Unnecessary Lies Quotes

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While we do our good works let us not forget that the real solution lies in a world in which charity will have become unnecessary.
Chinua Achebe (Anthills of the Savannah)
Honor was never taking the easy way when it was also the wrong one. Never telling a falsehood unless the truth was painful and unnecessary, or a lie was necessary to save others. Never manipulating the truth to serve only yourself. Protecting the weak and helpless; standing fast even when fear made you weak. Keeping your word.
Mercedes Lackey (Exile's Honor (Alberich's Tale, #1))
Obedience, fasting, and prayer are laughed at, yet only through them lies the way to real true freedom. I cut off my superfluous and unnecessary desires, I subdue my proud and wanton will and chastise it with obedience, and with God's help I attain freedom of spirit and with it spiritual joy.
Fyodor Dostoevsky (The Brothers Karamazov)
Why are men afraid of women?" "If your strength is only the other's weakness, you live in fear," Ged said. "Yes; but women seem to fear their own strength, to be afraid of themselves." "Are they ever taught to trust themselves?" Ged asked, and as he spoke Therru came in on her work again. His eyes and Tenar's met. "No," she said. "Trust is not what we're taught." She watched the child stack the wood in the box. "If power were trust," she said. "I like that word. If it weren't all these arrangements - one above the other - kings and masters and mages and owners - It all seems so unnecessary. Real power, real freedom, would lie in trust, not force." "As children trust their parents," he said.
Ursula K. Le Guin (Tehanu (Earthsea Cycle, #4))
We clutter the earth with our inventions, never dreaming that possibly they are unnecessary — or disadvantageous. We devise astounding means of communication, but do we communicate with one another? We move our bodies to and fro and incredible speeds, but do we really leave the spot we started from? Mentally, morally, spiritually, we are fettered. What have we achieved in mowing down mountain ranges, harnessing the energy of mighty rivers, or moving whole populations about like chess pieces, if we ourselves remain the same restless, miserable, frustrated creatures we were before? To call such activity progress is utter delusion. We may succeed in altering the face of the earth until it is unrecognizable even to the Creator, but if we are unaffected wherein lies the meaning?
Henry Miller (The World Of Sex)
Charity … is the opium of the privileged; from the good citizen who habitually drops ten kobo from his loose change and from a safe height above the bowl of the leper outside the supermarket; to the group of good citizens (like youselfs) who donate water so that some Lazarus in the slums can have a syringe boiled clean as a whistle for his jab and his sores dressed more hygienically than the rest of him; to the Band Aid stars that lit up so dramatically the dark Christmas skies of Ethiopia. While we do our good works let us not forget that the real solution lies in a world in which charity will have become unnecessary.
Chinua Achebe (Anthills of the Savannah)
He moved to the next tree. "Our past can only follow us if we allow it to, Hawk." "It doesn't follow me, Sensei, it haunts me," I said. "It lies in wait for me in the dark." "A warrior cannot be haunted." "What makes you think I am one?" "Because when I look at you, I see nothing but a warrior who insists on wrapping herself in an unnecessary cocoon.
K.A. Emmons (The Blood Race (The Blood Race, #1))
He may be my half brother, but we're not related. A chasm of incommunicable worlds lies between us.
Rabih Alameddine (An Unnecessary Woman)
Though Farmer Troutham had just hurt him, he was a boy who could not himself bear to hurt anything. He had never brought home a nest of young birds without lying awake in misery half the night after, and often reinstating them and the nest in their original place the next morning. He could scarcely bear to see trees cut down or lopped, from a fancy that it hurt them; and late pruning, when the sap was up and the tree bled profusely, had been a positive grief to him in his infancy. This weakness of character, as it may be called, suggested that he was the sort of man who was born to ache a good deal before the fall of the curtain upon his unnecessary life should signify that all was well with him again. He carefully picked his way on tiptoe among the earthworms, without killing a single one.
Thomas Hardy
What did they say?" Juni asks me over the cafeteria table. "I didn't catch whatever profoundly unnecessary insult it was." "Ho-livia," I explain over the chatter echoing off the cafeteria ceiling. "It's funny, because ho means whore and also rhymes with the first syllable of my name. Ha-ha. Excellent joke.
Riley Redgate (Seven Ways We Lie)
I also understand that you have to lie to yourself to survive in a bad marriage, you have to delude yourself if you want to carry on in this life.
Rabih Alameddine (An Unnecessary Woman)
They’re all lies that most people believe. We create such unnecessary pain for ourselves. You feel like a failure because no-one loves you. You only exist if there’s someone who sees you. Your life only has worth if you’re living for someone else.
Michelle Horst (Heartless (Enemies to Lovers #1))
Then there were the baffling, unnecessary lies. At one point, for example, the president told me that chief of staff Reince Priebus didn’t know we were meeting, which seemed incredible. The chief of staff should know when the president is dining alone with the FBI director. Then, later on in that same dinner, Trump said casually, "Reince knows we’re meeting.
James Comey (A Higher Loyalty: Truth, Lies, and Leadership)
I consider it a shame that most contemporary American writing seems informed more by Hemingway, the hero of adolescent boys of all ages and genders, than by the sui generis genius of letters, Faulkner. A phalanx of books about boredom in the Midwest is lauded (where the Midwest lies is a source of constant puzzlement to me, somewhere near Iowa, I presume), as are books about unexplored angst in New Jersey or couples unable to communicate in Connecticut. It was Camus who asserted that American novelists are the only ones who think they need not be intellectuals.
Rabih Alameddine (An Unnecessary Woman)
But to paraphrase the ever-paraphraseable Freud, who said something to the effect that when you speak about the past you lie with every breath you take, I will say this: When you write about the past, you lie with each letter, with every grapheme, including the goddamn comma.
Rabih Alameddine (An Unnecessary Woman)
To kill for murder is an immeasurably greater evil than the crime itself. Murder by legal process is immeasurably more dreadful than murder by a brigand. A man who is murdered by brigands is killed at night in a forest or somewhere else, and up to the last moment he still hopes that he will be saved. There have been instances when a man whose throat had already been cut, was still hoping, or running away or begging for his life to be spared. But here all this last hope, which makes it ten times easier to die, is taken away FOR CERTAIN; here you have been sentenced to death, and the whole terrible agony lies in the fact that you will most certainly not escape, and there is no agony greater than that. Take a soldier and put him in front of a cannon in battle and fire at him and he will still hope, but read the same soldier his death sentence FOR CERTAIN, and he will go mad or burst out crying. Who says that human nature is capable of bearing this without madness? Why this cruel, hideous, unnecessary, and useless mockery? Possibly there are men who have sentences of death read out to them and have been given time to go through this torture, and have then been told, You can go now, you've been reprieved. Such men could perhaps tell us. It was of agony like this and of such horror that Christ spoke. No, you can't treat a mean like that.
Fyodor Dostoevsky
Unsettled by the sudden appearance of Captain Quire within her court, Gloriana resolved to forego all frivolous entertainments and shun the more unnecessary pleasures. Yet, the queen reasoned, this surely did not apply to healthful exercise, such as riding in the royal park. Nor could she refuse to spend the remainder of the afternoon in quiet seclusion, lying face down upon a cushioned bench in her private dressing room while gentle Lady Mary rubbed all the soreness from her muscles. Such occupations were safe, and harmless. It was only afterwards, when she was sleeping deeply, that Captain Quire came to her in a dream.
