“
We cannot think of being acceptable to others until we have first proven acceptable to ourselves.
”
”
Malcolm X
“
You think this is a trap then?" the Count asked.
"I always think everything is a trap until proven otherwise," the Prince answered. "Which is why I'm still alive.
”
”
William Goldman (The Princess Bride)
“
In an extroverted society, the difference between an introvert and an extrovert is that an introvert is often unconsciously deemed guilty until proven innocent.
”
”
Criss Jami (Venus in Arms)
“
They are all innocent until proven guilty. But not me. I am a liar until I am proven honest.
”
”
Louise O'Neill (Asking For It)
“
Did you know that when you take away a person's fear of pain, you take away their fear of death? You make them, in their own eyes, immortal. Which of course they're not, but what's the saying? We are all immortal until proven otherwise?
”
”
Victoria Schwab (Vicious (Villains, #1))
“
We are all immortal until proven otherwise?
”
”
Victoria Schwab (Vicious (Villains, #1))
“
I go on the presumption that everyone's full of shit until proven otherwise, and this usually serves me in good stead.
”
”
Dennis Lehane (A Drink Before the War (Kenzie & Gennaro, #1))
“
If there is something in nature you don't understand, odds are it makes sense in a deeper way that is beyond your understanding. So there is a logic to natural things that is much superior to our own. Just as there is a dichotomy in law: 'innocent until proven guilty' as opposed to 'guilty until proven innocent', let me express my rule as follows: what Mother Nature does is rigorous until proven otherwise; what humans and science do is flawed until proven otherwise.
”
”
Nassim Nicholas Taleb (Antifragile: Things That Gain from Disorder)
“
All things are possible until they are proven impossible.
”
”
Pearl S. Buck
“
Change is painful. Few people have the courage to seek out change. Most people won’t change until the pain of where they are exceeds the pain of change.
”
”
Dave Ramsey (The Total Money Makeover: A Proven Plan for Financial Fitness)
“
More than a decade ago, a Supreme Court decision literally wiped off the books of fifty states statutes protecting the rights of unborn children. Abortion on demand now takes the lives of up to 1.5 million unborn children a year. Human life legislation ending this tragedy will some day pass the Congress, and you and I must never rest until it does. Unless and until it can be proven that the unborn child is not a living entity, then its right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness must be protected.
”
”
Ronald Reagan
“
Life, for Colin, was one long brace against pain and disappointment, and everybody apart from his wife was an enemy until proven otherwise.
”
”
J.K. Rowling (The Casual Vacancy)
“
Childbirth is normal until proven otherwise.
”
”
Peggy Vincent (Baby Catcher: Chronicles of a Modern Midwife)
“
All saints should be judged guilty until proven innocent.
”
”
George Orwell
“
Take my word for it: More people will like you if you believe that people are good until proven bad.
”
”
Guy Kawasaki
“
Until you make the unconscious conscious, it will direct your life and you will call it fate.
”
”
James Clear (Atomic Habits: An Easy & Proven Way to Build Good Habits & Break Bad Ones)
“
The beautiful thing about science is that we do not know what we cannot know and we will not know until we know. It requires an incredible amount of humility to be willing to be wrong nearly all the time. But we have to be willing to be wrong, and proven wrong, in order to increase knowledge overall. It is a thankless, and essential, job. Thank goodness.
”
”
Kelly Barnhill (When Women Were Dragons)
“
Guilty until proven innocent
- A
”
”
Sara Shepard
“
In the spirit of "I think, therefore I am," I'm just going to assume that I am in fact myself until proven otherwise.
”
”
Okina Baba (So I'm a Spider, So What? Manga, Vol. 1)
“
Everything is a symbol of something, it seems, until proven otherwise.
”
”
Thomas C. Foster (How to Read Literature Like a Professor: A Lively and Entertaining Guide to Reading Between the Lines)
“
Krauthammer’s Law: Everyone is Jewish until proven otherwise. I’ve had a fairly good run with this one.
”
”
Charles Krauthammer (Things That Matter: Three Decades of Passions, Pastimes, and Politics)
“
Everything is possible until proven impossible, and then you just need to become more creative.
”
”
Scott Parazynski (The Sky Below)
“
We can't settle for pieces from a man. We can't trade our happiness and self-respect for the opportunity to be held, cuddled and given tenderness. we can't give ourselves away for the words we want to hear if there's no action behind them. We deserve a healthy man who can make us happy. We can't stop remembering: "All men are jerks until proven otherwise." Until he proves otherwise, we can't get too caught up in his "goodies".
”
”
Daylle Deanna Schwartz (All Men Are Jerks - Until Proven Otherwise: A Woman's Guide to Understanding Men)
“
The implicit assumption behind any goal is this: “Once I reach my goal, then I’ll be happy.” The problem with a goals-first mentality is that you’re continually putting happiness off until the next milestone.
”
”
James Clear (Atomic Habits: An Easy & Proven Way to Build Good Habits & Break Bad Ones)
“
What's the point of being involved with someone who makes you unhappy.
”
”
Daylle Deanna Schwartz (All Men Are Jerks - Until Proven Otherwise: A Woman's Guide to Understanding Men)
“
There’s nothing I would change about the last few years. Valkyrie has proven herself to be an astonishing individual and one I would gladly lay down my life for, such as it is. How many people leading normal lives would you be able to say that about?”
“Until the end,” Valkyrie said softly.
Skulduggery looked at her, his head tilting gently.
”
”
Derek Landy (The Dying of the Light (Skulduggery Pleasant, #9))
“
I had to wonder, though, if there's something about a murderer, particularly a confident one, that gives him a certain charisma or charm that I, in particular, am susceptible to.
I mean, there's a reason more women are attracted to Dracula than repelled by him.
I made a resolution to myself. From now on, I'd assume that every man I was attracted to was a murderer until proven otherwise.
