Quotes

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I think the world is like a great mirror, and reflects our lives just as we ourselves look upon it. Those who turn sad faces toward the world find only sadness reflected. But a smile is reflected in the same way, and cheers and brightens our hearts. You think there is no pleasure to be had in life. That is because you are heartsick and-and tired, as you say. With one sad story ended you are afraid to begin another-a sequel-feeling it would be equally sad. But why should it be? Isn't the joy or sorrow equally divided in life?
~L. Frank Baum
 
It Is the Customary Fate of New Truths to Begin as Heresies and to End as Superstitions
It Is the Customary Fate of New Truths to Begin as Heresies and to End as Superstitions – Quote Investigator®

the scientist Thomas Henry Huxley during a lecture delivered at The Royal Institution of Great Britain. Today Huxley is best known as “Darwin’s bulldog” because of his vigorous defense of the theory of evolution. Huxley’s speech was printed in the journal “Nature” in 1880. Emphasis added to excerpts by QI:[1]

History warns us, however, that it is the customary fate of new truths to begin as heresies and to end as superstitions; and, as matters now stand, it is hardly rash to anticipate that, in another twenty years, the new generation, educated under the influences of the present day, will be in danger of accepting the main doctrines of the Origin of Species with as little reflection, and it may be with as little justification, as so many of our contemporaries, twenty years ago, rejected them.
 
"The ideal subject of totalitarian rule is not the convinced Nazi or the convinced Communist, but people for whom the distinction between fact and fiction (i.e., the reality of experience) and the distinction between true and false (i.e., the standards of thought) no longer exist.'

Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism.
 
"The insurance experts who investigate natural disasters all tell you that instant testimony must be taken into account, but that after three days it's worthless. There's no pressure on the public. It's only the effect of collective emotion that makes one version prevail and that everyone supports because everyone is afraid. You don't have the courage to say the opposite of your neighbours."

Thierry Meyssan
 
Peter Weir: You need courage and boldness to win, but also to lose. And sometimes, periods of defeat are incredibly beneficial for spiritual development, unleashing certain forces within a person, forcing them to seek the truth. I didn't understand this for a long time, because I was raised in the cult/worship of competition and victory.

Interview between Peter Weir and Barbara Hollender for "Rzeczpospolita" Daily published in Poland. I found this quote in Polish version Reader's Digest 2000/02.
 
George Orwell from Nineteen Eighty-Four

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It was always the women, and above all the young ones, who were the most bigoted adherents of the Party, the swallowers of slogans, the amateur spies and nosers-out of unorthodoxy.

 
It was always the women

Heard in the video: ".......Arrogant, smug, entitled, superior, lack of depth, angry, they hate themselves, they hate everybody else, they hate the country, they hate everything...They don't have a stable family life, they don't have a child and family to care for.... Doing this [interference routine] makes them feel powerful, feel important, feel like they are needed, they feel like they're making the world a better place.....They think they know it all......(plus some get paid).......They have nothing left to look forward to but old age and being alone..."

They gave us their mind?
 
"Kultura to nie jest, jak to sie na ogol w naszych zinstytucjonalizowanych czasach przypuszcza, masa ksiazek i filmow, obrazow i symfonii, ktorymi administruje zatroskany pan, zwany ministrem. Kultura to takze wyglad i metraz naszych mieszkan, sposob w jaki wspolzyjemy z ludzmi i w jaki przelozony zwraca sie do podwladnego, stosunek do starcow, a take wiele innych rzeczy. A takze co jest chyba najwazniejsze, budowanie wartosci, dla ktorych "warto zyc". W klasycznym rozumieniu, kultura w scislym tego slowa znaczeniu, to "uprawa ducha". Kultura zatem polega na bogactwie zycia wewnetrznego, na pielegnowaniu i rozwijaniu wartosci intelektualnych i moralnych, na harmonii rozumnosci wlasciwej czlowiekowi i wrazliwosci moralno-estetycznej. Naczelne wartosci kulturowe koncentruja sie wokol prawdy, dobra i piekna."

Zbigniew Herbert /interview for "Polityka" weekly in Poland/ from book Zanim zapalisz przeczytaj - Stefan Zajaczkowski
 
"Kultura to nie jest, jak to sie na ogol w naszych zinstytucjonalizowanych czasach przypuszcza, masa ksiazek i filmow, obrazow i symfonii, ktorymi administruje zatroskany pan, zwany ministrem. Kultura to takze wyglad i metraz naszych mieszkan, sposob w jaki wspolzyjemy z ludzmi i w jaki przelozony zwraca sie do podwladnego, stosunek do starcow, a take wiele innych rzeczy. A takze co jest chyba najwazniejsze, budowanie wartosci, dla ktorych "warto zyc". W klasycznym rozumieniu, kultura w scislym tego slowa znaczeniu, to "uprawa ducha". Kultura zatem polega na bogactwie zycia wewnetrznego, na pielegnowaniu i rozwijaniu wartosci intelektualnych i moralnych, na harmonii rozumnosci wlasciwej czlowiekowi i wrazliwosci moralno-estetycznej. Naczelne wartosci kulturowe koncentruja sie wokol prawdy, dobra i piekna."

