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In reply to the discussion: Do you have a favorite quote or two? [View all]sammythecat
(3,568 posts)much vodka, so please excuse the volume. I've got a whole folder of smart shit from smart people.
"The loneliest people are the kindest,
the saddest people smile the brightest,
and the most damaged people are the wisest.
All because they don't wish to see others suffer
like they do." -- I don't know who said this, or when, but it sounded true.
The assumption that animals are without rights and the illusion that our treatment of them has no moral significance is a positively outrageous example of Western crudity and barbarity. Universal compassion is the only guarantee of morality. -- Arthur Schopenhauer
"Reverence for Life says that the only thing we are really sure of is that we live and want to go on living. This is something that we share with everything else that lives, from elephants to blades of grass. So we are brothers and sisters to all living things, and owe to all of them the same care and respect that we wish for ourselves."
James Brabazon, Albert Schweitzer's biographer (concerning Schweitzer's philosophy of Reverence for Life)
Life is not so bad if you have plenty of luck, a good physique, and not too much imagination.
-- Christopher Isherwood -- Think about this one. Good luck (life is all about luck), good health, and a rather dull mind. The perfect recipe for self-satisfied contentment. BTW, the health and lack of imagination(empathy), both products of luck. It's all about luck.
True individual freedom cannot exist without economic security and independence. People who are hungry and out of a job are the stuff of which dictatorships are made. -- FDR (hat tip to Andrew Yang and his ubi).
Visitors from another world would, by definition, be far more advanced than us. And they would, of course, find much to learn about us, but... almost nothing at all to learn from us. -- I can not imagine any alien life, super impressively able to keep their shit together long enough to develop interstellar space travel, would consider us as anything more than an interesting curiosity for their scientists to study
It is no measure of health to be well adjusted to a profoundly sick society.
-- Jiddu Krishnamurti -- I find great comfort in this one
But after a while you learn to cope with things like seeing your dead grandmother crawling up your leg with a knife in her teeth. Most acid fanciers can handle this sort of thing.
-- Hunter S. Thompson, from Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas. One of a few books that made me laugh out loud.