c2p-cmd/Good-Quotes-Authors huggingface dataset:
It'll be when you first learn to walk that I get daily demonstrations of the asymmetry in our relationship. You'll be incessantly running off somewhere, and each time you walk into a door frame or scrape your knee, the pain feels like it's my own. It'll be like growing an errant limb, an extension of myself whose sensory nerves report pain just fine, but whose motor nerves don't convey my commands at all. It's so unfair: I'm going to give birth to an animated voodoo doll of myself. I didn't see this in the contract when I signed up. Was this part of the deal?
— Ted Chiang, Stories of Your Life and Others
A man can make a son but a true man would be a father. A lady can have a child, but a real mother raises the child.
— Sofia Reyes
Is there a word for adults when they aren't parents?"Steppa laughs. "Folks with other things to do?""Like what things?""Jobs, I guess. Friends. Trips. Hobbies.
— Emma Donoghue, Room
Esme skips on ahead. Jumping from one foot to the other, as if she can see markings on the ground he can’t. She is constantly jumping and skipping and twirling with the lightness of falling snow, looking up at him bright with questions, tugging on his hand, dashing off with all the speed her body is capable of and then skipping on the spot up ahead as if consecrating it for his arrival. It is so easy to make her happy that it seems like cheating at times.
— Glenn Haybittle, The Way Back to Florence
It's a wild ride, this parenthood thing. Hardest thing I've done in my life and by far the best.
— Aidan Donnelley Rowley, The Ramblers
You right! You one hundred percent right! I done spent the last seventeen years worrying about what you got. Now it’s your turn, see? I’ll tell you what to do. You grown . . . we don established that. You a man. Now, let’s see you act like one. Turn your behind around and walk out this yard. And when you get out there in the alley . . . you can forget about this house. See? Cause this is my house. You go on and be a man and get your own house. You can forget about this. You can forget about this. ‘Cause this is mine. You go on and get yours because I’m through with doing for you.
— August Wilson, Fences
It would have been helpful if there was a Mayo Clinic chapter about the topic of "leaving." Man, I would have read that chapter over and over -- leaving your wailing baby in the morning without wanting to slit your wrists; leaving your desk even though you are only a half hour away from completing something that would feel so good to wrap up; leaving the building so no one notices that you are actually leaving. I was much more interested in honing that skill than learning how to puree apples and carrots to freeze in ice-cube trays (not that I ever did that either). As long as I was a full-time working mother with a clock to punch or a train to catch -- as I would be for eight more years -- I never figured out how to leave with grace or with so-called conviction.
— Jenny Rosenstrach
Parenthood is a very sacred journey but only a few owe it!
— Tehreem Rahat
If a brokenhearted mother could sing, I could not remain silent.
— Beth Moore, To Live Is Christ
The thing is, after having your first baby - there is no 'normal'. The reason form this is that there is actually no time for normality. Feeding, changing, washing muslins and generally cooing over your baby takes 25 hours a day and there is little room for anything else. Plus, you also need time to nap if you are going to recover well from your pregnancy and birth. So if you are pressurising yourself on top of that to make plans or worry about underarm depilation, you are pushing yourself far too much. Keep everything calm so you stay calm. Listen to your body. Trust yourself to know how much is 'too much'.
— Dr Ellie Cannon
Parents need to see that every situation that their kids find themselves in is a teaching situation, and they need to take the time to explore cost and effect. So talking to your children, explaining things to children as to why things happen in the world. Getting them to see cost and relationships between events is the best way to increase comprehension skills. Daynette Gardiner, the best School Psychologist in The Bahamas.
— Drexel Deal, The Fight of My Life is Wrapped Up in My Father
I have never compromised on academics and the one thing that I insist on is good grades, even though I am a relaxed and indulgent parent in most other things.
— Preeti Shenoy, It Happens for a Reason
Make me the father, O Lord, who will show my sons enough of a sense of humor, so that they will always be serious, but never take themselves too seriously. Give them humility, so they will always remember the simplicity of true greatness, the open mind of true wisdom, the meekness of true strength.
— Thom S. Rainer
The very lack of explicit pressure was itself a compelling force, for it created a world in which the expectation of success was simply there, a fact of life as basic as breakfast.
— H.W. Brands
There was so much – so many tests and tasks, so many tiny referenda.
— H.W. Brands
It's a strange thing, having a child," he said. It completely alters your most fundamental priorities. When my eldest daughter was born, I realized that I would do anything - anything - to protect her. If I had to set myself on fire to save her from something, I would do it with the utmost relief and gratitude. It's quite a thing, quite a privilege, to care about someone so much that the measure of worth of your own life is changed so much."Tatsu.
— Barry Eisler, Redemption Games
A love for his child was so profound, it spilled over to all humanity.
— John Howard Griffin, Black Like Me
Being a father, having an heir, seem to add an extra dimension to David. He had always been of vivid, animating presence in any room he entered. But now he would come from visiting the boy crackling with even greater energy and force. He had been engaged listener, ready to learn what any man might have to offer in discussion, but now there was an additional depth to his questions, a more far-reaching vision behind his decisions. He thought now beyond the span of years, and into a future that glistened ahead into centuries. It's one thing, I suppose, to have a prophet tell you that you will found a dynasty. Now, it seemed, he allowed himself to truly believe it.
