“
Being unwanted, unloved, uncared for, forgotten by everybody, I think that is a much greater hunger, a much greater poverty than the person who has nothing to eat.
”
”
Mother Teresa
“
I'm sorry for hurting you...for pushing you away...for ever making you feel unwanted when you're the only person I've ever loved
”
”
Ana Huang (King of Wrath (Kings of Sin, #1))
“
The exaggerated dopamine sensitivity of the introvert leads one to believe that when in public, introverts, regardless of its validity, often feel to be the center of (unwanted) attention hence rarely craving attention. Extroverts, on the other hand, seem to never get enough attention. So on the flip side it seems as though the introvert is in a sense very external and the extrovert is in a sense very internal - the introvert constantly feels too much 'outerness' while the extrovert doesn't feel enough 'outerness'.
”
”
Criss Jami (Killosophy)
“
It's strange, how you go from being a person who is away from home to a person with no home at all. The place that is supposed to want you has pushed you out. No other place takes you in. You are unwanted, by everyone. You are a refugee.
”
”
Clemantine Wamariya (The Girl Who Smiled Beads: A Story of War and What Comes After)
“
You read all kinds of books and see all kinds of movies about the man who is obsessed and devoted, whose focus is a single solid beam, same as the lighthouse and that intense, too. It is Heathcliff with Catherine. It is a vampire with a passionate love stronger than death. We crave that kind of focus from someone else. We'd give anything to be that "loved." But that focus is not some soul-deep pinnacle of perfect devotion - it's only darkness and the tormented ghosts of darkness. It's strange, isn't it, to see a person's gaping emotional wounds, their gnawing needs, as our romance? We long for it, I don't know why, but when we have it, it is a knife at our throat on the banks of Greenlake. It is an unwanted power you'd do anything to be rid of. A power that becomes the ultimate powerlessness.
”
”
Deb Caletti (Stay)
“
Society had grown cruel. People who felt they were unwanted or unwelcome in their own country, reacted with aggression. There was no such thing as meaningless violence. Every violent act had a meaning for the person who committed it. Only when you dared accept this truth could you hope to turn society in another direction.
”
”
Henning Mankell (Die fünfte Frau (Kurt Wallander #6))
“
The starving, the unwanted old and unborn, the criminal, those of wrong color, ideology, sex, nation, class—whatever category renders a person least in our minds—bear the face of Jesus.
”
”
Jen Hatmaker (Interrupted: When Jesus Wrecks Your Comfortable Christianity)
“
The term 'deinstitutionalization' conceals some simple truths, namely, that old, unwanted persons, formerly housed in state hospitals, are now housed in nursing homes; that young, unwanted persons, formerly also housed in state hospitals, are now housed in prisons or parapsychiatric facilities; and that both groups of inmates are systematically drugged with psychiatric medications.
”
”
Thomas Szasz (Cruel Compassion: Psychiatric Control of Society's Unwanted)
“
If you were neglected by emotionally immature parents during childhood, you may find yourself willing to put up with unsolicited analysis and unwanted advice from others. This is common among people who are hungry for personal feedback that shows someone is thinking about them. But this kind of “advice” isn’t nourishing attention; rather, it’s motivated by a desire to be in control.
”
”
Lindsay C. Gibson (Adult Children of Emotionally Immature Parents: How to Heal from Distant, Rejecting, or Self-Involved Parents)
“
How did people get over this? They obviously did. Every day someone fell in love with the wrong person and had to pack up all their fragile, misguided hopes and unwanted affection, and move on to the next picnic table.
”
”
Josh Lanyon (Perfect Day (Wyatt & Graham, #1))
“
Although both home and mental illness are complex, modern ideas, we have fallen into the habit of using phrases such as "housing the homeless" and "treating the mentally ill" as if we knew what counts as housing a homeless person or what it means to treat mental illness. But we do not. We have deceived ourselves that having a home and being mentally healthy are our natural conditions, and that we become homeless or mentally ill as a result of "losing" our homes or our minds. The opposite is the case. We are born without a home and without reason, and have to exert ourselves and are fortunate if we succeed in building a secure home and a sound mind.
”
”
Thomas Szasz (Cruel Compassion: Psychiatric Control of Society's Unwanted)
“
the function all expressions of contempt have in common is the defense against unwanted feelings. Contempt simply evaporates, having lost its point, when it is no longer useful as a shield—against the child’s shame over his desperate, unreturned love; against his feeling of inadequacy; or above all against his rage that his parents were not available. Once we are able to feel and understand the repressed emotions of childhood, we will no longer need contempt as a defense against them. On the other hand, as long as we despise the other person and over-value our own achievements (“he can’t do what I can do”), we do not have to mourn the fact that love is not forthcoming without achievement. Nevertheless, if we avoid this mourning it means that we remain at bottom the one who is despised, for we have to despise everything in ourselves that is not wonderful, good, and clever. Thus we perpetuate the loneliness of childhood: We despise weakness, helplessness, uncertainty—in short, the child in ourselves and in others. The contempt for others in grandiose, successful people always includes disrespect for their own true selves, as their scorn implies: “Without these superior qualities of mine, a person is completely worthless.” This means further: “Without these achievements, these gifts, I could never be loved, would never have been loved.” Grandiosity in the adult guarantees that the illusion continues: “I was loved.
”
”
Alice Miller (The Drama of the Gifted Child: The Search for the True Self)
“
She understood then what Nana meant, that a harami was an unwanted thing; that she, Mariam, was an illegitimate person who would never have legitimate claim to the things other people had, things such as love, family, home, acceptance.
”
”
Khaled Hosseini (A Thousand Splendid Suns)
“
Unlock joy in any situation!
True understanding and mutual respect do not bridge blames, destructive, negative criticisms, false excuses and gossips. To express disappointments and ill-feelings are normal however to gossip around certain people and events in order to put another person down and destroy one's credibility is a form of bullying whether one expresses it publicly or privately.
Beware of segregation, regionalism, individualism, discrimination, stereotyping, destructive criticism, false accusations, biased wrong assumptions, prejudice, senseless comparison and unwanted competition because life is much more meaningful to live for where there is unity and harmony.
”
”
Angelica Hopes
“
We cannot institutionalize helping the "victims" of personal disasters.
”
”
Thomas Szasz (Cruel Compassion: Psychiatric Control of Society's Unwanted)
“
When and why do we attribute a person's behavior to brain disease, and when and why do we not do so? Briefly, the answer is that we often attribute bad behavior to disease (to excuse the agent);never attribute good behavior to disease (lest we deprive the agent of credit); and typically attribute good behavior to free will and insist bad behavior called mental illness is a "no fault" act of nature.
”
”
Thomas Szasz (Cruel Compassion: Psychiatric Control of Society's Unwanted)
“
The only person in my head is me.
Tibe is not the same. The crown has changed him, as you feared it would.
The fire is in him, the fire that will burn all the world.
And it is in your son, in the prince who will never change his blood and will never sit a throne.
The only person in my head is me.
The only person who has not changed is you. You are still the little girl in a dusty room, forgotten, unwanted, out of place. You are the queen of everything, mother to a beautiful son, wife to a king who loves you, and still you cannot find it in yourself to smile.
Still you make nothing.
Still you are empty.
The only person in your head is you.
And she is no one of any importance.
She is nothing
”
”
Victoria Aveyard (Cruel Crown (Red Queen, #0.1-0.2))
“
The true answer held my chest like an unwanted hand’s sudden touch, uncomfortable and unfeeling.
”
”
Aspen Matis (Your Blue Is Not My Blue: A Missing Person Memoir)
“
These displaced persons are mostly unwanted where they fled from; unwanted where they are, in refugee camps; and unwanted where they want to go.
”
”
Viet Thanh Nguyen (The Displaced: Refugee Writers on Refugee Lives)
“
When we keep private matters to our self, then we never have to worry about unwanted voices discussing these matters when we’re not listening.
”
”
Ron Baratono
“
Controlling unwanted thoughts is not the problem. Believing, thrusting, and taking direction from them is.
”
”
Charles F. Glassman (Brain Drain - The Breakthrough That Will Change Your Life)
“
Why didn't I feel that I belonged to my parents? How early could I have known that I was not right? I think it has always been part of me. Can a newborn sense her parents' disappointment and feelings of frustration at not being able to change the unchangeable?
”
”
Joan Frances Casey (The Flock: The Autobiography of a Multiple Personality)
“
unwanted notoriety to La Porte. It was not his purpose, said Smith, either “to defend the character of Belle Gunness” or “to drag it down.” From the “dismembered bodies of nine persons [that] were found
”
”
Harold Schechter (Hell's Princess: The Mystery of Belle Gunness, Butcher of Men)
“
For many years when I have heard nice people try to be respectful about describing undocumented people, I’ve heard them call us “undocumented workers” as a euphemism, as if there was something uncouth about being just an undocumented person standing with your hands clasped together or at your sides. I almost wish they’d called us something rude like “crazy fuckin’ Mexicans” because that’s acknowledging something about us beyond our usefulness—we’re crazy, we’re Mexican, we’re clearly unwanted!—but to describe all of us, men, women, children, locally Instagram-famous teens, queer puppeteers, all of us, as workers in order to make us palatable, my god. We were brown bodies made to labor, faces pixelated.
”
”
Karla Cornejo Villavicencio (The Undocumented Americans)
“
Auntie Phyl's last months in the care home were extra pieces. Age is unnecessary. Some of us, like my mother, are fortunate enough to die swiftly and suddenly, in full possession of our faculties and our fate, but more and more of us will be condemned to linger, at the mercy of anxious or indifferent relatives, careless strangers, unwanted medical interventions, increasing debility, incontinence, memory loss. We live too long, but, like the sibyl hanging in her basket in the cave at Cumae, we find it hard to die.
