Take A Few Swings Quotes

Cam let go of Evie and approached Sebastian as the room emptied. "You fight like a gentleman, my lord," he commented.
Sebastian gave him a sardonic glance. "Why doesn't that sound like a compliment?"
Sliding his hands into his pockets, Cam observed mildly, "You do well enough against a pair of drunken sots - "
"There were three to start with," Sebastian growled.
"Three drunken sots, then. But the next time you may not be so fortunate."
"The next time? If you think I'm going to make a habit of this - "
"Jenner did," Cam countered softly. "Egan did. Nearly every night there is some to-do in the alley, the stable yard, or the card rooms, after the guests have had hours of stimulation from gaming, spirits, and women. We all take turns dealing with it. And unless you care to get the stuffing knocked out of you on a weekly basis, you'll need to learn a few tricks to put down a fight quickly. It causes less damage to you and the patrons, and keeps the police away."
"If you're referring to the kind of tactics used in rookery brawls, and quarrels over back-alley bobtails - "
"You're not going for a half hour of light exercise at the pugilistic club," Cam said acidly.
Sebastian opened his mouth to argue, but as he saw Evie drawing closer something changed in his face. It was a response to the anxiety that she couldn't manage to hide. For some reason her concern gently undermined his hostility, and softened him. Looking from one to t ~ Lisa Kleypas

If your temper is aroused and you tell 'em a thing or two, you will have a fine time unloading your feelings. But what about the other fellow? Will he share your pleasure? Will your belligerent tones, your hostile attitude, make it easy for him to agree with you? "If you come at me with your fists doubled," said Wood row Wilson, "I think I can promise you that mine will double as fast as yours; but if you come to me and say, 'Let us sit down and take counsel together, and, if we differ from one another, understand why it is that we differ from one another, just what the points at issue are,' we will presently find that we are not so far apart after all, that the points on which we differ are few and the points on which we agree are many, and that if we only have the patience and the candor and the desire to get together, we will get together. ~ Dale Carnegie

You don't cheat, steal, or lie. You don't misuse animals or take advantage of those weaker than you. You don't spoil for a fight - which is a rule come to be in the last few years - but you don't walk away from one. You stand for your friends and for your round in the pub. You never touch a woman who belongs to another, and you don't give your word unless you intend to keep it. ~ Nora Roberts

She knew enough to take a few steps back from the relationship when things got particularly combustive. ~ Shelly Branch

About five miles back I had a brush with the CHP. Not stopped or pulled over: nothing routine. I always drive properly. A bit fast, perhaps, but always with consummate skill and a natural feel for the road that even cops recognize. No cop was ever born who isn't a sucker for a finely-executed hi-speed Controlled Drift all the way around one of those cloverleaf freeway interchanges.

Few people understand the psychology of dealing with a highway traffic cop. Your normal speeder will panic and immediately pull over to the side when he sees the big red light behind him ... and then he will start apologizing, begging for mercy.

This is wrong. It arouses contempt in the cop-heart. The thing to do – when you're running along about 100 or so and you suddenly find a red-flashing CHP-tracker on your tail – what you want to do then is accelerate. Never pull over with the first siren-howl. Mash it down and make the bastard chase you at speeds up to 120 all the way to the next exit. He will follow. But he won't know what to make of your blinker-signal that says you're about to turn right.

This is to let him know you're looking for a proper place to pull off and talk ... keep signaling and hope for an off-ramp, one of those uphill side-loops with a sign saying "Max Speed 25" ... and the trick, at this point, is to suddenly leave the freeway and take him into the chute at no less than 100 miles an hour.

He will lock his brakes about the same time ~ Hunter S. Thompson

What, then, remains to be done by those who live now, devoted body and soul to our ideal of visible (and invisible) perfection on all planes? On a worldwide scale, or even national, absolutely nothing. It is too late. The "twenty-fifth hour" has sounded for too long a time.

