Critical Quotes - Page 23

• I no longer agree to treat myself with disrespect. Every time a self-critical thought comes to mind, I will forgive the Judge and follow this comment with words of praise, self-acceptance, and love.

  Miguel Angel Ruiz

  Acceptance, Self, Judging

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• A culture's ability to understand the world and itself is critical to its survival. But today we are led into the arena of public debate by seers whose main gift is their ability to compel people to continue to watch them.

  George Saunders

  People, Survival, Watches

  George Saunders (2012). “The Brain-Dead Megaphone”, p.14, A&C Black

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• Despite long-standing claims by elites that Blacks, women, Latinos, and other similarly derogated groups in the United States remain incapable of producing the type of interpretive, analytical thought that is labeled theory in the West, powerful knowledges of resistance that toppled former social structures of social inequality repudiate this view. Members of these groups do in fact theorize, and our critical social theory has been central to our political empowerment and search for justice.

  Patricia Hill Collins

  Powerful, Views, Long

  Patricia Hill Collins (1998). “Fighting Words: Black Women and the Search for Justice”, p.16, U of Minnesota Press

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• I am passionate about everything in my life--first and foremost, passionate about ideas. And that's a dangerous person to be in this society, not just because I'm a woman, but because it's such a fundamentally anti-intellectual, anti-critical thinking society. --bell hooks

  Bell Hooks

  Thinking, Ideas, Intellectual

  Bell Hooks (1996). “Reel to Real: Race, Sex, and Class at the Movies”, p.110, Psychology Press

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• Every man is tasked to make his life, even in its details, worthy of the contemplation of his most elevated and critical hour.

  Henry David Thoreau

  Men, Details, Hours

  Henry David Thoreau (2012). “The Portable Thoreau”, p.202, Penguin

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• The amazing thing is that chaotic systems don't always stay chaotic," Ben said, leaning on the gate. "Sometimes they spontaneously reorganize themselves into an orderly structure." "They suddenly become less chaotic?" I said, wishing that would happen at HiTek. "No, that's the thing. They become more and more chaotic until they reach some sort of chaotic critical mass. When that happens, they spontaneously reorganize themselves at a higher equilibrium level. It's called self-organized criticality.

  Connie Willis

  Self, Wish, Levels

  Connie Willis (1996). “Futures Imperfect”, Doubleday Books

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• Your criticism sounds to me as if you have read too many critical books and are too smart in an artificial, destructive, and very limited way.

  Flannery O'Connor

  Smart, Book, Criticism

  Flannery O'Connor (1988). “The Habit of Being: Letters of Flannery O'Connor”, p.407, Macmillan

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• I must congratulate myself, in passing, for never having lost the ability to examine my conscience, never having lost the gift of finding myself wanting & defective. Why fear the criticism of others when you, yourself, are first out of the critical gate? If self-denigration is the race I am the winner, even before the starting gun. Collect the bets.

  Frank McCourt

  Gun, Race, Self

  Frank McCourt (2005). “Teacher Man: A Memoir”, p.318, Simon and Schuster

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• After the signing of the Constitution, Benjamin Franklin was asked by a woman on the street, "What have you given us, sir?" Franklin Responded, "A Republic, if you can keep it." A critical moment in history has come; our Republic is in jeopardy. Can we keep it? If the answer to that question, as I fear, is "no," then we have no one to blame but ourselves.

  Glenn Beck

  Critical Moments, Answers, Republic

  Glenn Beck (2009). “Glenn Beck's Common Sense: The Case Against an Ouf-of-Control Government, Inspired by Thomas Paine”, p.10, Simon and Schuster

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• Monsters remain human beings. In fact, to reduce them to a subhuman level is to exonerate them of their acts of terrorism and mass murder — just as animals are not deemed morally responsible for killing. Insisting on the humanity of terrorists is, in fact, critical to maintaining their profound responsibility for the evil they commit. And, if they are human, then they must necessarily not be treated in an inhuman fashion. You cannot lower the moral baseline of a terrorist to the subhuman without betraying a fundamental value.

  Andrew Sullivan

  Fashion, Responsibility, Animal

  "The Abolition Of Torture". newrepublic.com. December 19, 2005.

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• Critical and radical thought will only bear fruit when it is blended with the most precious quality man is endowed with - the love of life

  Erich Fromm

  Love Life, Men, Quality

  Erich Fromm (2013). “The Anatomy of Human Destructiveness”, p.728, Open Road Media

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• There I go being critical again. Does a man have to stand on one foot and juggle for me to consider him entertaining? What am I looking for? A knight?...No, knights are all polished and shiny. I think my taste runs to something with a bit of tarnish and maybe a few scratches. Someone who can make me laugh and cry and make me angry and make my knees tremble when he touches me.