Michael Moorcock (Gloriana, or The Unfulfill'd Queen)
Picture it. Nineteenth-century man with his horses, dogs, carts, slow motion. Then, in the twentieth century, speed up your camera. Books cut shorter. Condensations. Digests, Tabloids. Everything boils down to the gag, the snap ending.” “Snap ending.” Mildred nodded. “Classics cut to fit fifteen-minute radio shows, then cut again to fill a two-minute book column, winding up at last as a ten- or twelve-line dictionary resume. I exaggerate, of course. The dictionaries were for reference. But many were those whose sole knowledge of Hamlet (you know the title certainly, Montag; it is probably only a faint rumor of a title to you, Mrs. Montag), whose sole knowledge, as I say, of Hamlet was a one-page digest in a book that claimed: now at last you can read all the classics; keep up with your neighbors. Do you see? Out of the nursery into the college and back to the nursery; there’s your intellectual pattern for the past five centuries or more.” Mildred arose and began to move around the room, picking things up and putting them down. Beatty ignored her and continued: “Speed up the film, Montag, quick. Click, Pic, Look, Eye, Now, Flick, Here, There, Swift, Pace, Up, Down, In, Out, Why, How, Who, What, Where, Eh? Uh! Bang! Smack! Wallop, Bing, Bong, Boom! Digest-digests, digest-digest-digests. Politics? One column, two sentences, a headline! Then, in mid-air, all vanishes! Whirl man’s mind around about so fast under the pumping hands of publishers, exploiters, broadcasters that the centrifuge flings off all unnecessary, time-wasting thought!” Mildred smoothed the bedclothes. Montag felt his heart jump and jump again as she patted his pillow. Right now she was pulling at his shoulder to try to get him to move so she could take the pillow out and fix it nicely and put it back. And perhaps cry out and stare or simply reach down her hand and say, “What’s this?” and hold up the hidden book with touching innocence. “School is shortened, discipline relaxed, philosophies, histories, languages dropped, English and spelling gradually gradually neglected, finally almost completely ignored. Life is immediate, the job counts, pleasure lies all about after work. Why learn anything save pressing buttons, pulling switches, fitting nuts and bolts?
Ray Bradbury (Fahrenheit 451)
This book is an invitation to relax into the beauty of your life in any given moment, and to strip away all that is unnecessary, to discover what lies within.
Beth Kempton (Wabi Sabi: Japanese Wisdom for a Perfectly Imperfect Life)
Life is less to experience the wisdom and beauty lies in nature. So don't waste your time doing unnecessary things and thing you don't love.
Ankit Samrat
Anomalies manifest themselves on the border between chaos and order, so to speak, and have a threatening and promising aspect. The promising aspect dominates, when the contact is voluntary, when the exploring agent is up-to-date – when the individual has explored all previous anomalies, released the “information” they contained, and built a strong personality and steady “world” from that information. The threatening aspect dominates, when the contact is involuntary, when the exploring agent is not up-to-date – when the individual has run away from evidence of his previous errors, failed to extract the information “lurking behind” his mistakes, weakened his personality, and destabilised his “world.” The phenomenon of interest – that precursor to exploratory behaviour – signals the presence of a potentially “beneficial” anomaly. Interest manifests itself where an assimilable but novel phenomenon exists: where something new “hides,” in a partially comprehensible form. Devout adherence to the dictates of interest – assuming a suitably disciplined character – therefore insures stabilisation and renewal of personality and world. Interest is a spirit beckoning from the unknown – a spirit calling from outside the “walls” of society. Pursuit of individual interest means hearkening to this spirit’s call – means journeying outside the protective walls of childhood dependence and adolescent group identification; means also return to and rejuvenation of society. This means that pursuit of individual interest – development of true individuality – is equivalent to identification with the hero. Such identification renders the world bearable, despite its tragedies – and reduces unnecessary suffering, which most effectively destroys, to an absolute minimum. This is the message that everyone wants to hear. Risk your security. Face the unknown. Quit lying to yourself, and do what your heart truly tells you to do. You will be better for it, and so will the world.
Jordan B. Peterson (Maps of Meaning: The Architecture of Belief)
For somehow, beneath this gorgeous paradigm of unnecessary being, lies the Act by which it exists. You have just now reduced it to its parts, shivered it into echoes, and pressed it to a memory, but you have also caught the hint that a thing is more than the sum of all the insubstantialities that comprise it. Hopefully, you will never again argue that the solidities of the world are mere matters of accident, creatures of air and darkness, temporary and meaningless shapes out of nothing. Perhaps now you have seen at least dimly that the uniquenesses of creation are the result of continuous creative support, of effective regard by no mean lover. He likes onions, therefore they are. The fit, the colors, the smell, the tensions, the tastes, the textures, the likes, the shapes are a response, not to some forgotten decree that there may as well be onions as turnips, but to His present delight - His intimate and immediate joy in all you have seen, and in the thousand other wonders you do not even suspect. With Peter, the onion says, Lord, it is good for us to be here. Yes, says God. Tov, Very good.
Robert Farrar Capon (The Supper of the Lamb: A Culinary Reflection (Modern Library Food))
Even if I was outwardly a wallflower, I was angry at the entire world. I felt lied to or let down by everyone. I was insufficient, unnecessary, and I hated how much it all affected me.*8
David Chang (Eat a Peach)
So yes, the making of strawberry preserves is time-consuming, old-fashioned, and unnecessary. Then why, you might ask, do I bother to do it? • • • I do it because it’s time-consuming. Whoever said that something worthwhile shouldn’t take time? It took months for the Pilgrims to sail to Plymouth Rock. It took years for George Washington to win the Revolutionary War. And it took decades for the pioneers to conquer the West. Time is that which God uses to separate the idle from the industrious. For time is a mountain and upon seeing its steep incline, the idle will lie down among the lilies of the field and hope that someone passes by with a pitcher of lemonade. What the worthy endeavor requires is planning, effort, attentiveness, and the willingness to clean up.
Amor Towles (The Lincoln Highway)
Jesus lies on his back, holding the end of the cord to prevent the lamb from escaping, an unnecessary precaution, the poor animal has no strength, not only because of its tender age but also because of all the excitement, the constant motion back and forth, not to mention the meager food it was given this morning, for it is considered neither fitting nor decent for anyone, lamb or martyr, to die with a full belly.
José Saramago (The Gospel According to Jesus Christ)
You can strip away many unnecessary troubles which lie wholly in your own judgement. And you will immediately make large and wide room for yourself by grasping the whole universe in your thought, contemplating the eternity of time, and reflecting on the rapid change of each thing in every part. How brief the gap from birth to dissolution, how vast the gulf of time before your birth, and an equal infinity after your dissolution.
Marcus Aurelius
Now this raises a serious question: If so much of what the voice says is meaningless and unnecessary, then why does it even exist? The secret to answering this question lies in understanding why it says what it says when it says it.
Michael A. Singer (The Untethered Soul: The Journey Beyond Yourself)
Dangerous systems usually required standardized procedures and some form of centralized control to prevent mistakes. That sort of management was likely to work well during routine operations. But during an accident, Perrow argued, “those closest to the system, the operators, have to be able to take independent and sometimes quite creative action.” Few bureaucracies were flexible enough to allow both centralized and decentralized decision making, especially in a crisis that could threaten hundreds or thousands of lives. And the large bureaucracies necessary to run high-risk systems usually resented criticism, feeling threatened by any challenge to their authority. “Time and time again, warnings are ignored, unnecessary risks taken, sloppy work done, deception and downright lying practiced,” Perrow found. The instinct to blame the people at the bottom not only protected those at the top, it also obscured an underlying truth. The fallibility of human beings guarantees that no technological system will ever be infallible.
Eric Schlosser (Command and Control: Nuclear Weapons, the Damascus Accident, and the Illusion of Safety)
Put the other way around, he believes that the threat posed to political good order by lawless or unnecessary appetites is the greatest political evil of all. It is this belief that explains so much that we are likely to find most abhorrent in the Republic, such as the lies of
Plato (Republic)
There was too much talk and most of it unnecessary and most of it lying. Alone on the desert he felt he could reach to something, something he could never get to anywhere else, something that belonged to the beginning and made everything else that happened in between of no importance.
