Jeffrey Qi > Jeffrey's Quotes

“Politics is a strong and slow boring of hard boards. It takes both passion and perspective. Certainly all historical experience confirms the truth - that man would not have attained the possible unless time and again he had reached out for the impossible. But to do that a man must be a leader, and not only a leader but a hero as well, in a very sober sense of the word. And even those who are neither leaders nor heroes must arm themselves with that steadfastness of heart which can brave even the crumbling of all hopes. This is necessary right now, or else men will not be able to attain even that which is possible today.”
― Max Weber

“Hope just means another world might be possible, not promise, not guaranteed. Hope calls for action; action is impossible without hope.”
― Rebecca Solnit, Hope in the Dark: The Untold History of People Power

“Never trust people who don't have something in their lives that they love beyond all reason.”
― Fredrik Backman, Beartown

“The only thing the sport gives us are moments. But what the hell is life, Peter, apart from moments?”
― Fredrik Backman, Beartown

“There are few words that are harder to explain than "loyalty." It's always regarded as a positive characteristic, because a lot of people would say that many of the best things people do for each other occur precisely because of loyalty. The only problem is that many of the very worst things we do to each other occur because of the same thing.”
― Fredrik Backman, Beartown

“And after all those hours in the locker room, all those nights on the team bus, all the conversations and all the jokes and the blood, sweat, and tears, the boy didn’t dare tell his coach his biggest secret.
That’s betrayal. David knows it’s a huge betrayal. There’s no other way to explain how much a grown man must have failed as a person if such a warrior of a boy could believe that his coach would be less proud of him if he were gay.
David hates himself for not being better than his dad. That’s the job of sons.”
― Fredrik Backman, Beartown

“For me, culture is as much about what we encourage as what we actually permit.” David asked what he meant by that, and Sune replied: “That most people don’t do what we tell them to. They do what we let them get away with.”
― Fredrik Backman, Beartown

“Hate can be a deeply stimulating emotion. The world becomes much easier to understand and much less terrifying if you divide everything and everyone into friends and enemies, we and they, good and evil. The easiest way to unite a group isn’t through love, because love is hard. It makes demands. Hate is simple.”
― Fredrik Backman, Beartown

“The complicated thing about good and bad people alike is that most of us can be both at the same time.”
― Fredrik Backman, Us Against You

“He’s twelve years old, and this summer he learns that people will always choose a simple lie over a complicated truth, because the lie has one unbeatable advantage: the truth always has to stick to what actually happened, whereas the lie just has to be easy to believe.”
― Fredrik Backman, Us Against You

“I wish you courage
I wish you rushing blood
A heart that beats too hard
Feelings that make everything too hard
Love that gets out of control
The most intense adventures
I hope you find your way out
I hope you’re the kind of person
Who gets a happy ending”
― Fredrik Backman, Us Against You

“They say that a person’s personality is the sum of their experiences. But that isn’t true, at least not entirely, because if our past was all that defined us, we’d never be able to put up with ourselves. We need to be allowed to convince ourselves that we’re more than the mistakes we made yesterday. That we are all of our next choices, too, all of our tomorrows.”
― Fredrik Backman, Anxious People

“God doesn't protect people from knives, sweetheart. That's why God gave us other people, so we can protect each other.”
― Fredrik Backman, Anxious People

“This book is dedicated to the voices inside my head, the most remarkable of my friends.
And to my wife, who lives with us.”
― Fredrik Backman, Anxious People

“Sometimes people have to be allowed to have something to live for in order to survive everything else.”
― Fredrik Backman, Us Against You

“At some point almost everyone makes a choice. Some of us don't even notice it happening, most don't get to plan it in advance, but there's always a moment when we take one path instead of another, which has consequences for the rest of our lives. It determines the people we will become, in other people's eyes as well as our own. Elizabeth Zackell may have been right when she said that anyone who feels responsibility isn't free. Because responsibility is a burden. Freedom is a pleasure.”
― Fredrik Backman, Us Against You

“Sometimes good people do terrible things in the belief that they’re trying to protect what they love.”
― Fredrik Backman, Us Against You