  Nora Roberts

  Running, Men, Thinking

  Nora Roberts (2013). “The Heart's Victory”, p.17, Hachette UK

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• It isn't deep," the Eddisian Ambassador said from the other side of the bed. He was leaning over the wound, looking critical and mildly disappointed. Eugenides didn't miss a beat. "It is...too...deep!" he insisted, outraged.

  Megan Whalen Turner

  Missing, Bed, Ambassadors

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• It was a miserable machine, an inefficient machine, she thought, the human apparatus for painting or for feeling; it always broke down at the critical moment; heroically, one must force it on.

  Virginia Woolf

  Feelings, Machines, Critical Moments

  Virginia Woolf (2013). “Delphi Complete Works of Virginia Woolf (Illustrated)”, p.1120, Delphi Classics

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• Superstar lawyers and math whizzes and software entrepreneurs appear at first blush to lie outside ordinary experience. But they don't. They are products of history and community, of opportunity and legacy. Their success is not exceptional or mysterious. It is grounded in a web of advantages and inheritances, some deserved, some not, some earned, some just plain lucky - but all critical to making them who they are. The outlier, in the end, is not an outlier at all.

  Malcolm Gladwell

  Lying, Math, Opportunity

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• and our few good times will be rare because we have the critical sense and are not easy to fool with laughter

  Charles Bukowski

  Laughter, Fool, Good Times

  Charles Bukowski (2012). “The Pleasures of the Damned: Selected Poems 1951-1993”, p.60, Canongate Books

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• We humans...are seriously flawed. The things that are the most necessary, the most critical to us, are the things we take most for granted. Air. Water. Love. If you have someone to love, you are lucky. If they love you back, you're blessed. And if you waste the time you have to love them, you're a fool. -The Christmas List- p. 296

  Richard Paul Evans

  Blessed, Love You, Air

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• A good book deserves an active reading. The activity of reading does not stop with the work of understanding what a book says. It must be completed by the work of criticism, the work of judging. The undemanding reader fails to satisfy this requirement, probably even more than he fails to analyze and interpret. He not only makes no effort to understand; he also dismisses a book simply by putting it aside and forgetting it. Worse than faintly praising it, he damns it by giving it no critical consideration whatever.

  Mortimer Adler

  Book, Reading, Giving

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• Stories are propaganda, virii that slide past your critical immune system and insert themselves directly into your emotions.

  Cory Doctorow

  Past, Slides, Stories

  Cory Doctorow (2015). “Eastern Standard Tribe”, p.12, Booklassic

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• Every young lady may feel for my heroine in this critical moment, for every young lady has at some time or other known the same agitation.

  Jane Austen

  Agitation, Critical Moments, May

  Jane Austen (1833). “Northanger abbey [followed by] Persuasion”, p.56

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• At the age of twelve I had an attitude toward life that was to endure, that was to make me seek those areas of living that would keep it alive, that was to make me skeptical of everything while seeking everything, tolerant of all and yet critical. The spirit I had caught gave me insight into the suffering of others, made me gravitate toward those whose feelings were like my own, made me sit for hours while others told me of their lives, made me strangely tender and cruel, violent and peaceful.

  Richard Wright

  Attitude, Suffering Of Others, Peaceful

  Richard Wright (2017). “Black Boy”, p.99, Random House

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• The North American Church is at a critical juncture. The gospel of grace is being confused and compromised by silence, seduction, and outright subversion. The vitality of the faith is being jeopardized. The lying slogans of the fixers who carry religion like a sword of judgment pile up with impunity. Let ragamuffins everywhere gather as a confessing Church to cry out in protest. Revoke the licenses of religious leaders who falsify the idea of God. Sentence them to three years in solitude with the Bible as their only companion.

  Brennan Manning

  Religious, Confused, Lying

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• When you feel yourself to be in critical condition, you must treat yourself as gently as you would a sick friend.

  Julia Cameron

  Sick, Treats, Feels

  Julia Cameron (2009). “Finding Water: The Art of Perseverance”, p.182, Penguin

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• a process of aging had taken place in him that was so rapid and critical that soon he was being treated as one of those useless great-grandfathers who wander about the bedroom like shades, dragging their feet, remembering better times aloud, and whom no one bother about or remembers really until the morning they find them dead in their bed.

  Gabriel Garcia Marquez

  Morning, Taken, Feet

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• ...there must be a sequence to learning, that perseverance and a certain measure of perspiration are indispensable, that individual pleasures must frequently be submerged in the interests of group cohesion, and that learning to be critical and to think conceptually and rigorously do not come easily to the young but are hard-fought victories.

  Neil Postman

  Perseverance, Thinking, Victory

  Neil Postman (2005). “Amusing Ourselves to Death: Public Discourse in the Age of Show Business”, p.146, Penguin

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