”
”
Margaret Drabble (The Pattern in the Carpet: A Personal History with Jigsaws)
“
When you’re feeling insecure, you typically don’t notice the hundreds of people around you who accept you just the way you are. All you notice are the few who don’t. Don’t ever forget your worth. Spend time with those who value you. No matter how good you are to people, there will always be negative minds out there who criticize you. Smile, ignore them, and carry on. You might feel unwanted and unworthy to one person, but you are priceless to another.
”
”
John Geiger
“
When animals make a stupid mistake, you laugh at them. A cat misjudges a leap. A dog looks overly quizzical about a simple object. These are funny things. But when a person doesn’t understand something, if they miscalculate and hit the brakes too late, blame is assigned. They are stupid. They are wrong. Teachers and cops are there to sort it out, with a trail of paperwork to illustrate the stupidity. The faults. The evidence and incidents of these things. We have entire systems in place to help decide who is what. Sometimes the systems don’t work. Families spend their weekend afternoons at animal shelters, even when they’re not looking for a pet. They come to see the unwanted and unloved. The cats and dogs who don’t understand why they are these things. They are petted and combed, walked and fed, cooed over and kissed. Then they go back in their cages and sometimes tears are shed. Fuzzy faces peering through bars can be unbearable for many. Change the face to a human one and the reaction changes. The reason why is because people should know better. But our logic is skewed in this respect. A dog that bites is a dead dog. First day at the shelter and I already saw one put to sleep, which in itself is a misleading phrase. Sleep implies that you have the option of waking up. Once their bodies pass unconsciousness to something deeper where systems start to fail, they revolt a little bit, put up a fight on a molecular level. They kick. They cry. They don’t want to go. And this happens because their jaws closed over a human hand, ever so briefly. Maybe even just the once. But people, they get chances. They get the benefit of the doubt. Even though they have the higher logic functioning and they knew when they did it THEY KNEW it was a bad thing.
”
”
Mindy McGinnis (The Female of the Species)
“
Expecting good things to last and unwanted things to stay away forever is simply unrealistic,
”
”
Surya Das (Letting Go of the Person You Used to Be: Lessons on Change, Loss, and Spiritual Transformation)
“
The fastest way for a person to change or more precisely to change their behavioral pattern is to remove the environmental triggers that
support the unwanted behavior.
”
”
Sasha Tenodi (Be Your [Better] Self: A Hands on Approach to Become Who You Always Wanted to Be: Change the Status Quo)
“
Hitherto, the Palestinians had been relatively immune to this Allahu Akhbar style. I thought this was a hugely retrograde development. I said as much to Edward. To reprint Nazi propaganda and to make a theocratic claim to Spanish soil was to be a protofascist and a supporter of 'Caliphate' imperialism: it had nothing at all to do with the mistreatment of the Palestinians. Once again, he did not exactly disagree. But he was anxious to emphasize that the Israelis had often encouraged Hamas as a foil against Fatah and the PLO. This I had known since seeing the burning out of leftist Palestinians by Muslim mobs in Gaza as early as 1981. Yet once again, it seemed Edward could only condemn Islamism if it could somehow be blamed on either Israel or the United States or the West, and not as a thing in itself. He sometimes employed the same sort of knight's move when discussing other Arabist movements, excoriating Saddam Hussein's Ba'ath Party, for example, mainly because it had once enjoyed the support of the CIA. But when Saddam was really being attacked, as in the case of his use of chemical weapons on noncombatants at Halabja, Edward gave second-hand currency to the falsified story that it had 'really' been the Iranians who had done it. If that didn't work, well, hadn't the United States sold Saddam the weaponry in the first place? Finally, and always—and this question wasn't automatically discredited by being a change of subject—what about Israel's unwanted and ugly rule over more and more millions of non-Jews?
I evolved a test for this mentality, which I applied to more people than Edward. What would, or did, the relevant person say when the United States intervened to stop the massacres and dispossessions in Bosnia-Herzegovina and Kosovo? Here were two majority-Muslim territories and populations being vilely mistreated by Orthodox and Catholic Christians. There was no oil in the region. The state interests of Israel were not involved (indeed, Ariel Sharon publicly opposed the return of the Kosovar refugees to their homes on the grounds that it set an alarming—I want to say 'unsettling'—precedent). The usual national-security 'hawks,' like Henry Kissinger, were also strongly opposed to the mission. One evening at Edward's apartment, with the other guest being the mercurial, courageous Azmi Bishara, then one of the more distinguished Arab members of the Israeli parliament, I was finally able to leave the arguing to someone else. Bishara [...] was quite shocked that Edward would not lend public support to Clinton for finally doing the right thing in the Balkans. Why was he being so stubborn? I had begun by then—belatedly you may say—to guess. Rather like our then-friend Noam Chomsky, Edward in the final instance believed that if the United States was doing something, then that thing could not by definition be a moral or ethical action.
”
”
Christopher Hitchens (Hitch 22: A Memoir)
“
Self-harm or substance abuse being common ways in which BPD sufferers tend to block their unwanted emotions; this is not weakness but simply that the condition makes it so difficult to regulate your reactions.
”
”
Emily Laven (Borderline Personality Disorder: The Ultimate Practical Approach To Understanding, Coping, and Living With Borderline Personality Disorder)
“
Many of the people in this world that you will see and that you will meet, are the versions of themselves that have come about as a result of the things that have happened to them in life. When people laugh at you, you develop a layer of skin for that and when you lose people, you develop a different layer of skin for that and when you are hurt during the times you are vulnerable, there is another special layer of skin for that; so on and so forth. We become covered in layers of different kinds of skin that we never asked to have and that we would never want to have! But there we are, underneath all of that; we walk around and we don't see ourselves, we don't see each other, we can hardly remember anything about who we are! It takes someone to look through all of that skin, to remember yourself on behalf of you. A person can give you the set of eyes that were used to view the real you, in some distant past, in some different lifetime! Then when you see them looking at you like that, you remember who you are and that's when the layers of unwanted skin begin to peel and through that peeling you become a newborn.
”
”
C. JoyBell C.
“
The experience of death is going to get more and more painful, contrary to what many people believe. The forthcoming euthanasia will make it more rather than less painful because it will put the emphasis on personal decision in a way which was blissfully alien to the whole problem of dying in former times. It will make death even more subjectively intolerable, for people will feel responsible for their own deaths and morally obligated to rid their relatives of their unwanted presence. Euthanasia will further intensify all the problems its advocates think it will solve.
”
”
René Girard
“
The nurse pointed out that identical twins were already clones in a sense, and Mother Emmanuel suggested that the soul to worry about belonged to the person who would have himself cloned at great expense when so many unwanted children were going hungry.
”
”
Mark Salzman (Lying Awake)
“
When clients relinquish symptoms, succeed in achieving a personal goal, or make healthier choices for themselves, subsequently many will feel anxious, guilty, or depressed. That is, when clients make progress in treatment and get better, new therapists understandably are excited. But sometimes they will also be dismayed as they watch the client sabotage her success by gaining back unwanted weight or missing the next session after an important breakthrough and deep sharing with the therapist. Thus, loyalty and allegiance to symptoms—maladaptive behaviors originally developed to manage the “bad” or painfully frustrating aspects of parents—are not maladaptive to insecurely attached children. Such loyalty preserves “object ties,” or the connection to the “good” or loving aspects of the parent. Attachment fears of being left alone, helpless, or unwanted can be activated if clients disengage from the symptoms that represent these internalized “bad” objects (for example, if the client resolves an eating disorder or terminates a problematic relationship with a controlling/jealous partner). The goal of the interpersonal process approach is to help clients modify these early maladaptive schemas or internal working models by providing them with experiential or in vivo re-learning (that is, a “corrective emotional experience”). Through this real-life experience with the therapist, clients learn that, at least sometimes, some relationships can be different and do not have to follow the same familiar but problematic lines they have come to expect.
”
”
Edward Teyber (Interpersonal Process in Therapy: An Integrative Model)
“
She needed a confessor! Would she find it there, in the world of the artists? All over the world they had their meeting places, their affiliations, their rules of membership, their kingdoms, their chiefs, their secret channels of communication. They established common beliefs in certain painters, certain musicians, certain writers. They were the misplaced persons too, unwanted at home usually, or repudiated by their families. But they established new families, their own religions, their own doctors, their own communities.
”
”
Anaïs Nin (A Spy in the House of Love (Cities of the Interior, #4))
“
Rather than inhabiting a world of black and white, most individuals in the Reich operated in shades of gray. People confronted countless decisions each day. One might walk by a "Jews unwanted" sign at a local store and not say anything - only to shop at a Jewish-owned store on the next block for its favorable prices. One might help a neighbor threatened by the regime - only to look away as another neighbor disappeared. People navigated daily choices as they presented themselves, extemporizing in their personal and professional spheres. Caught in the swirl of life, one might conform, resist, and even commit harm all in the same afternoon. The cruelty of the Nazi world was inescapable.
”
”
Edith Sheffer (Asperger's Children: The Origins of Autism in Nazi Vienna)
“
It is a rare beast that gets such a funeral,” Father remarked, sweating and leaning on his spade. “Lucky cat.”
Personally I think the cat would have been luckier had it lived. Then again, life for a stray, unwanted thing is not always pleasant, so perhaps Father was right after all.
”
”
Maryrose Wood (The Poison Diaries (The Poison Diaries, #1))
“
But what about a person's anger? What about her voice? Her laughter? Her arrogance? Her irreverence? Her humor, her ego, her honor, her character? Do these fingerprints of an individual life simply evaporate and disappear with the last exhale? And if that is so, what use all this struggle, misery and strife? What difference whether a woman ever lived or not? Whether she was loved or unloved, educated or illiterate, wanted or unwanted by her parents, whether or not she suffered hurt and betrayal, or whether she still managed to retain her humanity and nobility? In the end, Bhima thinks, it doesn't matter. It is all ash and dust. This is what it means to be human, she thinks: Grains of dust arranged in human form - some dark, some light, some tall, some short, some male, some female. And in the end, the same gust of wind breaks them all down.
