Bloomsbury Group Quotes

I see clearly that I have achieved practically nothing. ~ Leonard Woolf

Nothing matters. ~ Leonard Woolf

The Bloomsbury Group has been characterised as a liberal, pacifist, and at times libertine, intellectual enclave of Cambridge-based privilege. The Cambridge men of the group (Bell, Forster, Fry, Keynes, Strachey, Sydney-Turner) were members of the elite and secret society of Cambridge Apostles. Woolf's aesthetic understanding, and broader philosophy, were in part shaped by, and at first primarily interpreted in terms of, (male) Bloomsbury's dominant aesthetic and philosophical preoccupations, rooted in the work of G. E. Moore (a central influence on the Apostles), and culminating in Fry's and Clive Bell's differing brands of pioneering aesthetic formalism. 'The main things which Moore instilled deep into our minds and characters,' Leonard Woolf recalls, 'were his peculiar passion for truth, for clarity and common sense, and a passionate belief in certain values.'
Increasing awareness of Woolf's feminism, however, and of the influence on her work of other women artists, writers and thinkers has meant that these Moorean and male points of reference, though of importance, are no longer considered adequate in approaching Woolf's work, and her intellectual development under the tutelage of women, together with her involvement with feminist thinkers and activists, is also now acknowledged. ~ Jane Goldman

Nothing matters, and everything matters. ~ Leonard Woolf

It is never right for any individual or government to do any vast evil as a means to some hypothetical good. ~ Leonard Woolf

Life is not an orderly progression, self-contained like a musical scale or a quadratic equation ... If one is to record one's life truthfully, one must aim at getting into the record of it something of the disorderly discontinuity which makes it so absurd, unpredictable, bearable. ~ Leonard Woolf

The fact is, I find it extremely difficult to force myself to read old letters ... Whenever one really knows the facts, one finds that what is accepted by contemporaries or posterity as the truth about them is so distorted or out of focus that it is not worth worrying about. ~ Leonard Woolf

Nothing matters. You get yourself into a state in which you imagine things which have no basis in reality ... One begins for some reason to worry about something and, if one allows oneself to go on doing that, one gradually imagines all kinds of things. It is a kind of self-indulgence and one gets into a perpetual daydream. It is essential to stop this process and face the real world
which is never so bad as all that. ~ Leonard Woolf

First off, I don't want anyone to think I'm this huge thing in Japan. Every group from here that's made any records over any length of time - even indie bands - have a Cheap Trick effect in Japan. ~ Matthew Sweet

It makes absolutely no sense to make sacrifices for a group that, itself, isn't willing to make sacrifices for you. That is the position American soldiers have been in for the past decade and a half. There ~ Sebastian Junger

From our group, we've had joint ventures with a lot of international companies: Procter & Gamble, General Electric, Sara Lee, currently with Hershey's and Tyson. We've learned a lot of the best practices. ~ Adi Godrej

Racism is the dogma that one ethnic group is condemned by nature to congenital inferiority and another group is destined to congenital superiority. ~ Ruth Benedict

Most of you will probably never really discover anything. You may not contribute anything to the great equations that describe the universe to the world. But you will have the good fortune of encountering people of exceptional intelligence. People who are much smarter than you. Never get in their way, never group together in disgruntled circles and play games. Respect talent, real talent. Worship it. Clever people will always be disliked. Don't exploit that to crawl your way to the top. By the laws of probability most of you are mediocre. Accept it. The tragedy of mediocrity is that even mediocre people shake their heads and mull over how "standards are falling". So don't mull. Just know when you've to get out of the way. Most of you will be sideshows, extras in the grand unfolding of truth. That's all right. Once you accept that and let the best brains do their jobs, you will have done your service to science and mankind. ~ Manu Joseph

While group collaboration can certainly be a source of collective intelligence, it can also get you to jump off a cliff or drive too fast. And that's probably why some form of continued connection to the adults and their adult perspectives still exists in traditional cultures, and even in our animal cousins. Without adults around, young adolescents can literally go wild. ~ Daniel J. Siegel

We may as well cut out group theory. That is a subject that will never be of any use in physics. ~ James Jeans

In the movie I was played by an actor who actually looked more like me than the character the author portrayed in the book: I wasn't blond, I wasn't tan, and neither was the actor. I also suddenly became the movie's moral compass, spouting AA jargon, castigating everyone's drug use and trying to save Julian. (I'll sell my car," I warn the actor playing Julian's dealer. "Whatever it takes.") This was slightly less true of Blair's character, played by a girl who actually seemed like she belonged in our group-- jittery, sexually available, easily wounded. Julian became the sentimentalized version of himself, acted by a talented, sad-faced clown, who has an affair with Blair and then realizes he has to let her go because I was his best bud. "Be good to her," Julian tells Clay. "She really deserves it." The sheer hypocrisy of this scene must have made the author blanch. Smiling secretly to myself with perverse satisfaction when the actor delivered that line, I then glanced at Blair in the darkness of the screening room. ~ Bret Easton Ellis