Perhaps it wasn't the most promising strategy for starting a relationship, but I might live longer.
”
”
Lee Goldberg (Mr. Monk on the Couch (Mr. Monk, #12))
“
Small changes often appear to make no difference until you cross a critical threshold. The most powerful outcomes of any compounding process are delayed. You need to be patient.
”
”
James Clear (Atomic Habits: An Easy & Proven Way to Build Good Habits & Break Bad Ones)
“
The children are innocent until proven guilty. For their sake, not ours, we must soldier on, muddling our way toward frugality, simplicity, liberty, community, until some kind of sane and rational balance is achieved between our ability to love and our cockeyed ambition to conquer and dominate everything in sight. No wonder the galaxies recede from us in every direction, fleeing at velocities that approach the speed of light. They are frightened. We humans are the Terror of the Universe.
”
”
Edward Abbey (Postcards from Ed: Dispatches and Salvos from an American Iconoclast)
“
If she is innocent! Why do you never wonder if Parris be innocent, or Abigail? Is the accuser always holy now? Were they born this morning as clean as God's fingers? I'll tell you what's walking Salem—vengeance is walking Salem. We are what we always were in Salem, but now the little crazy children are jangling the keys of the kingdom, and common vengeance writes the law!
”
”
Arthur Miller (The Crucible)
“
Most people won’t change until the pain of where they are exceeds the pain of change.
”
”
Dave Ramsey (The Total Money Makeover: A Proven Plan for Financial Fitness)
“
I get poked and prodded like this every morning. I'm like a piece of meat unearthed from the back of the fridge, suspect until proven otherwise.
”
”
Sara Gruen (Water for Elephants)
“
There's no excuse for excuses. Many of us are good at finding justification for behavior in men that isn't acceptable. We sometimes let them get away with things that hurt and upset us because we concentrate on what we like about HIM and the crumbs that give us gratification.
”
”
Daylle Deanna Schwartz (All Men Are Jerks - Until Proven Otherwise: A Woman's Guide to Understanding Men)
“
Never, ever try to impress somebody.
Be exactly the person you would be if you were alone or with somebody it was safe to fart around.
Be that person. Be the person you are right now, alone, reading this book.
And then meet people.
Then hold out until you meet somebody who is utterly impressed.
Because then? You will not have impressed them. They will have been impressed by you.
”
”
Augusten Burroughs (This Is How: Proven Aid in Overcoming Shyness, Molestation, Fatness, Spinsterhood, Grief, Disease, Lushery, Decrepitude & More. For Young and Old Alike.)
“
Men are assumed to be competent until proven otherwise, whereas a woman is assumed to be incompetent until she proves otherwise.
”
”
Mary Ann Sieghart (The Authority Gap: Why Women Are Still Taken Less Seriously Than Men, and What We Can Do About It)
“
I always assume a man is at least a latent homosexual until proven otherwise. In any case, you can't blame a gay for trying, he said, smiling a smile utterly unlike my own.
”
”
Viet Thanh Nguyen (The Sympathizer (The Sympathizer, #1))
“
Professors also read, and think, symbolically. Everything is a symbol of something, it seems, until proven otherwise.
”
”
Thomas C. Foster (How to Read Literature Like a Professor Revised: A Lively and Entertaining Guide to Reading Between the Lines)
“
The "omnivore's dilemma" (a term coined by Paul Rozin) is that omnivores must seek out and explore new potential foods while remaining wary of them until they are proven safe. Omnivores therefore go through life with two competing motives: neophilia (an attraction to new things) and neophobia (a fear of new things). People vary in terms of which motive is stronger, and this variation will come back to help us in later chapters: Liberals score higher on measures of neophilia (also known as "openness to experience"), not just for new foods but also for new people, music, and ideas. Conservatives are higher on neophobia; they prefer to stick with what's tried and true, and they care a lot more about guarding borders, boundaries, and traditions.
”
”
Jonathan Haidt (The Righteous Mind: Why Good People Are Divided by Politics and Religion)
“
What to Accept
The fact of mountains. The actuality
Of any stone — by kicking, if necessary.
The need to ignore stupid people,
While restraining one's natural impulse
To murder them. The change from your dollar,
Be it no more than a penny,
For without a pretense of universal penury
There can be no honor between rich and poor.
Love, unconditionally, or until proven false.
The inevitability of cancer and/or
Heart disease. The dialogue as written,
Once you've taken the role. Failure,
Gracefully. Any hospitality
You're willing to return. The air
Each city offers you to breathe.
The latest hit. Assistance.
All accidents. The end.
”
”
Thomas M. Disch (Yes, Let's: New and Selected Poems (Johns Hopkins: Poetry and Fiction))
“
Focus on whether you are fulfilling your own potential than comparing yourself to someone else. The fact that you have a natural limit to any specific ability has nothing too do with whether you are reaching the ceiling of your capabilities. People get so caught up in the fact that they have limits that they rarely exert the effort required to get close to them.
Genes can not make you successful if you’re not doing the work. Until you work as hard as those you admire, don’t explain away their success as luck.
”
”
James Clear (Atomic Habits: An Easy & Proven Way to Build Good Habits & Break Bad Ones)
“
And what does that mean for you, Tori Spring? Have you fancied many boys in your time?"
I actually haven't. Ever. Presumably this is because I have a very low opinion of most people.
I look down. "I guess I'll just go with 'straight' until proven otherwise.
”
”
Alice Oseman (Solitaire)
“
I am against justice … whenever it is carried out by a mob.
”
”
Mokokoma Mokhonoana
“
AIDS would have claimed fewer lives if we had publicly recommended what I wish to call ‘The Presumption of Sickness,’ i.e., the principle that whomever we are about to sleep with is HIV-positive until proven HIV-negative.
