Lisa Marie Blair

Tag: Quote

  • In Human History

    Of course I have been writing as though society was an organism in which people were in harmony with each other, in which they cooperated with each other and in which they were not waging wars of aggression against each other and were not in conflict with each other. But in actual fact and in terms of human history such harmony has not been the case.

    In human history, we see that society has been broken up into classes, into antagonistic ethnic and economic groups that struggle against each other for survival as each sees it. They enslave each other and make their living at the expense of other groups, special interest groups are formed, etc. So that in reality we have to look at our own situation, have to look at the situation that exists in the economic base in terms of the class struggle, also in terms of the ethnic struggles that have gone on.”

    — Eldridge Cleaver, “Education and Revolution” The Black Scholar, November 1969

  • Time Exists

    Time exists in order that everything doesn’t happen all at once…and space exists so that it doesn’t all happen to you.”

    — Susan Sontag, At the Same Time: Essays and Speeches

  • The First Step

    Choosing to be honest is the first step in the process of love. There is no practitioner of love who deceives.”

    — bell hooks (via swissmiss)

  • I See

    I can’t believe what you say, because I see what you do.”

    — James Baldwin

  • Two Sets of Rules

    Every system has two sets of rules: The rules as they are intended or commonly perceived, and the actual rules (‘reality’). In most complex systems, the gap between these two sets of rules is huge.”

    — Paul Buchheit, Applied Philosophy, a.k.a. “Hacking”

  • Is It More Probable?

    Is it more probable that nature should go out of her course or that a man should tell a lie? We have never seen, in our time, nature go out of her course. But we have good reason to believe that millions of lies have been told in the same time. It is therefore at least millions to one that the reporter of a miracle tells a lie.”

    — Thomas Paine, The Age of Reason (via philosophybits)

  • Nothing

    When you have gone through all the layers of the self, its inmost nature, its essence, is nothing. You are nothing.”

    — J. Krishnamurti, Public Talk 5, Madras (Chennai), 7 January 1978 (via Magnificent Ruin)

  • The Time of Monsters

    The old world is dying and the new world struggles to be born. Now is the time of monsters.”

    — Antonio Gramsci/Slavoj Žižek (via Dense Discovery)

  • We Plead

    “On behalf of all of the black folks of the USA, which are the only group that didn’t vote for the motherfucker, we plead innocent to all charges, claims, accusations, allegations and associations connected to the Klansman in The Oval Office, so help me God.”

    — Spike Lee, Da 5 Bloods, 2020

  • Trying to Remember

    Trying to remember you
    is like carrying water
    in my hands a long distance.”

    — Stephen Dobyns (via WeCroak)

  • How Am I Ever

    How am I ever to apologize to myself sufficiently?”

    — Virginia Woolf, Selected Diaries

  • A Luxury and a Major Problem

    [I]f the father works and the mother works, nobody is left to watch the kids. In societies where these families constitute the majority, either government acknowledges the situation and helps provide child care (as many European countries do) or child care becomes a luxury affordable for the affluent, and a major problem for everyone else.

    — Ariel Levy, Lift And Separate

  • A Grey Hum

    Sadly, Iʼll never really know, even now, what I missed or what I really needed at that time. There’s a mystery gap at the spot in my brain that feels like when your foot falls asleep but is slightly more sinister; itʼs a grey hum.”

    — Neko Case, What the hell am I (and who the hell cares)?

  • Any Human Anywhere

    Any human anywhere will blossom in a hundred unexpected talents and capacities simply by being given the opportunity to do so.”

    — Doris Lessing (via WeCroak)