no. 223

"The woman who follows the crowd will usually go no further than the crowd. The woman who walks alone is likely to find herself in places no one has ever been before."

Albert Einstein


but...

Apparently not. Seems to have been said by one Francis Phillip Wernig under the pseudonym Alan Ashley-Pitt.

no. 222

Consider that you can see less than 1% of the electromagnetic spectrum and hear less than 1% of the acoustic spectrum. As you read this, you are traveling at 220 km/sec across the galaxy. 90% of the cells in your body carry their own microbial DNA and are not “you.” The atoms in your body are 99.9999999999999999% empty space and none of them are the ones you were born with, but they all originated in the belly of a star. Human beings have 46 chromosomes, 2 less than the common potato.
The existence of the rainbow depends on the conical photoreceptors in your eyes; to animals without cones, the rainbow does not exist. So you don’t just look at a rainbow, you create it. This is pretty amazing, especially considering that all the beautiful colors you see represent less than 1% of the electromagnetic spectrum.

NASA Lunar Science Institute, We Originated in the Belly of a Star (2012)

via

no. 221

"Their marriages are now defenseless," he intoned gravely. "We attack at dawn".

Gin and Tacos on Facebook after the Supreme Court handed conservatives defeat on both DOMA and California's Prop 8.

no. 220

What if all women were bigger and stronger than you? And thought they were smarter? What if women were the ones who started wars? What if too many of your friends had been raped by women wielding giant dildos and no K-Y Jelly? What if the state trooper who pulled you over on the New Jersey Turnpike was a woman and carried a gun? What if the ability to menstruate was the prerequisite for most high-paying jobs? What if your attractiveness to women depended on the size of your penis? What if every time women saw you they’d hoot and make jerking motions with their hands? What if women were always making jokes about how ugly penises are and how bad sperm tastes? What if you had to explain what’s wrong with your car to big sweaty women with greasy hands who stared at your crotch in a garage where you are surrounded by posters of naked men with hard-ons? What if men’s magazines featured cover photos of 14-year-old boys with socks tucked into the front of their jeans and articles like: “How to tell if your wife is unfaithful” or “What your doctor won’t tell you about your prostate” or “The truth about impotence”? What if the doctor who examined your prostate was a woman and called you “Honey”? What if you had to inhale your boss’ stale cigar breath as she insisted that sleeping with her was part of the job? What if you couldn’t get away because the company dress code required you wear shoes designed to keep you from running? And what if after all that women still wanted you to love them?

Carol Diehl, For the Men Who Still Don’t Get It

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no. 219

“Only the strong go crazy. The weak just go along.”

Assata Shakur

via

no. 218

Everyone who terrifies you is sixty-five percent water.
And everyone you love is made of stardust, and I know sometimes
you cannot even breathe deeply, and
the night sky is no home, and
you have cried yourself to sleep enough times
that you are down to your last two percent, but

nothing is infinite,
not even loss.

You are made of the sea and the stars, and one day
you are going to find yourself again.

Finn Butler

no. 217

“A lot of people get so hung up on what they can’t have that they don’t think for a second about whether they really want it.”

Lionel Shriver, Checker and the Derailleurs

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no. 216

“We must be our own before we can be another’s.”

Ralph Waldo Emerson

no. 215

“Her philosophy is carpe diem for herself and laissez-faire for others.”

F. Scott Fitzgerald, This Side of Paradise

no. 214

“Mostly it is loss which teaches us about the worth of things.”

Arthur Schopenhauer

no. 213

You don’t know anyone at the party, so you don’t want to go. You don’t like cottage cheese, so you haven’t eaten it in years. This is your choice, of course, but don’t kid yourself: it’s also the flinch.

Your personality is not set in stone. You may think a morning coffee is the most enjoyable thing in the world, but it’s really just a habit. Thirty days without it, and you would be fine. You think you have a soul mate, but in fact you could have had any number of spouses. You would have evolved differently, but been just as happy.

You can change what you want about yourself at any time. You see yourself as someone who can’t write or play an instrument, who gives in to temptation or makes bad decisions, but that’s really not you. It’s not ingrained. It’s not your personality. Your personality is something else, something deeper than just preferences, and these details on the surface, you can change anytime you like.

If it is useful to do so, you must abandon your identity and start again. Sometimes, it’s the only way.

Set fire to your old self. It’s not needed here. It’s too busy shopping, gossiping about others, and watching days go by and asking why you haven’t gotten as far as you’d like. This old self will die and be forgotten by all but family, and replaced by someone who makes a difference.

Your new self is not like that. Your new self is the Great Chicago Fire—overwhelming, overpowering, and destroying everything that isn’t necessary.