On the individual scale, or at least "restricted," there remains to preserve, insofar as it is still possible, the beauty of the world: human, animal, vegetable, inanimate; all beauty; to obstinately and efficiently preserve élite minorities; dedicatedly to defend them at all costs - all noble minorities, whether they be those of the Aryans of Europe, Asia, or America, conscious of the excellence of their common race; or of those splendid large felines threatened by extinction; or of those noble trees threatened by the atrocity of being uprooted by bulldozers in order to install, on their nourishing soil, invading multitudes of mammals with two legs, less beautiful and less innocent than they. It remains to take care and resist; and to aid all beautiful minorities attacked by the agents of chaos; to resist, even if that should delay only a few decades the disappearance of the last aristocrats among men, animals, or trees. There is nothing else that one can do, if not, perhaps, to curse in one's heart, day and night, today's humanity (apart from very rare exceptions), and to work with all one's efforts for its destruction. ~ Savitri Devi

I tried to take a selfie or ten. Lame, maybe, but I hadn't posted to IG in a few days now and since I actually make money from my account for posting things like my outfits, then it's something I can't really neglect, demons or not. "What are you doing?" Jay asks, leaning across the roof of the car and watching me curiously. I chuck the duffel bag a few feet from me to get it out of the shot and try another angle, holding the iPhone far above my head. A lone scraggly-haired man in his pajamas exits his room, heading to the vending machine. He looks at me like I have a screw loose. Whatever. He probably takes dick pics so he should know all about getting the right angle. ~ Karina Halle

Things happened so casually. There was no added friction to the running of time, no solemnity…. Life kept going as it always did…as if what had happened was nothing at all. But it wasn't to me. Suddenly, I was not at home in any place anymore. They all became strangers - faceless, emotionless people I could not understand or relate to. And I slowly distanced myself from their world…and, since then, I haven't really been there for most of it…. When they lowered their coffins into the ground, I found myself in a horror movie with no one to save me. I understood that I would not see them again. But oddly, they appear in my mind all the time. I see their smile; I can hear their laughter. It makes me smile back…I forget they are gone…and my step quickens to take me home to them. For a few seconds, I believe they are waiting for me as if no time has passed at all…. ~ Sheila Matharu

Jack put his hands on his hips, surveying the scene with a satisfied nod. "That turned out much better than I'd hoped."
"Please,let's leave!"
"What's your hurry? Let's take a moment to bask in the satisfaction of a job well done."
"I didn't want to do that!"
"No?" He cocked his head and raised his eyebrows. "I thought you hated the fey."
"I do,but that doesn't mean I want to run around the Faerie Realms lighting everything on fire!"
"What's the point in hating something if you aren't proactive?" He put his arm around my shoulders, steering me to look at the inferno with him. "You can't tell me that's not satisfying, not after what you saw.Faeries care about very few things,but they're quite fond of their little trinkets. That boat was a particular favorite of hers,not to mention the entire lake. All the centuries she spent crafting this landscape,then poof! One excellently thrown firebomb, and you've made her feel anger and pain more deeply than she's probably ever known. And far less than she deserves to know. ~ Kiersten White

The prospect of a world that contains neither humans nor Z's is not so terrifying. Nature will take its world back. Animals will frolic and fight. There will be no lord of the manor, which is not such a bad thing, because it seems to me that people have done a pretty poor job of guiding the biosphere for the last few thousand years. ~ John Green

The clock is ticking. I should be leaving right now. But what I want to do is take Cicely in my arms and press her up against me hard enough to make her not care that I'm messing up her lipstick. I want to pick her up and carry her back through that doorway. We're only a few strides from the couch, only one rip away from ruining that expensive fabric, the dress she must have bought to wear for him. ~ Laura Bradley Rede

During the twentieth century, neuroscientists and psychologists also came to more fully appreciate the astounding complexity of the human brain. Inside our skulls, they discovered, are some 100 billion neurons, which take many different shapes and range in length from a few tenths of a millimeter to a few feet.4 A single neuron typically has many dendrites (though only one axon), and dendrites and axons can have a multitude of branches and synaptic terminals. The average neuron makes about a thousand synaptic connections, and some neurons can make a hundred times that number. ~ Nicholas Carr

In life you are going to make mistakes, you're going to fall down, but it's the getting up that counts. Just like in baseball: you'll get a few hits, but most likely, you'll strike out more than you'll get on base. But don't quit. Find your focus, relax, take a deep breath and give it a good swing ~ Dave Pelzer

Don't force yourself to write. Some people can write a novel in a few months, whereas for others it can take over a year. I'm lucky to be one of the former - but, even so, if I'm not in the mood to write, I won't. I'll go off, do something else and come back to it when I'm ready. ~ Cecelia Ahern