”
”
Mokokoma Mokhonoana
“
We can trace the communitarian fantasy that lies at the root of all humanism back to the model of a literary society, in which participation through reading the canon reveals a common love of inspiring messages. At the heart of humanism so understood we discover a cult or club fantasy: the dream of the portentous solidarity of those who have been chosen to be allowed to read. In the ancient world—indeed, until the dawn of the modern nation-states—the power of reading actually did mean something like membership of a secret elite; linguistic knowledge once counted in many places as the provenance of sorcery. In Middle English the word 'glamour' developed out of the word 'grammar'. The person who could read would be thought easily capable of other impossibilities.
”
”
Peter Sloterdijk (Regels voor het Mensenpark)
“
This was my wake-up call. I opened my eyes to the depressing fact that there are other forces at work in medicine besides science. The U.S. health care system runs on a fee-for-service model in which doctors get paid for the pills and procedures they prescribe, rewarding quantity over quality. We don’t get reimbursed for time spent counseling our patients about the benefits of healthy eating. If doctors were instead paid for performance, there would be a financial incentive to treat the lifestyle causes of disease. Until the model of reimbursement changes, I don’t expect great changes in medical care or medical education.5
”
”
Michael Greger (How Not to Die: Discover the Foods Scientifically Proven to Prevent and Reverse Disease)
“
Until you work as hard as those you admire, don't explain away their success as luck
”
”
James Clear (Atomic Habits: An Easy & Proven Way to Build Good Habits & Break Bad Ones)
“
Until you work as hard as those you admire, don't explain away their success as luck.
”
”
James Clear (Atomic Habits: An Easy & Proven Way to Build Good Habits & Break Bad Ones)
“
Taken out of context and given a forty-degree twist, you can use the Bible to justify almost anything.
”
”
J.A. Jance (Until Proven Guilty (J.P. Beaumont, #1))
“
You need to grab your dream out of the sky like it's a kite and pinch the string through your fingers until you reach the spool.
”
”
Augusten Burroughs (This Is How: Proven Aid in Overcoming Shyness, Molestation, Fatness, Spinsterhood, Grief, Disease, Lushery, Decrepitude & More. For Young and Old Alike.)
“
If I like someone, it doesn’t matter if I’ve known them for five minutes or five years. They’re a friend until proven otherwise.
”
”
Sarah Grunder Ruiz (Last Call at the Local (Love, Lists & Fancy Ships, #3))
“
Food commonly eaten for more than 150 years should be innocent until proven guilty, and food invented in the last 150 years is guilty until proven innocent.
”
”
Miles Hassell
“
I assume everything that President Trump says is a lie until proven otherwise.
”
”
Steven Magee
“
The attitude of a student in history should be do not accept anything until proven otherwise. Doubt everything including your parentage! Including your parentage!
”
”
Teodoro A. Agoncillo (Talking History: Conversations with Teodoro A. Agoncillo)
“
For disease prevention, berries of all colors have “emerged as champions,” according to the head of the Bioactive Botanical Research Laboratory.39 The purported anticancer properties of berry compounds have been attributed to their apparent ability to counteract, reduce, and repair damage resulting from oxidative stress and inflammation.40 But it wasn’t known until recently that berries may also boost your levels of natural killer cells.
”
”
Michael Greger (How Not to Die: Discover the Foods Scientifically Proven to Prevent and Reverse Disease)
“
Slavery wasn’t a crisis for British and American elites until abolitionism turned it into one. Racial discrimination wasn’t a crisis until the civil rights movement turned it into one. Sex discrimination wasn’t a crisis until feminism turned it into one. Apartheid wasn’t a crisis until the anti-apartheid movement turned it into one. In the very same way, if enough of us stop looking away and decide that climate change is a crisis worthy of Marshall Plan levels of response, then it will become one, and the political class will have to respond, both by making resources available and by bending the free market rules that have proven so pliable when elite interests are in peril.
”
”
Naomi Klein (This Changes Everything: Capitalism vs. The Climate)
“
If only I could see the world like I used to, again. Transport myself back to a time when I would take risks and do things just for fun and assume that people were inherently good until proven otherwise.
”
”
Lorraine Brown (Uncoupling)
“
Breakthrough moments are often the result of many previous actions, which build up the potential required to unleash a major change. This pattern shows up everywhere. Cancer spends 80 percent of its life undetectable, then takes over the body in months. Bamboo can barely be seen for the first five years as it builds extensive root systems underground before exploding ninety feet into the air within six weeks. Similarly, habits often appear to make no difference until you cross a critical threshold and unlock a new level of performance. In the early and middle stages of any quest, there is often a Valley of Disappointment. You expect to make progress in a linear fashion and it’s frustrating how ineffective changes can seem during the first days, weeks, and even months. It doesn’t feel like you are going anywhere. It’s a hallmark of any compounding process: the most powerful outcomes
”
”
James Clear (Atomic Habits: An Easy & Proven Way to Build Good Habits & Break Bad Ones)
“
She was very easy to please, because she took joy in the smallest things, but exacting, too, because that small thing must be authentic, and wondrous in its small self, and not any kind of bullshit. She could detect bullshit from a hillside away. But then she took people at face value and expected the best of them until proven otherwise.
”
”
Peter Heller (Kook: What Surfing Taught Me About Love, Life, and Catching the Perfect Wave)
“
Your brain cannot change until you accept the anxiety or depression as a signal giving you information on its cause, or origin, and in this way you make the anxiety or depression work for you and not against you.
”
”
Caroline Leaf (Cleaning Up Your Mental Mess: 5 Simple, Scientifically Proven Steps to Reduce Anxiety, Stress, and Toxic Thinking)
“
The problem with a goals-first mentality is that you’re continually putting happiness off until the next milestone.
