Inspirational Quotes 97

We are the cosmos made conscious and life is the means by which the universe understands itself. (Professor Brian Cox)
Post fact politics is a bit like post fact aviation. You will eventually hit the very real ground. (@ProfBrianCox)

Reality exists independent of the desires or claims of those in power. (Lawrence Krauss)

Violence is never the answer. The answer, as always, is smug platitudes. (@pixelatedboat)

Cruelty to animals is a known psychological precursor to cruelty to humans. (BG)

Those who suffer most are always the ones whose suffering is most invisible. They can't wield it or make it part of some identity. (@isacsohn)

I thought that the point of a koan was that it didn't have an answer. Your meditated on the unacceptability of various putative answers, until you gradually merged into to the cosmos in a spirit of calm resignation. (WUR)

Note that the 'what's your problem, it's just a joke!?' crowd never, ever punch upwards. (@jondrytay)

People could age without moving from the spot, without trying out any gestures other than the ones they were seen to be making. (Georges Simenon)

If scientists stayed out of politics we'd still be inhaling lead from fossil fuels and bathing in DDT. (@MaerzLab)

In the 19th century, Father Christmas evolved into Santa Claus with the express purpose of educating children about divine morality - if you’re good, you get a reward. He’s basically a training-wheels version of God for kids too young to comprehend an invisible deity. (Greg Jenner)

Holiday figures like Santa and the Easter Bunny are charming when it comes to entertaining small children, but it gets creepy when adults start concocting increasingly elaborate schemes to artificially extend their kid’s naïveté. (Danny Lavery, Slate.com)

I think postmodernism basically came out of WW2 and the Holocaust, when it seemed all systems of meaning and hope of progress collapsed. (PW)

Team-building exercises can be as mundane as that godforsaken trust game where you have to close your eyes and fall backward, or as terrifyingly complex as forcing you to group up and devise team cheers based around the names of the people in your group, or go for nature hikes and forage for your own lunch in the wild. (cracked.com)

It was the drip-drip effect of being berated and humiliated by my husband that has made it impossible for me to live with him. (Said a woman who was denied a divorce twice by the courts, because the law says the above is not “unreasonable behaviour”. As they gave the judgement, the judges said the law should be changed.)

Their “arguments” aren’t the point. The abuse is the point. The abuse is always the point. (LW. Someone adds: “Move on and don’t look back.”)

The key to destroying feminism from the inside is to redefine key concepts and make women feel guilty about questioning the new definitions. (@3rdwavelessons)

"Free speech is absolute." It is not. It is always restrained by other laws inc. Hate Speech, Libel, Incitement to Violence, etc. (@JonHolb)

That's "snowflake", "virtue signalling" and "SJW" going straight on to instamute. (@mrdavidwhitley)

‏The splitting defence – you blame the Other for bringing out your bad side while you squirrel away your good side for another. (RR)

Every coup claims it's a counter-coup. Cult leaders brainwash you by telling you you're being DEprogrammed. This is why are where we are. (@AlexPaknadel)

In the highly irritating words of Marcus Aurelius, “Begin each day by telling yourself: Today I shall be meeting with interference, ingratitude, insolence, disloyalty, ill-will, and selfishness—all of them due to the offenders’ ignorance of what is good or evil.” (Danny Lavery)

Being agnostic doesn't mean I half believe in every god. I don't believe in any god that has a name - I half believe in something I can't name. (RK)

Non-atheists seem to love this habit of telling atheists what atheism is. (@MrOzAtheist)

More here, and links to the rest.