If we take memetics seriously then the 'me' that could do the choosing is itself a memetic construct: a fluid and ever-changing group of memes installed in a complicated meme machine. ~ Susan Blackmore

The real menace of our Republic is the invisible government which like a giant octopus sprawls its slimy legs over our cities, states and nation. At the head is a small group of banking houses ... This little coterie ... runs our government for their own selfish ends. It operates under cover of a self-created screen ... seizes ... our executive officers ... legislative bodies ... schools ... courts ... newspapers and every agency created for the public protection. ~ John Francis Hylan

The most successful leader of all is the one who sees another picture not yet actualized. He sees the things which are not yet there ... Above all, he should make his co-workers see that it is not his purpose which is to be achieved, but a common purpose, born of the desires and the activities of the group. ~ Mary Parker Follett

When I was a kid, I was afraid of large group of conforming people. ~ Sean Durkin

We were too rough at the edges to be a pop group. ~ Roger Daltrey

Each group was required to propose its own "fitness function" - a linear equation that it could use to measure its own impact without ambiguity. For example, a two-pizza team in charge of sending advertising e-mails to customers might choose for its fitness function the rate at which these messages were opened multiplied by the average order size those e-mails generated. A group writing software code for the fulfillment centers might home in on decreasing the cost of shipping each type of product and reducing the time that elapsed between a customer's making a purchase and the item leaving the FC in a truck. Bezos wanted to personally approve each equation and track the results over time. It would be his way of guiding a team's evolution. Bezos was applying ~ Brad Stone

Rape culture is 1 in 6 women being sexually assaulted in their lifetimes. Rape culture is not even talking about the reality that many women are sexually assaulted multiple times in their lives. Rape culture is the way in which the constant threat of sexual assault affects women's daily movements. Rape culture is telling girls and women to be careful about what you wear, how you wear it, how you carry yourself, where you walk, when you walk there, with whom you walk, whom you trust, what you do, where you do it, with whom you do it, what you drink, how much you drink, whether you make eye contact, if you're alone, if you're with a stranger, if you're in a group, if you're in a group of strangers, if it's dark, if the area is unfamiliar, if you're carrying something, how you carry it, what kind of shoes you're wearing in case you have to run, what kind of purse you carry, what jewelry you wear, what time it is, what street it is, what environment it is, how many people you sleep with, what kind of people you sleep with, who your friends are, to whom you give your number, who's around when the delivery guy comes, to get an apartment where you can see who's at the door before they can see you, to check before you open the door to the delivery guy, to own a dog or a dog-sound-making machine, to get a roommate, to take self-defense, to always be alert always pay attention always watch your back always be aware of your surroundings and never let your guard down for a moment lest yo ~ Melissa McEwen

When you got a group like G-Unit ... we sold millions of records, we got a lot of egos. ~ Tony Yayo

Enlightenment is a group activity. ~ Charles Eisenstein

Urs Fischer specializes in making jaws drop. Cutting giant holes in gallery walls, digging a crater in Gavin Brown's gallery floor in 2007, creating amazing hyperrealist wallpaper for a group show at Tony Shafrazi: It all percolates with uncanny destructiveness, operatic uncontrollability, and barbaric sculptural power. ~ Jerry Saltz

A guy friend I was speaking to said he was talking to a group of male producersand he was just shocked that they said, "But if we give women directors a job they're going to
take jobs away from the men." I almost fell out of my chair. But when I encounter this kind
of thing, what I try to do is give a chiropractic adjustment to the mind, quickly. ~ Rose McGowan

People say, "I wouldn't have done that." But they haven't been exposed to any of the things, culturally, that might have made them do it. And the warning I take is that the number of people in a group who will stand out against these cultural forces are much smaller than you think, and you're probably not one of them. In fact, I think you can probably tell if you are because you're pretty bolshie already. If you've got a good career, and you're pretty sociable and you're going up the hierarchy and all the rest of it, where are you going to get your sudden revolutionary spurt from? ~ Will Storr

A community, a family, is a group of people who share common stories. The health of any community depends directly on the health of the stories the community embraces. ~ Daniel Taylor

You do know something quite important about the Cabinet," said Adora Belle, apparently waking up. "You know it wasn't built for or by a girl between the ages of four and, oh, eleven years old." "How do we know that?" "No pink. Trust me. No girl in that age group would leave out pink. ~ Terry Pratchett

Yeah, no. I did not want to hang out with that group again. ~ Tijan

The Earth faces environmental problems right now that threaten the imminent destruction of civilization and the end of the planet as a livable world. Humanity cannot afford to waste its financial and emotional resources on endless, meaningless quarrels between each group and all others. there must be a sense of globalism in which the world unites to solve the real problems that face all groups alike. ~ Isaac Asimov

The truth is, there is no Islamic army or terrorist group called Al Qaida. And any informed intelligence officer knows this. But there is a propaganda campaign to make the public believe in the presence of an identified entity representing the 'devil' only in order to drive the TV watcher to accept a unified international leadership for a war against terrorism. The country behind this propaganda is the US ... ~ Robin Cook