”
”
James Clear (Atomic Habits: An Easy & Proven Way to Build Good Habits & Break Bad Ones)
“
That is the difference between us—I believe in everything until proven, whereas you believe in nothing until proven.” I
”
”
Craig Johnson (Daughter of the Morning Star (Walt Longmire, #17))
“
I would like the expert physicians who are condemning me for my action, which has proven their ability, to take a perfectly sane and healthy woman, shut her up and make her sit from 6 A. M. until 8 P. M. on straight-back benches, do not allow her to talk or move during these hours, give her no reading and let her know nothing of the world or its doings, give her bad food and harsh treatment, and see how long it will take to make her insane. Two months would make her a mental and physical wreck.
”
”
Nellie Bly (Ten Days in a Mad-House (Illustrated))
“
Charlotte never lied to others, so she made the classic mistake of the habitually honest—she assumed that other people did not lie to her, at least not to her face. In her world, people were innocent of deliberate deceit until proven otherwise, which was, of course, way too late. Even
”
”
Jayne Ann Krentz (When All the Girls Have Gone (Cutler, Sutter & Salinas #1))
“
The next time I found myself behind a woman running alone, I thought, I would do what I wished men had done for me: I would announce myself. 'Passing on your right!' I'd call. I would be careful to give her a wide berth. I would be aware that my body was, for much of the world, a weapon until proven otherwise. People sometimes think that being trans means I live 'between' worlds, but that's not exactly true. If anything, it has just created within me a potential for empathy that I must work every day, like a muscle, to grow.
”
”
Thomas Page McBee (Amateur: A True Story About What Makes a Man)
“
I know this issue is very controversial. But unless and until it can be proven that an unborn child is not a human being, can we justify assuming without proof that it isn’t? No one has yet offered such proof; indeed, all the evidence is to the contrary. We should rise above bitterness and reproach, and if Americans could come together in a spirit of understanding and helping, then we could find positive solutions to the tragedy of abortion.
”
”
Ronald Reagan
“
There was nothing dreadfully wrong with me, I was just upsetting myself with my irrational thinking. I just couldn't admit it until I knew for sure. Now, I feel like a whole man, and I had to call you up and let you know where I stood . . . It was hard for me to do this, and I'm sorry it took so long for me to get around to telling you.
”
”
David D. Burns (Feeling Good: Overcome Depression and Anxiety with Proven Techniques)
“
Over the next twelve hours John Sawtelle’s body surrendered to what would later be called a cytokine storm. Certain tissues, in a panic, vomited indiscriminate gouts of alarm chemicals into his bloodstream. Other tissues, seeing this, concluded that the apocalypse was nigh. His organs, once a friendly federation, turned into a collection of survivalist encampments. Hunter cells appeared. Spongey bodies. They hunted and sponged anything remotely resembling a virus or bacterium. Then they attacked each other. Then they attacked the organs that had released them: lungs, heart, brain, marrow, follicular melanocytes. Every cell was guilty until proven innocent. Every cell gave up the names of other suspects.
”
”
David Wroblewski (Familiaris)
“
So a scientist and an engineer are tossed into separate rooms, stocked with tools and parts, and told that they aren't allowed out until they've produced a working prototype for a radio receiver. After two days, the scientist has covered the walls in scribbling and looks like a mad man, raving about how not only is it impossible to build a receiver with the parts given but that he's proven that radio is theoretically impossible anyway. When they check on the engineer, they find that he'd built the receiver in less than a day, fashioned a crude speaker and antenna, and had found a radio broadcast he liked and hadn't bothered to tell them he'd finished.
”
”
Joshua Dalzelle
“
When in court, the primary role of lawyers is not to prove or disprove innocence; unbeknown to almost all lawyers and their clients, it is to save the court time.
”
”
Mokokoma Mokhonoana
“
Until you make the unconscious conscious, it will direct your life and you will call it fate.”9
”
”
James Clear (Atomic Habits: An Easy and Proven Way to Build Good Habits and Break Bad Ones)
“
The calcium in your bones came from a star. We are all made from recycled bits and pieces of the universe. This matters because origins matter.
For example, if you were born to a reigning monarch but kidnapped by the black market baby underground shortly after birth and sent to America where you were raised by common, unremarkable people from Ohio, and when you were in your thirties working as a humble UPS driver, dignitaries landed their helicopter on the roof of your crummy apartment building and informed you of their thirty-plus year search for you, His Royal Highness, the course of your life might change.
You know?
Our familial genetic origins -medical histories- inform us of medical conditions which exist in our families and when we know about these specific conditions, we can sometimes take certain actions to prevent them.
Which is why I think it’s important to consider that billions of years before we were students and mothers and dog trainers and priests, we were particles that would form into star after star after star until forever passed, and instead of a star what formed was life; simplistic, crude, miraculous.
And after another infinity, there we were.
And this is why for you, anything is possible.
Because you are made out of everything.
”
”
Augusten Burroughs (This Is How: Proven Aid in Overcoming Shyness, Molestation, Fatness, Spinsterhood, Grief, Disease, Lushery, Decrepitude & More. For Young and Old Alike.)
“
Pointing out how modern-day institutionalized racism prevents blacks from getting jobs and paints them as angry, scary, and a menace to society by the police until proven otherwise is not me reveling in victimhood. It’s acknowledging the current environment as the first step in attempting to change it.
”
”
Phoebe Robinson (You Can't Touch My Hair: And Other Things I Still Have to Explain)
“
I am not a well educated man except that I have educated myself, and,
because I have educated myself, what I say will not stand up, for lack of recognized authority. This in turn leaves me free to say what I will, in the hope that, like those small forces that do not threaten empires and are thus not fully pursued, the things in which I believe can survive in some high and forgotten place until the power of empire subsides.
