no. 452

Daughter: "Where does snow come from mommy?"

Mother: "Broken Dreams, dear. They fall to the earth, coated in cold, unforgiving reality."

from the comic "Something Positive".

This is the kind of thing I try to tell my kids, but just cant seem to be able to.

no. 443

no. 392

Louis C K

no. 329

no. 327

"Never grow a wishbone, daughter, where your backbone ought to be."

Clementine Paddleford

no. 319

“Many adults are put off when youngsters pose scientific questions. Children ask why the sun is yellow, or what a dream is, or how deep you can dig a hole, or when is the world’s birthday, or why we have toes. Too many teachers and parents answer with irritation or ridicule, or quickly move on to something else. Why adults should pretend to omniscience before a five-year-old, I can’t for the life of me understand. What’s wrong with admitting that you don’t know? Children soon recognize that somehow this kind of question annoys many adults. A few more experiences like this, and another child has been lost to science. There are many better responses. If we have an idea of the answer, we could try to explain. If we don’t, we could go to the encyclopedia or the library. Or we might say to the child: 'I don’t know the answer. Maybe no one knows. Maybe when you grow up, you’ll be the first to find out.'”

Carl Sagan

no. 302

"The problem w/ the Zimmerman verdict isn’t that he got away with murder. It’s that even in 2013, citizens of society refuse to be humble, to be teachable, to be pliable. Pride goes before destruction, and haughtiness before a fall. Society has consistently fallen short of truly being human. Coercion replaces compassion; fear replaces love; complacency replaces being proactive. People have resolved that 'this is just the way it is', shrug their shoulders, and move on with the life, leaving the grieving families of displaced, misplaced, replaced, and dead children in the wake, then they wonder why 'kids these days' never learn. Who’s teaching them to be unteachable? Who’s teaching them to be passive and aggressive in the wrong areas of life? Who’s teaching them that murder is okay, sex tapes are the norm and will make you a lot of money, and selling your soul for a reality show is the ultimate goal in life? Who’s teaching them that more time & money are spent on trying to be pretty, in-shape, attractive, and/or appealing to the masses, rather than teaching them humility, generosity, compassion, and love? A part of kindness consists in loving people more than they deserve."

iv

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no. 289

“The wounded child inside many males is a boy who, when he first spoke his truths, was silenced by paternal sadism, by a patriarchal world that did not want him to claim his true feelings. The wounded child inside many females is a girl who was taught from early childhood that she must become something other than herself, deny her true feelings, in order to attract and please others. When men and women punish each other for truth telling, we reinforce the notion that lies are better. To be loving we willingly hear the other’s truth, and most important, we affirm the value of truth telling. Lies may make people feel better, but they do not help them to know love.”

Bell Hooks, All About Love: New Visions

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no. 286

"If I’d had children and had a girl, the first words I would have taught her would have been 'fuck off' because we weren’t brought up ever to say that to anyone, were we? And it’s quite valuable to have the courage and the confidence to say, 'No, fuck off, leave me alone, thank you very much'."

Dame Helen Mirren

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no. 257

Louis CK

no. 256

"Because that’s the thing about Scooby-Doo: The bad guys in every episode aren’t monsters, they’re liars.
I can’t imagine how scandalized those critics who were relieved to have something that was mild enough to not excite their kids would’ve been if they’d stopped for a second and realized what was actually going on. The very first rule of Scooby-Doo, the single premise that sits at the heart of their adventures, is that the world is full of grown-ups who lie to kids, and that it’s up to those kids to figure out what those lies are and call them on it, even if there are other adults who believe those lies with every fiber of their being. And the way that you win isn’t through supernatural powers, or even through fighting. The way that you win is by doing the most dangerous thing that any person being lied to by someone in power can do: You think."

Ask Chris #81: Scooby-Doo and Secular Humanism

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no. 278

"Don’t kiss anyone’s ass. Don’t do it. For the rest of your life, everyone will always tell you, ‘Pick your battles. Kiss a little bit of ass. Then you get to stop kissing ass later.’ It’s a lie. They all just want their ass kissed. They think that if they tell you that they’re gonna get to kiss less ass too. It’s all garbage. It’s all bullshit. You have to just do everything yourself."

Dan Harmon’s Dad’s advice to young people

no. 229

"The purpose of education is not to validate ignorance, but to overcome it."

Lawrence Krauss

no.208

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no. 188

"Oh, my son, if I teach you nothing else, let it be this: There's always someone, somewhere you can resent."

Davan, in Randy Milholland's Something Positive.