Inspirational Quotes 78

Shortage of comfortable ruts

It’s what’s on the inside that counts, we make our own reality, you'll be stronger on your own and the earth is flat.
He had no home, no car, no job, few friends. (Amanda Burton)

The present is apt to be parochial. (Agatha Christie)

There are some people who will never see you as being good enough. That is their short-coming not yours. Be merciful enough to yourself to cut them out of your life. (Steve Maraboli)

There’s a terrible shortage of comfortable ruts. (Web commenter)

Cherry had never realized before how isolated one could feel in a  big city. (West End People by Peter Wildeblood)

Some people just want a nice life. They want to bring up their kids, have a job – that’s winning for them. (Alastair Campbell, BBC Breakfast)

Religion is full of poetry and magic. (David Baddiel)

My morality? Consequentialist moral philosophy, in which acts are moral or immoral depending on their consequences, for example whether they cause pain or bring happiness. (Richard Dawkins)

As [Barbara Ehrenreich] points out, [positive thinking] must ultimately be founded on the preposterous idea that your state of mind can change the world and overcome the contingencies of life... This is superstition, as is the entire positive thinking industry... More preposterously, there was the supreme expression of positive thinking that was The Secret (2006), a book by Rhonda Byrne. This exposed the superstitious roots of positive thinking by openly saying that there was a “law of attraction”, whereby the universe would materially reward your positive thoughts. (New Statesman)

When a celeb goes to a party “everything you would want from a party – love, sex, work, contacts, drugs and friends – they can find.” (Cosmo Landesman, Starstruck – on his parents' lifelong struggle to be celebs)

"Have you got one wish for the coming year, Sam Smith?" "I’d like a boyfriend."

Everyone must keep in mind that his personal behaviour reflects very much on his parents. (The Talmud gives a useful clue to your parents' odd opinion of your behaviour.)

We’ve spent years trying to harden lines that are actually quite blurred. (Subject on Finding Your Roots with Henry Louis Gates)

What could be more romantic than making long-term plans together? (Advert)

Next time your spouse is getting shouty, why not tell them to calm down? It won’t have occurred to them & they will appreciate the advice! (Sanjeev Kohli ‏@govindajeggy )

It is often said that before you die your life passes before your eyes. It is in fact true. It’s called living. (Terry Pratchett)

Females are placed under a lot of pressure to fit in, and I think that drives us to develop coping mechanisms... Female brains are better than male ones at storing up scripts in social situations.... I would observe people around me, see how they were behaving, and develop a script to get myself through it. (Hannah Belcher, a woman with Asperger’s, New Scientist 2015)

Modern enquiry... falls away into confusion... religiosity (virtually everything to do with consciousness), and cant... (New Scientist 2015)

In the countryside it’s much worse: people see you as a social pariah. You get the lunch slot: people don’t ask you to dinner because it’s all about place settings, and being single just doesn’t work. Besides, they’re scared you’re after their husbands. (Daily Mail)

Books and movies always highlight the big dramatic moments of our lives, but it’s in the stupid meaningless details where grief lives. (@KristenePerron)

Does over-prescription of CBT “as a treatment for distress” reflect “the misplaced assumption that the causes of distress are to be found within the person?" (Peter McKenna and Keith Laws in a Maudsley debate)

The thing that always gets me is the assumption that depression means that something’s automatically wrong with you and that it needs to be “cured” or “treated” or “therapied” until you’re some kind of 24/7 grinning loon, rather than a signal that there’s probably something not right about your situation and what’s happening to you. All the focus seems to be on eliminating the feeling, and not on whether or not the person’s actually got something to be depressed about. (Web)

One might argue that the assumptions of behaviourism are still alive and well within contemporary cognitive approaches. (The Psychologist)

Power relations are a feature of every workplace, particularly those with formal ranks and explicit hierarchies. Holding power means greater freedom to act, and this can have consequences on behaviour such as ignoring societal norms. As an example, one wonderful experiment revealed that powerful people are more likely than others to take more biscuits from a plate, eat with their mouths open and spread crumbs. (BPS Occupational Digest)

"College dropouts [which she is] always end up in either McDonald’s, KFC, or if they’re in America, Taco Bell,” she says. “Unless you’re really really clever, and you’ll still probably end up in Pizza Hut. Do you know what I mean?” (Sam Wollaston in the Guardian, March 2015, quotes a KFC worker)

[Murderesses] tended to be above average in physical attractiveness, which may have helped to engender trust in their victims. (BPS Research Digest)

It’s so weird wearing a suit on the train. I’m suddenly aware of the businessmen giving me a “one of us” nod. (@greg_jenner)

This will bring back into play that old Protestant meaning in the word (economy), overlaid with ideas of delayed gratification, moderation and self-sacrifice being goodly, godly and rewarding in themselves. (Michael Rosen in the New Humanist)

More here, and links to the rest.