And although I know that few will listen to or credit this, I think we are in a lost age, in which holiness and charity have been traded for the victory and penetration of knowledge, though all the knowledge in the world has not brought us any further than where we can go without it even in the outermost halls of grace. I believe that more is to be known and apprehended from the beauty of a face than in delving, no
matter how deep, simply into how things work, no matter how marvelous that may be. The greatest substance of the world is immaterial, the province of the heart, and its study cannot be forced or reasoned. Merely to touch upon the edge of things in parsing their mechanics is to forswear their fullness, for the entry to this fullness lies not in science but in art. I cannot prove this, for it cannot be proven, but I claim, assert, and have seen it.
”
”
Mark Helprin
“
Accept nothing as final until you have proven it; but, if you are wise, you will profit by the advice and experience of those who have gone before.
”
”
William Walker Atkinson (Fourteen Lessons in Yogi Philosophy and Oriental Occultism)
“
Whenever you’re looking to improve, you can rotate through the Four Laws of Behavior Change until you find the next bottleneck. Make it obvious. Make it attractive. Make it easy. Make it satisfying. Round and round. Always looking for the next way to get 1 percent better.
”
”
James Clear (Atomic Habits: An Easy & Proven Way to Build Good Habits & Break Bad Ones)
“
Table 3–1. Definitions of Cognitive Distortions 1. ALL-OR-NOTHING THINKING: You see things in black-and-white categories. If your performance falls short of perfect, you see yourself as a total failure. 2. OVERGENERALIZATION: You see a single negative event as a never-ending pattern of defeat. 3. MENTAL FILTER: You pick out a single negative detail and dwell on it exclusively so that your vision of all reality becomes darkened, like the drop of ink that colors the entire beaker of water. 4. DISQUALIFYING THE POSITIVE: You reject positive experiences by insisting they “don’t count” for some reason or other. In this way you can maintain a negative belief that is contradicted by your everyday experiences. 5. JUMPING TO CONCLUSIONS: You make a negative interpretation even though there are no definite facts that convincingly support your conclusion. a. Mind reading. You arbitrarily conclude that someone is reacting negatively to you, and you don’t bother to check this out. b. The Fortune Teller Error. You anticipate that things will turn out badly, and you feel convinced that your prediction is an already-established fact. 6. MAGNIFICATION (CATASTROPHIZING) OR MINIMIZATION: You exaggerate the importance of things (such as your goof-up or someone else’s achievement), or you inappropriately shrink things until they appear tiny (your own desirable qualities or the other fellow’s imperfections). This is also called the “binocular trick.” 7. EMOTIONAL REASONING: You assume that your negative emotions necessarily reflect the way things really are: “I feel it, therefore it must be true.” 8. SHOULD STATEMENTS: You try to motivate yourself with shoulds and shouldn’ts, as if you had to be whipped and punished before you could be expected to do anything. “Musts” and “oughts” are also offenders. The emotional consequence is guilt. When you direct should statements toward others, you feel anger, frustration, and resentment. 9. LABELING AND MISLABELING: This is an extreme form of overgeneralization. Instead of describing your error, you attach a negative label to yourself: “I’m a loser.” When someone else’s behavior rubs you the wrong way, you attach a negative label to him: “He’s a goddam louse.” Mislabeling involves describing an event with language that is highly colored and emotionally loaded. 10. PERSONALIZATION: You see yourself as me cause of some negative external event which in fact you were not primarily responsible for.
”
”
David D. Burns (Feeling Good: Overcome Depression and Anxiety with Proven Techniques)
“
After some discussion, the four men {the board] reached a consensus: they would remove Elizabeth as CEO. She had proven herself too young and inexperienced for the job. Tom Brodeen would step in to lead the company for a temporary period until a more permanent replacement could be found. They called in Elizabeth to confront her with what they had learned and inform her of their decision.
But then something extraordinary happened.
Over the course of the next two hours, Elizabeth convinced them to change their minds.
”
”
John Carreyrou (Bad Blood: Secrets and Lies in a Silicon Valley Startup)
“
Our emotional suffering is caused by our desire for things to be other than they are. The more we resist the fact of what is happening right now, the more we suffer. Pain is like a gaseous substance. If you allow it to just be there, freely, it will eventually dissipate on its own. If you fight and resist the pain, however, walling it into a confined space, the pressure will grow and grow until there is an explosion.
”
”
Kristin Neff (Self-Compassion: The Proven Power of Being Kind to Yourself)
“
One can go on saying for years that one doesn't listen to gossip, that the absent cannot defend themselves from slander, etc., etc.; but, after all, isn't the provocation of so much gossip an offense in itself?
”
”
Thornton Wilder (The Ides of March)
“
True behavior change is identity change. You might start a habit because of motivation, but the only reason you’ll stick with one is that it becomes part of your identity. Anyone can convince themselves to visit the gym or eat healthy once or twice, but if you don’t shift the belief behind the behavior, then it is hard to stick with long-term changes. Improvements are only temporary until they become part of who you are.
”
”
James Clear (Atomic Habits: An Easy & Proven Way to Build Good Habits & Break Bad Ones)
“
The Hashud (‘suspect’) came to refer to any Palestinian the Israeli disliked; he was the ‘bad Arab’. Being a ‘suspect’ already meant guilty until proven otherwise even in those early days, and therefore a ‘suspect’ was someone who was likely to be arrested without trial and then remain listed on a kind of ‘criminal’ register that would then bar him or her later on from working in Israel, passing through checkpoints, getting permits to open a business and all other normal aspects of life. The only way of avoiding this, or of being taken off the register, was by becoming an informer for the internal Israeli security service, the Shabak.