”
”
Thrity Umrigar (The Secrets Between Us)
“
What I didn’t love was the person I became when I was in the shade that he cast around him.
”
”
Imogen Clark (An Unwanted Inheritance)
“
I’m sorry. I’m sorry for hurting you… For pushing you away… For ever making you feel unwanted when you’re the only person I’ve ever loved.
”
”
Ana Huang (King of Wrath (Kings of Sin, #1))
“
Healthy boundaries help us experience comfortable interdependence with other people. A person with no boundaries is unable to prevent unwanted intrusions.
”
”
Marion Franklin (The HeART of Laser-Focused Coaching: A Revolutionary Approach to Masterful Coaching)
“
When a general gave unwanted advice at a meeting, Saddam ordered him to stand, and shot him six times. —FIRST-PERSON ACCOUNT, SADDAM HUSSEIN WEB HIT
”
”
Stanley Bing (What Would Machiavelli Do?: The Ends Justify the Meanness)
“
I believe that when selecting victims, the administrator will have looked for four preconditions: bad life experiences, unwanted isolation, depression and a borderline personality disorder.
”
”
M.W. Craven (The Curator (Washington Poe, #3))
“
The Church, though, has always held up a mirror in which society can see reflected some of its uglier aspects, and it does not like what it sees. Thus it becomes angry but not, as it should be, with itself, but with the Church. This is particularly noticeable when it comes to issues of personal gratification and sexuality and especially, apart from abortion, when issues of artificial contraception, condoms, and the birth-control pill are discussed. The Church warned in the 1960s that far from creating a more peaceful, content, and sexually fulfilled society, the universal availability of the pill and condoms would lead to the direct opposite. In the decade since, we have seen a seemingly inexorable increase in sexually transmitted diseases, so-called unwanted pregnancies, sexuality-related depression, divorce, family breakdown, pornography addiction, and general unhappiness in the field of sexual relationships. The Church's argument was that far from liberating women, contraception would enable and empower men and reduce the value and dignity of sexuality to the point of transforming what should be a loving and profound act into a mere exchange of bodily fluids. The expunging from the sexual act the possibility of procreation, the Church said, would reduce sexuality to mere self-gratification. Pleasure was vital and God-given but there was also a purpose, a glorious purpose, to sex that went far beyond the merely instant and ultimately selfish.
”
”
Michael Coren (Why Catholics are Right)
“
Every no is good enough, and that goes for every person. If we believe that people shouldn’t have unwanted sex with strangers and that strangers are not entitled to sex, we should believe that people shouldn’t have unwanted sex with partners and that partners, no matter how loving or good, are not entitled to sex either. As long as people don’t know about asexuality—hell, forget about the label, so long as they don’t know that saying no forever and for any reason and in any context is okay—sex education, sex therapy, and popular depictions of sex are incomplete and people don’t have the relevant information to fully consent.
”
”
Angela Chen (Ace: What Asexuality Reveals About Desire, Society, and the Meaning of Sex)
“
For no real reason – well, perhaps because of the seriousness under the trees or Nader’s hair, which was very messy and covered in little grass seeds – Katie began to giggle. She knew it was wrong, yet it was also natural. She covered her mouth with both hands, but Nader was already pale with revulsion. He turned and marched away into unwanted sunlight, leaving her to wonder why bad things happened and why no good person prevented them.
”
”
Carla H. Krueger (Sleeping with the Sun)
“
Only later I felt that poetry is like feeling another person lying next to you in the dark. Do you believe in poetry, in the spirit of poetry? I could see poetry in ballads, in the picture of the cathedral on the back of the postcard that my father sent my mother from London, in glaciers, peaks of mountains, river dust, Ian McEwan's covers of his books, cheap thrillers. Running gave me a gravitational pull. Running was my mother love. I was barefoot. There I was dressed in white. Matchstick legs. Hair standing up. I did not feel like a zero. I did not feel like a lost oar, unloved and unwanted, like a plant that needed water. A fleet of paper ships that needed to be mourned. I often felt homesick for the country of my mother.
”
”
Abigail George (Sleeping Under Kitchen Tables in the Northern Areas (The Broken Family, #1))
“
English: "Allow yourself to make an exception of some your rule sometimes, but be aware not to make those exceptions an unwanted rule."
Česky: „Občas si dovol udělat výjimku ze svého pravidla, ale pozor, aby se z nich nestalo nechtěné pravidlo.
”
”
Sebastián Wortys (Vtiposcifilo-z/s-ofie)
“
The fear, though, is unassailable. The dark balls of dread pinball through my brain. This is what anxiety does to a brain, I know that. A barrage of intrusive, unwanted, and distressing thoughts that the person thinking them can't turn them off no matter how hard they try...
”
”
Lauren Miller
“
Know your self-worth. You might feel unwanted & unworthy to one person, but you are priceless to another. Spend time with those who value you. No matter how good you are to others, there’ll always be that one negative person who criticizes you. Smile, carry on & do your thing!
”
”
Ismail Musa Menk
“
I am a survivor, but I also am, and always will be, a victim. I can't speak for others who share this dual identity, but I can say for myself that, while I wish to be the proud person who exclusively occupies the title of survivor, I still claim the territory of the shivering, cowering victim.
”
”
Donna Freitas (Consent: A Memoir of Unwanted Attention)
“
Finally there are those who saw at once that the question was a trap. There is no answer. Instead of wasting time grappling with that trap. They decide to act. They look to their childhood and look for what filled them with enthusiasm then and disregarding the advice of their elders, devote their life to it. Because enthusiasm is the sacred fire. They slowly discover, their actions are linked to a mysterious impulse beyond human knowledge. And they bow their heads as a sign of respect for that mystery and pray that they will not be diverted from a path they do not know, a path which they have chosen to travel because of the flame burning in their hearts. They use their intuition when they can and resort to discipline when intuition fails them. They seem quite mad. And sometimes they behave like mad people. But they are not mad. They have discovered true love and will. And those two things reveal the goal and the direction that they should follow. Their will is crystalline, their love is pure and their steps determined. In moments of doubt or sadness they never forget: I am an instrument, allow me to be an instrument capable of manifesting your will. They have chosen their road, and they may understand what their goal is only when they find themselves before the unwanted visitor. That is the beauty of the person who continues onward with enthusiasm and respect for the mystery of life as his only guide. His road is beautiful, and his burden light. The goal will be large or small, it can be far away or right next door. He goes in search of it with respect and honor. He knows what each step means, and how much it costs in effort and training and intuition. He focuses not just on the goal to be reached but on everything happening around him. He often has to stop because his strength fails him. At such moments, love appears and says: You think you're heading toward a specific point, but the whole justification for the goals existence lies in your love for it. Rest a little. But as soon as you can, get up and carry on. Because ever since your goal found out that you were traveling toward it, it has been running to meet you.
”
”
Paulo Coelho
“
Shelling out money for your kid doesn’t make you a parent…it just makes you a donor.
A real parent builds a relationship with their child.
A real parent takes the time to nurture and learn who their child is as a person.
A real parent doesn’t let their child feel unloved and unwanted for a single day, let alone years.
”
”
Ashley Jade (Cruel Prince (Royal Hearts Academy, #1))
“
Equally, the legal codes do seem to genuinely recognise a woman's claim to the integrity of her body and person---for herself rather than merely as an extension of her kin. There were laws against unwanted touching without violence , with penalties that varied according to the part of the body on which a man laid hand or lips.
”
”
Neil Price (Children of Ash and Elm: A History of the Vikings)
“
ItHaving to put someone between himself and Emma made him feel sick, but the memory of the way he'd snapped at her in the entryway made him feel sicker.
It had been like watching someone else talking to the person he loved the most in the world; someone else, hurting his parabatai on purpose. He had been able to do something with his feelings while she'd ben with Mark - twist and crumple them, shove them far underneath his skin and consciousness. He had felt them there, bleeding, like a tumor slicing open his internal organs, but he hadn't been able to see them.
Now they were there again, laid out before him. It was terrifying to love someone who was forbidden to you. Terrifying to feel something you could never speak of, something that was horrible to almost everyone you knew, something that could destroy your life.
It was in some ways more terrifying to know that your feelings were unwanted. When he had thought Emma loved him back, he had not been completly alone in his hell.
Jules
”
”
Cassandra Clare (Lord of Shadows (The Dark Artifices, #2))
“
There was a rush of expectation with the vast transformation of our society by social media and by the internet itself. To be sure, we have greater access to each other now, we can find each other more easily, but we can also annoy each other more incessantly, intrude more abruptly, and use and abuse each other more profoundly by bombarding folks with unwanted commercial, religious, political, sentimentalized, and trivial chaff. (Wherever the human imprint advances, the Shadow follows apace.) For all the connectivity the modern electronic world offers, and I do appreciate that gift, I also perceive that we are more atomized, more disconnected from each other than ever before.
”
”
James Hollis (Living Between Worlds: Finding Personal Resilience in Changing Times)
“
There is a liminal space created between the powerful person and the person who is the target of unwanted attention, a liminal space between outright yes and outright no. That space is not a compromise—not a maybe-yes or maybe-no—but more of a hovering, a being caught and not knowing where else to go or how to move without making things much worse. So you stay put. You hold the person off as best you can without causing them to retaliate too terribly, and because you know they can retaliate if they want to, that they have the power to do this, that they could decide to ruin you for displeasing them or rejecting them too forcefully. On the outside you continue to exist as though nothing is wrong, you perpetuate everything as though it is normal. You maintain the status quo with the abuser and with everyone around the abuser. Yet inside you are at war, you are shrinking, you are wishing you could die rather than continue much longer as though everything were fine. You become exhausted with the responsibility of making a situation okay that is not at all okay.
