Quotations on thinking, speaking and writing (34)

“All men are rapists and that’s all they are.”

~Marilyn French

“Lack of transparency is a huge political advantage. And basically, call it the stupidity of the American voter or whatever, but basically that was really really critical for [Obamacare] to pass…”

~Jonathan Gruber, MIT professor and co-architect of Obamacare, boasting

“To be able to glide through life in the knowledge that one is bogus is a great achievement, far greater than that of the majority of genuinely earnest people.” 

~Slavoj Žižek

“Put a man in uniform, preferably a white man, give him a gun, and Americans will worship him. It is a particularly childish trait, of a childlike culture, that insists on anointing all active military members and police officers as ‘heroes.’ ”

~David Masciotra 

“But the effect of her being on those around her was incalculably diffusive: for the growing good of the world is partly dependent on unhistoric acts; and that things are not so ill with you and me as they might have been, is half owing to the number who lived faithfully a hidden life, and rest in unvisited tombs.” 

~George Eliot, Middlemarch 

“We must reclaim and retake feminism from our fellow idiotic women [and their] trivial bullsh*t.”

~Ayaan Hirsi Ali (pictured), commenting on this

“The Jews are the living embodiment of the minority, the constant reminder of what duties societies owe their minorities, whoever they might be.”

~Abba Eban

“It’s better to be unhappy alone than unhappy with someone – so far.

~Marilyn Monroe

The Takeaway: “Education is the ability to listen to almost anything without losing your temper or your self-confidence.” ~Robert Frost

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