Lauren L > Lauren's Quotes

“After a mass shooting, Republicans and the gun manufacturers' lobby reliably rally around the Second Amendment, shielding it better than they shield our own kids. They immediately gaslight the country, churning up bullshit like an octopus trying to blind a predator with sand.”
― Cody Keenan, Grace: President Obama and Ten Days in the Battle for America

“Most world religions also teach that human nature is flawed, and that there is something fundamentally wrong with all human beings that must be corrected in order to reach that religion's idea of salvation or enlightenment. This wrongness may be called original sin or ego or desire or free will... but the existence and overcoming of this inherent wrongness is the basis of the spiritual practices, sacraments, and ethics practiced by their members. ... The concepts of separateness and wrongness are so ingrained in each of us and in our culture that most of us are often not even aware they color our perceptions, life experience, and spiritual growth.”
― River Higginbotham, Paganism: An Introduction to Earth-Centered Religions

“He was a poor man in a criminal justice system that treats you better if you are rich and guilty than if you are poor and innocent. - Bryan Stevenson”
― Anthony Ray Hinton, The Sun Does Shine: How I Found Life and Freedom on Death Row

“Destructive beliefs don't hurt the Divine, but they can hurt us, our society, and our world. We have the right to insist that the beliefs we adopt, even about Divinity, be healthy and productive and serve us well.”
― Joyce Higginbotham, Paganism: An Introduction to Earth-Centered Religions

“And when children don’t feel respected by the decisions of their parents, their beliefs about how they are valued are crushed. (Dr. Bruce Perry)”
― Oprah Winfrey, What Happened To You?: Conversations on Trauma, Resilience, and Healing

“This was the trouble with emigration - it dismantled the patriarchy. Because really, what did Assunta, or any woman, need a husband for, when she did every goddamn thing herself?”
― Juliet Grames, The Seven or Eight Deaths of Stella Fortuna

“It's not that smart people aren't capable of believing in cultish things; instead, says [Michael] Shermer, it's that smart people are better at defending beliefs they arrived at for non-smart reasons.”
― Amanda Montell, Cultish: The Language of Fanaticism

“People with the strongest conscience will not be those with the most powerfully repressed aggressiveness but those with the most powerfully developed affiliation. - James Q. Wilson”
― Joyce Higginbotham, Paganism: An Introduction to Earth-Centered Religions

“Think carefully about the consequences of your actions not because you fear punishment, but because what you do is powerful.”
― Joyce Higginbotham, Paganism: An Introduction to Earth-Centered Religions

“History marches on, and names and destinations change, but not the injustices we let one another suffer.”
― Juliet Grames, The Seven or Eight Deaths of Stella Fortuna

“In the first months of this Alaskan winter, she had learned to live like one of those phosphorescent invertebrates that romaed the sea floor, their lives untouched by any light or color except that which they generated themselves.”
― Kristin Hannah, The Great Alone

“The people we've been taught to judge for 'not trying hard enough' are almost invariably the people fighting valiantly against the greatest number of unseen barriers and challenges.”
― Devon Price, Laziness Does Not Exist

“We live in a world where hard work is revered and having needs and limitations is seen as a source of shame.”
― Devon Price, Laziness Does Not Exist

“The Laziness Lie is a belief system that says hard work is morally superior to relaxation, that people who aren't productive have less innate value than productive people... The Laziness Lie has three main tenets. They are: 1. Your worth is your productivity. 2. You cannot trust your own feelings and limits. 3. There is always more you could be doing.”
― Devon Price, Laziness Does Not Exist

“Wasting time is a basic human need. Once we accept that, we can stop fearing our inner 'laziness' and begin to build healthy, happy, well-balanced lives.”
― Devon Price, Laziness Does Not Exist

“A great deal of research actually supports the notion that our lazy feelings are protective and instructive, and that our lives can improve a great deal when we decide to stop judging our desire for idle, 'lazy' time and start trusting those feelings instead.”
― Devon Price, Laziness Does Not Exist

“Research has repeatedly found that people procrastinate more when a task is one that really matters to them.”
― Devon Price, Laziness Does Not Exist

“Researchers consistently find that in office jobs, people are capable of being productive for only about three hours per day, on average.”
― Devon Price, Laziness Does Not Exist

“Attention fluctuates naturally because the human brain is constantly scanning the environment for new information, potential threats, opportunities for social contact, and more... Our attention is less like a laser beam (which can be pointed at any single specific point we desire) and more like a rotating lighthouse lantern, temporarily bathing individual rocks in light as it continues to spin across its surroundings.”
― Devon Price, Laziness Does Not Exist

“Often, the work of exhausted employees suffers for reasons other than simple resentment. Tired people also think in more biased ways, focusing on negatives and making more unfair judgements.”
― Devon Price, Laziness Does Not Exist

“Maslach found that burned-out people tended to complain that their workplaces were thanklessly demanding.”
― Devon Price, Laziness Does Not Exist

“People of color are also expected to head diversity initiatives, run inclusion committees, and spend time educating their white coworkers about racial bias, typically with no additional compensation.”
― Devon Price, Laziness Does Not Exist

“The Laziness Lie wants us to believe that the solution to every social problem is casting aside your grievances and getting to work.”
― Devon Price, Laziness Does Not Exist

“In our deeply victim-blaming, Laziness-Lie-loving culture, marginalized people are often told that they must solve the problem of their own oppression.”
― Devon Price, Laziness Does Not Exist

“Lacking compassion for a struggling group of people actually makes it harder for us to be gentle with ourselves.”
― Devon Price, Laziness Does Not Exist

“Our culture's hatred of 'lazy' is all-encompassing. It bleeds into how we view relationships, child-rearing, body size, barriers to voting, and so much more.”
― Devon Price, Laziness Does Not Exist

“Damned clever, I thought, how men had made life so intolerable for single women that most would gladly embrace even bad marriages instead.' - character Idadora Wing in Erica Jong's novel 'Fear of Flying”
― Mona Chollet, In Defense of Witches: The Legacy of the Witch Hunts and Why Women Are Still on Trial

“Apart from resistance to renouncing their privilege (whether as men or as white people), this reaction displays the inability of the dominant to comprehend the experience of the dominated, but perhaps also, despite their indignant protestations of innocence, an appalling guilty conscience, acknowledging something along the lines of: 'We are hurting them so badly that, if we give them the tiniest room for maneuver, they will destroy us.”
― Mona Chollet, In Defense of Witches: The Legacy of the Witch Hunts and Why Women Are Still on Trial

“A "real woman" is a graveyard of desires, of dreams unfulfilled, of delusions,' the Chimères collective wrote.”
― Mona Chollet, In Defense of Witches: The Legacy of the Witch Hunts and Why Women Are Still on Trial

“Life does not inspire them to action except when it comes to wrecking women's lives. A pro-birth policy is about wielding power, not about care for humanity.”
― Mona Chollet, In Defense of Witches: The Legacy of the Witch Hunts and Why Women Are Still on Trial