”
”
Donna Freitas (Consent: A Memoir of Unwanted Attention)
“
I’m sorry.” The aching whisper ghosted over me, seeping into my veins and settling into my bones. Another shiver ran through me. “I’m sorry for hurting you…” A soft kiss at the delicate crease between my thigh and insistent heat. “For pushing you away…” He slid my underwear to the side and gently touched his tongue to my clit. “For ever making you feel unwanted when you’re the only person I’ve ever loved.
”
”
Ana Huang (King of Wrath (Kings of Sin, #1))
“
One survey of senior level women working in Silicon Valley found that 90% of women had witnessed sexist behaviour; 87% had been on the receiving end of demeaning comments by male colleagues; and 60% had received unwanted sexual advances.41 Of that 60%, more than half had been propositioned more than once, and 65% had been propositioned by a superior. One in three women surveyed had felt afraid for her personal safety.
”
”
Caroline Criado Pérez (Invisible Women: Data Bias in a World Designed for Men)
“
Feelings of a Pimp They think I was a player because I was devoted to the game They thought I worked hard on my offense to break down these women’s defenses just to score They think it’s the body count that made me manipulate them into my arms to get between their legs They think I’m satisfied with a different woman in my bed every night When during the day, even my bed can feel the loneliness They think I love the easy women They think it’s for the cool points that my heart grew cold They think they have me figured out Another dog chasing after every female dog in the streets They think I’m happy with all the texting buddies, but no wife But they don’t know They don’t know how tired I am of this, how tired I am of myself How tired I am of living like this How tired I am of these games, but that’s the only way I can score with a chick They don’t know how after sleeping with these ladies, I wish I had more chemistry with at least one of them to cuddle, to give goodnight kisses and wake up beside They don’t know how loneliness consumes me With a phone filled with women’s numbers, I still feel unwanted and unworthy They don’t know these easy women make it easy for me to feel confident about myself; although it’s the wrong type of confidence I feel validated by them, I feel accomplished, I feel loved although I’m having sex with them, not making love They don’t know how tired I am of chasing fool’s gold Chasing fast women who would sleep with me in a heartbeat Leaving me with the empty feeling I felt before I started the chase The player in me is played out. I just want love, but that’s the only thing I can’t seem to find So, I keep pimping in hope of finding love Her insecurities were beautiful They opened the door for me as an opportunist She was the perfect candidate Oh so sweet, but oh so hurt How smart would I be if I didn’t capitalize? Some fellas get women drunk and have their way with them I was doing nothing wrong but pretending to be prince charming, just to get the same results I became what they needed emotionally I was the shoulder to cry on, the ear to listen to, the one person who understood I was a smooth criminal manipulating the innocent Did not feel an ounce of guilt because I was weak myself I was insecure I couldn’t help preying on vulnerable women In their weakness I found strength I was a coward, a “wannabe” player I was playing the wrong games, winning the wrong prizes The truth is, no strong man takes advantage of a woman’s vulnerability. It is a trait of the weak. Diary of a Weak Man
”
”
Pierre Alex Jeanty (Unspoken Feelings of a Gentleman)
“
In the Reintegration System, a problem or unwanted state of mind is viewed as a distinct part of the personality and reintegrated as such into the unity of one’s being.
Every seemingly challenging part of our personality was initially part of the highest intention for our being. It is over time that it degraded and became a lower state of delusion. Our aim is to target such parts and work them back into the wholeness of our being.
”
”
Nebo D. Lukovich (Inner Peace, Outer Success: The Reintegration System: Spiritual Growth, Healing, Solving Problems and Achieving Goals with Cutting-Edge Mind Techniques)
“
The outcome of an actual encounter with someone who is a carrier of the anima or animus projection 'frequently gives rise in dreams to the symbol of psychic pregnancy, a symbol that goes back to the primordial image of the hero's birth. The child that is to be born signifies the individuality, which, though present, is not yet conscious.' The real psychic purpose of the conventional man's affair with his very unconventional anima woman is to produce a symbolic child, which represents a union of the opposites in his personality and is therefore a symbol of the self.
The meeting with the anima/us represents a connection to the unconscious even deeper than that of the shadow. In the case of the shadow, it is a meeting with the disdained and rejected pieces of the total psyche, the inferior and unwanted qualities. In the meeting with the anima/us, it is a contact with levels of the psyche which has the potential to lead into the deepest and highest (at any rate furthest) reaches that the ego can attain.
”
”
Murray B. Stein (Jung's Map of the Soul: An Introduction)
“
Of course, I should have known the kids would pop out in the atmosphere of Roberta's office. That's what they do when Alice is under stress. They see a gap in the space-time continuum and slip through like beams of light through a prism changing form and direction. We had got into the habit in recent weeks of starting our sessions with that marble and stick game called Ker-Plunk, which Billy liked. There were times when I caught myself entering the office with a teddy that Samuel had taken from the toy cupboard outside.
Roberta told me that on a couple of occasions I had shot her with the plastic gun and once, as Samuel, I had climbed down from the high-tech chairs, rolled into a ball in the corner and just cried.
'This is embarrassing,' I admitted.
'It doesn't have to be.'
'It doesn't have to be, but it is,' I said.
The thing is. I never knew when the 'others' were going to come out. I only discovered that one had been out when I lost time or found myself in the midst of some wacky occupation — finger-painting like a five-year-old, cutting my arms, wandering from shops with unwanted, unpaid-for clutter.
In her reserved way, Roberta described the kids as an elaborate defence mechanism. As a child, I had blocked out my memories in order not to dwell on anything painful or uncertain. Even as a teenager, I had allowed the bizarre and terrifying to seem normal because the alternative would have upset the fiction of my loving little nuclear family.
I made a mental note to look up defence mechanisms, something we had touched on in psychology.
”
”
Alice Jamieson (Today I'm Alice: Nine Personalities, One Tortured Mind)
“
Would you like the rhythm of your heart to be calm?
Would you like the music of your soul towards harmony and fulfillment?
Deal with any conflict constructively to reduce stress, tension and other unwanted collateral effects. Sharing you strategies on how to deal with a conflict:
- take care of yourself and know well yourself
- clarify what personal needs threatened by the conflict
- identify a safe place and appropriate time for negotiation
- seek first to understand than be understood, listening skills is very important.
”
”
Angelica Hopes (Landscapes of a Heart, Whispers of a Soul (Speranza Odyssey Trilogy, #1))
“
Hundreds of studies have shown that people overrate their health, leadership ability, intelligence, professional competence, sporting prowess, and managerial skills. People also hold the nonsensical belief that they are inherently lucky. Most people think they are more likely than the average person to attain a good first job, to have gifted children, and to live to a ripe old age. They also think that they are less likely than the average person to be the victim of an accident, crime, disease, depression, unwanted pregnancy, or earthquake. Why
”
”
Steven Pinker (The Better Angels of Our Nature: Why Violence Has Declined)
“
Trauma isn’t always caused by one specific incident. It can also emerge in response to persistent distress or ongoing abuse, like a relationship where sex is unwanted, though it may be technically “consensual” because the targeted person says yes in order to avoid being hurt or feels trapped in the relationship or is otherwise coerced. In that context, a survivor’s body gradually learns that it can’t escape and it can’t fight; freeze becomes the default stress response because of the learned pattern of shutdown as the best way to guarantee survival.
”
”
Emily Nagoski (Come as You Are: The Surprising New Science that Will Transform Your Sex Life)
“
But they say just like they know history before the white children start to come, they know the future after the biggest of ’em leave. They say they know these particular children and they gon kill each other off, they still so mad bout being unwanted. Gon kill off a lot of other folk too who got some color. In fact, they gon kill off so much of the earth and the colored that everybody gon hate them just like they hate us today. Then they will become the new serpent. And wherever a white person is found he’ll be crush by somebody not white, just like they do us today.
”
”
Alice Walker (The Color Purple)
“
The skin sheds so finely we don't even notice it, but it's always renewing itself. You know what this means?" I asked and looked up to smile encouragingly at her face.
"Wh-what?" she breathed. I had her complete attention.
"It means that in a month or two, all your skin will have never known an unwanted touch. The skin that remembers the mansion will be completely gone," I answered, hoping it would help remind her that she'd always be her own person. Unowned. "These hands will only have touched what you chose to touch."
~Keyon from The Dragon Knight and the Coveted.
”
”
Asha Nyr
“
That's what these Olinka peoples say. But they say just like they know history before the white children start to come, they know the future after the bighest of 'em leave. They say they know these particular shildren and they gon kill each other off, they still so mad bout being unwanted. Gon kill off a lot of other folk too who got some color. In fact, they gon kill off so much of the earth and the colored thay everybody gon hate them just like they hate us today. Then they will become the new serpent. And wherever a white person is found he'll be crush by somebody not white, just like they do us today.