Julien Smith.

via

no. 212

"i don’t know why ‘boring’ is such a bad thing

i like staying in and sleeping and having heart-wrenching conversations and reading and not doing much in general

i’m happier when i’m being boring. screw u teens"

fatima

no. 211

"Archaeologists have not yet discovered any stage of human existence without art. Even in the half-light before the dawn of humanity we received this gift from Hands we did not manage to discern. Nor have we managed to ask: Why was this gift given to us and what are we to do with it? And all those prophets who are predicting that art is disintegrating, that it has used up all its forms, that it is dying, are mistaken. We are the ones who shall die. And art will remain. The question is whether before we perish we shall understand all its aspects and all its ends."

Alexsandr Solzhenitsyn, Beauty Will Save the World

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no. 210

“The Democrats are the party that says government will make you smarter, taller, richer, and remove the crabgrass on your lawn. The Republicans are the party that says government doesn’t work and then get elected and prove it.”

P.J. O’Rourke

no. 209

"A culture fixated on female thinness is not an obsession about female beauty, it is an obsession about female obedience. Dieting is the most potent political sedative in women’s history."

Naomi Wolf

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no.208

via

no. 207

"Women feel more guilt than men, not because of some weird chromosomal issue but because they have a history of being blamed for other people’s behavior. You get hit, you must have annoyed someone; you get raped, you must have excited someone; your kid is a junkie, you must have brought him up wrong."

Germaine Greer, Guilt Poisons Women

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no. 206

"It all makes sense now. Gay marriage and marijuana are being legalized at the same time.
Leviticus 20:13 says if a man lays with another man, he should be stoned.
We were just misinterpreting it."

tctisi

via

no. 205

"The useless days will add up to something. The shitty waitressing jobs. The hours writing in your journal. The long meandering walks. The hours reading poetry and novels and dead people’s diaries and wondering about sex and God and whether you should shave under your arms or not. These things are your becoming."

Cheryl Strayed, Tiny Beautiful Things

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no. 204

via

no. 203

"If you want to really hurt your parents, and you don’t have the nerve to be gay, the least you can do is go into the arts. I’m not kidding. The arts are not a way to make a living. They are a very human way of making life more bearable. Practicing an art, no matter how well or badly, is a way to make your soul grow, for heaven’s sake. Sing in the shower. Dance to the radio. Tell stories. Write a poem to a friend, even a lousy poem. Do it as well as you possibly can. You will get an enormous reward. You will have created something."

Kurt Vonnegut

no. 202

“If people are good only because they fear punishment, and hope for reward, then we are a sorry lot indeed”.

Albert Einstein

(well, sorta)

no. 201

"Tell people there’s an invisible man in the sky who created the universe, and the vast majority believe you. Tell them the paint is wet, and they have to touch it to be sure."

George Carlin

no. 200

"If there is a God, He will have to beg my forgiveness."

A phrase that was carved on the walls of a concentration camp cell during WWII by a Jewish prisoner

no. 199

"Blaming teachers for education is like blaming policemen for crime."

me

no. 198

Your god is Old. He killed children
in Egypt, murdered lovers in the night,
swept sinners dead in a righteous wave.
He told Eve she would die
if she ate the apple, knowing
that he had already planted the seed
of the tree of Knowledge inside her.
He lied. He stole. He coveted.
Just because you create something,
doesn’t make it yours.

I will not be Job. If god tries
to tear down my house, I will
not weep. I will build it up again myself,
with my own hands.
That god is not my god. I am New.
I will walk with children.
I will love and learn to swim.
I will eat apples and drink coffee
and build towers.
I will wear flowers
from that old tree
in my hair.

whatladybird

via

no. 197

"The entirety of Dallas's economy is based off of booze, boobs and jesus. When one fails*, it's like hearing that gravity stopped."

Peejee in Randy Milholland's Something Positive.



* referring to a business based on one of the three.

no. 196

"You don't owe prettiness to anyone. Not to your boyfriend/spouse/partner, not to your co-workers, especially not to random men on the street. You don’t owe it to your mother, you don’t owe it to your children, you don’t owe it to civilization in general. Prettiness is not a rent you pay for occupying a space marked 'female'."

Erin McKean, You Don’t Have to Be Pretty

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no. 195

"No one is going to give you the education you need to overthrow them."

Assata Shakur

no. 194

"Let me take a moment aside to discuss the elephant in the room here: Nuclear Power. I know, big bad scary right? For all the newly dredged fears and misinformed scare mongering, nuclear power is still the safest energy source we have. Per terrawatt-hour it has had less deaths associated with it than any other form of energy. Mind boggling, I know. But you have to look at the big picture. Think of the dangers of working in coal mines or from air pollution produced. Coal power is by-far the worst energy source out there as far as related deaths go.

You would need 25 meltdowns a year to match it. That’s statistics, baby."

Maki