if not most of us who will never be or have not yet been pushed or pulled into old age.
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Mokokoma Mokhonoana (The Use and Misuse of Children)
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Most sane human beings who have managed to attain and retain fame each uses it to dramatically increase their name’s chances of being remembered until Jesus comes back, since their heart cannot do what they consciously or unconsciously lust for, that is to say, for it to beat until Jesus returns.
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Mokokoma Mokhonoana (The Use and Misuse of Children)
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Just like how most if not all poor boys look up to and aspire to someday be rich men, most if not all underdeveloped and developing countries look up to and aspire to someday be developed countries.
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Mokokoma Mokhonoana (The Use and Misuse of Children)
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Orpheus never liked words. He had his music. He would get a funny look on his face and I would say what are you thinking about and he would always be thinking about music.
If we were in a restaurant sometimes Orpheus would look sullen and wouldn't talk to me and I thought people felt sorry for me. I should have realized that women envied me. Their husbands talked too much.
But I wanted to talk to him about my notions. I was working on a new philosophical system. It involved hats.
This is what it is to love an artist: The moon is always rising above your house. The houses of your neighbors look dull and lacking in moonlight. But he is always going away from you. Inside his head there is always something more beautiful.
Orpheus said the mind is a slide ruler. It can fit around anything. Show me your body, he said. It only means one thing.
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Sarah Ruhl (Eurydice)
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Many millions of pregnancies—many if not most of which have each led to the birth of at least one child—were each used as nothing but a conspicuous means to a secret end called the evasion of abortion.
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Mokokoma Mokhonoana (The Use and Misuse of Children)
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When selecting a one-night stand, a heterosexual woman who is materialistic is a trillion times more likely to choose a sexually unattractive poor man who seems rich over a sexually attractive rich man who seems poor.
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Mokokoma Mokhonoana (The Use and Misuse of Children)
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To ask a man whether or not he has a girlfriend is to talk about his sex life. If you disagree with that, then how in the name of God do you differentiate between a man’s girlfriend and a girl that is a friend to the man?
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Mokokoma Mokhonoana (The Use and Misuse of Children)
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As we all know, as if forever exploiting or attempting to exploit each other were not enough, a group of sane human beings who have just reached the end of a war against a common enemy of theirs will sooner or later start or continue killing and/or fighting against each other.
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Mokokoma Mokhonoana (The Use and Misuse of Children)
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I am not trying to be funny, it is just that you're a joke.
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Fakeer Ishavardas
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Boredom is probably more frequent and more tormenting if you do not have sight or hands.
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Mokokoma Mokhonoana
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Don't, but if at all, then, lie to the whole damn world - never to your own damn, silly stupid self.
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Fakeer Ishavardas
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For a sane person to sincerely be happy that someone has succeeded, they have to either be profiting or likely to profit from that person’s success, or be that person.
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Mokokoma Mokhonoana
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When you are unhappy, happy people are disgusting.
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Mokokoma Mokhonoana (F for Philosopher: A Collection of Funny Yet Profound Aphorisms)
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Some of our problems came to us; some, we went to them.
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Mokokoma Mokhonoana (F for Philosopher: A Collection of Funny Yet Profound Aphorisms)
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His mentality was dressed up as a moral code, but when naked, was simply a preference.
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J.S. Mason (The Stork Ate My Brother...And Other Totally Believable Stories)
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Come over,’ he said. ‘I’ll order in Chinese.’
‘You speak Chinese now?’
‘Funny guy, Libor. Be here at eight.’
‘You sure you’re up for it?’
‘I’m a philosopher, I’m not sure about anything.’..
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Howard Jacobson (The Finkler Question)
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More often than not, expecting to lose weight without first losing the diet that made the weight loss necessary is like expecting a pig to be spotless after hosing it down while it was still rolling in mud.
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Mokokoma Mokhonoana
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Most people are but a fake-art, and as real as a concealed fart.