”
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Ilan Pappé (The Biggest Prison on Earth: A History of the Occupied Territories)
“
They are not so hypocritical as to pretend that they are without standards—or without likes and dislikes. But they do not moralize and they do not seek to change behavior by evoking guilt. Thus, they do not say, “Only a sick person would do that.” Or, “Do you know how immoral you are?” Or, “Until you acknowledge your depravity, I can’t help you.” Or, “Not very bright, are you?” When we bombard people with our evaluations of their character, intelligence, and the like, we may intimidate but we do not inspire growth, confidence, or self-respect.
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Nathaniel Branden (How to Raise Your Self-Esteem: The Proven Action-Oriented Approach to Greater Self-Respect and Self-Confidence)
“
Yet the people who cry, “What about the presumption of innocence?” often behave as though there is no objective answer to “Did he do it?” until the trial is over. As though they think people accused of crimes are literally “innocent until proven guilty.” I’m not sure how that would work, exactly—once the verdict comes in, would the accused and the victim travel back in time, so the rape in question could either happen or not happen, based on what the jury decided? If you can’t grasp that any person accused of a crime has already either done it or not done it, regardless of what a future jury has to say, you have a very interesting understanding not only of time and space but of the law. How are police supposed to investigate suspects and make arrests if no one is allowed to draw a reasonable inference that someone is guilty until a jury has officially said so? How are prosecutors supposed to meet their burden of proof, so a jury can officially say so? In reality, lots of people within the justice system—let alone outside it—start to presume guilt after a certain point, because that’s their job
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Kate Harding (Asking for It: The Alarming Rise of Rape Culture--and What We Can Do about It)
“
Problem #3: Goals restrict your happiness. The implicit assumption behind any goal is this: “Once I reach my goal, then I’ll be happy.” The problem with a goals-first mentality is that you’re continually putting happiness off until the next milestone. I’ve slipped into this trap so many times I’ve lost count. For years, happiness was always something for my future self to enjoy. I promised myself that once I gained twenty pounds of muscle or after my business was featured in the New York Times, then I could finally relax. Furthermore, goals create an “either-or” conflict: either you achieve your goal and are successful or you fail and you are a disappointment. You mentally box yourself into a narrow version of happiness. This is misguided. It is unlikely that your actual path through life will match the exact journey you had in mind when you set out. It makes no sense to restrict your satisfaction to one scenario when there are many paths to success. A systems-first mentality provides the antidote. When you fall in love with the process rather than the product, you don’t have to wait to give yourself permission to be happy. You can be satisfied anytime your system is running. And a system can be successful in many different forms, not just the one you first envision.
”
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James Clear (Atomic Habits: An Easy & Proven Way to Build Good Habits & Break Bad Ones)
“
Have you guys ever heard of Moore’s Law? Moore was the co-founder of an insignificant little chip producer called Intel, and he predicted that the complexity of integrated circuits would double every twenty-four months. A prophecy that has proven itself to be true more or less until this day.
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Marc-Uwe Kling (Qualityland: Visit Tomorrow, Today!)
“
Gentlemen,” he said, “I am a simple soldier. When I was a cadet at Norwich, I was told, and I believed, and my subsequent career has proven true, that the essence of command is to make sure the troops have confidence in what they are doing. Troops must have faith in their officers Officers build and maintain that faith in a very simple manner: They never lie to their troops; they never ask them to do something they cannot do themselves, or are unwilling to do themselves; and they never partake of creature comforts until the last private in the rear rank has that creature comfort. If you’ll keep that in mind, I’m sure that we’ll get along.
”
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W.E.B. Griffin (The Captains (Brotherhood Of War, #2))
“
Similarly, habits often appear to make no difference until you cross a critical threshold and unlock a new level of performance. In the early and middle stages of any quest, there is often a Valley of Disappointment. You expect to make progress in a linear fashion and it’s frustrating how ineffective changes can seem during the first days, weeks, and even months. It doesn’t feel like you are going anywhere. It’s a hallmark of any compounding process: the most powerful outcomes are delayed.
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James Clear (Atomic Habits: An Easy & Proven Way to Build Good Habits & Break Bad Ones)
“
Debunked”: This word was rarely used in news reporting until a few years ago. That’s when propagandists began deploying the term to discredit theories, stories, and science with which they disagree. In fact, when special interests launch this word, it often means the opposite is the case: the targeted idea has not been debunked at all. Oftentimes, the idea in question is a subject of legitimate dispute or has actually proven to be true. Therefore, it is often inaccurate for news reporters to jump on the “debunked” bandwagon.
”
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Sharyl Attkisson (Slanted)
“
We often expect progress to be linear. At the very least, we hope it will come quickly. In reality, the results of our efforts are often delayed. It is not until months or years later that we realize the true value of the previous work we have done. This can result in a "valley of disappointment" where people feel discouraged after putting in weeks or months of hard work without experiencing any results. However, the work was not wasted, it was simply being stored. It is not until much later that the full value of previous efforts is revealed.
”
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James Clear (Atomic Habits: An Easy & Proven Way to Build Good Habits & Break Bad Ones)
“
These social media shamings bear an uncanny resemblance to medieval witch hunts.”
If you were accused of being a witch back then, you were shit out of luck. Being accused was all it took. Forget “innocent until proven guilty.” Nobody bothered to prove your guilt. Nobody dared to speak up on your behalf, for fear of being called a witch sympathizer. Because if you were seen as the friend of a witch, you were the next one to be accused of being a witch.
As soon as a woman was accused of being a witch, she was a pariah without any friends. Nobody wanted to be seen in public with her. The whole village ganged up on her. Everyone was trying to outdo everyone else in their antiwitch fervor: “Look at me! I'm throwing rocks at the witch! Look at how much I hate witches! I am definitely NOT a witch myself!”
Whenever I see a social media mob ganging up on a celebrity for supposedly saying something “offensive” it reminds me of the Salem witch hysteria: “That's racist! And me calling you a racist proves that I'm definitely not a racist myself! That's sexist! I shame you! And that means I'm definitely not sexist myself! I shame you for being a bad person. That means I'm a good person! Look at how really really offended I am! That means I'm a really really good person!”