Turning to me, he said, Take away your hand; it has deceived you. The road of the Tradition is not for the chosen few. It is everyone's road. And the power that you think you have is worthless, because it is a power that is shared by all. You should have refused your sword. If you had done so, it would have been given to you, because you would have shown that your heart was pure. But just as I feared, at the supreme moment you stumbled and fell. Because of your avidity, you will now have to seek again for your sword. And because of your pride, you will have to seek it among simple people. Because of your fascination with miracles, you will have to struggle to recapture what was about to be given to you so generously. ~ Paulo Coelho

While some select sobering situations may be unlaughable, there are few circumstances that humor, subtle or candid, can't improve. Afterall, remembering not to take ourselves or others too seriously can put a lot of things into perspective. Laughter is healing. Laughter creates bonds and forges enduring friendships. A healthy sense of humor can quell almost any overwhelming anxiety, and can quench the fires of fury and fear unlike anything else when appropriate. Even more so when not.
Connie Kerbs ~ Connie Kerbs

When I knew I was going to be able to write full time, I wondered, "What's going to happen to the relationships within my family?" Are they going to change? Is it going to be the kind of deal where you say, "I can't take this! Get me out of here! I can't stand these screaming kids!" The way it turned out was, I was able to change the diapers okay, after I stuck the pin through my fingers a few times. I had a dawning realization that children are not particularly hard to deal with. ~ Stephen King

When you are doing portraits, you have that intimacy with someone for a few minutes. For a really good portrait, you don't take the portrait - it's given. ~ Giles Duley

In regard to propaganda the early advocates of universal literacy and a free press envisaged only two possibilities: the propaganda might be true, or the propaganda might be false. They did not foresee what in fact has happened, above all in our Western capitalist democracies - the development of a vast mass communications industry, concerned in the main neither with the true nor the false, but with the unreal, the more or less totally irrelevant. In a word, they failed to take into account man's almost infinite appetite for distractions.
In the past most people never got a chance of fully satisfying this appetite. They might long for distractions, but the distractions were not provided. Christmas came but once a year, feasts were "solemn and rare," there were few readers and very little to read, and the nearest approach to a neighborhood movie theater was the parish church, where the performances though frequent, were somewhat monotonous. For conditions even remotely comparable to those now prevailing we must return to imperial Rome, where the populace was kept in good humor by frequent, gratuitous doses of many kinds of entertainment - from poetical dramas to gladiatorial fights, from recitations of Virgil to all-out boxing, from concerts to military reviews and public executions. But even in Rome there was nothing like the non-stop distractions now provided by newspapers and magazines, by radio, television and the cinema. In "Brave New World" non-stop distractions of ~ Aldous Huxley

People are irrational. What I want to do is let's take the irrational aspects out of it and let's just break this down. And you and I, let's go and see if we can't master this thing, a few steps at a time without giving up your day job, without having to give up your whole life. ~ Tony Robbins

He didn't take her out of the city," she'd said, cheeks glowing with color for the first time since she'd emerged from her battle with parem . "It's obvious he's keeping her there."
But Kaz had simply gazed into the middle distance with that odd look on his face and said, "Too obvious."
"Kaz - "
"How would you like a hundred kruge ?"
"What's the catch?"
"Exactly. Van Eck's making it too easy. He's treating us like marks. But he isn't Barrel born, and we aren't a bunch of dumb culls ready to jump at the first shiny lure he flashes. Van Eck wants us to think she's on that island. Maybe she is. But he'll have plenty of firepower waiting for us too, maybe even a few Grisha using parem ."
"Always hit where the mark isn't looking," Wylan had murmured.
"Sweet Ghezen," said Jesper. "You've been thoroughly corrupted. ~ Leigh Bardugo

Uncle Vernon rounded on Harry. "And you?"
"I'll be in my bedroom, making no noise and pretending I'm not there," said Harry tonelessly.
"Exactly," said Uncle Vernon nastily. At eight-fifteen - "
"I'll announce dinner," said Aunt Petunia.
"And, Dudley, you'll say - "
"May I take you through to the dining room, Mrs. Mason?" said Dudley.
"And you?" said Uncle Vernon viciously to Harry.
"I'll be in my room, making no noise and pretending I'm not there," said Harry dully.
"Precisely. Now, we should aim to get in a few good compliments at dinner.
"How about - 'We had to write an essay about our hero at school, Mr. Mason, and I wrote about you.'"
This was too much for both Aunt Petunia and Harry. Aunt Petunia burst into tears while Harry ducked under the table so they wouldn't see him laughing.
"And you, boy?"
Harry fought to keep his face straight as he emerged. "I'll be in my room, making no noise and pretending I'm not there," he said. ~ J.K. Rowling

