Danielle > Danielle's Quotes

“We are taught that men are the key to happiness and fulfillment. We fear that without heterosexual marriage and childbearing we cannot become people who matter or “real” adults. It is this nexus of desire and fear that is the breeding ground for self-destructive behavior like dieting. Rather than being taught that you deserve love simply because you are a person, you are taught that love is something people must earn through particular socially sanctioned methods. For many women, that method is weight control.”
― Virgie Tovar, You Have the Right to Remain Fat

“What we must realize is that it’s not thinness that is being eroticized. What is being eroticized is the submission thinness represents in our culture. Thinness is a secondary characteristic. The true commodity is the willingness of women to acquiesce to cultural control. Controlling women’s body size is about controlling women’s lives. This claim to control is based on fantasies of masculine superiority bolstered by the culture. This control does not just apply to thinness.”
― Virgie Tovar, You Have the Right to Remain Fat

“Now let your spiritual practice be this: As you go about your life, don’t give 100 percent of your attention to the external world and to your mind. Keep some within. I have spoken about this already. Feel the inner body even when engaged in everyday activities, especially when engaged in relationships or when you are relating with nature. Feel the stillness deep inside it. Keep the portal open. It is quite possible to be conscious of the Unmanifested throughout your life. You feel it as a deep sense of peace somewhere in the background, a stillness that never leaves you, no matter what happens out here. You become a bridge between the Unmanifested and the manifested, between God and the world. This is the state of connectedness with the Source that we call enlightenment.”
― Eckhart Tolle, The Power of Now: A Guide to Spiritual Enlightenment

“Even more than I hate commodifying myself, I hate men judging me as a commodity. For thousands of years, women have been throughout their lives reduced to their worth as sexual objects (slash domestic workers). We learn very early on to go to great lengths to increase our sexual value in the eyes of men, without even realizing that’s why we’re (for example) agonizing over whether our one snack for the day should be a pear or a seventy-calorie sugar-free yogurt. For years—much of my childhood and early twenties—I spent the largest portion of my conscious thought on food and how much I hated and was terrified of my body. It has taken a lot of work to divorce my view of my body and my feelings of romantic worthiness from outside sources. I’m afraid apps would undermine that effort.”
― Blythe Roberson, How to Date Men When You Hate Men

“We let individualism prevail in the twentieth century, and frankly, we have made a mess of it. We must begin anew for the twenty-first century; we need a new, different direction. We can no longer continue destroying ourselves and the planet we live on. With determination we can abandon the cult of individualism and the self, and act and live in harmony, in the spirit of interbeing.”
― Thich Nhat Hanh, Creating True Peace: Ending Violence in Yourself, Your Family, Your Community, and the World

“To build community, it is important to accept the insight of interbeing, of interconnectedness. We must realize that happiness is not an individual matter. Finding happiness through our separate, individual self is impossible.”
― Thich Nhat Hanh, Creating True Peace: Ending Violence in Yourself, Your Family, Your Community, and the World

“Our practice for the new century should be to transform the notion that we are separate selves and to liberate ourselves from the prison of the individual. The most meaningful practice we have today is to learn how to live as a sangha.”
― Thich Nhat Hanh, Creating True Peace: Ending Violence in Yourself, Your Family, Your Community, and the World