Elliott Arnold (Blood Brother)
I consider it a shame that most contemporary American writing seems informed more by Hemingway, the hero of adolescent boys of all ages and genders, than by the sui generis genius of letters, Faulkner. A phalanx of books about boredom in the Midwest is lauded (where the Midwest lies is a source of constant puzzlement to me, somewhere near Iowa, I presume), as are books about unexplored angst in New Jersey or couples unable to communicate in Connecticut. It was Camus who asserted that American novelists are the only ones who think they need not be intellectuals. One
Rabih Alameddine (An Unnecessary Woman)
When a place gets crowded enough to require ID’s, social collapse is not far away. It is time to go elsewhere. The best thing about space travel is that it made it possible to go elsewhere. A woman is not property, and husbands who think otherwise are living in a dreamworld. The second best thing about space travel is that the distances involved make war very difficult, usually impractical, and almost always unnecessary. This is probably a loss for most people, since war is our race’s most popular diversion, one which gives purpose and color to dull and stupid lives. But it is a great boon to the intelligent man who fights only when he must—never for sport. A zygote is a gamete’s way of producing more gametes. This may be the purpose of the universe. There are hidden contradictions in the minds of people who “love Nature” while deploring the “artificialities” with which “Man has spoiled ‘Nature.’ ” The obvious contradiction lies in their choice of words, which imply that Man and his artifacts are not part of “Nature”—but beavers and their dams are. But the contradictions go deeper than this prima-facie absurdity. In declaring his love for a beaver dam (erected by beavers for beavers’ purposes) and his hatred for dams erected by men (for the purposes of men) the “Naturist” reveals his hatred for his own race—i.e., his own self-hatred. In the case of “Naturists” such self-hatred is understandable; they are such a sorry lot. But hatred is too strong an emotion to feel toward them; pity and contempt are the most they rate. As for me, willy-nilly I am a man, not a beaver, and H. sapiens is the only race I have or can have. Fortunately for me, I like being part of a race made up of men and women—it strikes me as a fine arrangement and perfectly “natural.” Believe it or not, there were “Naturists” who opposed the first flight to old Earth’s Moon as being “unnatural” and a “despoiling of Nature.
Robert A. Heinlein (Time Enough for Love)
Beginning with scarlet fever, I'm afraid. It's well you left when you did, Molly. You've never had it. We must stop up all intercourse with the Hall for a time. If there's one illness I dread, it is this.' 'But you go and come back to us, papa.' 'Yes. But I always take plenty of precautions. However, no need to talk about risks that lie in the way of one's duty. It is unnecessary risks that we must avoid.
Elizabeth Gaskell (Wives and Daughters)
One Cincinnatus was counting, but the other Cincinnatus had already stopped heeding the sound of the unnecessary count which was fading away in the distance; and, with a clarity he had never experienced before – at first almost painful, so suddenly did it come, but then suffusing him with joy, he reflected: why am I here? Why am I lying like this? And, having asked himself these simple questions, he answered them by getting up and looking around.
Vladimir Nabokov (Invitation to a Beheading)
The principal justification offered by the Democrats for their campaign against the Iraq War was that “Bush lied” in order to persuade them to support an invasion that was unnecessary, illegal and immoral. This claim was the only way Democrats could explain the otherwise inexplicable and unconscionable fact that they had turned against a war they had supported for domestic political reasons, when an anti-war primary candidate, Howard Dean appeared to be on his way to winning their presidential primary.
David Horowitz (How Obama Betrayed America....And No One Is Holding Him Accountable)
Aim up. Pay attention. Fix what you can fix. Don’t be arrogant in your knowledge. Strive for humility, because totalitarian pride manifests itself in intolerance, oppression, torture and death. Become aware of your own insufficiency—your cowardice, malevolence, resentment and hatred. Consider the murderousness of your own spirit before you dare accuse others, and before you attempt to repair the fabric of the world. Maybe it’s not the world that’s at fault. Maybe it’s you. You’ve failed to make the mark. You’ve missed the target. You’ve fallen short of the glory of God. You’ve sinned. And all of that is your contribution to the insufficiency and evil of the world. And, above all, don’t lie. Don’t lie about anything, ever. Lying leads to Hell. It was the great and the small lies of the Nazi and Communist states that produced the deaths of millions of people. Consider then that the alleviation of unnecessary pain and suffering is a good. Make that an axiom: to the best of my ability I will act in a manner that leads to the alleviation of unnecessary pain and suffering. You have now placed at the pinnacle of your moral hierarchy a set of presuppositions and actions aimed at the betterment of Being.
Jordan B. Peterson (12 Rules for Life: An Antidote to Chaos)
I sat up, woozy and blurry-eyed. I was lying in my old cot in the Me cabin. Sunlight streamed through the windows—morning light? Had I really slept that long? Snuggled up next to me, something warm and furry was growling and snuffling in my pillow. At first glance, I thought it might be a pit bull, though I was fairly sure I did not own a pit bull. Then it looked up, and I realized it was the disembodied head of a leopard. One nanosecond later, I was standing at the opposite end of the cabin, screaming. It was the closest I’d come to teleporting since I’d lost my godly powers. “Oh, you’re awake!” My son Will emerged from the bathroom in a billow of steam, his blond hair dripping wet and a towel around his waist. On his left pectoral was a stylized sun tattoo, which seemed unnecessary to me—as if he could be mistaken for anything but a child of the sun god. He froze when he registered the panic in my eyes. “What’s wrong?” GRR! said the leopard. “Seymour?” Will marched over to my cot and picked up the leopard head—which at some point in the distant past had been taxidermied and stuck on a plaque, then liberated from a garage sale by Dionysus and granted new life. Normally, as I recalled, Seymour resided over the fireplace mantel in the Big House, which did not explain why he had been chewing on my pillow. “What are you doing here?” Will demanded of the leopard. Then, to me: “I swear I did not put him in your bed.” “I did.” Dionysus materialized right next to me. My tortured lungs could not manage another scream, but I leaped back an additional few inches. Dionysus gave me his patented smirk. “I thought you might like some company. I always sleep better with a teddy leopard.” “Very kind.” I tried my best to kill him with eye daggers. “But I prefer to sleep alone.” “As you wish. Seymour, back to the Big House.” Dionysus snapped his fingers and the leopard head vanished from Will’s hands. “Well, then…
Rick Riordan (The Tower of Nero (The Trials of Apollo, #5))
A jolt of rage now forced him into her face, their noses almost touching. At once she was the one pulling back. “Is this yours and Fricker’s little game, Geline? To what purpose? Why not keep to the truth? It’s disgusting enough.” His voice was ragged with fury. “Why make up lies when it’s so unnecessary? I was a gambler, a prodigious drinker. I whored my way through most of London’s lower echelons. I am profoundly fortunate not to be riddled with disease.” Her mouth crimped with distaste. “Yes, indeed. Don’t want to mention that, do we? There’s a price to be paid for treating this vessel,” he tapped his chest, “without respect. As to that, we’ve both been fortunate.
