Quotes by Journalists - Page 10

The enduring rapture with magic and fable has always struck me as latently childish and somehow sexless (and thus also related to childlessness).
Christopher Hitchens
He seemed to be lying on the bed. He could not see very well. Her youthful, rapacious face, with blackened eyebrows, leaned over him as he sprawled there.“‘How about my present?’ she demanded, half wheedling, half menacing.“Never mind that now. To work! Come here. Not a bad mouth. Come here. Come closer. Ah!“No. No use. Impossible. The will but not the way. The spirit is willing but the flesh is weak. Try again. No. The booze, it must be. See Macbeth. One last try. No, no use. Not this evening, I’m afraid.“All right, Dora, don’t you worry. You’ll get your two quid all right. We aren’t paying by results.“He made a clumsy gesture. ‘Here, give us that bottle. That bottle off the dressing-table.’“Dora brought it. Ah, that’s better. That at least doesn’t fail.
George Orwell
And here lies the essential difference between Stoicism and the modern-day 'cult of optimism.' For the Stoics, the ideal state of mind was tranquility, not the excitable cheer that positive thinkers usually seem to mean when they use the word, 'happiness.' And tranquility was to be achieved not by strenuously chasing after enjoyable experiences, but by cultivating a kind of calm indifference towards one's circumstances.
Oliver Burkeman
Be positive. Stay happy and don't let the negativity of the world get you down.
Germany Kent
As a recent editorial in the Journal of Clinical Oncology put it: "What we must first remember is that the immune system is designed to detect foreign invaders, and avoid out own cells. With few exceptions, the immune system does not appear to recognize cancers within an individual as foreign, because they are actually part of the self.
Barbara Ehrenreich
Don’t settle for living mediocre. Focus on all the positive and embrace it. Ignore the negative and be thankful for every single day.
Germany Kent
We can complain because rose bushes have thorns, or rejoice because thorns have roses.
Alphonse Karr
A ruler must learn to persuade and not to compel... he must lay the best coffee hearth to attract the finest men... a good ruler has to learn his world's language... it's different for every world... the language of the rocks and growing things... the language you don't hear just with your ears... the Mystery of Life... not a problem to solve, but a reality to experience... Understanding must move with the flow of the process.
Frank Herbert
I believe that religion, generally speaking, has been a curse to mankind — that its modest and greatly overestimated services on the ethical side have been more than overcome by the damage it has done to clear and honest thinking.I believe that no discovery of fact, however trivial, can be wholly useless to the race, and that no trumpeting of falsehood, however virtuous in intent, can be anything but vicious.I believe that the evidence for immortality is no better than the evidence of witches, and deserves no more respect.I believe in the complete freedom of thought and speech — alike for the humblest man and the mightiest, and in the utmost freedom of conduct that is consistent with living in organized society.I believe in the capacity of man to conquer his world, and to find out what it is made of, and how it is run.I believe in the reality of progress.I —But the whole thing, after all, may be put very simply. I believe that it is better to tell the truth than to lie. I believe that it is better to be free than to be a slave. And I believe that it is better to know than be ignorant.
H.L. Mencken
I carry out sun rituals on the slopes of high mountains. But I am also taboo for myself, untouchable because forbidden.
Clarice Lispector
It is instead just the grace of a common person turning suddenly real because he is common and human and recoignizable.
Clarice Lispector
Knowing God is like listening to beautiful music. His words have power. He lifts me up & soothes my soul. He makes me dance. He gives me joy.
Germany Kent
I'm more depressed about the realities of the mature bureaucracy and more excited about the ideal that we're fighting for. And the juxtaposition has obvious consequences. Rolf Mowatt-Larrsen
Ron Suskind
It isn't very nice to admit, but domestic violence has its uses. So raw and unleashed, it tears away the veil of civilization that comes between us as much as it makes life possible. A poor substitute for the sort of passion we like to extol perhaps, but real love shares more in common with hatred and rage than it does with geniality or politeness.
Lionel Shriver
Social Media begins with a story - your story.
Germany Kent
Because words have deep meaning, Tweets have power.
Germany Kent
People who develop the habit of thinking of themselves as world citizens are fulfilling the first requirement of sanity in our time.
Norman Cousins
The principle victims of British policies are Unpeople—those whose lives are deemed worthless, expendable in the pursuit of power and commercial gain. They are the modern equivalent of the ‘savages’ of colonial days, who could be mown down by British guns in virtual secrecy, or else in circumstances where the perpetrators were hailed as the upholders of civilisation.
Mark Curtis
Washington likes to threaten the people over whom they exercise power.