Zbigniew Herbert /interview for "Polityka" weekly in Poland/ from book Zanim zapalisz przeczytaj - Stefan Zajaczkowski

Can you translate this to English? This is an English-speaking board.
 
Google translate
"Culture is not, as it is generally assumed in our institutionalized times, a lot of books and films, paintings and symphonies, which are administered by a concerned gentleman, called the minister. Culture is also the appearance and size of our apartments, the way we live with people and the way we address the subordinate, the attitude towards the elderly, and many other things. And also what is probably the most important, building values for which it is "worth living". In the classical sense, culture in the strict sense of the word is "growing of the spirit". Culture therefore consists of the wealth of inner life, the promotion and development of intellectual and moral values, the harmony of human reason and moral and aesthetic sensitivity. The main cultural values are centered around the truth, good and beautiful."

Zbigniew Herbert /interview for "Polityka" weekly in Poland/ from book Before you light up read - Stefan Zajaczkowski
 
“The future of the Church can and will issue from those whose roots are deep and who live from the pure fullness of their faith. It will not issue from those who accommodate themselves merely to the passing moment or from those who merely criticize others and assume that they themselves are infallible measuring rods; nor will it issue from those who take the easier road, who sidestep the passion of faith, declaring false and obsolete, tyrannous and legalistic, all that makes demands upon men, that hurts them and compels them to sacrifice themselves. To put this more positively: The future of the Church, once again as always, will be reshaped by saints, by men, that is, whose minds probe deeper than the slogans of the day, who see more than others see, because their lives embrace a wider reality. Unselfishness, which makes men free, is attained only through the patience of small daily acts of self-denial. By this daily passion, which alone reveals to a man in how many ways he is enslaved by his own ego, by this daily passion and by it alone, a man's eyes are slowly opened. He sees only to the extent that he has lived and suffered. If today we are scarcely able any longer to become aware of God, that is because we find it so easy to evade ourselves, to flee from the depths of our being by means of the narcotic of some pleasure or other. Thus our own interior depths remain closed to us. If it is true that a man can see only with his heart, then how blind we are!
“How does all this affect the problem we are examining? It means that the big talk of those who prophesy a Church without God and without faith is all empty chatter. We have no need of a Church that celebrates the cult of action in political prayers. It is utterly superfluous. Therefore, it will destroy itself. What will remain is the Church of Jesus Christ, the Church that believes in the God who has become man and promises us life beyond death. The kind of priest who is no more than a social worker can be replaced by the psychotherapist and other specialists; but the priest who is no specialist, who does not stand on the [sidelines], watching the game, giving official advice, but in the name of God places himself at the disposal of man, who is beside them in their sorrows, in their joys, in their hope and in their fear, such a priest will certainly be needed in the future.
“Let us go a step farther. From the crisis of today the Church of tomorrow will emerge -- a Church that has lost much. She will become small and will have to start afresh more or less from the beginning. She will no longer be able to inhabit many of the edifices she built in prosperity. As the number of her adherents diminishes, so it will lose many of her social privileges. In contrast to an earlier age, it will be seen much more as a voluntary society, entered only by free decision. As a small society, it will make much bigger demands on the initiative of her individual members. Undoubtedly it will discover new forms of ministry and will ordain to the priesthood approved Christians who pursue some profession. In many smaller congregations or in self-contained social groups, pastoral care will normally be provided in this fashion. Along-side this, the full-time ministry of the priesthood will be indispensable as formerly. But in all of the changes at which one might guess, the Church will find her essence afresh and with full conviction in that which was always at her center: faith in the triune God, in Jesus Christ, the Son of God made man, in the presence of the Spirit until the end of the world. In faith and prayer she will again recognize the sacraments as the worship of God and not as a subject for liturgical scholarship.
The Church will be a more spiritual Church, not presuming upon a political mandate, flirting as little with the Left as with the Right. It will be hard going for the Church, for the process of crystallization and clarification will cost her much valuable energy. It will make her poor and cause her to become the Church of the meek. The process will be all the more arduous, for sectarian narrow-mindedness as well as pompous self-will will have to be shed. One may predict that all of this will take time. The process will be long and wearisome as was the road from the false progressivism on the eve of the French Revolution -- when a bishop might be thought smart if he made fun of dogmas and even insinuated that the existence of God was by no means certain -- to the renewal of the nineteenth century. But when the trial of this sifting is past, a great power will flow from a more spiritualized and simplified Church. Men in a totally planned world will find themselves unspeakably lonely. If they have completely lost sight of God, they will feel the whole horror of their poverty. Then they will discover the little flock of believers as something wholly new. They will discover it as a hope that is meant for them, an answer for which they have always been searching in secret.
“And so it seems certain to me that the Church is facing very hard times. The real crisis has scarcely begun. We will have to count on terrific upheavals. But I am equally certain about what will remain at the end: not the Church of the political cult, which is dead already, but the Church of faith. It may well no longer be the dominant social power to the extent that she was until recently; but it will enjoy a fresh blossoming and be seen as man's home, where he will find life and hope beyond death.
 
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