”
”
Alice Walker (The Color Purple)
“
Codependents may: think and feel responsible for other people—for other people’s feelings, thoughts, actions, choices, wants, needs, well-being, lack of well-being, and ultimate destiny. feel anxiety, pity, and guilt when other people have a problem. feel compelled—almost forced—to help that person solve the problem, such as offering unwanted advice, giving a rapid-fire series of suggestions, or fixing feelings. feel angry when their help isn’t effective. anticipate other people’s needs. wonder why others don’t do the same for them. find themselves saying yes when they mean no, doing things they don’t really want to be doing, doing more than their fair share of the work, and doing things other people are capable of doing for themselves. not know what they want and need or, if they do, tell themselves what they want and need is not important. try to please others instead of themselves. find it easier to feel and express anger about injustices done to others, rather than injustices done to themselves. feel safest when giving. feel insecure and guilty when somebody gives to them. feel sad because they spend their whole lives giving to other people and nobody gives to them. find themselves attracted to needy people. find needy people attracted to them. feel bored, empty, and worthless if they don’t have a crisis in their lives, a problem to solve, or someone to help. abandon their routine to respond to or do something for somebody else. overcommit themselves. feel harried and pressured. believe deep inside other people are somehow responsible for them. blame others for the spot the codependents are in. say other people make the codependents feel the way they do. believe other people are making them crazy. feel angry, victimized, unappreciated, and used. find other people become impatient or angry with them for all the preceding characteristics. LOW
”
”
Melody Beattie (Codependent No More: How to Stop Controlling Others and Start Caring for Yourself)
“
In the beginning was the Word and the Word was with God and the Word was God.” The Word is thought or imagination. God imagined the world into being and became that which He conceived. This is the principle on which all creation rests. Since God became man to give man life, man must contain that same creative principle within himself. “The Kingdom of Heaven is within you.” We have created our personal world through thought. If you are experiencing lack, limitation, illness, disharmony or any other unwanted condition, you have either consciously or unconsciously brought these conditions into your experience. The majority of people do not realize that thought, belief, and imagination has created their individual worlds. There is no other cause for the conditions of your life. You may choose to disbelieve this, but whether you believe it or not, all that you behold in the outer world was conceived within your own consciousness prior to your experience of it.
”
”
Neville Goddard (Imagination Creates Reality)
“
I discovered that the predominant effects produced by the drugs discussed in this book are positive. It didn’t matter whether the drug in question was cannabis, cocaine, heroin, methamphetamine, or psilocybin. Overwhelmingly, consumers expressed feeling more altruistic, empathetic, euphoric, focused, grateful, and tranquil. They also experienced enhanced social interactions, a greater sense of purpose and meaning, and increased sexual intimacy and performance. This constellation of findings challenged my original beliefs about drugs and their effects. I had been indoctrinated to be biased toward the negative effects of drug use. But over the past two-plus decades, I had gained a deeper, more nuanced understanding. Sure, negative effects were also possible outcomes. But they represented a minority of effects; they were predictable and readily mitigated. For example, the type of drug use described in this book should be limited to healthy, responsible adults. These individuals fulfill their responsibilities as citizens, parents, partners, and professionals. They eat healthy, exercise regularly, and get sufficient amounts of sleep. They take steps to alleviate chronic excessive stress levels. These practices ensure physical fitness and considerably reduce the likelihood of experiencing adverse effects. Equally important, I learned that people undergoing acute crises and those afflicted with psychiatric illnesses should probably avoid drug use because they may be at greater risk of experiencing unwanted effects. The vast amount of predictably favorable drug effects intrigued me, so much so that I expanded my own drug use to take advantage of the wide array of beneficial outcomes specific drugs can offer. To put this in personal terms, my position as department chairman (from 2016 to 2019) was far more detrimental to my health than my drug use ever was. Frequently, the demands of the job led to irregular exercise and poor eating and sleeping habits, which contributed to pathological stress levels. This wasn’t good for my mental or physical health. My drug use, however, has never been as disruptive or as problematic. It has, in fact, been largely protective against the negative health consequences of negotiating pathology-producing environments.
”
”
Carl L. Hart (Drug Use for Grown-Ups: Chasing Liberty in the Land of Fear)
“
Most people, who choose or are coerced into only identifying with “positive” feelings, usually wind up in an emotionally lifeless middle ground – bland, deadened, and dissociated in
an unemotional “no-man’s-land.”
Moreover, when a person tries to hold onto a preferred feeling for longer than its actual
tenure, she often appears as unnatural and phony as ersatz grass or plastic flowers. If instead, she learns to surrender willingly to the normal human experience that good feelings always ebb and flow, she will eventually be graced with a growing ability to renew herself in the vital waters of emotional flexibility.
The repression of the so-called negative polarities of emotion causes much unnecessary
pain, as well as the loss of many essential aspects of the feeling nature. In fact, much of the plethora of loneliness, alienation, and addictive distraction that plagues modern industrial societies is a result of people being taught and forced to reject, pathologize or punish so many of their own and others’ normal feeling states.
Nowhere, not in the deepest recesses of the self, or in the presence of his closest friends, is
the average person allowed to have and explore any number of normal emotional states. Anger,
depression, envy, sadness, fear, distrust, etc., are all as normal a part of life as bread and flowers and streets. Yet, they have become ubiquitously avoided and shameful human experiences.
How tragic this is, for all of these emotions have enormously important and healthy
functions in a wholly integrated psyche. One dimension where this is most true is in the arena of healthy self-protection. For without access to our uncomfortable or painful feelings, we are deprived of the most fundamental part of our ability to notice when something is unfair, abusive, or neglectful in our environments.
Those who cannot feel their sadness often do not know when they are being unfairly excluded, and those who cannot feel their normal angry or fearful responses to abuse, are often in danger of putting up with it without protest.
Perhaps never before has humankind been so alienated from so many of its normal feeling
states, as it is in the twenty-first century. Never before have so many human beings been so
emotionally deadened and impoverished.
The disease of emotional emaciation is epidemic. Its effects on health are often
euphemistically labeled as stress, and like the emotions, stress is often treated like some
unwanted waste that must be removed.
”
”
Pete Walker (Complex PTSD: From Surviving to Thriving)
“
For example, let us say that a woman has recently come from a bad relationship where her partner has verbally and physically abused her. She did not want that or like that. In fact she hated the life that she lived with that person. So, from her place of really knowing what she does not want, she makes a clear statement of what she does want. She wants a partner who loves her and treats her with kindness and respect. But she feels very insecure without a partner, and she wants a new partner immediately. And so, she goes someplace where she is accustomed to going and meets a new person who seems nice enough. But what she may not realize is that the Law of Attraction is still matching her up with whatever is dominant within her. And right now, what is still dominant within her is the vibration of what she does not want because the unwanted parts of her last relationship are much more active within her thoughts than the new intentions that have been established. In her eagerness to soothe her feelings of insecurity, she takes action and jumps into this new relationship—and gets more of what is dominant within her vibration. It would be our encouragement that she take things more slowly and spend more time thinking about what she wants until those thoughts are the basis for the dominant vibration within her. And then, let the Law of Attraction bring her wonderful new partner to her.
”
”
Esther Hicks (The Law of Attraction: The Basics of the Teachings of Abraham)
“
Mikhail, I don’t know what you want.” She didn’t know what she wanted either.
He stood up then, power and grace combined. His shadow reached her before he did. His strength was enormous, but his touch was gentle as he pulled her to her feet. His hands slid up her arms, rested lightly on her shoulders, thumbs stroking the pulse in her neck. His touch sent warmth curling in her abdomen.
She was so small beside him, so fragile and vulnerable. “Do not try to leave me, little one. We need one another.” His dark head bent lower, his mouth brushing her eyelids, sending little darts of fire licking along her skin. “You make me remember what living is,” he whispered in his mesmerizing voice. His mouth found the corner of hers, and a jolt of electricity sizzled through her body.
Raven reached up to touch the shadowed line of his jaw, to place a hand on the heavy muscles of his chest in an attempt to put space between them. “Listen to me, Mikhail.” Her voice was husky. “We both know what loneliness is, what real isolation can do to a person. It’s beyond my imagination that I can be this close to you, physically touch you, and not be swamped with unwanted burdens. But we can’t do this.”
Amusement crept into the dark fire of his eyes, a hint of tenderness. His fingers curled around the nape of her neck. “Oh, I think we can.” His black velvet voice was pure seduction, his smile frankly sensual.
”
”
Christine Feehan (Dark Prince (Dark, #1))
“
Dear Wildfire,
Ember, you are a wildfire that is out of control. It doesn’t matter because nobody sees it; they only feel it. I burn and set fire to everyone who crosses me because they deserve it. If they don’t deserve it, so what, fuck it. Nobody deserves my kindness. My kindness to them is a weakness, so I created a wildfire in my mind and around me. My skin is brass, and I do not burn easily. I am a human hazard because I destroy everything and everyone who gets in my way. They made me this way. Every time they neglected me, I was slowly fuming with heat. Every time they ignored me the fumes grew hotter from the smoke. Therefore, I became a human being gone bad because I was a dangerous person. Every time they inhaled my fumes, I would cut them with my tongue's quadruple swords and kill them with my words.
My fumes surrounded everyone with darkness because they couldn’t ever figure me out. They couldn’t read my thoughts; I became fearless in the worst way ever. When I was born, I was a wildfire, but the flames were smothered by me, always having to find a way to survive. Wildfire defines me perfectly because, just like a wildfire, I was unplanned, unwanted, and now I am uncontrollable. Everyone says, Ember, you’ve come so far, and they are shocked by my actions. I don’t know why they are surprised. After all, it is not my fault. I was born this way.
I have officially exploded
”
”
Charlena E. Jackson (Pinwheels and Dandelions)
“
Majesty,
A frozen swamp. Icicles on branches and uprooted trees. That was our crystal palace, once upon a time. I was your king and you were my queen. I promised you I’d always try to give you your desires. I meant that. And since you wanted Derek, I tried to get him for you. I tried to get Derek to see how beautiful, sweet and amazing you are, in spite of myself, in spite of my rending heart. He never saw you the way I did, and you never saw me at all. I thought maybe if I found love with someone else, I’d be rid of my feelings for you, but that empty relationship only made me long for you more. I’ve offered you the most support and devotion a person can give an unwanting heart, but all I get in return are your mocking advances, which blatantly scream and reiterate the fact that you’ll never love me. It’s been so excruciating to be around you lately. You’re always teasing me, and it kills me. That’s why I’ve been so irritable and angry. It’s inconceivable to me how you could think I’d EVER hurt you, when all I’ve been living for is to try and make you happy. Well, I’m done. Your doubt has caused me more pain than anything I’ve ever known. I always thought we’d be life-long friends, but this fairytale has no happy ending. The crystal has shattered. I can’t be your king anymore. Then again, I never really was. I’ve always been the lowly jester. And everyone knows a fool can never be with a queen.