Glenn Greenwald
... knowing what not to know was itself indispensable knowledge.
Ian Leslie
Don't give over all of your critical faculties to people in power, no matter how admirable those people may appear to be. Beneath the hero's facade you will find a human being who makes human mistakes. Enormous problems arise when human mistakes are made on the grand scale available to a superhero. And sometimes you run into another problem. It is demonstrable that power structures tend to attract people who want power for the sake of power and that a significant proportion of such people are imbalanced — in a word, insane.
Frank Herbert
The black world was expanding before me, and I could see now that that world was more than a photonegative of that of the people who believe they are white. "White America" is a syndicate arrayed to protect its exclusive power to dominate and control our bodies. Sometimes this power is direct (lynching), and sometimes it is insidious (redlining). But however it appears, the power of domination and exclusion is central to the belief in being white, and without it, "white people" would cease to exist for want of reasons.
Ta-Nehisi Coates
Every exercise of power incorporates a faint, almost imperceptible, element of contempt for those over whom the power is exercised. One can only dominate another human soul if one knows, understands, and with the utmost tact despises the person one is subjugating.
Sándor Márai
As he once wrote of Kipling, his own enduring influence can be measured by a number of terms and phrases—doublethink, thought police, 'Some animals are more equal than others'—that he embedded in our language and in our minds. In Orwell's own mind there was an inextricable connection between language and truth, a conviction that by using plain and unambiguous words one could forbid oneself the comfort of certain falsehoods and delusions. Every time you hear a piece of psychobabble or propaganda—'people's princess,' say, or 'collateral damage,' or 'peace initiative'—it is good to have a well-thumbed collection of his essays nearby. His main enemy in discourse was euphemism, just as his main enemy in practice was the abuse of power, and (more important) the slavish willingness of people to submit to it.
Christopher Hitchens
What frightened me most was, I could no longer believe in my own life as a story. Everyone needs a story, a part to play in order to avoid the realization that life is without significance. How else do any of us survive? It’s what makes life bearable, even interesting. When it becomes neither, people say you’ve lost the plot. Or just lost it.
Amanda Craig
It will no longer be necessary to leave one's own home in order to find work in the surrounding districts, which means spending week after week away from home, for no matter how restless a fellow might be, his own home, if he has a wife he respects and children he loves, has the same satisfying taste as bread, a man's home is not for all hours, but he soon begins to miss it if he does not go back there every day.
José Saramago
Think of all the love poured into him. Think of the tuitions for Montessori and music lessons. Think of the gasoline expended, the treads worn carting him to football games, basketball tournaments, and Little League. Think of the time spent regulating sleepovers. Think of the surprise birthday parties, the daycare, and the reference checks on babysitters. Think of World Book and Childcraft. Think of checks written for family photos. Think of credit cards charged for vacations. Think of soccer balls, science kits, chemistry sets, racetracks, and model trains. Think of all the embraces, all the private jokes, customs, greetings, names, dreams, all the shared knowledge and capacity of a black family injected into that vessel of flesh and bone. And think of how that vessel was taken, shattered on the concrete, and all its holy contents, all that had gone into him, sent flowing back to the earth. Think of your mother, who had no father. And your grandmother, who was abandoned by her father. And your grandfather, who was left behind by his father. And think of how Prince's daughter was now drafted into those solemn ranks and deprived of her birthright — that vessel which was her father, which brimmed with twenty-five years of love and was the investment of her grandparents and was to be her legacy.
Ta-Nehisi Coates
I know you don't want to be me. But I'd hate for you to ever feel like you're in my shadow. You're not and you never will be. You are awesome, and there is some kind of amazing future waiting for you.
Gwenda Bond
Those close to [Patricia Highsmith], particularly her family, often commented on how Highsmith's vision of reality was a warped one. In April 1947, she transcribed into her notebook what was, presumably, a real dialogue between herself and her mother, in which Mary accused her of not facing the world. Highsmith replied that she did indeed view the world 'sideways, but since the world faces reality sideways, sideways is the only way the world can be looked at in true perspective.' The problem, Highsmith said, was that her psychic optics were different to those around her, but if that was the case, her mother replied, then she should equip herself with a pair of new spectacles. Highsmith was not convinced. 'Then I need a new birth,' she concluded.
Andrew Wilson
For me, the sea was a great comfort, Pilar. But it made my children restless. It exists now so we can call and wave from opposite shores.