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Fakeer Ishavardas
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Before you call a spade a spade, dig a big hole for yourself.
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Fakeer Ishavardas
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If you can't laugh at yourself, maybe you're not funny
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Benny Bellamacina (Philosophical Uplifting Quotes volume 2)
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Some people would have killed themselves and/or someone else if they were single; and some people would not have done that.
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Mokokoma Mokhonoana
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Laugh, and the world laughs with you. Don't, and the world laughs at you.
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Fakeer Ishavardas
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The hardest thing about being a woman isn’t menstruation or giving birth. It’s resisting the pressure to love handbags, makeup, high heels … and men.
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Mokokoma Mokhonoana (F for Philosopher: A Collection of Funny Yet Profound Aphorisms)
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It goes without saying that even those of us who are going to hell will get eternal life—if that territory really exists outside religious books and the minds of believers, that is. Having said that, given the choice, instead of being grilled until hell freezes over, the average sane human being would, needless to say, rather spend forever idling in an extremely fertile garden, next to a lamb or a chicken or a parrot, which they do not secretly want to eat, and a lion or a tiger or a crocodile, which does not secretly want to eat them.
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Mokokoma Mokhonoana (The Use and Misuse of Children)
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Vivian’s first impression of Solidago was that she had travelled back in time, but not to a time where architecture had been invented. All houses were twisted out of shape, to say the least. Windows either too large to open or too small to make a difference peppered the city in places one would never dream of having one.
The walls were mostly cast in brickwork by the kind of stonemason whose day job was financial advising. Skewed walls with more bricks than mortar, knotted chimneys keeping the smoke inside and cupping rooftops whose main purpose was to gather rainwater – Solidago had it all and more.
As the oldest civilization of the cosmos, Alarians might have been excellent at healing, philosophizing and weaving into the fabric of reality, but they were very poor city builders.
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Louise Blackwick (The Weaver of Odds (Vivian Amberville, #1))
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More often than not, an inspirational or motivational speaker is someone who makes money from telling us that we can do all of the things that we can do … and pretty much all of the things that we cannot do.
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Mokokoma Mokhonoana
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Even if the intelligent design of some structure has been established, it still is a separate question whether a wise, powerful, and beneficent God ought to have designed a complex, information-rich structure one way or another. For the sake of argument, let's grant that certain designed structures are not simply, as Gould put it, "odd" or "funny," but even cruel. What of it? Philosophical theology has abundant resources for dealing with the problem of evil, maintaining a God who is both omnipotent and benevolent in the face of evil.
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William A. Dembski (Signs of Intelligence: Understanding Intelligent Design)
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Socrates was a funny little Greek man best known for forgetting to write things down and for screaming, "Look, I'm a philosopher!" in the middle of a No Philosophy zone. (He was later forced to eat his words. Along with some poison.)
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Brandon Sanderson (Alcatraz Versus the Knights of Crystallia (Alcatraz, #3))
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And then we heard a branch break. It might have been a deer, but the Colonel busted out anyway. A voice directly behind us said, "Don't run, Chipper," and the Colonel stopped, turned around, and returned to us sheepishly.
The Eagle walked toward us slowly, his lips pursed in disgust. He wore a white shirt and a black tie, like always.
He gave each of us in turn the Look of Doom.
"Y'all smell like a North Carolina tobacco field in a wildfire," he said.
We stood silent. I felt disproportionately terrible, like I had just been caught fleeing the scene of a murder.
Would he call my parents?
"I'll see you in Jury tomorrow at five," he announced, and then walked away. Alaska crouched down, picked up the cigarette she had thrown away, and started smoking again. The Eagle wheeled around, his sixth sense detecting Insubordination To Authority Figures. Alaska dropped the cigarette and stepped on it. The Eagle shook his head, and even though he must have been crazy mad, I swear to God he smiled.
"He loves me," Alaska told me as we walked back to the dorm circle. "He loves all y'all, too. He just loves the school more. That's the thing. He thinks busting us is good for the school and good for us. It's the eternal struggle, Pudge. The Good versus the Naughty."