According to the bible, Jesus said "let he who is without sin throw the first rock." But a lot of people seem to think he said: "If you throw rocks at someone else, it proves that you're without sin.
”
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Oliver Markus Malloy (Why Creeps Don't Know They're Creeps - What Game of Thrones can teach us about relationships and Hollywood scandals (Educated Rants and Wild Guesses, #2))
“
Unfortunately, the slow pace of transformation also makes it easy to let a bad habit slide. If you eat an unhealthy meal today, the scale doesn’t move much. If you work late tonight and ignore your family, they will forgive you. If you procrastinate and put your project off until tomorrow, there will usually be time to finish it later. A single decision is easy to dismiss.
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James Clear (Atomic Habits: An Easy & Proven Way to Build Good Habits & Break Bad Ones)
“
Watch for the storms of God. The only way God plants His saints is through the whirlwind of His storms. Will you be proven to be an empty pod with no seed inside? That will depend on whether or not you are actually living in the light of the vision you have seen. Let God send you out through His storm, and don’t go until He does. If you select your own spot to be planted, you will prove yourself to be an unproductive, empty pod. However, if you allow God to plant you, you will “bear much fruit” (John 15:8). It is essential that we live and “walk in the light” of God’s vision for us (1 John 1:7).
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Oswald Chambers (My Utmost for His Highest)
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Henry Ford thought debt was a lazy man’s method to purchase items, and his philosophy was so ingrained in Ford Motor Company that Ford didn’t offer financing until ten years after General Motors did. Now, of course, Ford Motor Credit is one of the most profitable of Ford Motor’s operations. The old school saw the folly of debt; the new school saw the opportunity to take advantage of the consumer with debt.
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Dave Ramsey (The Total Money Makeover: A Proven Plan for Financial Fitness)
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Habits are the compound interest of self-improvement. Getting 1 percent better every day counts for a lot in the long-run. ■ Habits are a double-edged sword. They can work for you or against you, which is why understanding the details is essential. ■ Small changes often appear to make no difference until you cross a critical threshold. The most powerful outcomes of any compounding process are delayed. You need to be patient. ■ An atomic habit is a little habit that is part of a larger system. Just as atoms are the building blocks of molecules, atomic habits are the building blocks of remarkable results. ■ If you want better results, then forget about setting goals. Focus on your system instead. ■ You do not rise to the level of your goals. You fall to the level of your systems.
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James Clear (Atomic Habits: An Easy and Proven Way to Build Good Habits and Break Bad Ones)
“
The overarching principle of a therapeutic relationship is that therapists should be ever mindful of a variant of the Hippocratic oath and, to the degree possible, strive to "do no more harm" (Courtois, 2010). Complex trauma clients have already experienced considerable harm, much of it at the hands of other human beings. As a result of the ubiquitous processes of transference, attachment styles, and IWM [Internal working models], these clients often view the therapist's behavior and their relationship through the lens of their trauma-related negative interpersonal expectancies and unhealed emotional wounds and injuries. Therapists should not be surprised to be "guilty until proven innocent", not because clients with complex trauma histories are "unfair" or "unreasonable" but precisely the opposite - because the most realistic self-protective stance for them (given the fact that betrayal and harm have been more the rule than the exception) is to "distrust first and verify" (or to be hypervigilant) rather than to start with an expectation of safety and trustworthiness.
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Christine A. Courtois (Treatment of Complex Trauma: A Sequenced, Relationship-Based Approach)
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You may have noticed that you sometimes feel more full about twenty minutes after you stop eating than you did while you were still eating. This is because it takes the stretch receptors in your stomach about twenty minutes to tell your brain (via the hormone cholecystokinin) how full you really are. If you eat until you experience yourself to be 100 percent full, you actually go about 20 percent over capacity with every meal. And if you do that regularly, your stomach will stretch a little bit each time to accommodate the extra food. Then you have to eat more next time to get the same feeling of fullness.
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John Robbins (Healthy at 100: The Scientifically Proven Secrets of the World's Healthiest and Longest-Lived Peoples)
“
Grinning, she hovered over him. Then, like a fist closing around a doorknob, her grin closed around him. With her lips, she turned the knob first one way and then the other: left, right, open, shut; left, right, open, shut. The knob did not squeak. In fact, Wiggs was unusually quiet.
Now, falling into rhythm, she sucked the knob from its axle, sucked the axle from its door, the door from its hinges. Out onto the lawn, tempo increasing, she sucked up the flagstone walk, the rosebushes, the petunia bed, the sprinkler, the driveway, and the small Japanese car parked in the driveway: oh, what a feeling! Toyota! Wiggs moaned as the neighborhood disappeared.
The towers of the city began to sway, and soon, the planet itself fell victim to the force, swelling at its equator, throbbing at its poles. It wobbled violently on its axis, once, twice, then exploded. The Big Bang theory, proven at last. Continuing to impersonate a black hole, she pulled in every drop and particle – she’d never had a man in such entirety – and it wasn’t until the final spasm had subsided and the cosmos was at peace that she loosened her grip and, lips glistening like the Milky Way, looked up to see – the legs of a third party standing there.