Goodbye, Alec
”
”
Courtney Vail (Kings & Queens (Kings & Queens, #1))
“
War is a poor word. Is it war when people find an infestation of vermin in some unwanted place and try to burn or poison it clean? Though that, too, is a poor metaphor, because no one hates individual mice or bedbugs. No one singles out for vengeance that one, that one right there, three-legged splotch-backed little bastards don't have much chance of becoming more than an annoyance to people-- whereas you and all your kind have cracked the surface of the planet and lost the Moon. If the mice in your garden, back in Tirimo, had helped Jija kill Uche, you would have shaken the place to pebbles and set fire to the ruins before you left. You destroyed Tirimo anyway, but if it had been personal, you'd have done worse.
Yet for all your hatred, you still might not have managed to kill the vermin. The survivors would be greatly changed-- made harder, stronger, more splotch-backed. Perhaps the hardships you inflicted would have fissioned their descendants into many factions, each with different interests. Some of those interests would have nothing to do with you. Some would revere and despise you for your power. Some would be as dedicated to your destruction as you were to theirs, even though by the time they had the strength to actually act on their enmity, you would have forgotten their existence. To them, your enmity would be the stuff of legend.
And some might hope to appease you, or talk you around to at least a degree of peaceful tolerance. I am one of these.
”
”
N.K. Jemisin (The Obelisk Gate (The Broken Earth, #2))
“
It is rather like arguing with an Irishman,” wrote Michael Hadow of his many conversations with Dayan. “He enjoys knocking down ideas just for the sake of argument and one will find him arguing in completely opposite directions on consecutive days.” Indeed, Dayan was a classic man of contradictions: famed as a warrior, he professed deep respect for the Arabs, including those who attacked his village, Nahalal, in the early 1930s, and who once beat him and left him for dead. A poet, a writer of children’s stories, he admitted publicly that he regretted having children, and was a renowned philanderer as well. A lover of the land who made a hobby of plundering it, he had amassed a huge personal collection of antiquities. A stickler for military discipline, he was prone to show contempt for the law. As one former classmate remembered, “He was a liar, a braggart, a schemer, and a prima donna—and in spite of that, the object of deep admiration.” Equally contrasting were the opinions about him. Devotees such as Meir Amit found him “original, daring, substantive, focused,” a commander who “radiated authority and leadership [with] … outstanding instincts that always hit the mark.” But many others, among them Gideon Rafael, saw another side of him: “Rocking the boat is his favorite tactic, not to overturn it, but to sway it sufficiently for the helmsman to lose his grip or for some of its unwanted passengers to fall overboard.” In private, Eshkol referred to Dayan as Abu Jildi, a scurrilous one-eyed Arab bandit.
”
”
Michael B. Oren (Six Days of War: June 1967 and the Making of the Modern Middle East)
“
Honoring Transmutation Thank you for helping me see my broken pieces as beautiful and worthy. Thank you for helping me lay into the earth what has become oppressive on my soul, and for helping me see the importance in my courage to feel. Scrub my body, heart, and mind of their accumulated stresses and unaddressed anguish. Let me stop the abuses and misfortunes from telling my future. Help me author my personal story of strength and perseverance while ripening me for rebirth. Let me strip off unwanted debris with my hands and behold how feasible it is for me to move my own energy. Help me see my offerings like fallen leaves that nourish the bustling, hungry communities of unseen beneficials living below the surface. Let the intensity of the weight I’ve been carrying feed the soil of my spirit. Help me plant the seeds of tomorrow’s wellness and water them with my tears. Let every creaking wail of sorrow be an investment in the freedom of tomorrow. When my griefs begin to release, let me feel the lightening of my heart like a dandelion setting free its seed-wishes. Let these composted traumas and hopes for the future quell my desire for an endless summer. Cover them gently in preparation for nature’s season of reflection and restoration. Open me to recurrent occasions of self-cleaning for giving my spirit, body, and mind the precious attention it is asking for. Make me an enthusiastic gardener for my well-being. Fill me with willingness to allow downtime when I have done what I can do for now. I trust you to finish the job in my dreams while I rest.
”
”
Pixie Lighthorse (Prayers of Honoring Grief)
“
Some moral philosophers try to thread a boundary across this treacherous landscape by equating personhood with cognitive traits that humans happen to possess. These include an ability to reflect upon oneself as a continuous locus of consciousness, to form and savor plans for the future, to dread death, and to express a choice not to die. At first glance the boundary is appealing because it puts humans on one side and animals and conceptuses on the other. But it also implies that nothing is wrong with killing unwanted newborns, the senile, and the mentally handicapped, who lack the qualifying traits. Almost no one is willing to accept a criterion with those implications. There is no solution to these dilemmas, because they arise out of a fundamental incommensurability: between our intuitive psychology, with its all-or-none concept of a person or soul, and the brute facts of biology, which tell us that the human brain evolved gradually, develops gradually, and can die gradually. And that means that moral conundrums such as abortion, euthanasia, and animal rights will never be resolved in a decisive and intuitively satisfying way. This does not mean that no policy is defensible and that the whole matter should be left to personal taste, political power, or religious dogma. As the bioethicist Ronald Green has pointed out, it just means we have to reconceptualize the problem: from finding a boundary in nature to choosing a boundary that best trades off the conflicting goods and evils for each policy dilemma. We should make decisions in each case that can be practically implemented, that maximize happiness, and that minimize current and future suffering.
”
”
Steven Pinker (The Blank Slate: The Modern Denial of Human Nature)
“
Guénon and Evola, consistently with most other modern spiritual figures, identified the age we are living in now as the final age, or Kali Yuga, as it is called in both Hinduism and Buddhism. In the ancient Scandinavian religion, the equivalent age was the Wolf Age. Lest this seems like just some metaphysical mumbo-jumbo, let me quote a few examples from the Hindu scriptures that describe the characteristics of Kali Yuga:
In Kali Yuga, wealth alone will be considered the sign of a man’s good birth, proper behavior, and fine qualities. And law and justice will be applied only on the basis of one’s power.
Men and women will live together merely because of superficial attraction, and success in business will depend on deceit. Womanliness and manliness will be judged according to one’s expertise in sex.
A person’s propriety will be seriously questioned if he does not earn a good living. And one who is very clever at juggling words will be considered a learned scholar.
He who can maintain a family will be regarded as an expert man, and the principles of religion will be observed only for the sake of reputation.
Cities will be dominated by thieves, the Vedas will be contaminated by speculative interpretations of atheists, political leaders will virtually consume the citizens, and the so-called priests and intellectuals will be devotees of their bellies and genitals.
When irreligion becomes prominent in the family, the women of the family become corrupt, and from the degradation of womanhood comes unwanted population.
These are just a few of many such examples. Whatever one thinks of Hinduism as a religion, this description certainly seems uncannily accurate in our present world.
”
”
John Morgan
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They tried to explain to the missionaries that it was they who put Adam and Eve out of the village because they was naked. Their word for naked is white. But since they are covered by color they are not naked. They said anybody looking at a white person can tell they naked, but black people can not be naked because they can not be white. . . . They was so mad to git throwed out and told they was naked they made up they minds to crush us wherever they find us, same as they would a snake.
That's what these Olinka peoples say. But they say just like they know history before the white children start to come, they know the future after the biggest of 'em leave. They say they know these particular children and they gon kill each other off, they still so mad bout being unwanted. Gon kill off a lot of other folk too who got some color. In fact, they gon kill off so much of the earth and the colored that everybody gon hate them just like they hate us today. Then they will become the new serpent. And wherever a white person is found he'll be crush by somebody not white, just like they do us today. And some of the Olinka peoples believe life will just go on and on like this forever. And every million years or so something will happen to the earth and folks will change the way they look. Folks might start growing two heads one of these days, for all we know, and then the folks with one head will send 'em all someplace else. But some of 'em don't think like this. They think, after the biggest of the white folks no longer on the earth, the only way to stop making somebody the serpent is for everybody to accept everybody else as a child of God, or one mother's children, no matter what they look like or how they act.
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Alice Walker (The Color Purple)
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Everywhere along the line there were people involved. Farmers who planted and monitored and cared for and pruned and fertilized their trees. Pickers who walked among the rows of plants, in the mountains’ thin air, taking the cherries, only the red cherries, placing them one by one in their buckets and baskets. Workers who processed the cherries, most of that work done by hand, too, fingers removing the sticky mucilage from each bean. There were the humans who dried the beans. Who turned them on the drying beds to make sure they dried evenly. Then those who sorted the dried beans, the good beans from the bad. Then the humans who bagged these sorted beans. Bagged them in bags that kept them fresh, bags that retained the flavor without adding unwanted tastes and aromas. The humans who tossed the bagged beans on trucks. The humans who took the bags off the trucks and put them into containers and onto ships. The humans who took the beans from the ships and put them on different trucks. The humans who took the bags from the trucks and brought them into the roasteries in Tokyo and Chicago and Trieste. The humans who roasted each batch. The humans who packed smaller batches into smaller bags for purchase by those who might want to grind and brew at home. Or the humans who did the grinding at the coffee shop and then painstakingly brewed and poured the coffee or espresso or cappuccino. Any given cup of coffee, then, might have been touched by twenty hands, from farm to cup, yet these cups only cost two or three dollars. Even a four-dollar cup was miraculous, given how many people were involved, and how much individual human attention and expertise was lavished on the beans dissolved in that four-dollar cup. So much human attention and expertise, in fact, that even at four dollars a cup, chances were some person—or many people, or hundreds of people—along the line were being taken, underpaid, exploited.