"You're awfully philosophical for a girl that just got busted," I told her.
"Sometimes you lose a battle. But mischief always wins the war.
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John Green (Looking for Alaska)
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Why was he doing this? So that life could continue in the metro? Right. So that they could grow mushrooms and pigs at VDNKh in the future, and so that his stepfather and Zhenkina’s family lived there in peace, so that people unknown to him could settle at Alekseevskaya and at Rizhskaya, and so that the uneasy bustle of trade at Byelorusskaya didn’t die away. So that the Brahmins could stroll about Polis in their robes and rustle the pages of books, grasping the ancient knowledge and passing it on to subsequent generations. So that the fascists could build their Reich, capturing racial enemies and torturing them to death, and so that the Worm people could spirit away strangers’ children and eat adults, and so that the woman at Mayakovskaya could bargain with her young son in the future, earning herself and him some bread. So that the rat races at Paveletskaya didn’t end, and the fighters of the revolutionary brigade could continue their assaults on fascists and their funny dialectical arguments. And so that thousands of people throughout the whole metro could breathe, eat, love one another, give life to their children, defecate and sleep, dream, fight, kill, be ravished and betrayed, philosophize and hate, and so that each could believe in his own paradise and his own hell . . . So that life in the metro, senseless and useless, exalted and filled with light, dirty and seething, endlessly diverse, so miraculous and fine could continue.
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Dmitry Glukhovsky (Metro 2033)
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I'm a serious sort of fella. But don't tell me your pal up in the sky exists, and mine does not. Then, my middle finger gets offended! For, my buddy up there nowhere, Mr. NOT, too insists without proof, that he is. Same as your god. Is Mr. NOT nuts? If he is, are you not?
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Fakeer Ishavardas
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Most experts today subscribe to some variations of the incongruity theory, the idea that humor arises when people discover there's an inconsistency between what they expect to happen and what actually happens. Or, as seventeenth-century French philosopher Blaise Pascal put it when he first came up with the concept, "Nothing produces laughter more than a surprising disproportion between that which one expects and that which one sees.
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Joel Warner (The Humor Code: A Global Search for What Makes Things Funny)
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Am Anfang war Gott? It may have been true, but it was not germane.
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Stephen Craig (The Omnipotence Paradox (A Flash Fiction Philosophical Fantasy))
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If water was beer I'd be a teetotaler
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Benny Bellamacina (Philosophical Uplifting Quotes and Poems)
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Oh hell, yeah! It is rather good to be un-dead. You my dear friend, are welcome to be otherwise instead.
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Fakeer Ishavardas
“
Of course I love you. For real. I will sure come and personally meet you myself. Just to make sure you're well. When is your funeral?
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Fakeer Ishavardas
“
You see, religion is really a kind of second womb. It’s designed to bring this extremely complicated thing, which is a human being, to maturity, which means to be self-motivating, self-acting. But the idea of sin puts you in a servile condition throughout your life. MOYERS: But that’s not the Christian idea of creation and the Fall. CAMPBELL: I once heard a lecture by a wonderful old Zen philosopher, Dr. D. T. Suzuki. He stood up with his hands slowly rubbing his sides and said, “God against man. Man against God. Man against nature. Nature against man. Nature against God. God against nature—very funny religion!
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Joseph Campbell (The Power of Myth)
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If you seriously believe that your imaginary guy up in the sky told you to kill people of a differing faith and religion, your illusory pal is a dickhead. And of course and therefore, analogically speaking, so are you, shithead.