Cynthia Wicklund (Lord of Always)
My short-term goals are to defend and even strengthen elements of state authority which, though illegitimate in fundamental ways, are critically necessary right now to impede the dedicated efforts to "roll back" the progress that has been achieved in extending democracy and human rights. State authority is now under severe attack in the more democratic societies, but not because it conflicts with the libertarian vision. Rather the opposite: because it offers (weak) protection to some aspects of that vision. Governments have a fatal flaw: unlike the private tyrannies, the institutions of state power and authority offer to the despised public an opportunity to play some role, however limited, in managing their own affairs. That defect is intolerable to the masters, who now feel, with some justification, that changes in the international economic and political order offer the prospects of creating a kind of "utopia for the masters," with dismal prospects for most of the rest. It should be unnecessary to spell out here what I mean. The effects are all too obvious even in the rich societies, from the corridors of power to the streets, countryside, and prisons. For reasons that merit attention but that lie beyond the scope of these remarks, the rollback campaign is currently spearheaded by dominant sectors of societies in which the values under attack have been realized in some of their most advanced forms, the English-speaking world; no small irony, but no contradiction either.
Noam Chomsky (Chomsky On Anarchism)
Once, books appealed to a few people, here, there, everywhere. They could afford to be different. The world was roomy. But then the world got full of eyes and elbows and mouths. Double, triple, quadruple population. Films and radios, magazines, books levelled down to a sort of paste pudding norm [...]. [...] Nineteenth-century man with his horses, dogs, carts, slow motion. Then, in the twentieth century, speed up your camera. Books cut shorter. Condensations, Digests. Tabloids. Everything boils down to the gag, the snap ending. [...] Classics cut to fit fifteen-minute radio shows, then cut again to fill a two-minute book column, winding up at last as a ten- or twelve-line dictionary resume. I exaggerate, of course. The dictionaries were for reference. But many were those whose sole knowledge of Hamlet [...] was a one-page digest in a book that claimed: "now at least you can read all the classics; keep up with your neighbors". Do you see? Out of the nursery into the college and back to the nursery; there's your intellectual pattern for the past five centuries or more. [...] Speed up the film, Montag, quick. Click? Pic, Look, Eye, Now, Flick, Here, There, Swift, Pace, Up, Down, In, Out, Why, How, Who, What, Where, Eh? Uh! Bang! Smack! Wallop, Bing, Bong, Boom! Digest-digests, digest-digest-digests. Politics? One column, two sentences, a headline! Then, in mid-air, all vanishes! Whirl man's mind around about so fast under the pumping hands of publishers, exploiters, broadcasters, that the centrifuge flings off all unnecessary, time-wasting thought! [...] School is shortened, discipline relaxed, philosophies, histories, languages dropped, English and spelling gradually neglected, finally almost completely ignored. Life is immediate, the job counts, pleasure lies all about after work. Why learn anything save pressing buttons, pulling switches, fitting nuts and bolts? [...] The zipper displaces the button and a man lacks just that much time to think while dressing at dawn, a philosophical hour, and thus a melancholy hour. [...] Life becomes one big pratfall, Montag; everything bang, boff, and wow!
Ray Bradbury (Fahrenheit 451)
of their behavior on the target. In so doing, the aggressor’s intentions become the most important issue. In essence, this guideline tells victims that as long as there was no intention to cause harm, they need to let go of the hurt and move on. In so doing, this guideline upholds white racial innocence while minimizing the impact of racism on people of color. • Speak your truth: The admonition to speak the truth seems to be an unnecessary guideline. I have not seen a pattern of lying in these groups. Have I seen defensiveness, distancing behavior, silence, avoidance of taking risks? Yes. But have I observed people not speaking their truth? No. More importantly, what if your truth is that you are color blind? Because no one can actually be color blind in a racist society, the claim that you are color blind is not a truth; it is a false belief. Yet this guideline can position all beliefs as truths and, as such, equally valid. Given that the goal of antiracist work is to identify and challenge racism and the misinformation that supports it, all perspectives are not equally valid; some are rooted in racist ideology and need to be uncovered and challenged. We must distinguish between sharing your beliefs so that we can identify how they may be upholding racism and stating your beliefs as “truths” that cannot be challenged.
Robin DiAngelo (White Fragility: Why It's So Hard for White People to Talk About Racism)
To start the process of healing and recovery from addiction, the first thing we must do is accept how our addictions cause suffering in us and in the ones we love. We begin by understanding that addiction always creates suffering. Suffering is greed, hatred, and delusion. For the addict it may manifest as: Suffering is the stress created by craving for more. Suffering is never having enough to feel satisfied. Suffering is stealing to support your addiction. Suffering is lying to hide your addiction. Suffering is feeling ashamed of one’s actions. Suffering is feeling unworthy. Suffering is living in fear of the consequences of one’s actions. Suffering is the feelings of anger and resentment. Suffering is hurting other people. Suffering is hurting yourself. Suffering is the feeling of being isolated and alone. Suffering is the feeling of hatred toward oneself or others. Suffering is jealousy and envy. Suffering is feeling less than, inferior, or beneath others. Suffering is feeling superior, better than, or above others. Suffering is greedy, needy, and selfish. Suffering is the thought that I cannot be happy until I get. . . . Suffering is the anguish and misery of being addicted. All these feelings are unnecessary suffering caused by an imbalance between our instinctual drive for happiness and our instinctual need for survival. It is also very important to remember that the end of suffering does not mean the end of pain or difficulties, just the end of creating unnecessary suffering in our lives.
Noah Levine (Refuge Recovery: A Buddhist Path to Recovering from Addiction)
One of my earliest memories is from around age three or four—sitting in a dress by myself playing with a doll. I was fine playing, but the sense was that there was no connection. There was nobody around; I was completely isolated. This was safe, but there wasn’t a sense of happiness, only that I had figured out how to protect myself.” “By being alone.” “By being alone and yes … without feeling contact. “There are other fragments that come up. For a long time I’ve had this image of lying in what felt like clouds; I was on a bed of clouds with a grey and colourless sky above me and this one ray of sun hitting me, but it was cold. The sense of really being completely alone, that even this ray, which might be love, wasn’t. I saw that learning not to feel was what I had to do in order to survive.” Such experiences — or the conclusions Harriette drew from them—left her isolated in life, or in relationships that, she felt, depleted her more than they nurtured her. Her intensive therapy was aimed at developing emotional competence. Emotional competence is the capacity that enables us to stand in a responsible, non-victimized, and non-self-harming relationship with our environment.* It is the required internal ground for facing life’s inevitable stresses, for avoiding the creation of unnecessary ones and for furthering the healing process. Few of us reach adult age with anything close to full emotional competence. Recognizing our lack of it is not cause for self-judgment, only a call for further development and transformation.
Gabor Maté (When the Body Says No: The Cost of Hidden Stress)
firm, nonslip blanket, yoga mat, beach towel, or exercise or camping mat can be used to lie on. A thin (one- to three-inch) cushion or pillow can support your head and maintain the neck’s natural arch. Be careful: a thick pillow easily creates tension in the neck and this is to be avoided. An eye pillow, wash cloth, or scarf can cover your eyes. Even though your eyes will be closed, the extra darkness and weight of the eye cover enhances relaxation significantly. It calms the brain and reduces restlessness by preventing unnecessary eye movements. Do not cover your nose. Firm bolsters or pillows can be used to support your back and legs. Cover up with a cozy blanket to keep warm. Your body temperature is likely to drop during deep relaxation. Getting cold is a nuisance.
Julie T. Lusk (Yoga Nidra for Complete Relaxation and Stress Relief)
14. Pack Light This brings us to the stage of our journey where I can begin to equip you with some of the key ‘know-how’ to help you survive the many obstacles that lie ahead. Now, there is ‘good’ kit we need to carry and then there is ‘bad’ kit. The ‘good’ is the list we are going to start compiling. The ‘bad’ is the stuff we are going to drop. Ultimately I want you to be empowered with a super-efficient, totally functional kit list made up of solid principles on which to build your life and adventure. And here is the reason why we want to keep our kit list light: On an expedition, obviously you never want to carry more gear than you need. Unnecessary kit is just extra weight - and too much baggage slows you down. Part of the appeal of the TV shows I do is that they show how you can survive with just a bottle of water, a decent knife and some key know-how. The message is that attitude is king and the greatest resource we have is inside of us all. Pack the right skills, and the right attitudes, and you don’t need much else.
