Michael > Michael's Quotes

“The educated differ from the uneducated as much as the living differ from the dead.”
― Aristotle

“A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds, adored by little statesmen and philosophers and divines. With consistency a great soul has simply nothing to do. He may as well concern himself with his shadow on the wall. Speak what you think now in hard words, and to-morrow speak what to-morrow thinks in hard words again, though it contradict every thing you said to-day. — 'Ah, so you shall be sure to be misunderstood.' — Is it so bad, then, to be misunderstood? Pythagoras was misunderstood, and Socrates, and Jesus, and Luther, and Copernicus, and Galileo, and Newton, and every pure and wise spirit that ever took flesh. To be great is to be misunderstood.”
― Ralph Waldo Emerson, Self-Reliance: An Excerpt from Collected Essays, First Series

“Alexander the Great found the philosopher looking attentively at a pile of human bones. Diogenes explained, "I am searching for the bones of your father but cannot distinguish them from those of a slave.”
― Diogenes

“In a rich man's house there is no place to spit but his face.”
― Diogenes of Sinope

“A philosopher named Aristippus, who had quite willingly sucked up to Dionysus and won himself a spot at his court, saw Diogenes cooking lentils for a meal. "If you would only learn to compliment Dionysus, you wouldn't have to live on lentils."

Diogenes replied, "But if you would only learn to live on lentils, you wouldn't have to flatter Dionysus.”
― Diogenes of Sinope

“When some one reminded him that the people of Sinope had sentenced him to exile, he said, "And I sentenced them to stay at home.”
― Diogenes

“The insult dishonors the one who infers it, not the one who receives it.”
― Diogenes of Sinope

“I've been patient, but where I'm concerned patience has its limits. Take it too far, and it's cowardice.”
― George L. Jackson, Soledad Brother: The Prison Letters of George Jackson

“Settle your quarrels, come together, understand the reality of our situation, understand that fascism is already here, that people are already dying who could be saved, that generations more will live poor butchered half-lives if you fail to act. Do what must be done, discover your humanity and your love in revolution.”
― George L. Jackson

“It's very contradictory for a man to teach about the murder in corporate capitalism, to isolate and expose the murderers behind it, to instruct that these madmen are completely without stops, are licentious, totally depraved — and then not make adequate preparations to defend himself from the madman's attack. Either they don't really believe their own spiel or they harbor some sort of subconscious death wish.”
― George L. Jackson, Soledad Brother: The Prison Letters of George Jackson

“I repeat: realistic, day-to-day needs should be the basis of organizing people and making them conscious of revolution-- that the world, the universe, must revolve-- that it will stop, stagnate, and die for no man's privilege.”
― George L. Jackson, Blood in My Eye

“The only effective challenge to power is one that is broad enough to make isolation impossible, and intensive enough to cause repression to affect the normal life style of as many members of society as possible. By compromising and playing at class war, we lose.”
― George L. Jackson, Blood in My Eye

“This Vietnam adventure on the part of the fascist has vastly changed the whole relationship between the masses and the ruling class. Can you detect the subtle changes? The really ugly side of imperialism is being demonstrated for not just the people who suffer its effects abroad, but also to the sleepy little guy here inside the U.S. They're starting now to make the link between foreign wars and foreign businesses.”
― George L. Jackson, Blood in My Eye

“I feel as if I’m on the moon listening to the air hiss out of my spacesuit, and I can’t find the hole. I’m the vice president of panic, and the president is missing.”
― Paige Lewis, Space Struck

“And once upon a time I wondered: Is writing epic fantasy not somehow a betrayal? Did I not somehow do a disservice to my own reality by paying so much attention to the power fantasies of disenchanted white men?

But. Epic fantasy is not merely what Tolkien made it.

This genre is rooted in the epic — and the truth is that there are plenty of epics out there which feature people like me. Sundiata’s badass mother. Dihya, warrior queen of the Amazighs. The Rain Queens. The Mino Warriors. Hatshepsut’s reign. Everything Harriet Tubman ever did. And more, so much more, just within the African components of my heritage. I haven’t even begun to explore the non-African stuff. So given all these myths, all these examinations of the possible… how can I not imagine more? How can I not envision an epic set somewhere other than medieval England, about someone other than an awkward white boy? How can I not use every building-block of my history and heritage and imagination when I make shit up?

