Harry Malinson > Harry's Quotes

“Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable."

[Remarks on the first anniversary of the Alliance for Progress, 13 March 1962]”
― John F. Kennedy

“People sleep peaceably in their beds at night only because rough men stand ready to do violence on their behalf.”
― George Orwell

“This calls for a very special blend of psychology and extreme violence.”
― Ben Elton, Bachelor Boys: The Young Ones Book

“Violence, naked force, has settled more issues in history than has any other factor.”
― Robert A. Heinlein, Starship Troopers

“We should write as we dream; we should even try and write, we should all do it for ourselves, it’s very healthy, because it’s the only place where we never lie. At night we don’t lie. Now if we think that our whole lives are built on lying-they are strange buildings-we should try and write as our dreams teach us; shamelessly, fearlessly, and by facing what is inside very human being-sheer violence, disgust, terror, shit, invention, poetry. In our dreams we are criminals; we kill, and we kill with a lot of enjoyment. But we are also the happiest people on earth; we make love as we never make love in life.”
― Helene Cixous

“Solitude is independence. It had been my wish and with the years I had attained it. It was cold. Oh, cold enough! But it was also still, wonderfully still and vast like the cold stillness of space in which the stars revolve.”
― Hermann Hesse, Steppenwolf

“I hold this to be the highest task of a bond between two people: that each should stand guard over the solitude of the other.”
― Rainer Maria Rilke, Letters to a Young Poet

“Loneliness is the poverty of self; solitude is richness of self.”
― May Sarton

“People don't get better, they just get smarter. When you get smarter you don't stop pulling the wings off flies, you just think of better reasons for doing it.”
― Stephen King, Carrie

“I think insomnia is a sign that a person is interesting.”
― Avery Sawyer, Notes to Self

“If it's natural to kill, how come men have to go into training to learn how?”
― Joan Baez

“When you vote, you are exercising political authority, you're using force. And force, my friends, is violence. The supreme authority from which all other authorities are derived.”
― Robert A. Heinlein, Starship Troopers

“It was life, often unsatisfying, frequently cruel, usually boring, sometimes beautiful, once in a while exhilarating.”
― Stephen King, Insomnia

“There’s no reason to live, but there’s no reason to die, either. The only way we can still show our contempt for life is to accept it. Life is not worth the bother of leaving it. Out of charity, one might spare a few individuals the trouble of living, but what about oneself? Despair, indifference, betrayal, fidelity, solitude, the family, freedom, weight, money, poverty, love, absence of love, syphilis, health, sleep, insomnia, desire, impotence, platitudes, art, honesty, dishonor, mediocrity, intelligence – nothing there to make a fuss about. We know only too well what those things are made of, no point in watching for them.”
― Jacques Rigaut

“Try as we will to take the “cure” of ineffectuality; to meditate on the Taoist fathers’ doctrine of submission, of withdrawal, of a sovereign absence; to follow, like them, the course of consciousness once it ceases to be at grips with the world and weds the form of things as water does, their favorite element—we shall never succeed. They scorn both our curiosity and our thirst for suffering; in which they differ from the mystics, and especially from the medieval ones, so apt to recommend the virtues of the hair shirt, the scourge, insomnia, inanition, and lament.
“A life of intensity is contrary to the Tao,” teaches Lao Tse, a normal man if ever there was one. But the Christian virus torments us: heirs of the flagellants, it is by refining our excruciations that we become conscious of ourselves. Is religion declining? We perpetuate its extravagances, as we perpetuate the macerations and the cell-shrieks of old, our will to suffer equaling that of the monasteries in their heyday. If the Church no longer enjoys a monopoly on hell, it has nonetheless riveted us to a chain of sighs, to the cult of the ordeal, of blasted joys and jubilant despair.
The mind, as well as the body, pays for “a life of intensity.” Masters in the art of thinking against oneself, Nietzsche, Baudelaire, and Dostoevsky have taught us to side with our dangers, to broaden the sphere of our diseases, to acquire existence by division from our being. And what for the great Chinaman was a symbol of failure, a proof of imperfection, constitutes for us the sole mode of possessing, of making contact with ourselves.”
― Emil Cioran, The Temptation to Exist

“An eye for an eye never made much sense to me; when someone takes your eye you take their head.”
― anonymous

“A cop's JOB is to violently enforce upon the rest of us whatever arbitrary bullshit the political parasites declare to be "law." It is, therefore, impossible to be a "law enforcer" and behave morally, for the same reason one can't be a moral car-jacker.”
― Larken Rose

“Forgive me, O Heavenly Father, according to the multitude of Thy mercies. I have lusted in my heart to break a man's skull and scatter the stench of his brains across several people's back yards.”
― Barbara Kingsolver, The Poisonwood Bible

“I am now quite cured of seeking pleasure in society, be it country or town. A sensible man ought to find sufficient company in himself.”
― Emily Bronte, Wuthering Heights

“Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.”
― William Butler Yeats, The Collected Poems of W.B. Yeats

“You know how both life and porno movies end. The only difference is life starts with the orgasm.”
― Chuck Palahniuk

“Self-mastery is the first step towards attaining enlightenment. Change begins with personal dissatisfaction and belief that a person can do better. A person can set meaningful goals and vow not to hold onto frivolous attachments. My objective is to cultivate the ability to expect the best effort from myself and never be afraid to tackle the type of difficult projects or pursue scintillating adventures that spur mental growth. I aim to become a loyal, loving, and joyful person, and broaden personal knowledge through a self-prescribed course of active reading and studious contemplation. I aspire to use an expanded base of knowledge to live a more ethical and principled existence and rid myself of self-defeating behaviors brought on by brooding doubts regarding the paucity of my innate talent. Instead of grieving over what I failed to achieve, I plan to concentrate upon what I can achieve and bring the collective force of my newly resolved mindset to the forefront.”
― Kilroy J. Oldster, Dead Toad Scrolls

“‎Hold yourself responsible for a higher standard than anybody else expects of you. Never excuse yourself. Never pity yourself. Be a hard master to yourself-and be lenient to everybody else.”
― Henry Ward Beecher

“Except our own thoughts, there is nothing absolutely in our power.”
― René Descartes

“No person is free who is not master of himself.”
― Epictetus

“What was it St. Augustine said? "The mind commands the body and it obeys. The mind orders itself and meets resistance.”
― Frank Herbert, Dune

“Let hunger sharpen your awareness. Abstain liquor and frivolous recreation, which dull the mind and weaken the body.”
― Laura Joh Rowland, The Concubine's Tattoo

“It requires disciplined thinking to achieve an organized life because you should focus on what is the most appropriate (and not the easiest) action to take.”
― Noah William Smith, You Own Your Life

“Only those who value self-knowledge over self-satisfaction can achieve wisdom, only those who value self-perfection over "self-fulfilment" can retain dignity, and only those who value self-discipline over self-indulgence can enjoy liberty.”
― Jakub Bożydar Wiśniewski

“The tendency to avoid challenges is so omnipresent in human beings that it can properly be considered a characteristic of human nature. But calling it natural does not mean it is essential or beneficial, or unchangeable behavior. It is also natural to defecate in our pants and never brush our teeth. Yet we teach ourselves to do the unnatural until the unnatural becomes itself second nature. Indeed, all self-discipline might be defined as teaching ourselves to do the unnatural. Another characteristic of human nature - perhaps the one that makes us most human - is our capacity to do the unnatural, to transcend and hence transform our own nature.”
― M. Scott Peck, The Road Less Traveled: A New Psychology of Love, Traditional Values and Spiritual Growth