Raquel > Raquel's Quotes

“From the beginning men used God to justify the unjustifiable.”
― Salman Rushdie, The Satanic Verses

“Now I know what a ghost is. Unfinished business, that's what.”
― Salman Rushdie, The Satanic Verses

“What kind of idea are you? Are you the kind that compromises, does deals, accomodates itself to society, aims to find a niche, to survive; or are you the cussed, bloody-minded, ramrod-backed type of damnfool notion that would rather break than sway with the breeze? – The kind that will almost certainly, ninety-nine times out of hundred, be smashed to bits; but, the hundredth time, will change the world.”
― Salman Rushdie, The Satanic Verses

“The world, somebody wrote, is the place we prove real by dying in it.”
― Salman Rushdie, The Satanic Verses

“Question: What is the opposite of faith?

Not disbelief. Too final, certain, closed. Itself is a kind of belief.

Doubt.

The human condition, but what of the angelic? Halfway between Allahgod and homosap, did they ever doubt? They did: challenging God's will one day they hid muttering beneath the Throne, daring to ask forbidden things: antiquestions. Is it right that. Could it not be argued. Freedom, the old antiquest. He calmed them down, naturally, employing management skills a la god. Flattered them: you will be the instruments of my will on earth, the salvationdamnation of man, all the usual etcetera. And hey presto, the end of protest, on with the haloes, back to work. Angels are easily pacified; turn them into instruments and they'll play your harpy tune. Human beings are tougher nuts, can doubt anything, even the evidence of their own eyes. Of behing-their-own-eyes. Of what, as they sink heavy-lidded, transpires behind closed peepers ... angels, they don't have much in the way of a will. To will is to disagree; not to submit; to dissent.”
― Salman Rushdie, The Satanic Verses

“Question: What is the opposite of faith?

Not disbelief. Too final, certain, closed. Itself is a kind of belief.

Doubt.”
― Salman Rushdie, The Satanic Verses

“A people that has remained convinced of its greatness and invulnerability, that has chosen to believe such a myth in the face of all the evidence, is a people in the grip of a kind of sleep, or madness.”
― Salman Rushdie, The Satanic Verses

“Great is truth, but still greater, from a practical point of view, is silence about truth.”
― Aldous Huxley, Brave New World

“It is natural to believe in God when you're alone-- quite alone, in the night, thinking about death.”
― Aldous Huxley, Brave New World

“Não se sabe tudo, nunca se saberá tudo, mas há horas em que somos capazes de acreditar que sim, talvez porque nesse momento nada mais nos podia caber na alma, na consciência, na mente, naquilo que se queira chamar ao que nos vai fazendo mais ou menos humanos.”
― José Saramago, Las pequeñas memorias

“Ironically, I believe Picasso was right. I believe we could paint a better world if we learned to see it from all perspectives, as many perspectives as we possibly could. Because diversity is strength. Difference is a teacher. Fear difference, you learn nothing.

Picasso’s mistake was his arrogance. He assumed he could represent all of the perspectives. And our mistake was to invalidate the perspective of a 17-year-old girl because we believed her potential would never equal his.

Hindsight is a gift. Stop wasting my time.

A 17-year-old girl is just never, ever, ever in her prime! Ever. I am in my prime. Would you test your strength out on me?

There is no way anyone would dare test their strength out on me because you all know there is nothing stronger than a broken woman who has rebuilt herself.”
― Hannah Gadsby

“I shut my eyes and all the world drops dead;
I lift my eyes and all is born again.”
― Sylvia Plath, The Bell Jar