— Geraldine Brooks, The Secret Chord
The author stipulates that while television lately background noise for a child, it tends to shift to the foreground for the adult. The adult pays enough attention to the media attention is paid to the child.
— Gary Chapman, Growing Up Social: Raising Relational Kids in a Screen-Driven World
Adams looks forward to teaching his granddaughters about planting trees, noting that they already show inclination toward this and need only be encouraged in the naturalist pursuits he has found so healthy.
— Paul C. Nagel, John Quincy Adams: A Public Life, a Private Life
I was too old for my father to (be protective), too young to be flattered.
— Catherine Marshall, Christy
We've been here dozen of times since we met, but this precious month before the baby is born feels like a last first date. There's a different kind of romance beginning. We will never again be entirely alone in the world
— Elizabeth Bard, Picnic in Provence: A Memoir with Recipes
On her way toward the shore, she kept coming across weekend tourists. Every cluster of them presented the same pattern: the man was pushing a stroller with a baby in it, the woman was walking beside him; the man's expression was meek, solicitous, smiling, a bit embarrassed, and endlessly willing to bend over the child, wipe its nose, soothe its cries; the woman’s expression was blasé, distant, smug, sometimes even (inexplicably) spiteful. This pattern Chantal saw repeated in several variants: the man alongside a woman was pushing the stroller and also carrying another baby on his hack, in a specially made sack: the man alongside a woman was pushing the stroller, carrying one baby on his shoulders and another in a belly carrier: the man alongside a woman had no stroller but was holding one child by the hand and carrying three others, on his back, his belly, and his shoulders. Then, finally, with no man. a woman was pushing the stroller: she was doing it with a force unseen in the men, such that Chantal, walking on the same sidewalk, had to leap out of her way at the last moment.Chantal thinks: men have daddified themselves. They aren't fathers, they're just daddies, which means: fathers without a father's authority.
— Milan Kundera
He did not so much follow his father's example as his father's vision.
— John Taliaferro, All the Great Prizes : The Life of John Hay, from Lincoln to Roosevelt
I could impersonally imagine a father willingly and painlessly ending the life of a son before that life should fade and fray into the common background pattern of greedy passions and deliberate violence which is also the pattern of inevitable self-destruction.
— Kenneth MacKenzie, The Refuge
All children think unkindly of their parents at some time or another
— Kenneth MacKenzie, The Refuge
But he was sixty-two when I was, born, and the novelty of daughters had worn away long before.
— Jane Smiley, The All-True Travels and Adventures of Lidie Newton
The goal of a true family is not that their children follow in their footsteps, but that their children surpass them in all ways.
— Andrew Vachss
This anxiety to keep his father from anger was wearisome to him.
— Pearl S. Buck
Children who are well nurtured and whose parents help them learn how to calm down when they are upset, for instance, seem to develop greater strength in the brain’s circuits for managing distress;
— Lisa Lantieri
They are full of wonder and awe and can play creatively. Sometimes they can sense things that adults often take time to perceive or know. For example, young children are able to make quick intuitive decisions about whom they will be friendly with. However, when this aspect of a child is not affirmed and noticed, it becomes hidden and repressed. As a result, young children can lose touch with a part of themselves that is already quite well developed.
— Lisa Lantieri
You´re my son, Ed. You might be idiotic and irresponsible, but it doesn´t make the slightest difference to what I feel for you. I´m pissed off that you could have thought it would
— Jojo Moyes, One Plus One
A man with no children can easily be lulled into a sense that time is standing still. It's not. It's marching past us, relentlessly. Having a child growing and changing before your eyes makes this unavoidably clear.
— Jonathan V. Last
It’s a . . . transcendental act. Making life. . . . ‘By this act, I bring one death into the world.’ One birth, one death, and all the pain and acts of will between. . . . Our children change us . . . whether they live or not.
— Lois McMaster Bujold, Barrayar
Would you actually believe that you had committed your foolish acts in order to spare your son from committing them too? And could you in any way protect your son from Sansara? How could you? By means of teachings, prayer, admonition? My dear, have you entirely forgotten that story, that story containing so many lessons, that story about Siddhartha, a Brahman's son, which you once told me here on this very spot? Who has kept the Samana Siddhartha safe from Sansara, from sin, from greed, from foolishness? Were his father's religious devotion, his teachers warnings, his own knowledge, his own search able to keep him safe? Which father, which teacher had been able to protect him from living his life for himself, from soiling himself with life, from burdening himself with guilt, from drinking the bitter drink for himself, from finding his path for himself? Would you think, my dear, anybody might perhaps be spared from taking this path? That perhaps your little son would be spared, because you love him, because you would like to keep him from suffering and pain and disappointment? But even if you would die ten times for him, you would not be able to take the slightest part of his destiny upon yourself.
— Hermann Hesse, Siddhartha
He should be very proud of Andrew if he got a scholarship, he said. She would be just as proud of him if he didn't, she answered. They disagreed always about this, but it did not matter. She liked him to believe in scholarships, and he liked her to be proud of Andrew whatever he did.
— Virginia Woolf, To the Lighthouse
then Siddhartha began to understand that his son had not brought him happiness and peace, but suffering and worry. But he loved him, and he preferred the suffering and worries of love over happiness and joy without the boy.