Cristina García
Modern life seems set up so that we can avoid loneliness at all costs, but maybe it's worthwhile to face it occasionally. The further we push aloneness away, the less are we able to cope with it, and the more terrifying it gets. Some philosophers believe that loneliness is the only true feeling there is. We live orphaned on a tiny rock in the immense vastness of space, with no hint of even the simplest form of life anywhere around us for billions upon billions of miles, alone beyond all imagining. We live locked in our own heads and can never entirely know the experience of another person. Even if we're surrounded by family and friends, we journey into death completely alone.
Michael Finkel
It was hard to know what to make of the brothers' dark infatuation with death. It was strange, wildly anomalous in sun-baked Southern California, where the light is so bright it bleaches the shadows.
Peter Biskind
In Africa, there is a birthrate trap: a higher standard of living will lead to smaller families but smaller families will not lead to a higher standard of living.
Christopher Hitchens
Tell me about your family," I said. And so she did. I listened intently as my mother went through each branch of the tree. Years later, after the funeral, Maria had asked me questions about the family - who was related to whom - and I struggled. I couldn't remember. A big chunk of our history had been buried with my mother. You should never let your past disappear that way.
Mitch Albom
If you don't put anything in place, do not expect miraculous results to appear.
Germany Kent
My CountryI don't have any caps left made back homeNor any shoes that trod your roadsI've worn out your last shirt quite long agoIt was of Sile clothNow you only remain in the whiteness of my hairIntact in my heartNow you only remain in the whiteness of my hairIn the lines of my foreheadMy country-Nazim Hikmet
Fatima Bhutto
...true love is an irrevocable act - you can only give your heart away once - after that, you give as much as you have left ...
John Geddes
The mistake you make, don't you see,is in thinking one can live in a corrupt society without being corrupt oneself. After all, what do you achieve by refusing to make money? You're trying to behave as though one could stand right outside our economic system. But one can't. One's got to change the system, or one changes nothing. One can't put things right in a hole-and-corner way, if you take my meaning.
George Orwell
Why then should money be blamed for all the dirt and crimes it causes? For is love less filthy - love which creates life?
Émile Zola
All the men in Daddy's records sang of love with drastically imbalanced emotion. In the span of three minutes, they begged for it and kicked it to the curb. They turned to anybody, even to God, with a perpetual request: Please send me someone to love. But once they got it, love scrambled them.
Rashod Ollison
And there were the warm spaces in the music I loved the most, openings through which I could enter and lay my burdens down. There, behind the groove and riding on the melody, I was complete and free.
Rashod Ollison
When I was your age, I would go to plays all the time, just sit in the darkness and try to take it all in inside me. Contain everything in some corner of my heart so that when I had my shot, it could all come pouring out - all the lights and moments and colour.
Brenna Ehrlich
You feel the same hum at a Cohen concert that you do at a church or a synagogue, a feeling that emanates from the realization that the words and tunes you're about to hear represent the best efforts we humans can make to capture the mysteries that surround us, and that by listening and closing your eyes and singing along, you, too can somehow transcend.
Liel Leibovitz
Perhaps no line of Cohen’s better captures the essence of his vision. He is telling his listeners what prophetically inclined rabbis have been telling theirs for thousands of years, namely that the world is a place of suffering, that no celestial cataclysm could ever change that, but that there are things here on this earth - art, love, friendship, kindness, music, sex - that have the power to redeem us.
Liel Leibovitz
..moments of transport, and of comfort, and of a bracing vastness of possibility. That was all there for me sometimes when I plunged my mind into the Bible’s puzzles; and it was always there in the music of church. I wouldn’t have said it this way then. But I would feel all the cells in my body as I sang hymns that connected my little life with the grandeur of the cosmos, the Christian drama across space and time. This was my earliest experience of breath and body, mind and spirit soaring together, alive to both mystery and reality, in kinship with others both familiar and unknown. That’s one way I’d define the feeling of faith now.
Krista Tippett
After we hung up, I took the joint. If I was going to die here, in the creepy basement out of a horror movie, in an epic snowstorm that was like an icy prison, with a wife unwilling to pretend-like Bananarama to maybe save her husband's life, I should at least go out with a smile on my face.
Eric Spitznagel
I'm fairly tired of hipsters. They have terrible taste in music. These kids come in and say, 'You don't have anything that was released this year?' That makes me crazy. We don't need anything from this year! (Bob Diener, owner of Record Swap in Champaign, IL)
Eric Spitznagel
I don't know how you hear music. I imagine that if you like music at all then it has, in your head, some kind of third dimension to it, a dimension suggesting space as well as surface, depth of field as well as texture.Speaking for myself, I used to hear "buildings"... three-dimensional forms of architectural substance and tension. I did not "see" these buildings in the classic synaesthetic way so much as sense them. These forms had "floors", "walls", "roofs", "windows", "cellars". They expressed volume. Music to me has always been a handsome three-dimensional container, a vessel, as real in its way as a Scout hut or a cathedral or a ship, with an inside and an outside and subdivided internal spaces.I'm absolutely certain that this "architecture" had everything to do with why music has always exerted such a hold over me. I think music was the structure in which I learned to contain and then examine emotion.
