#gm

Though he never actually joined it, he was close to some civilian elements of the Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine, which was the most Communist (and in the rather orthodox sense) of the Palestinian formations. I remember Edward once surprising me by saying, and apropos of nothing: 'Do you know something I have never done in my political career? I have never publicly criticized the Soviet Union. It’s not that I terribly sympathize with them or anything—it's just that the Soviets have never done anything to harm me, or us.' At the time I thought this a rather naïve statement, even perhaps a slightly contemptible one, but by then I had been in parts of the Middle East where it could come as a blessed relief to meet a consecrated Moscow-line atheist-dogmatist, if only for the comparatively rational humanism that he evinced amid so much religious barking and mania. It was only later to occur to me that Edward's pronounced dislike of George Orwell was something to which I ought to have paid more attention. ↗

— Christopher Hitchens

#communism #dflp #dogmatism #edward-said #humanism

What! Would I be turned back from doing a thing that I had determined to do, and that I knew to be right, by the airs and interference of such a person, or any person I may say? No, I have no idea of being so easily persuaded. When I have made up my mind, I have made it. ↗

— Jane Austen

#empowerment #independence #interference #judgment #persuasion

Not all diseases come from bacteria and viruses, Professor. The worst often come from things you cannot see under a microscope. This plant is infested with an aggressive strain of such invisible germs. ↗

— Taona Dumisani Chiveneko

#flame-lily #great-zimbabwe #hangman #mystrey #parnormal

... the poor always live on debt. At this point, time is the only thing I still have the credibility to borrow. ↗

— Taona Dumisani Chiveneko

#hangman #mystrey #paranormal #seduction #thriller

Being black is not a matter of pigmentation - being black is a reflection of a mental attitude. ↗

— Steven Biko

#being #black #matter #mental #mental attitude

Let us come to the philosophers, whose authority is of greater weight, and their judgment more to be relied on, because they are believed to have paid attention, not to matters of fiction, but to the investigation of the truth. ↗

— Lactantius

#authority #because #believed #come #fiction

When I was first starting out, if you were acting on television, it was a real stigma. ↗

— Christine Lahti

#first #i #out #real #starting

I don't have any stigma attached to my body. When I'm in my own private space, I have very little on. ↗

— Padma Lakshmi

#attached #body #i #little #my own

I think there was a sense that the impact was being lost because the audience was so familiar with the form. You combine that with people's attention spans, which are clearly conditioned to be shorter now, and there's a need to vary the paradigm. ↗

— Jim Lampley

#attention spans #audience #because #being #clearly

Next to sound judgment, diamonds and pearls are the rarest things in the world. ↗

— Jean de la Bruyere

#judgment #next #pearls #rarest #sound