— Hermann Hesse
After having been standing by the gate of the garden for a long time, Siddhartha realised that his desire was foolish, which had made him go up to this place, that he could not help his son, that he was not allowed to cling him. Deeply, he felt the love for the run-away in his heart, like a wound, and he felt at the same time that this wound had not been given to him in order to turn the knife in it, that it had to become a blossom and had to shine.
— Hermann Hesse, Siddhartha
Recalling his mother’s endless drudgery, (Senator) Richard (Russell) Jr. was to say that he was ten years old before he saw his mother asleep; previously, he had “thought that mothers never had to sleep.
— Robert A. Caro, Master of the Senate
I can do one of two things. I can be President of the United States or I can control Alice Roosevelt. (His 19-year-old daughter.) I cannot possibly do both.
— Theodore Roosevelt
Author Toni Morrison swats aside other possible sources of her success and says that the ONLY reason she is a great writer is because when she walked into a room as a child her father's face lit up.
— Donald Miller, Searching for God Knows What
She had dealt with her pregnancy by wrapping herself in dreams.
— Robert K. Massie, Catherine the Great: Portrait of a Woman
Theodore Roosevelt's father wrote him, "I fear for your future. We cannot stand so corrupt a government for any great length of time.
— Doris Kearns Goodwin, The Bully Pulpit: Theodore Roosevelt, William Howard Taft, and the Golden Age of Journalism
It’s a beautiful thing to see a man put so much trust in his children; to put so much care into their emotional well-being, to build them up from the earliest stages, and motivate them. Most parents are stumped when it comes to their first-born, they are not sure what are the right and wrong things to do, but Mr. Ellison was a natural… He gave his first born everything he never had, and multiplied it with an excessive amount of love and still kept a company going—- face immeasurable amount of pressure and stress, as he said:“ It was the most traumatic period in my life.
— Avra Amar Filion
I found that life intruding on writing was, in fact, life. And that, tempting as it may be for a writer who is a parent, one must not think of life as an intrusion. At the end of the day, writing has very little to do with writing, and much to do with life. And life, by definition, is not an intrusion.
— Sarah Ruhl, 100 Essays I Don't Have Time to Write: On Umbrellas and Sword Fights, Parades and Dogs, Fire Alarms, Children, and Theater
There has always been a sliver of panic in him, deeply buried, when it comes to his daughter: a fear that he is no good as a father, that he is doing everything wrong. That he never quite understood the rules. …There is pride, too, though–pride that he has done it alone. That his daughter is so curious, so resilient. There is the humility of being a father to someone so powerful, as if he were only a narrow conduit for another, greater thing. That’s how it feels right now, he thinks, kneeling beside her, rinsing her hair: as though his love for his daughter will outstrip the limits of his body. The walls could fall away, even the whole city, and the brightness of that feeling would not wane.
— Anthony Doerr, All the Light We Cannot See
A boy, if he's lucky, discovers his limitations across a leisurely passage of years, with a self-awareness arriving slowly. That way, at least he has plenty of time to heroically imagine himself first. Most boys unfold in this natural, measured way, growing up with at least one adult on the scene who can convincingly fake being all-powerful, omniscient, and unfailingly protective for a kid's first decade or so, providing an invaluable canopy of reachable stars and monsters that are comfortably make-believe.
— Ron Suskind, A Hope in the Unseen: An American Odyssey from the Inner City to the Ivy League
You raise them half-decent, and they grow up and leave. They move to Miami or California-- someplace with gourmet groceries and nude beaches because you've reared them to cook good and be liberal minded. It's just the opposite with your failures-- them kids stick to your tail like a cocklebur. You'd think it would be the other way around, but it's not. No matter how old I get, this will always amaze me.
— Michael Lee West, American Pie
Her mother admonished through closed lips, the sound a mother can make mean anything from "pick up your socks" to "we are very disappointed you have murdered those orphans.
— Thomm Quackenbush, Danse Macabre (Night's Dream, #2)
Emma, Emma, Emma," I said, wishing I could somehow teach her to take the smaller blows of life in her stride.
— Jane Hamilton, A Map of the World
That night I experienced one of those sudden, unpleasant shifts of perception that occur to parents, when you notice a difference in your child that's been coming over a long time, and you're faced with it, and at the same time you're groping back to touch the child they were a minute ago, while a somehow unaccountable, unpredictable person is watching you, waiting for you to catch up with them, contemptuous because you haven't.
— Dorothy Johnston, The Trojan Dog
But the truth is, there's little even the most organized people can do to prepare themselves for having children. They can buy all the books, observe friends and relations, review their own memories of childhood. But the distance between those proxy experiences and the real thing, ultimately, can be measured in light-years.
— Jennifer Senior, All Joy and No Fun: The Paradox of Modern Parenthood
These stories depressed me. Love ruined people's lives, the way our parents said drugs could.
— Mona Simpson, Casebook
It’s certainly TOUGH being AWESOME all the time, but I do it so the kids have someone to look up to!
— Tanya Masse
The door was flung open. Maurice Duplay filled it; energetic master, shirt- sleeves rolled up. He threw out his arms, the good Jacobin Duplay, and formed a sentence totally original, something which had never been uttered in the history of the world: “Camille, you have a son, and your wife is very well, and is asking you to be at home, right now.