Barry, you're over thirty years old. You owe it to your mum and dad not to sing in a group called Sonic Death Monkey. ~ Nick Hornby

I started crying when the group [therapy] was over because the last thing we did upset me - we all held a piece of the same cloth, leaned back and supported each other's weight. I couldn't do it. I bent my legs and elbows and stood very firm, yet . . .
I needed to feel supported, as i do in life, but i can't let myself be, and i pretend not to need that support. ~ Carol Lee

I've tried to write deep and serious. I spent years working to write a story that would make my writing group cry. ~ Jim C. Hines

I'm proud to say I'm the only Slaughterhouse member who has not rewritten a verse yet, and that's the ongoing joke in the group, 'cause everybody has rewrote their sh*t except for me. ~ Joe Budden

Anyone have a pen and paper?"
There was a moment of stillness as the four of us looked around, totally clueless. The only things any of us ever wrote with were our phones. And there was no way this was going to be a vote via group text. ~ Goldy Moldavsky

It's hard to have any moral authority over a group of drunken college students when you have never had a beer and never been laid. ~ Tom Green

Sam - I liked you from the first moment I met you! I made you invite me to your house for a study group, even though - you know what - I'm pretty good at studying on my own! When I went away, you were the only person I wanted to talk to! You were the first person I needed to see when I got back! I sang in front of you, and I've never let anyone see that part of me before! You are the person ... I feel like I've run halfway around the world to find! I thought that was pretty obvious! Apart from throwing myself naked at you while holding a giant sign that says, Samuel, I am completely in love with you too, I don't know what else to do! ~ Melissa Keil

Australian pro surfer Dave Rastovich, straddling his board waiting for a wave, was astonished to watch a dolphin hurtle itself at a shark that was torpedoing toward him, sending it fleeing. (Coincidentally, only two days earlier Rastovich had launched a nonprofit group, Surfers for Cetaceans, to protect dolphins and whales.) ~ Susan Casey

To be included in the group with women like Glenn Close and Kyra Sedgwick is a little bit astonishing to me. To even be mentioned in the same sentence as Glenn Close is just ridiculous. ~ Julianna Margulies

You hire the best people you can possibly find. Then it's up to you to create an environment where great people decide to stay and invest their time. ~ Rich Lesser

When I met scientists, I found them to be as various as any other group of people. ~ Harrison Ford

A Canadian woman was sentenced to 90 days in jail on Thursday for causing two deaths in 2010 when she stopped her car on a Quebec highway to help a group of ducklings crossing the road. ~ Anonymous

None other than Malcolm Ericson, drummer for worldwide renowned rock group Stage Dive, had somehow shacked up with my sister. My quiet, calm, color-within-the-lines-or-else sister. ~ Kylie Scott

She remembers standing at her locker, hearing the whispers. Whispers about her. And about Luke. She remembers turning and seeing Dani and Lynn with a group of girls they knew from Yearbook. She remembers not understanding right away. And then Dani stared her down, eyes narrowed to slits. When Hallelujah dropped her gaze, she heard Lynn's peal of laughter. "So anyway," Lynn went on, "Luke said . . ."
She remembers the note, in English class. "You knew I liked him." Dani's clean cursive. Hallelujah stared at her friend's back. Dani didn't turn around. And she didn't respond to calls or emails in the weeks that followed.
By winter break, Dani was dating Luke. The rumors about Hallelujah had circulated and changed and circulated again. Still, on the first day of the new semester, she mustered up the courage to say something. To warn her former friend about who Luke really was. Dani laughed in her face. Called her jealous. Luke dumped Dani in February. Dani and Lynn still refused to speak to Hallelujah. It was like they'd never been friends at all. ~ Kathryn Holmes

To cheapen the lives of any group of men, cheapens the lives of all men, even our own. This is a law of human psychology, or human nature. And it will not be repealed by our wishes, nor will it be merciful to our blindness. ~ William Pickens

When our environment changes we change, and this combination of transformative deeds create a synergistic effect. Seemingly, insignificant and imperceptible quantitative changes can eventfully lead to fundamental qualitative changes in the way a group of people function as a society. ~ Kilroy J. Oldster

Any serious social encounter with knives has one main goal: to stop the action. Beyond that, you have a little flexibility: to kill, or merely get away, or what have you. But first comes the cessation of hostilities.
There are many ways to handle this. You can run, shoot, call the cops, or even try to organize a discussion group to talk the problem out. But I'm talking knives, so I'll limit myself to that.

All wounds are painful and pain is a great tool for stopping fights. So is the loss of use of various parts of the body. Therefore, it follows that although we wish to inflict any wound we can, the more painful it is, the better. ~ Hank Reinhardt

(Cleaning women: You will get a lot of liberated women. First stage is a CR group; second stage is a cleaning woman; third, divorce.) ~ Lucia Berlin

We can self-censor ourselves for various reasons, but we can't live in a world where some person or some group decides what's offensive and what's not. ~ Steve Breen