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    • Showing only topics with the tag "quotes". Back to normal view

    2. Keeping a commonplace book

      ~creative Ask (survey)
      I have tried and tried to write a daily journal/diary and always gave up after a while. My longest stretch was over the course of five years. It always devolves into a litany of banality, though,...

      I have tried and tried to write a daily journal/diary and always gave up after a while. My longest stretch was over the course of five years. It always devolves into a litany of banality, though, and when I look back at it, invariably appears a bit cringy.

      So I have decided to start keeping a commonplace book- a place to write down interesting thoughts, quotes, ideas I come across and so forth. Without the chronological format of a journal I feel less compelled to list down stuff for the sake of it and am actually listing down ideas I'd like to remember.

      Do any of you do something similar?

      17 votes

    4. What is something someone has said that stuck with you?

      ~life Ask (survey)
      One time I asked someone what they thought about the phrase "people are temporary" and it ended with them telling me: I don't like saying goodbye to people because I don't know if it's going to be...

      One time I asked someone what they thought about the phrase "people are temporary" and it ended with them telling me:

      I don't like saying goodbye to people because I don't know if it's going to be the last time.

      That just stuck with me and really got me thinking how precious our time is.

      54 votes

    9. Collapsed comments that contain only a quote

      ~tildes Text 92 words
      When a comment is collapsed, either through tags or already being read, it shows a one line preview of the comment. This preview skips any quotes in the comment. This works perfectly when quotes...

      When a comment is collapsed, either through tags or already being read, it shows a one line preview of the comment. This preview skips any quotes in the comment. This works perfectly when quotes are used to reference a part of the comment they are replying to. But if the comment includes only a quote, the preview line is just blank. This makes it look like an error. I think that, if a comment has only a quote, it should do something like this:

      Quote

      Or

      Quote: This is the quote text…

      7 votes

    10. What is/are your favorite quote/s?

      ~talk Ask (survey)
      (This is a self-repost, hence the "duplicate question" tag.) A guy named Adolf Hitler won an election in 1932. He won an election, and 50 million people died as a result of that election in World...

      (This is a self-repost, hence the "duplicate question" tag.)

      A guy named Adolf Hitler won an election in 1932. He won an election, and 50 million people died as a result of that election in World War II, including six million Jews. So what I learned as a little kid is that politics is, in fact, very important.

      -Bernie Sanders

      Good satire raises questions about reality.
      (IDK the source, but I first heard it here)

      The old world is dying, and the new world struggles to be born: now is the time of monsters.
      -Antonio Gramsci, 1930

      When I was a kid my parents warned me about the mind-numbing effect TV would have on me if I watched too much of it. They were referring to fluff entertainment, which I've consumed plenty of over the years. Meanwhile, my parents used the TV to watch important and meaningful shows like the news. Eventually Fox News. In the end, they were right— but not in the way they expected.

      -@balooga, here

      If God has made us in his image, we have returned him the favor.

      -Voltaire

      All tyrannies rule through fraud and force. When fraud is exposed, they must rule exclusively by force.

      -George Orwell

      If you do not use the person you are, you will lose the person you are and instead become the mask that you wear.
      -Greg Guevara/Jreg

      What do you need from your parents?

      encouragement
      -u/DeSteph-DeCurry

      This (very long) quote from "They thought they were free"

      Each act, each occasion, is worse than the last, but only a little worse. You wait for the next and the next. You wait for one great shocking occasion, thinking that others, when such a shock comes, will join with you in resisting somehow. You don't want to act, or even talk, alone; you don't want to 'go out of your way to make trouble.' Why not?-Well, you are not in the habit of doing it. And it is not just fear, fear of standing alone, that restrains you; it is also genuine uncertainty. Uncertainty is a very important factor, and, instead of decreasing as time goes on, it grows. Outside, in the streets, in the general community, 'everyone' is happy. One hears no protest, and certainly sees none. You know, in France or Italy there would be slogans against the government painted on walls and fences; in Germany, outside the great cities, perhaps, there is not even this. In the university community, in your own community, you speak privately to your colleagues, some of whom certainly feel as you do; but what do they say? They say, 'It's not so bad' or 'You're seeing things' or 'You're an alarmist.'

      And you are an alarmist. You are saying that this must lead to this, and you can't prove it. These are the beginnings, yes; but how do you know for sure when you don't know the end, and how do you know, or even surmise, the end? On the one hand, your enemies, the law, the regime, the Party, intimidate you. On the other, your colleagues pooh-pooh you as pessimistic or even neurotic. You are left with your close friends, who are, naturally, people who have always thought as you have....

      But the one great shocking occasion, when tens or hundreds or thousands will join with you, never comes. That's the difficulty. If the last and worst act of the whole regime had come immediately after the first and smallest, thousands, yes, millions would have been sufficiently shocked-if, let us say, the gassing of the Jews in '43 had come immediately after the 'German Firm' stickers on the windows of non-Jewish shops in '33. But of course this isn't the way it happens. In between come all the hundreds of little steps, some of them imperceptible, each of them preparing you not to be shocked by the next. Step C is not so much worse than Step B, and, if you did not make a stand at Step B, why should you at Step C? And so on to Step D.