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Fakeer Ishavardas
“
It didn’t occur to him to think that better is not the same as well. Was he fooling himself? He would not have said so. Even at twenty-two, when his diagnosis was confirmed, he was realistic. Most suffer. Everyone dies. He knew how, if not when. Now more than ever, he was determined to cheat the Fates of entertainment, but naturally, his time would come. When it did, he believed he would accept death as Socrates had: with cool philosophical distance. He would say something funny, or profound, or loving. Then he would let life fall gracefully from his hands. Horseshit, as James Earp would say, of the highest order. The truth is this. On the morning of August 14, 1878, Doc Holliday believed in his own death exactly as you do—today, at this very moment. He knew that he was mortal, just as you do. Of course, you know you’ll die someday, but … not quite the same way you know that the sun will rise tomorrow or that dropped objects fall. The great bitch-goddess Hope sees to that. Sit in a physician’s office. Listen to a diagnosis as bad as Doc’s. Beyond the first few words, you won’t hear a thing. The voice of Hope is soft but impossible to ignore. This isn’t happening, she assures you. There’s been a mix-up with the tests. Hope swears, You’re different. You matter. She whispers, Miracles happen. She says, often quite reasonably, New treatments are being developed all the time! She promises, You’ll beat the odds. A hundred to one? A thousand to one? A million to one? Eight to five, Hope lies. Odds are, when your time comes, you won’t even ask, “For or against?” You’ll swing up on that horse, and ride.
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”
Mary Doria Russell (Doc)
“
More often than not, these attempts at sociability ended in painful silence. His old friends, who remembered him as a brilliant student and wickedly funny conversationalist, were appalled by what had happened to him. Tom had slipped from the ranks of the anointed, and his downfall seemed to shake their confidence in themselves, to open the door onto a new pessimism about their own prospects in life. It didn't help matters that Tom had gained weight, that his former plumpness now verged on an embarrassing rotundity, but even more disturbing was the fact that he didn't seem to have any plans, that he never spoke about how he was going to undo the damage he'd done to himself and get back on his feet. Whenever he mentioned his new job, he described it in odd, almost religious terms, speculating on such questions as spiritual strength and the importance of finding one's path through patience and humility, and this confused them and made them fidget in their chairs. Tom's intelligence had not been dulled by the job, but no one wanted to hear what he had to say anymore, least of all the women he talked to, who expected young men to be full of brave ideas and clever schemes about how they were going to conquer the world. Tom put them off with his doubts and soul-searchings, his obscure disquisitions on the nature of reality, his hesitant manner. It was bad enough that he drove a taxi for a living, but a philosophical taxi driver who dressed in army-navy clothes and carried a paunch around his middle was a bit too much to ask. He was a pleasant guy, of course, and no one actively disliked him, but he wasn't a legitimate candidate?not for marriage, not even for a crazy fling.
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”
Paul Auster (The Brooklyn Follies)
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The proper attitude toward human activity and climate is expressed in the 1957 novel Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand. Consider the following passage, where industrialist-philosopher Francisco d’Anconia remarks to steel magnate Hank Rearden how dangerous the climate is, absent massive industrial development. The conversation takes place indoors at an elegant party during a severe storm (in the era before all severe storms were blamed on fossil fuels). There was only a faint tinge of red left on the edge of the earth, just enough to outline the scraps of clouds ripped by the tortured battle of the storm in the sky. Dim shapes kept sweeping through space and vanishing, shapes which were branches, but looked as if they were the fury of the wind made visible. “It’s a terrible night for any animal caught unprotected on that plain,” said Francisco d’Anconia. “This is when one should appreciate the meaning of being a man.” Rearden did not answer for a moment; then he said, as if in answer to himself, a tone of wonder in his voice, “Funny . . .” “What?” “You told me what I was thinking just a while ago . . .” “You were?” “. . . only I didn’t have the words for it.” “Shall I tell you the rest of the words?” “Go ahead.” “You stood here and watched the storm with the greatest pride one can ever feel—because you are able to have summer flowers and half-naked women in your house on a night like this, in demonstration of your victory over that storm. And if it weren’t for you, most of those who are here would be left helpless at the mercy of that wind in the middle of some such plain.
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Alex Epstein (The Moral Case for Fossil Fuels)