And how dare I disrespect that history, profane all my ancestors’ suffering and struggles, by giving up the freedom to imagine that they’ve won for me.”
― N.K. Jemisin

“This is why she hates Alabaster: not because he is more powerful, not even because he is crazy, but because he refuses to allow her any of the polite fictions and unspoken truths that have kept her comfortable, and safe, for years.”
― N.K. Jemisin, The Fifth Season

“To those who’ve survived: Breathe. That’s it. Once more. Good. You’re good. Even if you’re not, you’re alive. That is a victory.”
― N.K. Jemisin, The Stone Sky

“But if you stay, no part of this comm gets to decide that any part of this comm is expendable. No voting on who gets to be people.”
― N.K. Jemisin, The Obelisk Gate

“The forest was shrinking but the trees kept voting for the axe, for the axe was clever and convinced the trees that because his handle was made of wood he was one of them.”
― Turkish Proverbs

“I'm a pessimist because of intelligence, but an optimist because of will.”
― Antonio Gramsci, Antonio Gramsci: Prison Letters

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

“I hate the indifferent. I believe that living means taking sides. Those who really live cannot help being a citizen and a partisan. Indifference and apathy are parasitism, perversion, not life. That is why I hate the indifferent.

The indifference is the deadweight of history. The indifference operates with great power on history. The indifference operates passively, but it operates. It is fate, that which cannot be counted on. It twists programs and ruins the best-conceived plans. It is the raw material that ruins intelligence. That what happens, the evil that weighs upon all, happens because the human mass abdicates to their will; allows laws to be promulgated that only the revolt could nullify, and leaves men that only a mutiny will be able to overthrow to achieve the power. The mass ignores because it is careless and then it seems like it is the product of fate that runs over everything and everyone: the one who consents as well as the one who dissents; the one who knew as well as the one who didn’t know; the active as well as the indifferent. Some whimper piously, others curse obscenely, but nobody, or very few ask themselves: If I had tried to impose my will, would this have happened?

I also hate the indifferent because of that: because their whimpering of eternally innocent ones annoys me. I make each one liable: how they have tackled with the task that life has given and gives them every day, what have they done, and especially, what they have not done. And I feel I have the right to be inexorable and not squander my compassion, of not sharing my tears with them.

I am a partisan, I am alive, I feel the pulse of the activity of the future city that those on my side are building is alive in their conscience. And in it, the social chain does not rest on a few; nothing of what happens in it is a matter of luck, nor the product of fate, but the intelligent work of the citizens. Nobody in it is looking from the window of the sacrifice and the drain of a few. Alive, I am a partisan. That is why I hate the ones that don’t take sides, I hate the indifferent.”
― Antonio Gramsci

“The point of modernity is to live a life without illusions while not becoming disillusioned”
― Antonio Gramsci

“If you beat your head against the wall, it is your head that breaks and not the wall.”
― Antonio Gramsci

“Common sense is a chaotic aggregate of disparate conceptions, and one can find there anything that one like.”
― Antonio Gramsci, Selections from the Prison Notebooks

“Misbehavior and punishment are not opposites that cancel each other - on the contrary they breed and reinforce each other.”
― Haim G. Ginott

“While parents possess the original key to their offspring's experience, teachers have a spare key. They, too, can open or close the minds and hearts of children.”
― Haim Ginott

“What do we say to a guest who forgets her umbrella? Do we run after her and say "What is the matter with you? Every time you come to visit you forget something. If it's not one thing it's another. Why can't you be like your sister? When she comes to visit, she knows how to behave. You're forty-four years old! Will you never learn? I'm not a slave to pick up after you! I bet you'd forget your head if it weren't attached to your shoulders." That's not what we say to a guest. We say "Here's your umbrella, Alice," without adding "scatterbrain."
Parents need to learn to respond to their children as they do to guests.”
― Haim G. Ginott, Between Parent and Child

“If you want your children to improve, let them overhear the nice things you say about them to others.”
― Haim Ginott

“When a child hits a child, we call it aggression.
When a child hits an adult, we call it hostility.
When an adult hits an adult, we call it assault.
When an adult hits a child, we call it discipline.”
― Haim G. Ginott