— Hilary Mantel, A Place of Greater Safety
I kept glancing at her animated face, scrunched up as though imitating an adult. I got hit with that overwhelming feeling. It sneaked up on me. Parents get it from time to time. You are looking at your child and it is an ordinary moment, not like they are onstage or hitting a winning shop, just sitting there, and you look at them and you know that they are your whole life and that moves you and scares you and makes you want to stop time.
— Harlan Coben, The Woods
I was into third guesses with Theo and Maddy. Anyway, that's one of the reasons I opted to buythe van and drive cross-country instead of dumping us all in a plane. It gave us some time. Nothinglike a three-thousand-mile drive in an enclosed vehicle to cement a family unit—if you live throughit.""It was very brave of you.""You want to talk courage?" He drove easily up the lane to the villa. "I've been chief taste-testeron this wine experiment Maddy's conducting. It's brut
— Nora Roberts, The Villa
I don't know why I wanted a girl,' he says, as if to himself. 'I mean, I wouldn't swap Louis, but when they said, 'It's a boy!', I thought: 'Oh, well.' Everyone else was incredibly pleased that it was a boy – grandparents are always very pleased when it's a boy for some reason. Another one's on the way, and I hope it's going to be a girl. After that, I'll stop. I think it can be a real mistake to sort of plug away for a particular sex … you end up having millions and they're all boys.
— Antonella Gambotto-Burke, The Martin Amis Interview
Forget Batman: when I really thought about what I wanted to be when I grew up, I wanted to be my dad.
— Paul Asay, God on the Streets of Gotham: What the Big Screen Batman Can Teach Us about God and Ourselves
Why did you do it? Give up everything to raise another man's son?'His father did look up at that. 'I didn't raise another man's son,' he said sharply. 'I raised my own.
— Courtney Milan, The Heiress Effect
It is not true that "love is not love which alters when it alteration finds." Love alters all the time; it is fluid, in perceptual flux, an evolving business across a lifetime.
— Andrew Solomon, Far from the Tree: Parents, Children, and the Search for Identity
Parenthood wasn’t about blood or biology, he found; it was about a joyful willingness to give yourself over, to subordinate your own needs for someone else’s. When you loved your kids, you’d give up everything to keep them safe and make them happy, and you didn’t care about the other things, the ones that went away.
— Lisa Unger, Heartbroken
We made mistakes trying to correct mistakes. Isn't that how we knew we were parents?
— The Odd Life of Timothy Green
Where did the bonds of maternity end? All children grew up, changed, became somebody else. Parents who trembled that they might lose a gap-toothed toddler to some terrible accident ended up losing him anyway, always, to time. The toddlers died, after all, and what was left was a bond with another adult, who had once been the beloved child.
— Nancy Kress, Brain Rose
Parenthood offers many lessons in patience and sacrifice. But ultimately, it is a lesson in humility. The very best thing about your life is a short stage in someone else’s story.
— Michael Gerson
If coupling should but make us whole / And of the selfsame mind and soul, / Then couple let's in celebration; / We have contained the population.
— N. Scott Momaday, In The Presence of The Sun: Stories and Poems
One of the ridiculously difficult things about raising children is that they are constantly developing and changing so that just when you think you have them figured out, they throw you a curve, a new twist you never saw coming. They are like mutating viruses - as soon as you have become immune to their latest shenanigans, they develop a new strain to which you have yet to be exposed. While this constant shape-shifting is one of the greatest challenges of parenting, it is also one of the things which makes them so fascinating and wonderful.
— Amy E. Spiegel, Letting Go of Perfect: Women, Expectations, and Authenticity
Acknowledge and voice the positives LOUDER than the negatives.
— Tanya Masse
We are now parents. The love for our offspring has opened up fresh fountains of love for each other. Edwin Stanton to his wife.
— Doris Kearns Goodwin, Team of Rivals: The Political Genius of Abraham Lincoln
What was I waiting for with regards to the sea-soaked woman laughing in front of me? What would I tell myself if I didn't watch her grow gorgeously ripe with our baby? If we didn't become sleep-deprived and snappy with each other as we tried to navigate the stormy seas of parenthood together.
— Dorothy Koomson, The Woman He Loved Before
He felt her heartbeat against his shoulder, through his jacket, light as raindrops.
— Lauren Gilley, Whatever Remains
It's the silliness--the profligacy, and the silliness--that's so dizzying: a seven-year-old will run downstairs, kiss you hard, and then run back upstairs again, all in less than 30 seconds. It's as urgent an item on their daily agenda as eating or singing. It's like being mugged by Cupid.
— Caitlin Moran, How to Be a Woman
Fathers, provoke not your children to wrath.
— Fyodor Dostoyevsky, The Brothers Karamazov
They (teenage boys)don’t really listen to speeches or talks. They absorb incrementally, through hours and hours of observation.
— Rob Lowe, Stories I Only Tell My Friends
Family likeness has often a deep sadness in it. Nature, that great tragic dramatist, knits us together by bone and muscle, and divides us by the subtler web of our brains; blends yearning and repulsion; and ties us by our heart-strings to the beings that jar us at every movement.
— George Eliot, Adam Bede
- How does it feel to have a daughter?- At times it's like holding a warm egg in my hand.