Bear Grylls (A Survival Guide for Life: How to Achieve Your Goals, Thrive in Adversity, and Grow in Character)
Master Daie (Ta-hui) says this about kufu: In training ourselves to solve koan, we should neither make guesses or comments nor try to understand them. It is unnecessary to know the meanings of the words or justify our attitudes toward the koan presented to us. On the contrary, we should neither be empty and tranquil nor expect to be enlightened. It is still worse to be absent-minded. Whether we walk, dwell, sit, or lie down, we should always be one with the koan and try to keep in touch with them all the time.17 In the Mumonkan, Master Mumon Ekai (Wu-men Hui-k’ai) states, Arouse your entire body with its three hundred and sixty bones and joints and its eighty-four thousand pores of the skin. Summon up a spirit of great doubt and concentrate on this word “mu.” In order to do so, hold to the problem from morning to night without letting it go even for one second, and become one with the word “mu” (void) with all your strength.
Omori Sogen (Introduction to Zen Training: A Physical Approach to Meditation and Mind-Body Training (The Classic Rinzai Zen Manual))
They’re all lies that most people believe. We create such unnecessary pain for ourselves. You feel like a failure because no-one loves you. You only exist if there’s someone who sees you. Your life only has worth if you’re living for someone else. That restlessness you feel? It’s your soul crying out to be set free from all that deceit you’ve been forced to believe.
Michelle Horst
We are not individually much cleverer than the average animal, a heron or a mole, but the knack of our species lies in our capacity to transmit our accumulated knowledge down the generations. The slowest among us can, in a few hours, pick up ideas that it took a few rare geniuses a lifetime to acquire. Yet what is distinctive is just how selective we are about the topics we deem it possible to educate ourselves in. Our energies are overwhelmingly directed towards material, scientific and technical subjects – and away from psychological and emotional ones. Much anxiety surrounds the question of how good the next generation will be at maths; very little around their abilities at marriage or kindness. We devote inordinate hours to learning about tectonic plates and cloud formations, and relatively few fathoming shame and rage. The assumption is that emotional insight might be either unnecessary or in essence unteachable, lying beyond reason or method, an unreproducible phenomenon best abandoned to individual instinct and intuition. We are left to find our own path around our unfeasibly complicated minds – a move as striking (and as wise) as suggesting that each generation should rediscover the laws of physics by themselves.
Alain de Botton (The School of Life: An Emotional Education)
I was as relieved and happy as she, but it ate away at me that all those lies—misleading friends and family, twisting and turning, the panic—had been unnecessary, caused by a chimera. I had allowed myself to be swept along by her specters of punishment, condemnation, and excommunication, and she—however temporarily—had possessed the power to make me someone I was not and never wanted to be, a liar, a coward, rather than a man who stands up for himself regardless of the cost.
Connie Palmen (Your Story, My Story)
Lying to someone who already knows the truth is like trying to teach a fish how to swim — unnecessary, futile, and likely to leave you all wet.
Don Santo
The monastic way is very different. Obedience, fasting, and prayer are laughed at, yet only through them lies the way to real, true freedom. I cut off my superfluous and unnecessary desires, I subdue my proud and wanton will and chastise it with obedience, and with God’s help I attain freedom of spirit and with it spiritual joy. Which is most capable of conceiving a great idea and serving it—the rich man in his isolation or the man who has freed himself from the tyranny of material things and habits?
Fyodor Dostoevsky (The Brothers Karamazov)
A crime risk model dehumanizes the prior offender by paring him or her down to the extremely limited view captured by a small number of characteristics (variables input to a predictive model). But, if the integration of PA promises to lower the overall crime rate—as well as the expense of unnecessary incarceration—is this within the acceptable realm of compromises to civil liberties one endures when incarcerated in the first place?
Eric Siegel (Predictive Analytics: The Power to Predict Who Will Click, Buy, Lie, or Die)
Memory, memoir, autobiography - lies, lies, all lies.
Rabih Alameddine (An Unnecessary Woman)
Would you feel better if I lie beside you until you go to sleep?” I nodded. Carefully. No dignity, no pride. He stretched out beside me and put an arm around my waist and gathered me close. It felt so-o-o-o nice. Except . . . “You’re—” “What?” “Nothing.” No need to point out that he was shaking. He probably already knew. And I understood. I’d been a wreck, when he’d been injured and no one was sure he was going to live. He buried his face in my hair. “You’re all right,” he whispered into my ear. “You’re all right.” I laid my hand on top of his. “We’re both all right,” I said. “We’re both going to be fine.” I’d never liked the idea of the bond. It was, I thought, an unnecessary chain. Two professionals shouldn’t need it. And it wasn’t right, to link the life of one person to another so thoroughly. Neither of us were careless with our safety, but accidents happened. One person shouldn’t have to walk around knowing that at any moment they might die because their partner has. It wasn’t right. And yet . . . At least he couldn’t leave. No matter what I did wrong, he couldn’t leave.
Moira J. Moore (The Hero Strikes Back (Hero, #2))
A leader needs a balanced approach to time lest it become his bondage and downfall. Without a grip on time, the leader works under unnecessary strain. Even when the leader has done the utmost to fulfill daily obligations, vast areas of work always remain. Every call for help is not necessarily a call from God, for it is impossible to respond to every need. If the leader sincerely plans his day in prayer, then executes the plan with all energy and eagerness, that is enough. A leader is responsible only for what lies within the range of control. The rest he should trust to our loving and competent heavenly Father.
J. Oswald Sanders (Spiritual Leadership: Principles of Excellence for Every Believer (Sanders Spiritual Growth Series))
If any of you are giving yourselves such proud airs, listen to me for a little while. You will be lost, as sure as you are alive. You righteous men, whose righteousness is all of your own working, are either deceivers or deceived; for the Scripture cannot lie, and it saith plainly, "There is none righteous, no, not one." In any case I have no gospel to preach to the self-righteous, no, not a word of it. Jesus Christ himself came not to call the righteous, and I am not going to do what He did not do. If I called you, you would not come, and, therefore, I will not call you, under that character. No, I bid you rather look at that righteousness of yours till you see what a delusion it is. It is not half so substantial as a cobweb. Have done with it! Flee from it! Oh believe that the only persons that can need justification are those who are not in themselves just! They need that s omething should be done for them to make them just before the judgment seat of God. Depend upon it, the Lord only does that which is needful. Infinite wisdom never attempts that which is unnecessary. Jesus never undertakes that which is superfluous. To make him just who is just is no work for God—that were a labor for a fool; but to make him just who is unjust—that is work for infinite love and mercy. To justify the ungodly—this is a miracle worthy of a God. And for certain it is so.
Anonymous
THE WRITERS WE discussed in Part I all lived between the mid-eighteenth and the mid-twentieth centuries. What has changed in the meantime? Not much, basically, except for the fact that survivors of childhood abuse can now seek therapy in an attempt to free themselves from the consequences of that abuse. Frequently, however, not only the victims themselves but also their therapists are reluctant to square up to the truth of what happened to them in childhood. Accordingly, it is still very rare for that liberation process to be fully successful. If clients can actually experience their emotions, there may be a temporary alleviation of the symptoms. The emotions can be consciously felt, they can be expressed in another’s presence, and this is something that has never been possible before. But as long as the therapist tacitly stands in the service of some “deity” (parental figure), she will hardly be able to help her clients find their way to genuine autonomy. The morality implicit in the Fourth Commandment will continue to hold sway over both of them, and the body will pay the price for this sacrifice. If I assert, here and now, that this sacrifice is unnecessary, that one can free oneself of the dictatorship of conventional morality and the Fourth Commandment without having to punish oneself for it or do harm to others, some people may accuse me of naïve optimism.
