The philosophical idea that there are no more distances, that we are all just one world, that we are all brothers, is such a drag! I like differences.
I feel like there is always something trying to pull us back into sleep, that there is this sort of seductive quality in all the hedonistic pleasures that pull on us.
Using pseudonyms was such a part of the early feminist movement. We didn't want to have this star system. We wanted attention on the ideas, not the persona of the writer.
In this culture, the phrase 'black woman' is not synonymous with 'tender,' or 'gentle.' It's as if those words couldn't possibly speak to the reality of black females.
The working-class black Southern Christian culture I come from still nurtures me, and I mean directly, daily.
Knowing how to be solitary is central to the art of loving. When we can be alone, we can be with others without using them as a means of escape.
People in minority religious communities, like Paganism, often feel isolated and even marginalized by others because of the lifestyle differences associated with their spiritual path.
So long as a man imagines that he cannot do this or that, so long as he is determined not to do it; and consequently so long as it is impossible to him that he should do it.
A strong work ethic is a form of accountability, because it involves keeping a promise to one's employer. It is not the same thing as workaholism.
When liberty is mentioned, we must always be careful to observe whether it is not really the assertion of private interests which is thereby designated.
What gives it its human character is that the individual through language addresses himself in the role of the others in the group and thus becomes aware of them in his own conduct.
If you see a philosopher determining all things by means of right reason, him you shall reverence: he is a heavenly being and not of this earth.
Der Schlaf, den wir ersehnen, der vollkommene Schlaf, ist traumlos. Wir werden von Träumen heimgesucht, sobald wir gelernt haben, uns zu erinnern und Reue zu empfinden
For this reason, strangers are not really conceived as individuals, but as strangers of a particular type: the element of distance is no less general in regard to them than the element of nearness.
The intellectually sophisticated person is indifferent to all genuine individuality, because relationships and reactions result from it which cannot be exhausted with logical operations.
When I had a fellowship at the Smithsonian, I asked for a couch in the office because I liked to lie down and take a break.
The mark, to me, of a constructive argument is one that looks at a specific problem and says, 'What shall we do about this?' And a nonconstructive one is one that tries to label people.
I was raised in Brooklyn and in Baltimore. My father was a bookkeeper. When I was 36 years old, my mother told me I was adopted.
The more language is a living operation, the less we are aware of it. Thus it follows from the self-forgetfulness of language that its real being consists in what is said in it.
When we find out an Idea, by whose Intervention we discover the Connexion of two others, this is a Revelation from God to us, by the voice of Reason.
The world, as transformed by this creative deed, is better than it would have been had all else remained the same, but had that deed of treason not been done at all.
