Inspirational Quotes 93

He's such a nice man, he's a good person, it was out of character, it was an isolated incident, he does a lot of work for charity...
Abusive men have many years of experience conning and convincing not only their victims, but friends, family, teachers, childcare workers and health professionals. (Guardian Dec 2015)

Previous convictions are, in practice, such a good indicator of guilt that, in the jury's thinking, they're likely to swamp other considerations. (WS)

The idea that the prominent should be treated specially and be apologised to for being arrested allowed Jimmy Savile to escape. (Noel McGivern ‏@Good_Beard)

Partners who go in for “low-level sniping” are more likely to break up. (Times 2015)


JOBS
Tom Attenborough was three weeks into his first term at university when he saw his childhood ambition [to be an actor] turn to dust...The rest of the cast were talented, too. In fact, he soon realised that they were far too talented. All of a sudden, he was out of his league. “I just realised I wasn’t very good.” (Times 2016)

Holly Woodlawn had not managed to parlay her downtown credentials into a full-blown career the way other Factory people had... People lived by any number of schemes and scams. Most of those people were living on welfare... (Observer magazine Jan 2016 suggests some alternative career paths)

My Generation-X contemporaries thought for a while that we could make a living telling each other stories of groovy modern alienation and ennui. In the end, it turned out only Douglas Coupland could do this. Personally, I thought I could run photography galleries. (Daily Telegraph Dec 2015)

"There is a school of writing which is obsessed with style, and they have a few friends who feel as they do. I think they are much too conscious of hierarchy.” She also says the literary scene has got “too pompous” and that Martin thinks himself a “grand old man of letters”. (Elizabeth Jane Howard on her stepson Martin Amis)

Doris [Lessing, her foster mother] thought me older, perfectly able to cope with the world... A nice study group seemed just the thing. In the druggy world, I was part of something, really for the first time. [She got a job as a secretary.] Deference didn’t work for me... or having to pretend that I had a full day’s work, when actually it could all be done in two hours and the rest of the day had to be spent pretending to be busy. (Jenny Diski)

To recommend thrift to the poor is both grotesque and insulting. It is like advising a man who is starving to eat less. (Oscar Wilde)


LOOKS DON’T MATTER
Insecure bosses less likely to employ handsome men: Most studies show that good-looking men get better jobs and higher salaries. “Such men generally do better in life, being treated better everywhere from restaurants to work.” (Times Dec 2015)

BE YOURSELF Your daughter needs to learn how to operate within the parameters of normal expectation [and write that thankyou letter]. (Mariella Frostrup)

"If you wish to inquire about anything, do not do it by asking a question; but introduce the subject, and give the person an opportunity of saying as much as he finds it agreeable to impart. Do not even say, 'How is your brother today?' but 'I hope your brother is quite well.'” (Early 19th century etiquette book)

Those who behave rudely in the workplace experience stronger social support, which probably makes them less afraid of negative reactions to their behaviour from managers. (Eva Torkelson, Times Dec 2015) She says negative behaviour in the workplace spreads as people imitate each other (and cruel banter may make you more popular).

MENTAL HEALTH
Always upsetting reading about the search for an autism 'cure'. That would be pretty much everyone in science, tech & engineering gone. (James Wong ‏@Botanygeek)

Just noticed how often mental health services are like Giles in Buffy S6: "I don't want to disempower u so will leave u to face apocalypse on your own". (@TheBeetleBox)

Mindfulness, i.e. a conditioning technique designed to help you accept unacceptable situations with a beatific smile. (@AlexPaknadel)

Wonder how many times people think someone is being rude or anti-social when really they are being anxious? (@matthaig1)

Most cargo cults in the South Sea died out fairly quickly because no cargo arrived: it was really hard to continue fooling themselves. (David Didau)
‏
Lack real intelligence? Compensate with multiple intelligence! Always in psychology textbooks, because any comforting notion deserves mention. (James Thompson ‏@JamesPsychol)

I went with my children to Nando’s and they took on that air of importance that people have when they are introducing you to a ritual that they have mastered and you have not. (Daniel Finkelstein)

The one thing people on either side of the political spectrum all agree on is that the BBC is terribly biased against them. (Sam MacGregor ‏@samjustsamyeah)

I am a product of long corridors, empty sunlit rooms, upstairs indoor silences, attics explored in solitude, distant noises of gurgling cisterns and pipes, and the noise of wind under the tiles. Also, of endless books. (C.S. Lewis)

It’s safe to say I didn’t have a very good experience with the NHS. I was told no one would ever love me and I would be neither man nor woman. (Transgender woman who is training to be a ballet dancer, Times Feb 2016)

Nicola reminded me how she had first been to our family home as a 14-year-old schoolfriend in 1978. How, in a much colder, more uptight, less accepting time, our house had been a friendly, welcoming, tolerant place, full of fun and chat and debate among all manner of visitors. (Robert Crampton 2016 on the Good Old Days)

Loving the book "Party Animals" by @DAaronovitch. Turns out a communist upbringing is so like a Jehovahs Witness's. (@Tamethyst1)

Top tip: just because you aren’t ‘outraged’ by something, it doesn’t mean that anyone else’s outrage is false (faux, if you must). (@PaulbernalUK)


More here, and links to the rest.