— Clarice Lispector, Near to the Wild Heart
That's what Father and Mother are, thought Nafai. They stay together, not because of any gain, but because of the gift. Father doesn't stay with Mother because she is good for him, but rather because together they can do good for us, and for many others.
— Orson Scott Card, The Memory of Earth: Homecoming, Vol. 1
My dear Watson, you as a medical man are continually gaining light as to the tendencies of a child by the study of the parents. Don't you see that the converse is equally valid. I have frequently gained my first real insight into the character of parents by studying their children.”—Sherlock Holmes, “The Adventure of the Copper Beeches
— Arthur Conan Doyle
The debt we owe our parents can never be squared, and jolly good too, because doing so would threaten to nullify all relationship, all emotional commerce between the two generations. Being in debt, just like being in credit, means an active interest applies between the two parties and, once the debt is taken care of, the interest is bound to wane.
— Robert Rowland Smith, Breakfast with Socrates: An Extraordinary (Philosophical) Journey Through Your Ordinary Day
Apparently, the easiest way to overcome any awkwardness of speaking about sex is to sterilize it and outsource it to the professionals.
— Matthew Lee Anderson, Earthen Vessels: Why Our Bodies Matter To Our Faith
Be bad, but at least don't be a liar, a deceiver!
— Leo Tolstoy, Anna Karenina
Come on, say it again. I'm a perfect devil. Tell me how bad I am. It makes me feel so good!
— Anne Rice, The Queen of the Damned
There were some days that deserved to be drowned at birth and everyone sent back to bed with a hot brandy, a box of chocolates and a warm, energetic companion. Today was without question one of those days.
— Diana Pharaoh Francis, The Cipher
the worst happens when you least expect it
— Dean Koontz, Watchers
Also not the kind of place to hide a server.""Is that another pun?" She asked."No! I swear! I didn't mean that one."~Shell Game, Kingdom Keepers #5
— Ridley Pearson
And I didn't tell mom what happened. She'd already warned me that bad things could hide in the most unlikely places.
— Lorraine Zago Rosenthal, Other Words for Love
Bad is always afraid of good and that is the reason why bad tries to eliminate good!
— Mehmet Murat ildan
If you get drunk today ask yourself why you never got drunk yesterday, and if you got drunk yesterday ask yourself today why you got drunk yesterday. Drunkenness is bad when it affects someone’s life in a bad way.
— Simon Mashalla
Piper wondered if Olympian gods ever blasted their kids with lightning for being evil, or grounded them in the Underworld.
— Rick Riordan, The Lost Hero
People always have such a hard time believing that robots could do bad things.
— Rita Stradling, Ensnared
Bad and bad and bad and bad move... and move and move just another checkmate...
— Deyth Banger
Even when you're down, there is still hope. No matter how bad things get and no matter how small a hope there is, anything is better than nothing, No matter how bad things get, they can always, ALWAYS get worse. Take my word on that.
— Christina Engela, Demonspawn
If you are reading this... I'm dead so far probably or still alive who knows?It's bad day in bad time, I can tell this for sure!
— Deyth Banger
Falling isn’t so bad, you know. It’s only the landing that hurts.
— Terry Pratchett, The Color of Magic
Bad and worse and worst makes a beggar's choice.
— George R.R. Martin, A Dance with Dragons
I want to know,” he breathed, his tongue moving between her breasts. “When do we get to be bad again?” She smiled big. “Baby, I thought you'd never ask.
— Stylo Fantome, The Bad Ones
Because sometimes in life, sweetheart. The bad guys win-Ford 'Blame It on the Pain
— Ashley Jade, Blame It on the Pain
It really sucks when good things are being hated over the bad one.
— Ridhdhesh Jivawala
Everything’s bad, until you find something worse.
— Paolo Bacigalupi, The Water Knife
Maybe I was a bad kid. But I was also slowly turning to stone.
— Dan Carr, New Horizons
Watch out when the bad treats you well!
— Mehmet Murat ildan
There are bad people who would be less dangerous if they were quite devoid of goodness.
— François de La Rochefoucauld
Excess of everything is worst
—  even if it is best otherwise.
Envy isn’t always green; it’s often black and white!" (On book reviews - from an article written in 2013)
— Eric J. Gates
A complex world of intrigues and power play among couples hascombined to deny young people the love and attention they trulydeserve, more and more teenagers are leaving home to peer up withbad influence which eventually lands them in jail for the lucky onesand six feet under for the not so lucky.
— Oche Otorkpa, The Unseen Terrorist
Hey Rid?"She stopped and turned to look at him, almost ruefully. Like she couldn't help what she was any more then a shark could help being a shark, but if she could..."Yeah, Shrinky Dink?""You're not all bad."She looked right at him and almost smiled. "You know what they say. Maybe I'm just drawn that way.
— Kami Garcia, Beautiful Creatures
I only mean, Bessy, there's good and bad in everything in this world; and as you felt the bad up here, I thought it was but fair you should know the bad down there.
— Elizabeth Gaskell, North and South
The best thing about a horrible city is that it makes you to understand the beauty of the pastoral life! The bad crystallizes the value of the good.
— Mehmet Murat ildan
If you sought to leave the world, don’t go alone. Since there are too many bad people you can take them too.
