Alison > Alison's Quotes

“If you fulfill your obligations everyday you don't need to worry about the future.”
― Jordan Peterson

“Women select men. That makes them nature, because nature is what selects. And you can say "Well it's only symbolic that women are nature", it's like no, it's not just symbolic. The woman is the gatekeeper to reproductive success. And you can't get more like nature than that, in fact it's the very definition of nature.”
― Jordan B. Peterson

“You cannot be protected from the things that frighten you and hurt you, but if you identify with the part of your being that is responsible for transformation, then you aare always the equal, or more than the equal of the things that frighten you.”
― Jordan B. Peterson

“You're going to pay a price for every bloody thing you do and everything you don't do. You don't get to choose to not pay a price. You get to choose which poison you're going to take. That's it.”
― Jordan B. Peterson

“There are some games you don't get to play unless you are all in.”
― Jordan B. Peterson

“One of the problems with being relatively wealthy if you are a parent is that you cannot provide your children with necessity.”
― Jordan B. Peterson

“For religions, spirituality is a dangerous threat.”
― Yuval Noah Harari, Homo Deus: A History of Tomorrow

“Happiness is not something ready made. It comes from your own actions.”
― Dalai Lama XIV

“Love is the absence of judgment.”
― Dalai Lama XIV

“If you think you are too small to make a difference, try sleeping with a mosquito.”
― Dalai Lama XIV

“There is, after all, a kind of happiness in unhappiness, if it's the right unhappiness.”
― Jonathan Franzen, Freedom

“You may be poor, but the one thing nobody can take away from you is the freedom to fuck up your life whatever way you want to.”
― Jonathan Franzen, Freedom

“It’s all circling around the same problem of personal liberties,” Walter said. “People came to this country for either money or freedom. If you don’t have money, you cling to your freedoms all the more angrily. Even if smoking kills you, even if you can’t afford to feed your kids, even if your kids are getting shot down by maniacs with assault rifles. You may be poor, but the one thing nobody can take away from you is the freedom to fuck up your life whatever way you want to.”
― Jonathan Franzen, Freedom

“The reason this system can’t be overthrown in this country,” Walter said, “is all about freedom. The reason the free market in Europe is tempered by socialism is that they’re not so hung up on personal liberties there. They also have lower population growth rates, despite comparable income levels. The Europans are all-around more rational, basically. And the conversation about rights in this country isn’t rational. It’s taking place on the level of emotion, and class resentments, which is why the right is so good at exploiting it.”
― Jonathan Franzen, Freedom

“He became another data point in the American experiment of self-government, an experiment statistically skewed from the outset, because it wasn't the people with sociable genes who fled the crowded Old World for the new continent; it was the people who didn't get along well with others.”
― Jonathan Franzen, Freedom

“And this of course, was the simplest definition of depression that he knew of: strongly disliking yourself.”
― Jonathan Franzen, Freedom

“there are few things harder to imagine than other people’s conversations about yourself.”
― jonathan franzen, Freedom

“Stupidity mistook itself for intelligence, whereas intelligence knew its own stupidity.”
― Jonathan Franzen, Purity

“Everyone thinks they have strict limits,” she said, “until they cross them.”
― Jonathan Franzen, Purity

“It’s like having one red sock in a load of white laundry. One red sock, and nothing is ever white again.”
― Jonathan Franzen, Purity

“it seemed as if the Internet was governed more by fear: the fear of unpopularity and uncoolness, the fear of missing out, the fear of being flamed or forgotten.”
― Jonathan Franzen, Purity

“The world was overpopulated with talkers and underpopulated by listeners,”
― Jonathan Franzen, Purity

“There’s the imperative to keep secrets, and the imperative to have them known. How do you know that you’re a person, distinct from other people? By keeping certain things to yourself.”
― Jonathan Franzen, Purity

“Power, power, power: how could the world be organized around the struggle for a thing so lonely and oppressive in the having of it?”
― Jonathan Franzen, Purity

“A prayer or chant is a way of creating an imprint in your mind to one day perceive and experience something favorable. It's a way of actively settling aspiration through a process of cultivation and familiarization. What you think you become.”
― Miles Neale, Gradual Awakening: The Tibetan Buddhist Path of Becoming Fully Human

“When people are presented with the alternatives of hating themselves for their failure or hating others for their success, they seldom choose to hate themselves.”
― Thomas Sowell, Black Rednecks & White Liberals

“Where would I find enough leather
To cover the entire surface of the earth?
But with leather soles beneath my feet,
It’s as if the whole world has been covered.”
― Shantideva

“Enlightenment is possible - for everyone.”
― Miles Neale, Gradual Awakening: The Tibetan Buddhist Path of Becoming Fully Human

“Of all tyrannies, a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It would be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron's cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end for they do so with the approval of their own conscience. They may be more likely to go to Heaven yet at the same time likelier to make a Hell of earth. This very kindness stings with intolerable insult. To be "cured" against one's will and cured of states which we may not regard as disease is to be put on a level of those who have not yet reached the age of reason or those who never will; to be classed with infants, imbeciles, and domestic animals.”
― C.S. Lewis, God in the Dock: Essays on Theology (Making of Modern Theology)

“We have bigger houses but smaller families;
more conveniences, but less time;
We have more degrees, but less sense;
more knowledge, but less judgment;
more experts, but more problems;
more medicines, but less healthiness;
We’ve been all the way to the moon and back,
but have trouble crossing the street to meet
the new neighbor.
We’ve built more computers to hold more
information to produce more copies than ever,
but have less communications;
We have become long on quantity,
but short on quality.
These times are times of fast foods;
but slow digestion;
Tall man but short character;
Steep profits but shallow relationships.
It is time when there is much in the window,
but nothing in the room.

--authorship unknown
from Sacred Economics”
― Charles Eisenstein, Sacred Economics: Money, Gift, and Society in the Age of Transition