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Dave Eggers (The Monk of Mokha)
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The 14 Day Get better at Cleanser, a few Day Cleansing Diet and the 1 Week Cleanse Diet Plan
The actual 12 morning master Facial cleanser, the three day detox diet regime, and the 7 days detox eating habits are strategies associated with the Master cleanse detox Body Purify Program and Diet. This plan of action offers folks the assistance of taking away harmful as well as unwanted toxic compounds essentially located in the body simply by using a natural and safe indicates. It focuses on the bodily, mental, and also spiritual types and elements associated with the persons body along with their determination to get a healthier strategy for eating and also lifestyle too.
The A dozen day master cleanser, the 14 Day Detox, and also the 1 week diet plan consists of cleaning the body naturally and also teaches the individual around the toxins they're removing from their body.
The greatest issue folks have with these eating plans are the vital discomforts they will experience once they first start off the program.
By way of example, cravings at times become a problem in the concept that the body desires what the individual is giving up or even removing using their diet. State for instance caffeine or sodas. The body craves the the level of caffeine and therefore the particular person "craves" or would like coffee or perhaps soda. By drinking lemonade or water according to the master cleanse diet this specific craving is usually subsided in several of the individuals which experience this specific discomfort.
Something that can be for this removing involving harmful toxins by using these diet plans is definitely an overwhelming sense of tiredness how the individual hasn't ever experienced before. This is because our bodies is essentially employing energy to fight the unwelcome toxins which might be being removed from the body which energy is slowly removed from standard daily activities; however this issue is normally resolved right after days in to the initial These kinds of diets that are associated with the Master cleansing diet body purifying program and diet.
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zvz
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Rape has been described by victim advocate and former police officer Tom Tremblay as “the most violent crime a person can survive.”10 Those who have not been sexually assaulted can perhaps most clearly understand the experience of a survivor by thinking of them as having survived an attempted murder that used sex as the weapon. Sexual violence often doesn’t look like what we think of as “violence”—only rarely is there a gun or knife; often there isn’t even “aggression” as we typically think of it. There is coercion and the removal of the targeted person’s choice about what will happen next. Survivors don’t “fight” because the threat is too immediate and inescapable; their bodies choose “freeze” because it’s the stress response that maximizes the chances of staying alive . . . or of dying without pain. Trauma isn’t always caused by one specific incident. It can also emerge in response to persistent distress or ongoing abuse, like a relationship where sex is unwanted, though it may be technically “consensual” because the targeted person says yes in order to avoid being hurt or feels trapped in the relationship or is otherwise coerced. In that context, a survivor’s body gradually learns that it can’t escape and it can’t fight; freeze becomes the default stress response because of the learned pattern of shutdown as the best way to guarantee survival. Each person’s experience of survival is unique, but it often includes a kind of disengaged unreality. And afterward, that illusion of unreality gradually degrades, disintegrating under the weight of physical existence and burdened memory. The tentative recognition that this thing has actually happened incrementally unlocks the panic and rage that couldn’t find their way to the surface before, buried as they were under the overmastering mandate to survive. But survival is not recovery; survival happens automatically, sometimes even against the survivor’s will. Recovery requires an environment of relative security and the ability to separate the physiology of freeze from the experience of fear, so that the panic and the rage can discharge, completing their cycles at last.
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Emily Nagoski (Come as You Are: The Surprising New Science that Will Transform Your Sex Life)
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Boy Lost
Picture a sunset in a small port town by the sea. Two teenaged boys sitting on the docks watching the ships as they fly across the water. One reaches out and takes the other’s hand. In this brush of skin for skin, a thousand unspoken promises erupt between them, and both are determined to keep them. This is what youth is. The sheer belief that you will be able to keep every promise you made to someone else. That you will be able to love someone into a forever when you do not even understand what forever means.
An evening spent in the headiness of love, they go back to their respective homes. One boy helps his mother with cooking and cleaning and looking after his little sister. His father is a good man, a sailor who brings home with him meagre wages, but a heart full of love and a quicksilver tongue that tells stories of faraway lands to enthral them all. But this boy, despite his blessings, is not happy. He may have been blessed with a loving family, but that faraway look is made of unrest and wanderlust, something about him says fae, changeling, wearing the skin of a boy who was always destined to fly, to leave.
The other boy returns home to a father who drinks and a mother who works so hard that she is never there. He is the unwanted creature in this home, a beating waiting for him at every corner. His father’s temper is a beast so powerful that a boy made of paper bones barely held together cannot fight him. He hides in his room. He lives for a boy at sunset, hope made into a human being.
Now picture this. This boy of paper bones alone at the docks the next sunset. And this boy alone on the docks again on a rainy day. And this boy alone on the docks every day after, waiting for someone who promised him forevers he never intended to keep. This boy becoming a man, a heart wounded so young in youth that it never quite healed right. Imagine him becoming a sailor, searching land after land for a boy he once loved, thinking he was hurt, or stolen, just needing to know what happened to him.
Now see him finally finding out that the boy he loved in his boyhood ran away to a magical land where he never grew up. That without a second glance, he just forgot every promise of forever. Imagine his rage, that ancient pain turning to a terrible anger and escaping from the forgotten attic of his mangled heart. Think of what happens when immense love turns into immense hate. An anger so intense it cannot be controlled. What he would give up to avenge the boy he once was, paper-boned, standing on the docks, broken without a single person to love him, simply all alone. A hand is a small price to pay for a magical ship that will take him to Neverland, a place that lives on a star. Becoming a villain called Captain Hook is a small exchange to show Peter Pan that you cannot throw away love and think you will get away unscarred.
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Nikita Gill (Fierce Fairytales: Poems and Stories to Stir Your Soul)
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Wake up every day, expecting not to know what's going to happen, and look for the events to unfold with curiosity. Instead of stressing and managing, just be present at anything that pops up with the intention of approaching it with your best efforts. Whatever happens in the process of spiritual awakening is going to be unpredictable and moving forward, if you're just the one who notices it, not fighting or making a big project out there. • You may have emotional swings, energetic swings, psychic openings, and other unwanted shifts that, as you knew, feel unfamiliar to your personality. Be the beholder. Don't feel like you have something to fix or alter. They're going to pass. • If you have severe trauma in your history and have never had therapy, it might be very useful to release the pains of memories that arise around the events. Therapy teaches you how to express, bear witness, release, and move forward. Your therapist needn't know much about kundalini as long as he or she doesn't discount that part of your process. What you want to focus on is the release of trauma-related issues, and you want an experienced and compassionate therapist who sees your spiritual orientation as a motivation and support for the healing process. • This process represents your chance to wake up to your true nature. Some people wake up first, and then experience the emergence of a kundalini; others have the kundalini process going through as a preparation for the emergence. The appearance happens to do the job of wiping out, so is part of either pattern. Waking up means realizing that whoever looks through your eyes, lives through your senses, listens to your thoughts, and is present at every moment of your experience, whether good or bad, is recognized or remembered. This is a bright, conscious, detached and unconditionally loving presence that is universal and eternal and is totally free from all the conditions and memories you associate with as a personal identity. But as long as you believe in all of your personal conditions and stories, emotions, and thoughts, you have to experience life filtered by them. This programmed mind is what makes the game of life to be varied and suspense-filled but it also causes suffering and fear of death. When we are in Samadhi and Satori encounters, we glimpse the Truth about the vast, limitless space that is the foundation for our being. It is called gnosis (knowledge) or the One by the early Gnostics. Some spiritual teachings like Advaita Vedanta and Zen go straight for realization, while others see it as a gradual path through years of spiritual practices. Anyway, the ending is the same. As Shakespeare said, when you know who you are, the world becomes a stage and you the player, and life is more light and thoughts less intrusive, and the kundalini process settles down into a mellow pleasantness. • Give up places to go and to be with people that cause you discomfort.
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Adrian Satyam (Energy Healing: 6 in 1: Medicine for Body, Mind and Spirit. An extraordinary guide to Chakra and Quantum Healing, Kundalini and Third Eye Awakening, Reiki and Meditation and Mindfulness.)
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A similar theological—and particularly ecclesiological—logic shapes the Durham Declaration, a manifesto against abortion addressed specifically to the United Methodist Church by a group of United Methodist pastors and theologians. The declaration is addressed not to legislators or the public media but to the community of the faithful. It concludes with a series of pledges, including the following: We pledge, with Cod’s help, to become a church that hospitably provides safe refuge for the so-called “unwanted child” and mother. We will joyfully welcome and generously support—with prayer, friendship, and material resources—both child and mother. This support includes strong encouragement for the biological father to be a father, in deed, to his child.27 No one can make such a pledge lightly. A church that seriously attempted to live out such a commitment would quickly find itself extended to the limits of its resources, and its members would be called upon to make serious personal sacrifices. In other words, it would find itself living as the church envisioned by the New Testament. William H. Willimon tells the story of a group of ministers debating the morality of abortion. One of the ministers argues that abortion is justified in some cases because young teenage girls cannot possibly be expected to raise children by themselves. But a black minister, the pastor of a large African American congregation, takes the other side of the question. “We have young girls who have this happen to them. I have a fourteen year old in my congregation who had a baby last month. We’re going to baptize the child next Sunday,” he added. “Do you really think that she is capable of raising a little baby?” another minister asked. “Of course not,” he replied. No fourteen year old is capable of raising a baby. For that matter, not many thirty year olds are qualified. A baby’s too difficult for any one person to raise by herself.” “So what do you do with babies?” they asked. “Well, we baptize them so that we all raise them together. In the case of that fourteen year old, we have given her baby to a retired couple who have enough time and enough wisdom to raise children. They can then raise the mama along with her baby. That’s the way we do it.”28 Only a church living such a life of disciplined service has the possibility of witnessing credibly to the state against abortion. Here we see the gospel fully embodied in a community that has been so formed by Scripture that the three focal images employed throughout this study can be brought to bear also on our “reading” of the church’s action. Community: the congregation’s assumption of responsibility for a pregnant teenager. Cross: the young girl’s endurance of shame and the physical difficulty of pregnancy, along with the retired couple’s sacrifice of their peace and freedom for the sake of a helpless child. New creation: the promise of baptism, a sign that the destructive power of the world is broken and that this child receives the grace of God and hope for the future.29 There, in microcosm, is the ethic of the New Testament. When the community of God’s people is living in responsive obedience to God’s Word, we will find, again and again, such grace-filled homologies between the story of Scripture and its performance in our midst.