I decided it would be better to be a bird. Birds are very busy at one period each year caring for babies, but this lasts only a few weeks with many of them, and then their babies are grown and gone. Best of all, they leave their houses forever and take to camping for the rest of the year. No wonder they are happy. ~ Margaret Morse Nice

I don't think Dave ever thought of himself as an efficiency expert, but every job he ever held, he simplified. His successor always had less work to do than his predecessor. That his successor usually reorganized the job again to take three times as much work, and as many subordinates, says little about Dave's oddity, other than by contrast. Some people are ants by nature, they have to work. Even when it's useless. Few people have a talent for "constructive laziness." And so ends the tale about the man who was too lazy to fail. Let's leave him there, in his hammock under the shade trees. So far as I know, he is still there. ~ Robert A. Heinlein

My scripts are always heavily noted. If I can take a director to one side and say, "Do you mind if we try this?," a few days before, that's usually a better way of doing it then on the day. ~ Nick Frost

This building on its east façade has the words 'The house of the Lord.' The first time I walked just a few feet into the temple here, I had the feeling that I had been here before. In an instant, the thought came to me that what I recognized was a sense of peace beyond anything I had felt before in this life, but that I seemed to recognize and almost remember. We knew our Heavenly Father and His Beloved Son before we came into this life. We felt peace with them then and we long to be with them again, with our families and those we love. Dedicated temples are sacred places where the risen Savior may come. In them we can feel the peace of our associations with Him in the life before. In them we can make the covenants which help us to come unto Him in this life and which will permit Him, if we keep our promises to Him, to take us home to the Father, with our families, in the world to come. ~ Henry B. Eyring

Adam and Eve lived in a perfect world. Their continued presence in the Garden was contingent on the keeping of only a few commandments, not 613 commandments. Under the best conditions this world has ever seen, Adam and Eve break one of the three laws and die in exile. It is not at all clear how the telling of the story of Adam and Eve's failure to keep only a few commandments in a perfect world is supposed to encourage Israel to keep 613 commandments in a fallen world. Actually, it offers no encouragement, at all. And if we take the principle of ma'asei avot' siman l'banim seriously, Adam's story never was intended to warn Israel from following in Adam's footsteps (i.e., a warning to keep the Law). Rather, Adam's story was intended to be a prophecy that Israel would follow in Adam's footsteps. "Israel, you will be just like Adam. ~ Seth D. Postell

Take a few minutes of every day to fantasize about how you would wander, travel, or explore if you could. ~ Wayne Dyer

Once Seung Sahn Soen-sa and a student of his attended a talk at a Zen center in California. The Dharma teacher spoke about Bodhidharma. After the talk, someone asked him "What's the difference between Bodhidharma's sitting in Sorim for nine years and your sitting here now?"
The Dharma teacher said, "About five thousand miles."
The questioner said, "Is that all?"
The Dharma teacher said, "Give or take a few miles."
Later on, Soen-sa asked his student, "What do you think of these answers?"
"Not bad, not good. But the dog runs after the bone."
"How would you answer?"
"I'd say, 'Why do you make a difference?' "
Soen-sa said, "Not bad. Now you ask me."
"What's the difference between Bodhidharma's sitting in Sorim for nine years and your sitting here now?"
"Don't you know?"
"I'm listening."
"Bodhidharma sat in Sorim for nine years. I am sitting here now."
The student smiled. ~ Seung Sahn

Vargo climbed in, twisted and turned a few times to get comfortable on the pillow, then pulled the lid down and latched it.
As the eye of narrative drew back from the coffin on its stand, two things happened. One happened comparatively slowly, and this was Vargo's realization that he never recalled the coffin having a pillow before.
The other was Greebo deciding that he was as mad as hell and wasn't going to take it any more. He'd been shaken around in the wheely thing and then sat on by Nanny, and he was angry about that because he knew, in a dim, animal way, that scratching Nanny might be the single most stupid thing he could do in the whole world, since no one else was prepared to feed him. This hadn't helped his temper.
Then he'd encountered a dog, which had tried to lick him. He'd scratched and bitten it a few times, but this had had no effect apart from encouraging it to try to be more friendly.
He'd finally found a comfy resting place and had curled up into a ball, and now someone was using him as a cushion-
There wasn't a great deal of noise. The coffin rocked a few times, and then pivoted around. ~ Terry Pratchett