      And one day, too late, your principles, if you were ever sensible of them, all rush in upon you. The burden of self-deception has grown too heavy, and some minor incident, in my case my little boy, hardly more than a baby, saying 'Jewish swine,' collapses it all at once, and you see that everything, everything, has changed and changed completely under your nose. The world you live in-your nation, your people-is not the world you were born in at all. The forms are all there, all untouched, all reassuring, the houses, the shops, the jobs, the mealtimes, the visits, the concerts, the cinema, the holidays. But the spirit, which you never noticed because you made the lifelong mistake of identifying it with the forms, is changed. Now you live in a world of hate and fear, and the people who hate and fear do not even know it themselves; when everyone is transformed, no one is transformed. Now you live in a system which rules without responsibility even to God. The system itself could not have intended this in the beginning, but in order to sustain itself it was compelled to go all the way."

      and this shorter quote from a 1950 report, along with some extras from an article that features it

      Back in 1950, when both major parties were broad and moderate with overlapping appeals, many of America’s leading political scientists wrote a report in which they bemoaned this state of affairs.

      In a report, “Toward a More Responsible Two-Party System,” they saw two national parties that were but loose confederations of state and local parties, incapable of bringing forward coherent programs to the voters and carrying them out when they got into power.

      If the American political parties failed to heed their advice, the authors issued a dire warning:

      If the two parties do not develop alternative programs that can be executed, the voter’s frustration and the mounting ambiguities of national policy might also set in motion more extreme tendencies to the political left and the political right. This, again, would represent a condition to which neither our political institutions nor our civic habits are adapted. Once a deep political cleavage develops between opposing groups, each group naturally works to keep it deep. Such groups may gravitate beyond the confines of the American system of government and its democratic institutions.

      Assuming a survival of the two-party system in form though not in spirit, even if only one of the diametrically opposite parties comes to flirt with unconstitutional means and ends, the consequences would be serious. For then the constitution-minded electorate would be virtually reduced to a one-party system with no practical alternative to holding to the “safe” party at all cost.

      (That being said, this quote does show some age, as we now know that this "constitution-minded electorate" doesn't really exist. And "moderate" is extremely relative)

      19 votes

    11. Do you have any quotes or articles that you now find prescient to share?

      ~talk Ask (survey)
      I have these 2 quotes here. This quote is apparently from this book, cited in this article: If the two parties do not develop alternative programs that can be executed, the voter’s frustration and...

      I have these 2 quotes here. This quote is apparently from this book, cited in this article:

      If the two parties do not develop alternative programs that can be executed, the voter’s frustration and the mounting ambiguities of national policy might also set in motion more extreme tendencies to the political left and the political right. This, again, would represent a condition to which neither our political institutions nor our civic habits are adapted. Once a deep political cleavage develops between opposing groups, each group naturally works to keep it deep. Such groups may gravitate beyond the confines of the American system of government and its democratic institutions.

      Assuming a survival of the two-party system in form though not in spirit, even if only one of the diametrically opposite parties comes to flirt with unconstitutional means and ends, the consequences would be serious. For then the constitution-minded electorate would be virtually reduced to a one-party system with no practical alternative to holding to the “safe” party at all cost.

      Wow.

      There is nothing which I dread so much as a division of the republic into two great parties, each arranged under its leader, and concerting measures in opposition to each other. This, in my humble apprehension, is to be dreaded as the greatest political evil under our Constitution. -John Adams

      There is also this text from the Pew Political Typology of the US in 1999 which I found somewhat funny:

      The polling shows more compassion toward the poor and less hostility toward immigrants. A greater percentage in this survey than in the recent past think the government should do more to help needy people, and fewer express strong support for tightening our borders to further restrict immigration. Both of these trends may reflect the increased economic satisfaction and diminished financial pressure registered in this year’s survey. Gains in economic contentment have been greatest among upper income groups, while people in the lowest income category report less financial pressure but no more financial satisfaction than in the mid-1990s. Unexpectedly, despite these trends, Americans report no greater satisfaction with their wages than in the recent past. In fact, middle-income people are less satisfied than they were in 1994.

      DAMAGED AND SCUFFED, MY HANDS HAVE BEEN CUFFED, BUT I DON'T PLAN TO GET HUFF, FRANTIC AND PUFF OR PLAN TO GIVE U-

      That has aged pretty uniquely if you see it as the immediate effects of neoliberalism.

      Anyway, do you have anything to share?

      12 votes

    12. Let's try to make some quotes of our own

      ~talk Ask (survey)
      I guess I'll start. "From accountability/transparency one derives trust." "If you don't learn where your problems come from and how to solve them someone might just claim to have done those things...

      I guess I'll start.

      "From accountability/transparency one derives trust."

      "If you don't learn where your problems come from and how to solve them someone might just claim to have done those things for you and you'll have no way to know if they're being sincere."

      Edit:

      "A nostalgic society is not a society that loves it's past but one that hates it's present and dreads it's future."

      19 votes

    13. What is/are your favorite quote/s?

      ~talk Ask (survey)
      "Dead people receive more flowers than living ones because regret is stronger than gratitude." -Anne frank It is quite hard to convince someone on something if their income depends on them not...

      "Dead people receive more flowers than living ones because regret is stronger than gratitude."

      -Anne frank

      It is quite hard to convince someone on something if their income depends on them not understanding it."

      "A guy named Adolf Hitler won an election in 1932. He won an election, and 50 million people died as a result of that election in World War II, including six million Jews. So what I learned as a little kid is that politics is, in fact, very important."

      -Bernie sanders

      19 votes