Alice Miller (The Body Never Lies: The Lingering Effects of Hurtful Parenting)
You might be tempted to think I’m anti self-improvement5 at this point, but that would be a mistake. It’s not really a question of if we want to make behavioral improvements. The question is more about why we believe we need to make them—why we feel desperate to make them. Sure, we all make steady behavioral improvements of one kind or another throughout our lives. That’s normal as it’s a part of living and growing. But I’m talking about impulsive, irrepressible, and unnecessary improvements—image improvements. Those that occur when we believe the lie that says we’re not good enough and we secretly preoccupy ourselves with thoughts of how we can modify our behavioral image to better fit the opinions of others. Or when we have an unhealthy interest in who we are not and feel we must change it or suffer the supposed consequences.
Steven Sisler (The Four People Types: And what drives them)
Any awareness of how lies spread must generate a real sensitivity to the fact that most lies believed to be “white” are unnecessary if not downright undesirable.
Sissela Bok (Lying: Moral Choice in Public and Private Life)
Never tell an unnecessary lie; the truth has great authority. The cleverest murders have been caught, not because they told the one essential lie, but because they continued to lie about unimportant detail when the truth could have done them no harm.
P.D. James
When you write about the past, you lie with each letter, with every grapheme, including the goddamn comma.
Rabih Alameddine (An Unnecessary Woman)
When we were young, we unconsciously chose friends with similar values. We didn’t like dealing with individuals, for example, who were not truthful. They concerned us. Lying seemed so silly, so unnecessary. Nobody likes dishonesty. I remember associating with people who often were not the most popular in the school, but they were respected. And one of the reasons they were respected was because they had integrity.
Jon M. Huntsman Sr. (Winners Never Cheat: Even in Difficult Times)
Remember when you gave me shit after the Bridget situation?” Rhys was practically in a state of schadenfreude, that bastard. “You said love is, and I quote, ‘tedious, boring, and utterly unnecessary. People in love are the most insufferable on the planet.’” His grin widened. “Want to take that back?
Ana Huang (Twisted Lies (Twisted, #4))
He would think I was taking an unnecessary risk. “I’ll drop it by the mailbox on my way home.” Devon’s head turns just slightly in my direction. “That’s not your home, L.” I flinch at his words, then grab the magazine in front of me, shoving it in my bag. I pick up my cup and stand from my stool. “I’ll be in touch.” Just as I start to walk away, he whispers, “Please be safe.
Ashley Elston (First Lie Wins)
One song to the tune of another - a concept that is almost too simple for words. Without a trace of ostentation and offering no more than plain uncomplicated straightforwardness, the difficulty of the round lies only in finding the mode juste to describe its lack of pretention and complication or the ease and clarity, which embraces its artless elementalism. Indeed Its this very lack of convoluted ramification that makes excessive detail description not only unnecessary, but also superfluous to a point bordering on the tautological. It's impossible to describe its lack of advanced over contrived complex compound structure or its total avoidance of extravagantly woven sophistry in mere words. These conventional catalysts so expeditious to verbal facility that elucidate conceptual comprehension succinctly and without recourse to extraneous elaboration. If only everything in life was so simple!
Graeme Garden;Jon Naismith;Iain Pattinson;Tim Brooke-Taylor;Barry Cryer;Humphrey Lyttelton (I'm Sorry I Haven't A Clue)
Remember when you gave me shit after the Bridget situation?” Rhys was practically in a state of schadenfreude, that bastard. “You said love is, and I quote, ‘tedious, boring, and utterly unnecessary. People in love are the most insufferable on the planet.’” His grin widened. “Want to take that back?” “It’s deeply concerning that you can quote me word for word. Find a new hobby, Larsen. Obsessing over me isn’t healthy.
Ana Huang (Twisted Lies (Twisted, #4))
Every moment I question the rules we play by that keep us confined by our loneliness and (for many) imprisoned by meds. What possibilities lie dormant or stuffed away? What could it look like if we claimed our own personal truth, our own personal definitions of integrity, and our freedom to break unnecessary societal rules for our own sanity?
Julieanne O'Connor
The question cannot be dealt with by invoking the simplistic formula: ‘The end never justifies the means.’ For all but the strictest adherent of an ethic of rules, the end sometimes does justify the means. Most people think that lying is wrong, other things being equal, yet consider it right to lie in order to avoid causing unnecessary offence or embarrassment –
Peter Singer (Practical Ethics)
The question cannot be dealt with by invoking the simplistic formula: ‘The end never justifies the means.’ For all but the strictest adherent of an ethic of rules, the end sometimes does justify the means. Most people think that lying is wrong, other things being equal, yet consider it right to lie in order to avoid causing unnecessary offence or embarrassment.
Peter Singer (Practical Ethics)
The best thing you can tell someone (about themselves) is the truth, and the worst thing you can tell someone (about themselves) is the truth. Lies are very unnecessary.
Chinyerim Alizor
We are still slaves, facing colonialists and their pawns, direct or indirect, in the package of so-called democracies. - The world is such a train that has engines at both ends, the USA drives the front side while Russia operates the backside, and Western Europe performs as a ticket collector of that endless journey towards the mirage; all other states are passengers of that - The so-called Wars on terror, whether in Iraq, Afghanistan, or such other victimized Muslim States by the USA, West, Russia, Israel, and pawn leaders of the Muslim world, were for oligopoly, duopoly interests to monopolize and that resulted in thousands of deaths. The oppressor Arab leaders supported the destruction of Iraq, Libya, Yemen with all national resources, and Pakistan criminally favoured and fought in Afghanistan against those that its institutions created to defeat the former Soviet Union to obey and fulfil the desire of the USA; whereas, India benefited and achieved evil goals from legalized terror with the approval of the United Nations. The conclusion of those wars is that; India and Pakistan fooled the USA and West Europe for dollars, and the USA lied to its people, and Russia enjoyed the tragedies and consequences of the unnecessary wars; sure, history will never justify that and forgive criminals and such warmongers.
Ehsan Sehgal
The so-called Wars on terror, whether in Iraq, Afghanistan, or such other victimized Muslim States by the USA, West, Russia, Israel, and pawn leaders of the Muslim world, were for oligopoly, duopoly interests to monopolize and that resulted in thousands of deaths. The oppressor Arab leaders supported the destruction of Iraq, Libya, Yemen with all national resources, and Pakistan criminally favoured and fought in Afghanistan against those that its institutions created to defeat the former Soviet Union to obey and fulfil the desire of the USA; whereas, India benefited and achieved evil goals from legalized terror with the approval of the United Nations. The conclusion of those wars is that; India and Pakistan fooled the USA and West Europe for dollars, and the USA lied to its people, and Russia enjoyed the tragedies and consequences of the unnecessary wars; sure, history will never justify that and forgive criminals and such warmongers.
Ehsan Sehgal
He was lying on his side, and the water pressed against his face forced him to turn his head and try to raise himself a couple of inches without losing track of where he was cutting the suit. His new position was too awkward to allow him to work efficiently, so he took a deep breath and lay flat again, torquing the blade around his calf, to keep cutting away the trapped suit mate rial. His lungs screamed for air, but he ignored his body's needs, working with preternatural calm despite the danger. He tried yanking himself free, but the tough plastic cloth wouldn't tear. He tried again with the same results. Now he had to breathe, so he heaved himself upright to clear his helmet of water, but there was too much pressure. The helmet wouldn't drain. Cabrillo's lungs convulsed, allowing a trickle of bubbles to es cape his lips. It was like suppressing a cough, and the correspond ing pain in his chest was an unnecessary reminder that his brain was starving for oxygen. He was already becoming light-headed. He pulled savagely at the suit and felt it tear slightly, but it wouldn't give completely. Juan tried to force himself to calm down, but survival instincts were overwhelming any sense of logic.