— M.F. Moonzajer
You’ve got a good side?”“I do. I just don’t use it too often. My bad side’s so much more fun.
— Faye Kellerman, The Mercedes Coffin
Me, Tarzan. You, Jane. I kill bad guy. Beat chest. Tarzan howl.
— Stephanie Rowe, Kiss at Your Own Risk
My biggest mistake is in believing there are limits to how bad it can get.
— Laura Wiess
Scarlett kicked the coverlet in impotent rage, trying to think of something bad enough to say.'God's nightgown!' she cried at last, and felt somewhat relieved.
— Margaret Mitchell, Gone with the Wind
What is important is to spread confusion, not eliminate it.
— Salvador Dalí
It is our suffering that brings us together. It is not love. Love does not obey the mind, and turns to hate when forced. The bond that binds us is beyond choice. We are brothers. We are brothers in what we share. In pain, which each of us must suffer alone, in hunger, in poverty, in hope, we know our brotherhood. We know it, because we have had to learn it. We know that there is no help for us but from one another, that no hand will save us if we do not reach out our hand. And the hand that you reach out is empty, as mine is. You have nothing. You possess nothing. You own nothing. You are free. All you have is what you are, and what you give.
— Ursula K. Le Guin, The Dispossessed
In a world like this one, only the random makes sense.
— Libba Bray, Going Bovine
We have nothing but our freedom. We have nothing to give you but your own freedom. We have no law but the single principle of mutual aid between individuals. We have no government but the single principle of free association. We have no states, no nations, no presidents, no premiers, no chiefs, no generals, no bosses, no bankers, no landlords, no wages, no charity, no police, no soldiers, no wars. Nor do we have much else. We are sharers, not owners. We are not prosperous. None of us is rich. None of us is powerful. If it is Anarres you want, if it is the future you seek, then I tell you that you must come to it with empty hands. You must come to it alone, and naked, as the child comes into the world, into his future, without any past, without any property, wholly dependent on other people for his life. You cannot take what you have not given, and you must give yourself. You cannot buy the Revolution. You cannot make the Revolution. You can only be the Revolution. It is in your spirit, or it is nowhere.
— Ursula K. Le Guin, The Dispossessed
There are times when the law jeopardizes those who obey it.
— Kathy Acker, Pussy, King of the Pirates
Beginning with Santa Claus as a cognitive exercise, a child is encouraged to share the same idea of reality as his peers. Even if that reality is patently invented and ludicrous, belief is encouraged with gifts that support and promote the common cultural lies. The greatest consensus in modern society is our traffic systems. The way a flood of strangers can interact, sharing a path, almost all of them traveling without incident. It only takes one dissenting driver to create anarchy.
— Chuck Palahniuk, Rant
Anarchy could never get a man to the moon, but it may the only mode that can allow us to survive on earth.
— Sheldon B. Kopp, If You Meet the Buddha on the Road, Kill Him: The Pilgrimage Of Psychotherapy Patients
Oh, most unhappy man,' he cried, 'try to be happy! You have red hair like your sister.'My red hair, like red flames, shall burn up the world,' said Gregory.
— G.K. Chesterton, The Man Who Was Thursday: A Nightmare
Nationalism does nothing but teach you to hate people you never met, and to take pride in accomplishments you had no part in.
— Doug Stanhope
Batman: a force of chaos in my world of perfect order. The dark side of the Soviet dream. Rumored to be a thousand murdered dissidents, they said he was a ghost. A walking dead man. A symbol of rebellion that would never fade as long as the system survived.Anarchy in black.
— Mark Millar, Superman: Red Son
The authoritarian system we live under is set to benefit a tiny minority — an all-powerful elite gets obscenely rich, while billions are cheated out of realizing their true potential. But the system is rotten. It's ripe for collapse. It's the duty of every revolutionary — everyone of us — to hasten that collapse... It's not a crime to fight injustice... The system's conditioned us — hypnotized nearly everybody into accepting that life has to be the way it is. We're hypnotized into believing war is natural — famine is natural — crime is natural... but they're not. They're products of the system and its all-consuming greed! People have become robots — zombies — too busy scrambling for day-to-day existence to be able to see they're really victims. It's up to us to open their eyes. From cradle to grave, we're taught — indoctrinated! — that happiness depends on always getting more. Buy — throw away — buy more! Doesn't matter if we destroy the planet on the way! Politicians say they can fix the world's problems. Just give them more power. Religions say do more of what they order and you'll be happy — but only after you're dead! They've been making the same hollow promises for thousands of years, and we, the people — the sheep — have listened. But it's time to wake up and smell the coffee — the days of external authority and force-backed power are numbered... that's the way the system is set up! A sham democracy that acts as a front for the elite's ambitions... It doesn't have to be like that. We can change it!
— Alan Grant
Jelly beans! Millions and billions of purples and yellows and greens and licorice and grape and raspberry and mint and round and smooth and crunchy outside and soft-mealy inside and sugary and bouncing jouncing tumbling clittering clattering skittering fell on the heads and shoulders and hardhats and carapaces of the Timkin works, tinkling on the slidewalk and bouncing away and rolling about underfoot and filling the sky on their way down with all the colors of joy and childhood and holidays, coming down in a steady rain, a solid wash, a torrent of color and sweetness out of the sky from above, and entering a universe of sanity and metronomic order with quite-mad coocoo newness. Jelly beans!
