Secher Nbiw: Useful confusion

Thursday, July 1, 2010

Useful confusion

I had a flash of understanding today when advised to be myself when I'm talking at the door. Class clowns have an advantage with concepts like "anatta." We realize more quickly that there is no essential self to be. Who we are when we're alone is no one.

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"It is more difficult to fight poverty in a rich country than in a poor one." -Mother Teresa

"What you do speaks so loud that I cannot hear what you say." - Ralph Waldo Emerson

"We are afraid of religion because it interprets rather than just observes. Religion does not confirm that there are hungry people in the world; it interprets the hungry to be our brethren whom we allow to starve." -Dorothee Sölle

"As fear is close companion to falsehood, so truth follows fearlessness." -Jawaharlar Nehru

"I have a policy about honesty and ass-kicking: if you ask for it, I have to let you have it." -Taylor Mali

"It is the nature of slavery to render its victims so abject that at last, fearing to be free, they multiply their own chains. You can liberate a freeman, but you cannot liberate a slave." -Louis J. Halle

"Yeah, though I walk through the valley of death I will fear no evil, for I am the meanest son of a bitch in the valley." -Joel Rosenberg

"The things which we fear the most in life have already happened to us." -One Hour Photo

"I would rather be a coward than brave because people hurt you when you are brave." -Edward Morgan Forster

"Love is an act of sedition, a revolt against reason, an uprising in the body politic, a private mutiny." -Diane Ackerman

"An intelligent fool can make things bigger, more complex, and more violent. It takes a touch of genius - and a lot of courage - to move in the opposite direction." -Hoshang N. Akhtar

"Authority does not precede its use, but is created by it." -James Carse

"What hurts the victim most is not the cruelty of the oppressor but the silence of the bystander." -Elie Wiesel

"Courage is the art of being the only one who knows you're scared to death." -Harold Wilson

"A true friend will tell you the truth to your face - not behind your back." -Sasha Azevedo

"It is hard to believe that a man is telling the truth when you know that you would lie if you were in his place." -Henry Louis Mencken

"Who lies for you will lie against you." -Bosnian proverb

"A truth that's told with bad intent beats all the lies you can invent." -William Blake

"Honesty is never seen sitting astride the fence." -Lemuel K. Washburn

"Respect for the truth is an acquired taste." -Mark Van Doren

"When I give food to the poor, they call me a saint. When I ask why are they poor, they call me a Communist." -Dom Hélder Pessoa Câmara

"People who are brutally honest get more satisfaction out of the brutality than out of the honesty." -Richard J. Needham

"Speak the truth, but leave immediately after." -Slovenian proverb

"The highest compact we can make with our fellow is - "Let there be truth between us two forevermore."" -Ralph Waldo Emerson

"Man is least himself when he talks in his own person. Give him a mask, and he will tell you the truth." -Oscar Wilde

"Some people will not tolerate such emotional honesty in communication. They would rather defend their dishonesty on the grounds that it might hurt others. Therefore, having rationalized their phoniness into nobility, they settle for superficial relationships." -Author Unknown

"A timid person is frightened before a danger, a coward during the time, and a courageous person afterward." -Jean Paul Richter

"A hero is no braver than an ordinary man, but he is braver five minutes longer." -Ralph Waldo Emerson

"Fairy tales do not tell children the dragons exist. Children already know that dragons exist. Fairy tales tell children the dragons can be killed." -GK Chesterton

"At least in popular parlance, what makes religious folks religious today is not so much that they believe in Jesus' divinity or Buddhism's Four Noble Truths but that they hold certain moral positions on bedroom issues such as premarital sex, homosexuality, and abortion." -Stephen Prothero

"There are few nudities so objectionable as the naked truth." -Agnes Repplier

"God has no other hands than ours." -Dorothee Sölle

"Truth: the most deadly weapon ever discovered by humanity. Capable of destroying entire perceptual sets, cultures, and realities. Outlawed by all governments everywhere. Possession is normally punishable by death." -John Gilmore

"Peace if possible, truth at all costs." -Martin Luther

“Fear is not in the habit of speaking truth.” -Publius Cornelius Tacitus

“Men hate those to whom they have to lie.” -Victor Hugo

“In order that all men might be taught to speak truth, it is necessary that all likewise should learn to hear it.” -Dr. Samuel Johnson

"Your beliefs will be the light by which you see, but they will not be what you see, and they will not be a substitute for seeing." -Flannery O'Connor

"Government has a right to attack Roe v. Wade only when it guarantees that the fetus will have a quality education, adequate food and housing, quality healthcare, and a favorable community in which to advance. Anything short of this is infanticide in stages and wanton hypocrisy." -Rev. Gardner Calvin Taylor

"See, that's the beauty of argument. If you argue correctly you're never wrong." -Nick Naylor (Thank You For Smoking)

“Cultural relativism, inferred from the enormous variety of existing cultures, remains a prerequisite of objective analysis: one must first understand a culture in its own terms, not in terms of theoretical or practical schemes imposed on it from the outside. But the moral corollary of cultural relativism—moral relativism—has been quietly discarded, except as a form of intellectual indulgence among those who claim the privileges of non-involvement.” -Eric R. Wolf

"I would ask you to be thinking of the truth and not of Socrates; agree with me, if I seem to you to be speaking the truth; or if not; withstand me might and main, that I may not deceive you as well as myself in my enthusiasm, and like the bee, leave my sting in you before I died." -Socrates

"There is nothing more deceptive than an obvious fact." -Sherlock Holmes

"Among all the lessons which men require for carrying on the struggle against the inevitable imperfections of their lot on earth, there is no lesson which they more need, than not to add to the evils which nature inflicts, by their jealous and prejudiced restrictions on one another." -John Stuart Mills, 1869

"Mediocrity know nothing higher than itself; but talent instantly recognizes genius." -Sherlock Holmes

"Lie to a liar, for lies are his coin; Steal from a thief, for that is easy; lay a trap for a trickster and catch him at first attempt, but beware of an honest man." -Arab proverb

"Your beliefs will be the light by which you see, but they will not be what you see, and they will not be a substitute for seeing." -Flannery O'Connor

"People treat you differently when they believe you've gone where they could never go, and seen beyond the kind horizon of the only life they know." --SJ Tucker, "Storm"

"The person who experiences greatness must have a feeling for the myth he is in. He must reflect what is projected upon him. And he must have a strong sense of the sardonic. This is what uncouples him from belief in his own pretensions. The sardonic is all that permits him to move within himself. Without this quality, even occasional greatness will destroy a man." --from Collected Sayings of Muad'Dib by the Princess Irulan

"There is an appalling directness about your questions, Watson. They come at me like bullets." -Sherlock Holmes

"The convoluted wording of legalisms grew up around the necessity to hide from ourselves the violence we intend toward each other. Between depriving a man of one hour from his life and depriving him of his life there exists only a difference of degree. You have done violence to him, consumed his energy. Elaborate euphemisms may conceal your intent to kill, but behind any use of power over another the ultimate assumption remains: 'I feed on your energy.'" --Addenda to Orders in Council The Emperor Paul Muad'dib

"When I tell the truth, it is not for the sake of convincing those who do not know it, but for the sake of defending those that do." -William Blake

Secher Nbiw

Thursday, July 1, 2010

Useful confusion

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