Clive Cussler (Plague Ship (Oregon Files, #5))
Rigid ranking based on minuscule differences misleads rather than informs. Rounding and approximation is superior to unwarranted and unnecessary precision. Doubt, caution, and incessant questioning are in order—but so is the insistence on quantifying the complex realities of the modern world. If we are to understand many unruly realities, if we are to base our decisions on the best available information, then there is no substitute for this pursuit.
Vaclav Smil (Numbers Don't Lie: 71 Things You Need to Know About the World)
These critical observations on Epicurus’s claim that satisfying one’s basic needs suffices for happiness do not mean that his thesis is entirely wrong. It offers a useful perspective, a reminder that prods us into reflecting on the way we live with an eye to identifying wants and habits that are foolish, wasteful, unnecessary, or inauthentic. The truly valuable idea it contains is that the key ingredients for happiness are usually within easy reach for those of us not mired in awful circumstances. When we fail to realize this, we assume that happiness lies in the acquisition of what we do not already have. This is the mistake that leads us to step off the path toward contentment and onto the hedonic treadmill.
Emrys Westacott (The Wisdom of Frugality: Why Less Is More - More or Less)
Time and time again warnings are ignored, unnecessary risks taken, sloppy work done, deception and downright lying practiced. As an organizational theorist I am reasonably unshaken by this; it occurs in all organizations, and it is a part of the human condition. But when it comes to systems with radioactive, toxic, or explosive materials, or those operating in an unforgiving, hostile environment in the air, at sea, or under the ground, these routine sins of organizations have very nonroutine consequences.
Charles Perrow (Normal Accidents: Living with High Risk Technologies - Updated Edition)
Anyway! Like a memory she does not travel, She just stays in the mind of everything, A feeling that is abysmal and at the same time makes you feel well, Almost like experiencing everything but feeling nothing, But her thoughts and her memories remain intact, A love affair of a different kind maybe, Where infinity is the witness and love that lasts for eternity is the pact, There is no other way for it to exist maybe, Or it could be my predilection towards her memories, That makes everything else less preeminent, And gradually one loses interest in all worldly stories, Because her thought is still fresh and omnipresent, Like a flower that you come to admire in Summer, And you wait for the seasons to pass by, To witness this flower again in the new Summer, There, anticipating and waiting you lie, Not for the Summer, but for the flower, And how unnecessary everything else seems, Almost like a desperate lover, Whose heart often her name screams, But the yearnings of heart are silent, And no matter how much it cries or screams everyday, It has no audience, except the helpless firmament, Where it is heard, but it can't do anything to help it anyway!
Javid Ahmad Tak (They Loved in 2075!)
he is clearly referring to laws of a coercive or punitive nature. He goes on to dissect the failings of the French legal system, dwelling particularly on judicial persecution, false testimony, torture, witchcraft accusations and differential justice for rich and poor. In conclusion, he swings back to his original observation: the whole apparatus of trying to force people to behave well would be unnecessary if France did not also maintain a contrary apparatus that encourages people to behave badly. That apparatus consisted of money, property rights and the resultant pursuit of material self-interest: Kandiaronk: I have spent six years reflecting on the state of European society and I still can’t think of a single way they act that’s not inhuman, and I genuinely think this can only be the case, as long as you stick to your distinctions of ‘mine’ and ‘thine’. I affirm that what you call money is the devil of devils; the tyrant of the French, the source of all evils; the bane of souls and slaughterhouse of the living. To imagine one can live in the country of money and preserve one’s soul is like imagining one could preserve one’s life at the bottom of a lake. Money is the father of luxury, lasciviousness, intrigues, trickery, lies, betrayal, insincerity, – of all the world’s worst behaviour. Fathers sell their children, husbands their wives, wives betray their husbands, brothers kill each other, friends are false, and all because of money. In the light of all this, tell me that we Wendat are not right in refusing to touch, or so much as to look at silver?
David Graeber (The Dawn of Everything: A New History of Humanity)
The true revolutionary import of science lies in its capacity to amplify reason's own power of knowing and to instigate cognitive expansion. The convergent progressivist interpretation of scientific theories is often assumed to be a preventive measure against irrationality and relativism with regards to scientific theories; but in reality it is an oversimplification that causes more unnecessary problems which can become the source of irrationality. The rationality of science lies not in the uniform progression of science, but in how these theories are constructed and how they expand the capacities of reason and its cognitive traction on the world. In light of the dynamics of scientific structuration or theoreticity, the rationality of science can be preserved without a convergent progressivist reading of scientific change. Similarly, epistemological anarchism can be shown to be merely a parasitic outcome of the pseudo-rationality of an uncritically progressivist view of science.
Reza Negarestani (Intelligence and Spirit)
When he had eaten he went into the cave, where a great flat block of stone, lying on some large pebbles, had served from time immemorial as a resting-place for travellers. On this Bjartur lay down to sleep, using his bundle as a pillow. He was practically the only traveller who paid a regular yearly visit to the cave at this season, and as he had acquired the art of sleeping on the block without ill effect in any weather, he was very fond of the place. When he had slept for a good while, he woke up shivering. This shiver was a characteristic of the lodging, but it was unnecessary to lose one’s temper over it if one only knew the trick of getting rid of it. This trick consisted in getting up, gripping the block with both arms, and turning it round till one was warm again. According to ancient custom it had to be turned around eighteen times, thrice a night. It would have been considered a most formidable task in any other lodging, for the block weighed not less than a quarter of a ton, but Bjartur thought nothing more natural than to revolve it fifty-four times a night, for he enjoyed trying his strength on large stones. Each time that he had given the block eighteen turns, he felt warm enough to lie down again and go to sleep with his bundle under his head. But when he woke up the fourth time, he was well rested, and, indeed, dawn was in the sky. He set out at once up the mountain slopes and looked in several gullies. When he had warmed himself with walking, he sat down on a stone and ate some black pudding. After threading a pass in the mountains, he came about midday into the district of Reykjadalir.
Halldór Laxness (Independent People)
You know those telemarketing people who always call you at dinnertime? I’m talking about the ones who never come right out and say they’re selling something. Lately, they’ve been using the bizarre term “courtesy call” to describe what they’re doing. “Mr. Barry,” they’ll say, “this is just a courtesy call to do you the courtesy of interrupting your dinner so I can ask you this question: Would you like to save fifty percent or more on your long-distance phone bill?” I always say no. I tell them that I WANT a big long-distance bill, and that I often place totally unnecessary calls to distant continents just to jack it up. I tell them that if my long-distance bill is not high enough to suit me, I deliberately set fire to a pile of cash. Then I hang up. But of course this does not stop them. The next night, they call again. That’s how courteous they are.
Dave Barry (Boogers Are My Beat: More Lies, but Some Actual Journalism)
The hardwood frames of both couch and table were simple: no unnecessary flourishes, just crisp, elegant lines executed by a masterful hand, the kind of lines I remembered from the bunk bed I used to lie in as a boy, listening to the bullfrogs sing their echoing evening chorus.
Tovar Cerulli (The Mindful Carnivore)
The real solution lies in a world in which charity will have become unnecessary.