— Harlan Ellison, "Repent, Harlequin!" Said the Ticktockman
Can we imagine a togetherness that isn't founded on gross generalizations, conceptualizing ourselves as unique individuals who still stand to gain from looking out for one another? Can we identify with each other rather than with categories or masters?
— CrimethInc., Work: Capitalism. Economics. Resistance
Dead anarchists make martyrs, you know, and keep living for centuries. But absent ones can be forgotten.
— Ursula K. Le Guin, The Dispossessed
Anarchists are mouthpieces of a declining stratum of society; when they work themselves into a state of righteous indignation demanding 'rights', 'justice', 'equal rights', they are just acting under the pressure of their own lack of culture, which has no way of grasping why they really suffer, or what they lack in life.
— Friedrich Nietzsche
The greatest of all historical shams is believing you can not do something you can.
— Erik Petersen - Love and Rage
It is cold anarchy to say that all men are to meddle in all men'smarriages. It is cold anarchy to say that any doctor may seize andsegregate anyone he likes. But it is not anarchy to say that a fewgreat hygienists might enclose or limit the life of all citizens,as nurses do with a family of children. It is not anarchy, it istyranny; but tyranny is a workable thing.
— G.K. Chesterton
The measure of the state's success is that the word anarchy frightens people, while the word state does not.
— Joseph Sobran
We are the anarchists your parents warned you about.
— Suzy Kassem, Rise Up and Salute the Sun: The Writings of Suzy Kassem
Those then, who resist a confirmation of public order, are the true Artificers of monarchy—not that this is the intention of the generality of them. Yet it would not be difficult to lay the finger upon some of their party who may justly be suspected. When a man unprincipled in private life desperate in his fortune, bold in his temper, possessed of considerable talents, having the advantage of military habits—despotic in his ordinary demeanour—known to have scoffed in private at the principles of liberty—when such a man is seen to mount the hobby horse of popularity—to join in the cry of danger to liberty—to take every opportunity of embarrassing the General Government & bringing it under suspicion—to flatter and fall in with all the non sense of the zealots of the day—It may justly be suspected that his object is to throw things into confusion that he may “ride the storm and direct the whirlwind.
— Alexander Hamilton
At least I had frost on my nose, boots on my feet, and protest in my mouth.
— Jack Kerouac, The Dharma Bums
It is a disturbing aspect of human nature that if there is a place where there are no consequences and where the most grotesque murders are tolerated in the name of a cult claiming to be a faith, a certain type of person will be attracted to it.
— Richard Engel, And Then All Hell Broke Loose: Two Decades in the Middle East
Rome sees some bloke from the London School of Economics on the telly while he’s flicking through the channels. This chap makes the point that governments don’t actually do anything for us. The only thing that makes them boss is that they control all the currency. Historically, anyone proposing an alternative to cash is brutally suppressed, but then historically they haven’t got the Internet, which makes such things much easier to set up; much harder to crack down on.
— Alan Moore, Jerusalem
And each ripple builds and builds into the tidal wave of anarchy to which we are now doomed.
— Brian Michael Bendis, Powers, Vol. 5: Anarchy
Everyone needs rules. After all, how can you break what doesn’t exist? Rules give anarchy something to aim at
— Jodi Taylor, What Could Possibly Go Wrong?
How could anarchy be any worse for the general welfare than this? I say let the city go bankrupt, the buildings fall, let grass take over Fifth Avenue. Let birds nest in storefronts, whales swim up the Hudson. We can spend mornings hunting for food, and afternoons fornicating, and at night we’ll dance on the rooftops and chant shantih shantih at the sky.
— Garth Risk Hallberg, City on Fire
Consider the following sequence of cases, which we shall call the Tale of the Slave, and imagine it is about you.1. There is a slave completely at the mercy of his brutal master’s whims. He is often cruelly beaten, called out in the middle of the night, and so on.2. The master is kindlier and beats the slave only for stated infractions of his rules (not fulling the work quota, and so on). He gives the slave some free time.3. The master has a group of slave, and he decides how things are to be allocated among them on nice grounds, taking into account their needs, merit, and so on.4. The master allows the slave four days on their own and requires them to work only three days a week on his land. The rest of the time is their own.5. The master allows his slaves to go off and work in the city (or anywhere they wish) for wages. He also retains the power to recall them to the plantation if some emergency threatens his land; and to raise or lower the three-sevenths amount required to be turned over to him. He further retains the right to restrict the slaves from participating in certain dangerous activities that threaten his financial return, for example, mountain climbing, cigarette smoking.6. The master allows all of his 10,000 slaves, except you, to vote, and the joint decision is made by all of them. There is open discussion, and so forth, among them, and they have the power to determine to what use to put whatever percentage of your (and their) earnings they decide to take; what activities legitimately may be forbidden to you, and so on.7. Though still not having the vote, you are at liberty (and are given the right) to enter into discussion of the 10,000, to try to persuade them to adopt various policies and to treat you and themselves in a certain way. They then go off to vote to decide upon policies covering the vast range of their powers.8. In appreciation of your useful contributions to discussion, the 10,000 allow you to vote if they are deadlocked; they commit themselve3s to this procedure. After the discussion you mark your vote on a slip of paper, and they go off and vote. In the eventuality that they divide evenly on some issue, 5,000 for and 5,000 against, they look at your ballot and count it in. This has never yet happened; they have never yet had occasion to open your ballot. (A single master may also might commit himself to letting his slave decide any issue concerning him about which he, the master, was absolutely indifferent.)9. They throw your vote in with theirs. If they are exactly tied your vote carries the issue. Otherwise it makes no difference to the electoral outcome.The question is: which transition from case 1 to case 9 made it no longer the tale of the slave?