Nick Coleman
Jobs had begun to drop acid by then, and he turned Brennan on to it as well, in a wheat field just outside Sunnyvale. "It was great," he recalled. "I had been listening to a lot of Bach. All of a sudden the whole field was playing Bach. It was the most wonderful feeling of my life up to that point. I felt like the conductor of this symphony with Bach coming through the wheat.
Walter Isaacson
She was still not at ease with the idea that she was now important enough to have people as accessories. Nor was she comfortable with the idea of these people as gatekeepers with access to the details of their personal lives. Whenever she felt herself shrinking under the indifferent glare of the staff that surrounded her, as she did in this instance, she straightened her back and lifted her chin in the way that Chiedza, her trusted advisor-friend, had instructed her to do.
Panashe Chigumadzi
You know, Tsitsi, you are so quick to point out that you are not a prostitute. I just want to laugh because you are just falling into rank. You all should spare us your ‘morality’ that lauds ‘women’ over the supposedly lesser ‘whores’ and ‘girls’. That’s how society sees us. That’s how you see us. You want it to be that we are like coal, only to be loved in the dark and tossed like ashes come morning.
Panashe Chigumadzi
You can’t fight an evil disease with sweet medicine,’ says the ng’anga.
Panashe Chigumadzi
When, some months later, Zoltan emailed me about his decision to run for president, I immediately called him. The first thing I asked was what his wife thought of the plan.“Well, in a way,” he said, “it was Lisa who gave me the idea. Remember how I said she wanted me to do something concrete, get some kind of a proper job?”“I do,” I said. “Although I’m guessing running for president on the immortality platform was not what she had in mind.”“That’s correct,” he confirmed. “It took a little while for her to come around to the idea.”“How did you break it to her?”“I left a note on the refrigerator,” he said, “and went out for a couple hours.
Mark O'Connell
As married people, we dwell on a spectrum between happy and unhappy, in love and out of love, and we move back and forth on that line decade by decade, year by year, week by week, even hour by hour.
Ada Calhoun
My head ached. I was thinking of the pain, and wondering how it was possible for physical agony to be so intense. I had never imagined that such a torture could be endured. Yet here was I, both conscious and able to think clearly. And not only to think, but to observe the process and make calculations about it. The steel circle round my skull was closing in with faint cracking noises. How much farther could it shrink? I counted the cracking sounds. Since I took the triple dose of pain-killer, there had been two more. …I took out my watch and laid it on the table.“Give me morphia,” I said in a calm, hostile, icy tone.“You mustn’t take morphia! You know perfectly well. The very idea! And what are you doing with that watch?”“You will give me morphia within three minutes.”They looked me uneasily up and down. No one moved. Three minutes went by. Then ten more. I slipped the watch calmly into my pocket and rose unsteadily to my feet.“Then take me to the Fiakker Bar. They say it’s a good show, and to-night I want to enjoy myself.”The others jumped up with a feeling of relief.I never confessed the secret to anyone, either then or afterwards. I had made up my mind at the end of those three minutes — for the first and last time in my life — that if my headache had not stopped within the next ten I should throw myself under the nearest tram.It never came out whether I should have kept to my resolve, for the pain left with the suddenness of lighting.
Frigyes Karinthy
Technology is a means, not an end, no matter how brilliant it appears. How we use digital technology, exploit it and benefit from it depends on old-fashioned political concepts of how we treat each other: how we approach class, race, gender and war and peace. Nothing has changed in that regard. At present, we are ruled by an extreme version of capitalism called 'neoliberalism'. Technology in the service of any extremism has a catastrophic history.
JohnPilger
Funny how we do not realize the true value and legacy of a living icon until they suddenly pass away. Truth is, there are many living legends among us, we just do not stop and take time to notice their worth until it's too late.
Germany Kent
If we all work together there is no telling how we can change the world through the impact of promoting positivity online.
Germany Kent
Gratitude is one of the most powerful human emotions. Once expressed, it changes attitude, brightens outlook, and broadens our perspective.
Germany Kent
Living in peace has transformative power!
Germany Kent