Chinua Achebe (Anthills of the Savannah)
Autumn Psalm A full year passed (the seasons keep me honest) since I last noticed this same commotion. Who knew God was an abstract expressionist? I’m asking myself—the very question I asked last year, staring out at this array of racing colors, then set in motion by the chance invasion of a Steller’s jay. Is this what people mean by speed of light? My usually levelheaded mulberry tree hurling arrows everywhere in sight— its bow: the out-of-control Virginia creeper my friends say I should do something about, whose vermilion went at least a full shade deeper at the provocation of the upstart blue, the leaves (half green, half gold) suddenly hyper in savage competition with that red and blue— tohubohu returned, in living color. Kandinsky: where were you when I needed you? My attempted poem would lie fallow a year; I was so busy focusing on the desert’s stinginess with everything but rumor. No place even for the spectrum’s introverts— rose, olive, gray—no pigment at all— and certainly no room for shameless braggarts like the ones that barge in here every fall and make me feel like an unredeemed failure even more emphatically than usual. And here they are again, their fleet allure still more urgent this time—the desert’s gone; I’m through with it, want something fuller— why shouldn’t a person have a little fun, some utterly unnecessary extravagance? Which was—at least I think it was—God’s plan when He set up (such things are never left to chance) that one split-second assignation with genuine, no-kidding-around omnipotence what, for lack of better words, I’m calling vision. You breathe in, and, for once, there’s something there. Just when you thought you’d learned some resignation, there’s real resistance in the nearby air until the entire universe is swayed. Even that desert of yours isn’t quite so bare and God’s not nonexistent; He’s just been waylaid by a host of what no one could’ve foreseen. He’s got plans for you: this red-gold-green parade is actually a fairly detailed outline. David never needed one, but he’s long dead and God could use a little recognition. He promises. It won’t go to His head and if you praise Him properly (an autumn psalm! Why didn’t I think of that?) you’ll have it made. But while it’s true that my Virginia creeper praises Him, its palms and fingers crimson with applause, that the local breeze is weaving Him a diadem, inspecting my tree’s uncut gold for flaws, I came to talk about the way that violet-blue sprang the greens and reds and yellows into action: actual motion. I swear it’s true though I’m not sure I ever took it in. Now I’d be prepared, if some magician flew into my field of vision, to realign that dazzle out my window yet again. It’s not likely, but I’m keeping my eyes open though I still wouldn’t be able to explain precisely what happened to these vines, these trees. It isn’t available in my tradition. For this, I would have to be Chinese, Wang Wei, to be precise, on a mountain, autumn rain converging on the trees, a cassia flower nearby, a cloud, a pine, washerwomen heading home for the day, my senses and the mountain so entirely in tune that when my stroke of blue arrives, I’m ready. Though there is no rain here: the air’s shot through with gold on golden leaves. Wang Wei’s so giddy he’s calling back the dead: Li Bai! Du Fu! Guys! You’ve got to see this—autumn sun! They’re suddenly hell-bent on learning Hebrew in order to get inside the celebration, which explains how they wound up where they are in my university library’s squashed domain. Poor guys, it was Hebrew they were looking for, but they ended up across the aisle from Yiddish— some Library of Congress cataloger’s sense of humor: the world’s calmest characters and its most skittish squinting at each other, head to head, all silently intoning some version of kaddish. Part 1
Jacqueline Osherow
Not only do we harbor patriarchal indifference to uniquely female suffering, but additionally, most of us are ignorant of the horrible cruelty inherent in factory farming. It is easy to buy a bucket of chicken or a carton of vanilla yogurt without even knowing about the females whose sad lives lie behind these unnecessary products. It is easy to forget that mozzarella and cream come from a mother’s munificence—mothers who would have desperately preferred to tend their young, and to live out their lives with a measure of freedom and comfort—or not to be born at all. Most consumers are unaware of the ongoing, intense suffering and billions of premature deaths that lurk behind mayonnaise and cream, cold cuts and egg sandwiches. Even with the onset of contemporary animal advocacy, and the unavoidability of at least some knowledge of what goes on in slaughterhouses and on factory farms, most of us choose to look away—even feminists. Collectively, feminists remain largely unaware of the well-documented links between the exploitation of women and girls, and the exploitation of cows, sows, and hens.
Lisa Kemmerer (Speaking Up for Animals: An Anthology of Women's Voices)
With each second passing by I realise I am moving towards my death. But then I also understand how important it is to untangle yourself from everything that is unnecessary and unworthy of this life. Like a room filled with all the noisy sound you didn't want to hear and everything lying around you don't know why but it is just there because you were lost in the moment thinking about something stupid and when you took hold of things you find everything was shattering down and falling into the ground. You being bewildered run around crying, 'hilfe hilfe' and suddenly out of a dream you wake up and question the sanctity of your life. You give that confused look like you nod when you look at your reflection in the mirror and then you turn around, there is a room with everything scattered in bits and pieces, don't know why and you press hard both of your ears with your delicate hands trying to stop the noise coming out of your mind.
Gaurav S. Kaintura
Nonetheless, conflict is something that leaders must do. And truly courageous leaders often excel at predicting and preventing conflict long before there’s even a chance of it. In contrast, when cowardly leaders avoid conflict, they create all kinds of unnecessary problems, and even more conflicts. Their avoidance creates a void in leadership that allows the “Ferguson effect,”[34] or the “nobody’s got my back” phenomenon to creep in and take over—which has become an increasingly significant problem throughout the law enforcement profession.
Travis Yates (The Courageous Police Leader: A Survival Guide for Combating Cowards, Chaos, and Lies)
Lies had only brought her family unnecessary pain. All these years she coulda understood her mother, rather than pushing her away.
Kim Catron (Threshing of Straw)
The horrible thing about the Two Minutes Hate was not that one was obliged to act a part, but that it was impossible to avoid joining in. Within thirty seconds any pretense was always unnecessary. A hideous ecstasy of fear and vindictiveness, a desire to kill, to torture, to smash faces in with a sledge hammer, seemed to flow through the whole group of people like an electric current, turning one even against one’s will into a grimacing, screaming lunatic. And yet the rage that one felt was an abstract, undirected emotion which could be switched from one object to another like the flame of a blowlamp. Thus, at one moment Winston’s hatred was not turned against Goldstein at all, but, on the contrary, against Big Brother, the Party, and the Thought Police; and at such moments his heart went out to the lonely, derided heretic on the screen, sole guardian of truth and sanity in a world of lies. And yet the very next instant he was at one with the people about him, and all that was said of Goldstein seemed to him to be true. At those moments his secret loathing of Big Brother changed into adoration, and Big Brother seemed to tower up, an invincible, fearless protector, standing like a rock against the hordes of Asia, and Goldstein, in spite of his isolation, his helplessness, and the doubt that hung about his very existence, seemed like some sinister enchanter, capable by the mere power of his voice of wrecking the structure of civilization. It was even possible, at moments, to switch one’s hatred this way or that by a voluntary act. Suddenly, by the sort of violent effort with which one wrenches one’s head away from the pillow in a nightmare, Winston succeeded in transferring his hatred from the face on the screen to the dark-haired girl behind him. Vivid, beautiful hallucinations flashed through his mind. He would flog her to death with a rubber truncheon. He would tie her naked to a stake and shoot her full of arrows like Saint Sebastian. He would ravish her and cut her throat at the moment of climax. Better than before, moreover, he realized why it was that he hated her. He hated her because she was young and pretty and sexless, because he wanted to go to bed with her and would never do so, because round her sweet supple waist, which seemed to ask you to encircle it with your arm, there was only the odious scarlet sash, aggressive symbol of chastity.
George Orwell (1984)
His eyes grew bright with moisture as I spoke, and when I finished, my brother dragged me in for a hug. "You are extra, but not like you think. You're above and beyond what was needed. Your mere existence brings us joy, and you will never be unnecessary. I know Belle made you feel that way, but she was wrong. She could never see that you gave us the love we needed to hold the family together when we were in danger of falling apart. You keep us in balance.
S.R. Nulton (Belle Lied (Refurbished Fairy Tales, #3))