#oran

Whenever an occasion arose in which she needed an opinion on something in the wider world, she borrowed her husband's. If this had been all there was to her, she wouldn't have bothered anyone, but as is so often the case with such women, she suffered from an incurable case of of pretentiousness. Lacking any internalized values of her own, such people can arrive at a standpoint only by adopting other people's standards or views. The only principle that governs their minds is the question "How do I look? ↗

— Haruki Murakami

#narcissism #pretentiousness #vanity #vanity

originality and a feeling of one's own dignity are achieved only through work and struggle. ↗

— Fyodor Dostoyevsky

#knowledge #originality #self-esteem #wisdom #self-knowledge

Bhutan does seem a bit unreal at times. Hardly anybody in the U.S. knows where it is. I have friends who still think the entire country is a figment of my imagination. When I was getting ready to move there, and I told people I was going to work in Bhutan, they'd inevitably ask, "Where's Butane?" It is near Africa," I'd answer, to throw them off the trail. "It's where all the disposable lighters come from." They'd nod in understanding. ↗

— Linda Leaming

#geography #humor #ignorance #humor

Man has gone out to explore other worlds and other civilizations without having explored his own labyrinth of dark passages and secret chambers, and without finding what lies behind doorways that he himself has sealed. ↗

— Stanisław Lem

#closed-mindedness #discovery #humanity #ignorance #mankind

Creators of history always play with our impotence and our ignorance. ↗

— Dejan Stojanovic

#creators #dejan-stojanovic #history #ignorance #impotence