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Richard B. Hays (The Moral Vision of the New Testament: A Contemporary Introduction to New Testament Ethics)
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Many things enter our minds as undeveloped thought-seeds which continue to work in our subconscious long after we have dismissed them from our attention. One need only think of the unwanted fantasies, especially sexual ones, that beset every person at one time or another. Often such a fantasy develops from an image that originally held one’s attention for only a brief moment.
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J. Heinrich Arnold (Freedom from Sinful Thoughts)
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Every possible physical manifestation first exists as invisible, faster vibrating energy in the source energy field. Everything is possible in the infinite energy field. If your personal consciousness is aligned with the source energy field, your desired manifestations will be brought into physical reality with relative ease. If you are misaligned with the source energy field, you will struggle to manifest your desires and will often manifest unwanted things instead.
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Russell Anthony Gibbs (The Principle of Manifestation: A Practical Guide to How We Materialize the Physical Universe)
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Become a junk mail detective. • Commercial catalogs: Go to CatalogChoice.org (they cancel catalogs for you) or call the catalogs directly. I opted out and I have never been happier with my personal sense of decorating and celebrating. • First-class mail: Do not open the unwanted letter. Its postage includes return service; you can write “Refused—Return to sender” and “Take me off your mailing list” on the front of the unopened envelope. I keep a pen in my mailbox for that specific purpose. • Mail addressed to the previous resident: Fill out a U.S. Postal Service change-of-address card for each previous resident. In lieu of a new address, write: “Moved, no forwarding address.” In the signature area, sign your name and write “Form filled by current resident of home [your name], agent for the above.” Hand the form to your carrier or postal clerk. • For standard/ third-class presorted mail: Do not open those that mention “return service requested,” “forwarding service requested,” “change service requested,” or “address service requested.” These postages also include return service, so here, too, you can write “Refused—Return to sender” and “Take me off your mailing list” on the front of an unopened envelope. Otherwise, open the letter, look for contact info, then call/ email/ write to be taken off the mailing list. These items typically include promotional flyers, brochures, and coupon packs. Make sure to also request that your name or address not be sold, rented, shared, or traded. • Bulk mail: Inexpensive bulk mailing, used for items such as community education catalogs, allows advertisers to mail to all homes in a carrier route. It is not directly addressed to a specific name or address but to “local” or “postal customer,” and is therefore most difficult to stop. A postal supervisor told me that my carrier had to deliver them and that he could take them back when refused, but since the postage does not include return service, the mailman would simply throw the mail away with no further action. The best way to reduce the production of such mailings is to contact the senders directly and convince them to either choose a different type of postage or adopt Internet communication instead. In the case of community-born mailing, one could also persuade his/ her city council to boycott the postage preference. But ideally, the U.S. Postal Service would not even provide this wasteful option.
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Bea Johnson (Zero Waste Home: The Ultimate Guide to Simplifying Your Life by Reducing Your Waste (A Simple Guide to Sustainable Living))
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... while we were in inhabited country every Bedu for miles around would come to feed at our expense. It would be impossible to refuse them food: in the desert one may never turn a guest away, however unwanted he may be. T.E. Lawrence observed that 'the desert was held in a crazed communism by which Nature and the elements were for the free use of every known friendly person for his own purposes and no more.
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Dean King (Skeletons on the Zahara: A True Story of Survival)
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Liam had given his entire self over to the power of Justine - the power she had to take away a best friend without anyone objecting. The power to make a person give up everything and obey, because obeying was easy, and standing against her seemed impossible.
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Lisa McMann (Island of Shipwrecks (Unwanteds, #5))
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The ‘republican’ variant is that freedom must mean non-domination. Stemming from Aristotle, republican freedom requires freedom from potential domination as well as from actual domination by figures, institutions or processes of unaccountable domination.12 In other words, to the extent that authority figures or institutions could, if they wished, ‘arbitrarily interfere’ with a person’s ability to act or think (or develop), republican freedom is compromised.13 This view is linked to the argument, derived in part from the philosophy of Jean-Jacques Rousseau, that the very existence of property can destroy or compromise such freedom. After all, if a few families own all the land, to talk of everyone having freedom would be absurd. Robust republican freedom could be said to exist if everyone in society could avoid or escape from unwanted interference, and also from the rational fear of it. To be free, a person must be free of the will of others. If I fear rationally and reasonably that, were I to offend someone, my freedom would be lost, I am not free. By contrast with libertarianism, which sees all government as compromising freedom, republican freedom requires and depends on government. But it must be government that is democratically accountable and geared to the promotion of full freedom, defined primarily as the ability of the most vulnerable in society to avoid domination. Republican freedom also requires government to ensure that the choices of the powerful cannot block others from making choices themselves. If
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Guy Standing (Basic Income: And How We Can Make It Happen)
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Uncontrolled circumstances can create unexpected or unwanted outcomes that are driven totally by chance rather than specific choices to bring about exactly what is personally required.
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Steven Redhead (Life Is A Circus)
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The way circus elephants are trained demonstrates this dynamic well: When young, they are attached by heavy chains to large stakes driven deep into the ground. They pull and yank and strain and struggle, but the chain is too strong, the stake too rooted. One day they give up, having learned that they cannot pull free, and from that day forward they can be “chained” with a slender rope. When this enormous animal feels any resistance, though it has the strength to pull the whole circus tent over, it stops trying. Because it believes it cannot, it cannot. “You’ll never amount to anything;” “You can’t sing;” “You’re not smart enough;” “Without money, you’re nothing;” “Who’d want you?;” “You’re just a loser;” “You should have more realistic goals;” “You’re the reason our marriage broke up;” “Without you kids I’d have had a chance;” “You’re worthless”—this opera is being sung in homes all over America right now, the stakes driven into the ground, the heavy chains attached, the children reaching the point they believe they cannot pull free. And at that point, they cannot. Unless and until something changes their view, unless they grasp the striking fact that they are tied with a thread, that the chain is an illusion, that they were fooled, and ultimately, that whoever so fooled them was wrong about them and that they were wrong about themselves—unless all this happens, these children are not likely to show society their positive attributes as adults. There’s more involved, of course, than just parenting. Some of the factors are so small they cannot be seen and yet so important they cannot be ignored: They are human genes. The one known as D4DR may influence the thrill-seeking behavior displayed by many violent criminals. Along with the influences of environment and upbringing, an elongated D4DR gene will likely be present in someone who grows up to be an assassin or a bank robber (or a daredevil). Behavioral geneticist Irving Gottesman: “Under a different scenario and in a different environment, that same person could become a hero in Bosnia.” In the future, genetics will play a much greater role in behavioral predictions. We’ll probably be able to genetically map personality traits as precisely as physical characteristics like height and weight. Though it will generate much controversy, parents may someday be able to use prenatal testing to identify children with unwanted personality genes, including those that make violence more likely. Until then, however, we’ll have to settle for a simpler, low-tech strategy for reducing violence: treating children lovingly and humanely.
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Gavin de Becker (The Gift of Fear: Survival Signals That Protect Us from Violence)
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Towards the end of recording Roger created two pieces called ‘Pigs On The Wing’ to open and close the album, designed to give the overall shape of the album a better dynamic and enhance the animal aspect of it. An unwanted side effect was that it opened up the question of the share-out of publishing royalties (which are based on the number of tracks, not their length) since it gave Roger two additional tracks, and meant that the longer piece ‘Dogs’, co-written with David, was not split up, but left as a single track. This was the kind of issue that would later prove contentious.
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Nick Mason (Inside Out: A Personal History of Pink Floyd (Reading Edition): (Rock and Roll Book, Biography of Pink Floyd, Music Book))
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Blitzscaling isn't really a recipe for success but rather survivorship bias masquerading as a strategy"
Yet the O'Reilly critique is less an indictment of VCs than a warning to founders. If the objective of entrepreneurship is personal autonomy, founders must understand that venture capital comes with conditions. If entrepreneurs want to grow their companies at a measured pace, venture capital may well create unwanted pressures. But while inexperienced founders may need to be told of these realities, venture capitalists understand them all too well: they are the first to proclaim that cautious founders should raise money elsewhere. "The vast majority of entrepreneurs should NOT take venture capital," Bill Gurley tweeted in 2019. "I sell jet fuel," Josh Kopelman of First Round Capital agreed; "some people don't want to build a jet." As these comments indicate, VCs may be capable of backing companies in a broad swath of sectors, but in another sense their competence is narrow. Venture capital is suitable only for the ambitious minority that wants to take the risk of growing fast...
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Sebastian Mallaby (The Power Law: Venture Capital and the Making of the New Future)