Inspirational Quotes 95

Never in the history of calming down has anyone ever calmed down by being told to calm down.

You are not owed a read from a professional, even if you think you have an in, and even if you think it's not a huge imposition. It's not your choice to make. (Josh Olson, villagevoice.com, gives advice to aspiring writers.)

I knew I needed [antidepressants] again, if only to make life less painful for the people who love me. They do make life more bearable for everyone. (Disabled journalist Melanie Reid wants to take antidepressants so that she doesn’t cry in front of people. Times April 2016 Lynn Payer in Medicine and Culture says Brits take painkillers and antidepressants to avoid “making a fuss” and upsetting others. Melanie calls them a “chemical crutch”. )

Remember, the myth that everyone is a selfish bastard is spread by selfish bastards to stop them feeling guilty about being selfish bastards. (‏@SteveHall5582)

Off-line Criticism - propagating gossip or criticism to a third party in an attempt to negatively influence the third party’s opinion of a person. (gizmodo.com)

They’re so goddam different that they hold a stacked deck and they don’t know any other kind of deck. (Raymond Chandler on the rich)

Humiliation always happens in a tyranny, and that foments revolution. (Shirley MacLaine)

I always feel as if people looking for English Lit to "matter" may be the sort who are secretly rather irritated we’re not all out there curing cancer, landing on Mars, and other things that don’t involve noses in books and the Waste of the Taxpayers’ Money (TM). ("Jeanne de Montbaston")

It always astounds me that people have a comfort zone. (@jtlovell1979)

People who say "I'm just saying what everyone else is thinking" - You are never, ever saying what I'm thinking. (@Nick_Pettigrew)

Combien de soi-disant classiques ne survivent que sous respiration artificielle? (Xavier Lechard. How many so-called classics would disappear without artificial respiration?)

Trump rallies are the comments section come to awful life. (Diana Burbano)

Over the past eight years, hundreds, maybe even thousands of wits have both emailed me or left a comment below the line dismissing me as “the fashion girl” or telling me to “go back to shoe shopping”. I’ve had snarky comments about fashion from teenagers, academics, even other journalists... But one thing unites them: do you really need me to tell you they’re all men? (Former fashion writer and writer on many other subjects Hadley Freeman in the Guardian)

Side by side with organised religion there has always existed a folk religion, which is not organised, has no temples, no priests, no fixed precepts; it consists of old beliefs and customs, generally not in the spirit of the official religion. The folk belief is in the background, but it plays a great role in the lives of the masses, those who are little influenced by the new thoughts and trends of the times. (Hayim Schauss)

Frankly, there are things in Narnia which are nothing to do with religion. They are to do with being out of date. As with Tolkien, there are ideas there which haven't yet faded sufficiently into the past to become valuable antiques. (Guy Kewney)

Changing the behaviour of a population is likely to take time, perhaps a generation or more, and politicians usually look for quick win solutions. The government needs to be braver about mixing and matching policy measures, using both incentives and disincentives to bring about change. They must also get much better at evaluating the measures they put in place. In order to help people live healthier and happier lives, we need to understand much more about what sorts of policies will have an effect on how people behave, and the best way to do this is through research, proper evaluation of policies and the provision of well-informed and independent scientific advice. (Julia Neuberger, 2011)

Bias is also more deeply ingrained and harder to mitigate when people convince themselves that they are not biased in a certain aspect and so unconsciously create strategies to substantiate their convictions to that belief.  This is also known as ‘confirmation bias’... while there is much talk around mentoring programmes to help women ‘break through the glass ceiling’, my own perspective from both sides of the gender divide is that there is at least an equal need for men, standing on the ‘glass floor’, to receive mentoring and coaching in how to tackle gender bias. (Letitia Davis, 2015)

‏The Sunday Post... and its claustrophobic worldview formed 50 years before in Presbyterian Dundee. (London Review of Books, 2016)

Before you diagnose yourself with depression or low self-esteem, first make sure you are not, in fact, surrounded by assholes. (via Wicca Teachings)

The leader of the mass is still the feared primal father, the mass still wishes to be dominated by absolute power, it is in the highest degree addicted to authority. (Sigmund Freud)

Dystopias will have cycle lanes and host World Cups. (Darran Anderson)

Caitlin Moran suggests that instead of holding state banquets, the Queen should “introduce a series of evenings where the guests knit, quilt, sort out jumble, prep a buffet... collect tinfoil... decorate someone’s front room”. As “the king of Tonga helps the US ambassador... a dazzlingly productive new epoch in international diplomacy will finally be forged, one based on genuine understanding and warmth”. (Times, 2016)

Its amazing how quickly we become conspiracy theorists when things don’t go our way... (@Furmadamadam)

More here, and links to the rest.