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Tom Robbins
“
Homewrecker"
Every boyfriend is the one
Until otherwise proven
The good are never easy
The easy never good
And love it never happens like you think it really should
Deception and perfection are wonderful traits
One will breed love
The other hate
You'll find me in the lonely hearts
Under 'I'm after a brand new start'
And I don't belong to anyone
They call me Homewrecker
Homewrecker
They call me Homewrecker
Homewrecker
Girls and their curls and their gourmet vomit
Boys and their toys and their six inch rockets
We're all very lovely 'til we get to know each other
As we stop becoming friends and we start becoming lovers
And I don't belong to anyone
They call me Homewrecker
Homewrecker (I'm only happy when I'm on the run)
They call me Homewrecker
Homewrecker (I broke a million hearts just for fun)
They call me Homewrecker
Homewrecker (I'm only happy when I'm on the run)
They call me Homewrecker
Homewrecker (I broke a million hearts just for fun)
I'm only happy when I'm on the run
I break a million hearts just for fun
I don't belong to anyone
I guess you could say that my life's a mess
But I'm still looking pretty in this dress
I'm the image of deception
When everything is life and death
You may feel like there's nothing left
Instead of love and trust and laughter
What you get is happy never after
But deep down all you want is love
The pure kind we all dream of
But we cannot escape the past
So you and I will never last
'Cause I'm a Homewrecker
Homewrecker (I'm only happy when I'm on the run)
'Cause I'm a Homewrecker
Homewrecker (I broke a million hearts just for fun)
'Cause I'm a Homewrecker
Homewrecker (I'm only happy when I'm on the run)
'Cause I'm a Homewrecker
Homewrecker (I broke a million hearts just for fun)
'Cause I'm a Homewrecker
Homewrecker
”
”
Marina & The Diamonds
“
Leyel had buried himself within the marriage, helping and serving and loving Deet with all his heart. She was wrong, completely wrong about his coming to Trantor. He hadn't come as a sacrifice, againt his will, solely because she wanted to come. On the contrary: because she wanted so much to come, he also wanted to come, changing even his desires to coincide with hers. She commanded his very heart, because it was impossible for him not to desire anything that would bring her happiness.
But she, no, she could not do that for him. If she went to Terminus, it would be as a noble sacrifice. She wold never let him forget that she hadn't wanted to. To him, their marriage was his very soul. To Deet, their marriage was just a friendship with sex. Her soul belonged as much to these other women as to him. By dividing her loyalties, she fragmented them; none were strong enough to sway her deepest desires. Thus he discovered what he supposed all faithful men eventually discover--that no human relationship is ever anything but tentative. There is no such thing as an unbreakable bond between people. Like the particles in the nucleus of the atom. They are bound by the strongest forces in the universe, and yet they can be shattered, they can break.
Nothing can last. Nothing is, finally, waht it once seemed to be. Deet and he had had a perfect marriage until there came a stress that exposed its imperfection. Anyonewho thinks he has a perfect marriage, a perfect friendship, a perfect trust of any kind, he only believes this becasue the stress that will break it has not yet come. He might die with the illusion of happiness, but all he has proven is that sometimes death comes before betrayal. If you live long enough, betrayal will inevitably come.
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Orson Scott Card (Maps in a Mirror: The Short Fiction of Orson Scott Card)
“
My hypothesis is mimetic: because humans imitate one another more than animals, they have had to find a means of dealing with contagious similarity, which could lead to the pure and simple disappearance of their society. The mechanism that reintroduces difference into a situation in which everyone has come to resemble everyone else is sacrifice. Humanity results from sacrifice; we are thus the children of religion. What I call after Freud the founding murder, in other words, the immolation of a sacrificial victim that is both guilty of disorder and able to restore order, is constantly re-enacted in the rituals at the origin of our institutions. Since the dawn of humanity, millions of innocent victims have been killed in this way in order to enable their fellow humans to live together, or at least not to destroy one another. This is the implacable logic of the sacred, which myths dissimulate less and less as humans become increasingly self-aware. The decisive point in this evolution is Christian revelation, a kind of divine expiation in which God through his Son could be seen as asking for forgiveness from humans for having revealed the mechanisms of their violence so late. Rituals had slowly educated them; from then on, humans had to do without.
Christianity demystifies religion. Demystification, which is good in the absolute, has proven bad in the relative, for we were not prepared to shoulder its consequences. We are not Christian enough. The paradox can be put a different way. Christianity is the only religion that has foreseen its own failure. This prescience is known as the apocalypse. Indeed, it is in the apocalyptic texts that the word of God is most forceful, repudiating mistakes that are entirely the fault of humans, who are less and less inclined to acknowledge the mechanisms of their violence. The longer we persist in our error, the stronger God’s voice will emerge from the devastation. […] The Passion unveiled the sacrificial origin of humanity once and for all. It dismantled the sacred and revealed its violence. […] By accepting crucifixion, Christ brought to light what had been ‘hidden since the foundation of the world,’ in other words, the foundation itself, the unanimous murder that appeared in broad daylight for the first time on the cross. In order to function, archaic religions need to hide their founding murder, which was being repeated continually in ritual sacrifices, thereby protecting human societies from their own violence. By revealing the founding murder, Christianity destroyed the ignorance and superstition that are indispensable to such religions. It thus made possible an advance in knowledge that was until then unimaginable.
[…] A scapegoat remains effective as long as we believe in its guilt. Having a scapegoat means not knowing that we have one. Learning that we have a scapegoat is to lose it forever and to expose ourselves to mimetic conflicts with no possible resolution. This is the implacable law of the escalation to extremes. The protective system of scapegoats is finally destroyed by the Crucifixion narratives as they reveal Jesus’ innocence, and, little by little, that of all analogous victims. The process of education away from violent sacrifice is thus underway, but it is going very slowly, making advances that are almost always unconscious. […] Mimetic theory does not seek to demonstrate that myth is null, but to shed light on the fundamental discontinuity and continuity between the passion and archaic religion. Christ’s divinity which precedes the Crucifixion introduces a radical rupture with the archaic, but Christ’s resurrection is in complete continuity with all forms of religion that preceded it. The way out of archaic religion comes at this price. A good theory about humanity must be based on a good theory about God. […] We can all participate in the divinity of Christ so long as we renounce our own violence.
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René Girard (Battling to the End: Conversations with Benoît Chantre)