We are parts of one universe, true enough. We stand within an almost infinite network of relationships. Yet each of us is a single point of consciousness, a unique event, a private, unrepeatable world. This is the essence of our aloneness.
In any culture, subculture, or family in which belief is valued above thought, and self-surrender is valued above self-expression, and conformity is valued above integrity, those who preserve their self-esteem are likely to be heroic exceptions.
Some people stand and move as if they have no right to the space they occupy. They wonder why others often fail to treat them with respect--not realizing that they have signalled others that it is not necessary to treat them with respect.
Out of fear, out of the desire for approval, out of misguided notions of duty, people surrender themselves--their convictions and their aspirations--every day. There is nothing noble about it. It takes far more courage to fight for your values than t...
I told them, you can succeed - it's not likely the first time, maybe 25 per cent, but you CAN succeed. You can also die. By April 16 they had already been to camp III, well ahead of most teams.
Examine each question in terms of what is ethically and aesthetically right, as well as what is economically expedient. A thing is right when it tends to perserve the integrity, stability, and beauty of the biotic community. It is wrong when it tends...
We seem to live a culture that doesn't want blemishes. The vision of most beautiful models... airbrushed in order to be seen as perfect, infects our notion of how literature should be written.
Capitalism is not about free competitive choices among people who are reasonably equal in their buying and selling of economic power, it is about concentrating capital, concentrating economic power in very few hands using that power to trash everyone...
If we weren't born with anti-social passions - narcissism, envy, lust, meanness, greed, hunger for power, just to name the more obvious - why the need for so many laws, whether religious or secular, that govern behavior?
I think a responsibility comes with notoriety, but I never think of it as power. It's more like something you hold, like grains of sand. If you keep your hand closed, you can have it and possess it, but if you open your fingers in any way, you can lo...
I don't want to belong to any league. I am in a league of my own. I don't want any tags associated with me because I know when the media associates tags with you, they also have the power to remove those tags tomorrow.
But it will be said that the husband provides for the wife, or in other words, he feeds, clothes and shelters her! I wish I had the power to make every one before me fully realize the degradation contained in that idea.
Why the Romans, Father?" I asked him one afternoon. "Because, my child, they teach us how to bear suffering in a world of injustice where all faith is dead," he answered.
Even the most artistic of imaginings can sometimes seem callow in the face of truth. That which appears may not be and that which lies hidden may just be the stark, naked face of reality.
I didn't have that typical high school experience of feeling ashamed of who I was. I once wore a superman cape and pajamas, and I thought that was awesome - and some people didn't! But some people did, and it was an arts high school, so nobody made m...
I think the joy of any soap opera is it is always there. You are allowed into this world for a little while and it's safe in that you are watching other people go through some troubles rather than yourself. It's there every night, and there is someth...
Novels aren't pedagogical instruments, or instructions in law or physics or any other discipline. A novel has to be an emotional experience, a trip of the imagination, and because science has raised so many issues that concern and affect humans, it's...
My high school experience was kind of like 'Mean Girls.' It was very much like a bad B movie. 'This is where the jocks sit, and this is where the cheerleaders sit.' And I never really fit in. I guess I was sort of a theatre geek, but the activity tha...
I'd be perfectly happy with a mathematically precise description of how time began. I see science and religion as being two completely different things. I don't see science as relevant to the question of whether or not there's a God.
Having refuted, then, as well as we could, every notion which might suggest that we were to think of God as in any degree corporeal, we go on to say that, according to strict truth, God is incomprehensible, and incapable of being measured.
God be praised for his gracious long suffering towards me in sparing my life so long. Grant, gracious God, that I may make a good use of the time that thou mayest be pleased yet to grant me for repentance.