I shuffled my weight from foot to foot, trying to relieve some of the soreness and wondering how long it would take Reth to figure out where I was and get into Raquel's room.
The door slid open in reply.
Jack and I darted in, letting out twin sighs of relief. Lend, of course, immediately dropped to the floor. Naked, still. I doubted Raquel had anything in his size.
"He was rather upset waking up in the Faerie Paths with me," Reth said.
"I can't imagine." I quickly scanned Raquel's austere living room area. "There, help me get him into that closet."
Jack grabbed an arm and we dragged my poor boyfriend across the floor and shoved him into the tiny coat closet next to Raquel's vacuum. I added watching Lend walk to the things I missed most about him.
We closed the door and after a few moments a loud thunk sounded. "What the - Where am I? Evie?"
"Right here," I said, tapping on the door. "You're in a closet in Raquel's unit."
"Why?"
"Because I'm going to search the rest of her place and I didn't want you to risk brain damage by any more unconscious falls."
He muttered something unintelligible but distinctly grouchy and I turned, quickly scanning the room. ~ Kiersten White

There's always the question of time. Does time at 10:00 mean 10:00 sharp? Or does it mean give or take a few minutes? And a few minutes, is that plus or minus two minutes? Or plus or minus ten, or maybe a half an hour each way? ~ Michael Emerson

There is so much I want to say to you, but it would take a lifetime to say it all. I wish I had a lifetime to be with you. All these centuries and yet it all comes down to this, a few moments beneath a dying sun. - Parvati ~ Sarwat Chadda

"Having it all" is the phrase of a culture that, as Adam Phillips implies in 'Missing Out', is tyranized by the idea of its own potential. A few generations ago, most people didn't wake up in the morning and fret about whether or not they were living their lives to the fullest. Freedom has always been built into the American experiment, of course, but the freedom to take off and go rock-climbing for the afternoon, or to study engineering, or even to sneak in ten minutes for ourselves in the morning to read the paper- these kinds of freedoms were not, until very recently, built into our private universes of anticipation. It's important to remember that. ~ Jennifer Senior

Obviously, you can't control everything, but you are obliged to take care of the few things you can. I'm an optimist, basically, who acts like a pessimist. On principle. Just in case. ~ Russell Banks

Since very few things in life are worth getting into silly arguments over, I virtually don't respond at all when someone tries to persuade me otherwise. I simply take the tangent by making people smarter--it is my way to simply "bow and take my leave" instead of stooping to argue, with someone of lower intellect, lesser emotional maturity or simply lower class. It is a reasonable solution, their demeanour changes instantly. ~ Efrat Cybulkiewicz

We climbed this hill. Each step up we could see farther, so of course we kept going. Now we're at the top. Science has been at the top for a few centuries now. And we look out across the plain and we see this other tribe dancing around above the clouds, even higher than we are. Maybe it's a mirage, maybe it's a trick. Or maybe they just climbed a higher peak we can't see because the clouds are blocking the view. So we head off to find out - but every step takes us downhill. No matter what direction we head, we can't move off our peak without losing our vantage point. So we climb back up again. We're trapped on a local maximum. But what if there is a higher peak out there, way across the plain? The only way to get there is to bite the bullet, come down off our foothill and trudge along the riverbed until we finally start going uphill again. And it's only then you realize: Hey, this mountain reaches way higher than that foothill we were on before, and we can see so much better from up here. But you can't get there unless you leave behind all the tools that made you so successful in the first place. You have to take that first step downhill. ~ Peter Watts

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The Way of the Superior Man Quotes
The Way of the Superior Man by David Deida
The Way of the Superior Man: A Spiritual Guide to...
by David Deida
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Austerity means to eliminate the comforts and cushions in your life that you have learned to snuggle into and lose wakefulness. Take away anything that dulls your edge. No newspapers or magazines. No TV. No candy, cookies, or sweets. No sex. No cuddling. No reading of anything at all while you eat or sit on the toilet. Reduce working time to a necessary minimum. No movies. No conversation that isn't about truth, love, or the divine.