— Robert Nozick, Anarchy, State, and Utopia
Anarchy is law and freedom without force.Despotism is law and force without freedom.Barbarism force without freedom and law.Republicanism is force with freedom and law.
— Immanuel Kant, Anthropology from a Pragmatic Point of View
It couldn't have been gonorrhea, which never stops eating you up of its own accord. Why should it ever stop of its own accord? It's having such a nice time. Why call off the party? Look how healthy and happy the kids are.
— Kurt Vonnegut Jr., Hocus Pocus
He hadn't killed nearly as many people as I had. But then again, he hadn't had my advantage, which was the full cooperation of our Government.
— Kurt Vonnegut Jr., Hocus Pocus
When you vote, you play Russian Roulette with a magazine fed pistol.
— Tom Wallace
The freedom we want, for ourselves and for others, is not an absolute metaphysical, abstract freedom which in practice is inevitably translated into the oppression of the weak; but it is real freedom, possible freedom, which is the conscious community of interests, voluntary solidarity.
— Errico Malatesta
Tomorrow will use you the way you use today.
— CrimethInc., Contradictionary
Gun Control: A measure to ensure that guns always point in one direction.
— CrimethInc.
What is common becomes sense, but what is sensible doesn't always become common.
— CrimethInc., Contradictionary
Historically, the 'deadline' was the line around a prison beyond which prisoners were eligible for shooting. In keeping with shifts in the exercise of control, what one was delineated spatially over life is now enforced temporarily over labor.
— CrimethInc., Contradictionary
In the United States, people don't revolt in order to obtain freedom, but continue denying it to others.
— CrimethInc., Contradictionary
One does not suffer nearly so much from one's inadequacies as from one's unused abilities.
— CrimethInc.
There is no returning to the masses - once your forays into theory have borne you far enough away from them that you can perceive them and the benefits of being among them. the only return is through the process of disillusionment; one must cease to care about motivating the masses to be reunited with them. Likewise, there is no converting them - no matter how many people you come to join you at your outpost, from up close they will never look as impressive as the distant crowd.
— CrimethInc., Contradictionary
Right and wrong are superstitions; your desires, however, are real. Those who cannot achieve their desires, or who despair of doing so, often compensate by constructing imaginary frameworks. For example, if you wish to live in a world in which no one exploits animals, it is moralism to judge those who eat meat immoral instead of setting about disabling the animal exploitation industry. People retreat into moralism as a sort of consolation prize, for it is easier to rule in the realm of good and evil, fictitious as it may be, than to come to terms with our limited leverage upon this world and yet persist in endeavoring to change it.
— CrimethInc., Contradictionary
Economy: As an adjective, cheap; As a noun, that which compels us to render ourselves as such.
— CrimethInc., Contradictionary
Feeling that one has some leverage upon something, even by proxy or association, makes one a great deal more interested in it.
— CrimethInc., Contradictionary
When desertion is not an option, sabotage is a must.
— Curious George Brigade
Never confuse efficiency with effectiveness.
— Curious George Brigade, Anarchy in the Age of Dinosaurs
One of the most inefficient utopias I have ever seen was that of a humble Zapatista village in the mountains of Southeastern Mexico. I kid you not, the entire village sits down and takes days to make a single decision! Everyone gets a chance to hear and be heard, and some questions take eons of time, but everyone is patient and respectful. Things actually get done. It's as if time was suddenly transformed from the tickling of a Newtonian clock to something that revolved around ordinary folks.
— Curious George Brigade, Anarchy in the Age of Dinosaurs
Within a diverse swarm of individuals and small groups, resistance can be anywhere and anything; everywhere and all the time.
— Curious George Brigade
Accident - A statistical inevitability. Some nuclear power plants are built on fault lines, but ever mine, dam, oil rig, and waste dump is founded upon a tacit acceptance of the worst-case scenario. One a long enough timeline, everything that can go wrong will, however small the likelihood is from one day to the next. The responsible parties may wring their hands about the Fukushima meltdown - and the Gult of Mexico oil spill, and the Exxon Valdez, and Hurricane Katrina, and Chernobyl, and Haiti - but accident is no accident.
— CrimethInc.
Within a diverse swarm of individuals and small groups, resistance can be anywhere and anytime; everywhere and all the time.
— Curious George Brigade, Anarchy in the Age of Dinosaurs
If you can see a cop in your rear view mirror - no matter how far back the cop is - TURN! The sooner you turn the better. Your goal while driving should be to never let a law enforcement officer into a position where he can pull you over. Don't even let them come close enough to read your tag.
— Ian Tinny, Drug Detection Dog Training: Libertarian Lawyers Fight Police State USA