#isms

Narcissism and self-deception are survival mechanisms without which many of us might just jump off a bridge. ↗

— Todd Solondz

#jump #just #many #mechanisms #might

The movements which I make I cannot possibly repress because, at the time, I am actually the idea I am interpreting, and naturally I picture my players and auditors as in accord with me. I know, of course, that my mannerisms have been widely discussed. ↗

— John Philip Sousa

#actually #am #auditors #because #been

I've got used to criticisms and, naturally, I try to make sure I don't listen to the more extreme ones because most of the people who have taken their right-wing extremist view of my life are people that I've never met. ↗

— Maurice Strong

#criticisms #extreme #extremist #got #i

I've always been more interested in organisms that can move on their own than in stationary plants. But when I canoe or hike along the edge of lakes or oceans and see trees that seem to be growing out of rock faces, I am blown away. How do they do it? ↗

— David Suzuki

#always #am #away #been #blown

Organisms by their design are not made to adapt too far. ↗

— Kevin Kelly

#design #far #made #organisms #their

Some kids get called 'bundles of joy' or 'slices of heaven' or 'dreams come true.' We got 'the fifty-fourth generation of DNA experiments.' Doesn't have the same warm and fuzzy feel. But maybe I'm oversensitive. ↗

— James Patterson

#euphemisms #humor #max #maximum-ride #maxride

Embrace aging. ↗

— Mitch Albom

#aphorisms #age

What makes the prospect of death distinctive in the modern age is the background of permanent technological and sociological revolution against which it is set, and which serves to strip us of any possible faith in the permanence of our labours. Our ancestors could believe that their achievements had a chance of bearing up against the flow of events. We know time to be a hurricane. Our buildings, our sense of style, our ideas, all of these will soon enough be anachronisms, and the machines in which we now take inordinate pride will seem no less bathetic than Yorick's skull. ↗

— Alain de Botton

#anachronisms #death #permanence #revolution #sociology

Writing is beautiful, like putting on a gold suit and going to sleep in it. ↗

— Mark Leidner

#writing #beauty

For in spite of itself any movement that thinks and acts in terms of an ‘ism becomes so involved in reaction against other ‘isms that it is unwittingly controlled by them. For it then forms its principles by reaction against them instead of by a comprehensive, constructive survey of actual needs, problems, and possibilities. ↗

— John Dewey

#education #isms #change