If you take on these disciplines for a few weeks, as well as any other disciplines that may particularly cut through your unique habits of dullness, then your life will be stripped of routine distraction. All that will be left is the edge you have been avoiding by means of your daily routine. You will have to face the basic discomfort and dissatisfaction that is the hidden texture of your life. You will be alive with the challenge of living your truth, rather than hiding form it.

Unadorned suffering is the bedmate of masculine growth. Only by staying intimate with your personal suffering can you feel through it to its source. By putting all your attention into work, TV, sex, and reading, your suffering remains unpenetrated, and the source remains hidden. Your life becomes structured e ~ David Deida

I couldn't take my eyes off the little dark girl and the way, like a queen, she walked around and was even reduced by the sullen bartender to menial tasks such as bringing us drinks and sweeping the back. Of all the girls in there she needed the money most; maybe her mother had come to get money from her for her little infant/ sisters and brothers. It never, never occurred to me just to approach her and give her some money. I have a feeling she would have taken it with a degree of scorn, and scorn from the likes of her made me flinch. In my madness I was actually in love with her for the few hours it all lasted; it was the same unmistakable ache and stab across the mind, the same sighs, the same pain, and above all the same reluctance and fear to approach. Strange that Neal and Frank also failed to approach her; her unimpeachable dignity was the thing that made her poor in a wild old whorehouse, and think of that. At one point I saw Neal leaning like a statue toward her, ready to fly, and befuddlement cross his face as she glanced coolly and imperiously his way and he stopped rubbing his belly and gaped and finally bowed his head. For she was the queen. ~ Jack Kerouac

I transitioned to being a vegan slowly. I took out beef and chicken first and did research on alternative forms of protein. Then after a few months, I gave up something else but added in new things. You need to bring in new food when you take away the old food you are giving up. Learn about what foods you should be eating. ~ Kim Barnouin

By his own admission, Tom is nothing like his brother. He has neither the fierce ambition nor the compulsion for risk taking. ... Will relied on aggression to anchor the world while Tom passively accepted whatever the world would give or take away. Consequently Tom won no awards, achieved no fame, ... He drifted, bending to daily pressures, never protesting when he was deprived of what he should have rightfully claimed as his own. In his sad trip downstream, Tom dulled the pain with alcohol and a few joints a day - what he called his 'friendly haze'. ~ Mark Z. Danielewski

Elizabeth ran her finger along the windowsill, gathering dust. The view was almost exactly the same as from her own bedroom, only a few degrees shifted. She could still see the Rosens' place, with its red door and folding shutters, and the Martinez house, with its porch swing and the dog bowl. She'd heard once that what made you a real New Yorker was when you could remember back three laters -- the place on the corner that had been a bakery and then a barbershop before it was a cell-phone store, or the restaurant that had been Italian, then Mexican, then Cuban. The city was a palimpsest, a Mod Podged pileup or old signage and other people's failures. Newcomers saw only what was in front of them, but people who had been there long enough were always looking at two or three other places simultaneously. The IRT, Canal Jeans, the Limelight. So much of the city she'd fallen in love with was gone, but then again, that's how it worked. It was your job to remember. At least the bridges were still there. Some things were too heavy to take down. ~ Emma Straub

Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John are a bunch of practical jokers who meet somewhere and decide to have a contest. They invent a character, agree on a few basic facts, and then each one's free to take it and run with it. At the end, they'll see who's done the best job. The four stories are picked up by some friends who act as critics: Matthew is fairly realistic, but insists on that Messiah business too much: Mark isn't bad, just a little sloppy: Luke is elegant, no denying that; and John takes the philosophy a little too far. Actually, though, the books have an appeal, they circulate, and when the four realize what's happening, it's too late, Paul has already met Jesus on the road to Damascus, Pliny begins his investigation ordered by the worried emperor, and a legion of apocryphal writers pretends also to know plenty ... It all goes to Peter's head; he takes himself seriously. John threatens to tell the truth, Peter and Paul have him chained up on the island of Patmos. ~ Umberto Eco

As long as we try to project from the relative and conditioned to the absolute and unconditioned, we shall keep the pendulum swinging between dogmatism and skepticism. The only way to stop this increasingly tiresome pendulum swing is to change our conception of what philosophy is good for. But that is not something which will be accomplished by a few neat arguments. It will be accomplished, if it ever is, by a long, slow process of cultural change - that is to say, of change in common sense, changes in the intuitions available for being pumped up by philosophical arguments. ~ Richard Rorty

Centuries of navel-gazing. Millennia of masturbation. Plato to Descartes to Dawkins to Rhanda. Souls and zombie agents and qualia. Kolmogorov complexity. Consciousness as Divine Spark. Consciousness as electromagnetic field. Consciousness as functional cluster.

