Inspirational Quotes 83

It's perfectly fine to be single – but you can't become leader of the Labour Party. And you can't go to the cinema when anyone might see you.

Liz Kendall has little hope of leading Labour when she doesn’t have a boyfriend, let alone any media-friendly kids... Can we imagine a single woman running the country? (Janice Turner, Times 2015)

She’s 28 – why isn’t she married? (Ruth Rendell, Wolf to the Slaughter)

If people have got kids and no partners all they worry about is how to put food on the table. (Woman on BBC Breakfast)

Participants enjoyed a solo visit to an art gallery much more than they expected, even though the building’s glass walls meant they could be seen on their lonesome from the street... For participants contemplating a cinema visit on their own, Sunday was preferable, at least partly because they felt they would be seen by fewer people on the quieter night. (BPS Digest)

People are not going to resign just because some dinosaurs believe they can stop the meteorite striking the earth by wittering on about lavatories. (Garrick member re the vote to admit women, Guardian July 2015)

I am never quite sure of the etiquette when someone makes a point and when asked for evidence says “You find it!”. (JP)

Smile at a party and people are more likely to remember seeing your face there. (BPS Research Digest)

When “openness to new experiences” goes dreadfully wrong. (@StuartJRitchie)

Freedom of speech is not freedom to intimidate, bully, or persecute. Those shrieking loudest about free speech are usually those abusing it. (@MsJackMonroe)

And maybe some of [them] were just looking for somewhere to place their anger at their problems, their sense of powerlessness, and their discomfort at social change. They found a scapegoat in black America. (Margaret Biser, vox.com)

I don’t believe for a moment that people genuinely enjoy frantic atonal jazz funk. (@paulwhitelaw)

Banner at Streatham Jobcentre protest:

Jobcentre therapists: unethical mystifiers
Compulsory therapy is an ineffectual con job
UNEMPLOYMENT IS STRUCTURAL
Puberty is going to happen whether parents like it or not. (Judy Blume)

Some people just don’t understand the mechanics of business. There are people who think they are learning but they don’t learn. (Deborah Meaden, paraphrase)

It eventually dawned on her that there was something a little wrong with Archie: he was unapologetically self-serving. She quotes him saying, “I hate it when people are ill or unhappy—it sort of spoils everything for me.” (New Yorker on Agatha Christie)

He sat down and cleared his mind and tried to live in the present moment, to see what it would feel like. It couldn’t be done. (Enchantment, Monica Dickens)

Meet men, get rid of them or be dropped, meet new men with persistent hope, hang on to one or two drearies so as not to be at home too many evenings. (Dear Dr Lily, Monica Dickens)

More here, and links to the rest.