Media is an assemblage of tools with which to expand an audience's conception of what "the world" is to such and extent that their own lives and capabilities seem utterly insignificant; a means of psychological warfare by which people are overloaded ...
I don’t think of it that way. Besides, it’s only temporary. Once Dad sees that— That what? That the idiot who kidnapped you, stole you again, and made you an accomplice to a bunch of criminals, still calls you his? Something tells me that you b...
Your religion assumes that people are children and need a boogeyman so they'll behave. You want people to believe in God so they'll obey the law. That's the only means that occurs to you: a strict secular police force, and the threat of punishment by...
By acknowledging and accepting the ultimate commonality, we can naturally and voluntarily develop the attitude of compassion and benevolence toward other people, other life-forms, and all beings. We will want to live for the good of all because we kn...
It meant something to climb, to haul this sack of bones and flesh all this way, and then look, then think, then be. She could have taken a flyer here any time when she'd been recovering, but she hadn't, even though Jase had suggested it. That was too...
We are surrounded by the absurd excess of the universe. By meaningless bulk, vastness without size, power without consequence. The stubborn iteration that is present without being felt. Nothing the spirit can marry. Merely phenomenon and its physics....
Although we have refined our behavior over many centuries, the basic perception that we are individual beings, separate from the rest of the world, remains unchanged, and so how we relate to the world remains unchanged. Because separation is an illus...
Nothing is ever truly gone... Not for me, nor for any human being. We can only go forward, unless we are guests in some enchantment that is not is ours. We are condemned to an endless present, and we can never go back-the source of all our joy, and a...
The old exhortations to nationalist fervor and jingoist pride have begun to lose their appeal. Perhaps because of rising standards of living, children are being treated better worldwide. In only a few decades, sweeping global changes have begun to mo...
As with Jack, the discriminating milieu of loneliness moved Hugh to raise the stakes of solitude, not from a wish to spare himself the sapping drudgery of a conventional, passionless marriage, but rather to gamble on the existence of a just goddess. ...
Miracles... seem to me to rest not so much upon... healing power coming suddenly near us from afar but upon our perceptions being made finer, so that, for a moment, our eyes can see and our ears can hear what is there around us always.
Because I care about human beings, I want them to be free to do what is right for them. Isn't that more important than mere peace on earth? Isn't freedom, even dangerous freedom, preferable to the safest slavery, to peace bought with ignorance, cowar...
If humans did not manufacture some of their own to appear like better people, people would not aspire to be someone else. They would stop dreaming. And if people didn't dream, they would be awake to discover the wonderful misery of being. There are n...
It's hard for an educated woman to turn her head off. That's part of the joy of being a submissive. None of the decisions are yours. When you can't refuse anything and can't even move, those voices in your head go silent. All you can do, and all you ...
I was very pleased with your kind letter. Until now I never dreamed of being something like a hero. But since you've given me the nomination I feel that I am one.
One of the most important elements in the evolution of human institutions is the emergence of the difficult customer within the system itself, the radical who starts to question its very being, the reformer who calls for changes in the way it runs.
Drosophila,” I said, remembering the word. “What?” Lily asked. “Why do girls always fall for guys with the at ention span of drosophila?” “What?” “Fruit flies. Guys with the attention span of fruit flies.” “Because they’re hot?�...
When I step out on stage in front of thousands of people, I don't feel that I'm being brave. It can take much more courage to express true feelings to one person. [...] In spite of the risks, the courage to be honest and intimate opens the way to sel...
In my life long study of human beings, I have found that no matter how hard they try, they have found no way yet to prevent the arrival of Monday morning. And they do try, of course, but Monday always comes, and all the drones have to scuttle back to...
For you cannot live in New York City very long and not be conscious of the niceties of being rich—the city is, after all, an ecstatic exercise in merchandising—and one evening of his visit to Venezuela Sutherland sat straight up when he read a li...
Not setting the 'proper and accepted' religious example for them conjured up images of the bad mother, the worst mother. Yet wouldn't the example of a mother being true to her journey, taking a stand against patriarchy, and questing for spiritual mea...