I explored it all.

Wegner thought it was an executive summary. Penrose heard it in the singing of caged electrons. Nirretranders said it was a fraud; Kazim called it leakage from a parallel universe. Metzinger wouldn't even admit it existed. The AIs claimed to have worked it out, then announced they couldn't explain it to us. Gödel was right after all: no system can fully understand itself.

Not even the synthesists had been able to rotate it down. The load-bearing beams just couldn't take the strain.

All of them, I began to realize, had missed the point. All those theories, all those drugdreams and experiments and models trying to prove what consciousness was: none to explain what it was good for. None needed: obviously, consciousness makes us what we are. It lets us see the beauty and the ugliness. It elevates us into the exalted realm of the spiritual. Oh, a few outsiders - Dawkins, Keogh, the occasional writer of hackwork fiction who barely achieved obscurity - wondered briefly at the why of it: why not soft computers, and no more? Why should nonsentient systems be inherently inferior? But they never really raised their voices above the crowd. The value of what we are was ~ Peter Watts

You said that you would've taken back that day if you were given a chance. But I ask you why? All things happen for a reason, right? We don't understand the details of our lives because we're so busy living day to day. We need to take a few steps back and take the whole picture in. ~ Amy Astorga

If anyone attempted to rule the world by the gospel and to abolish all temporal law and sword on the plea that all are baptized and Christian, and that, according to the gospel, there shall be among them no law or sword - or need for either - pray tell me, friend, what would he be doing? He would be loosing the ropes and chains of the savage wild beasts and letting them bite and mangle everyone, meanwhile insisting that they were harmless, tame, and gentle creatures; but I would have the proof in my wounds. Just so would the wicked under the name of Christian abuse evangelical freedom, carry on their rascality, and insist that they were Christians subject neither to law nor sword, as some are already raving and ranting.

To such a one we must say: Certainly it is true that Christians, so far as they themselves are concerned, are subject neither to law nor sword, and have need of neither. But take heed and first fill the world with real Christians before you attempt to rule it in a Christian and evangelical manner. This you will never accomplish; for the world and the masses are and always will be unchristian, even if they are all baptized and Christian in name. Christians are few and far between (as the saying is). Therefore, it is out of the question that there should be a common Christian government over the whole world, or indeed over a single country or any considerable body of people, for the wicked always outnumber the good. Hence, a man who would venture to g ~ Martin Luther

Roden wasn't convinced. "How big of a fuss will this require?"
[Jaron] grinned. "Catastrophic levels of bad behavior Trust me, it'll be fun."
"You have a sick idea of fun." Roden's cool expression seemed less than enthusiastic. "When we do this, will they hurt us?"
That made me sigh. "You're the captain of my guard, aren't you? Surely you can take a few hits by now. Besides, the pain will be forgotten once the ropes go around our necks"
"I don't want a rope going around my neck, Jaron! That's the part you need to figure out. ~ Jennifer A. Nielsen

Men did care enough to struggle with our demands. And some cared enough to convert to feminist thinking and to change. But only a very, very few loved us – loved us all the way. And that meant respecting our sexual rights. To this day I believe that feminist debate about love and sexuality ended precisely because straight women did not want to face the reality that it was highly unlikely in patriarchal society that a majority of men would wholeheartedly embrace women's right to say no in the bedroom. Since the vast majority of heterosexual women, even those involved in radical feminist movement, were not willing to say no when they did not want to perform sexually for the fear of upsetting or alienating their mate, no significant group of men ever had to rise to the occasion. While it became more acceptable to say no now and then, it was not acceptable to say no for any significant amount of time. An individual woman in a primary relationship with a man could not say no, because she feared there was always another woman in the background who could take her place, a woman who would never say no. ~ Bell Hooks