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Quote by Bonta

“Significant events of the past are subject to reinterpretation every few generations.”

Quote by Bonta

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Bonta

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“These examples of [adjusting] physical activities are relatively straightforward. Bodies age and we have to change how we think about success or we'll always be failing. I think these examples are worth discussing, though, because they make an important point: we don't always see these necessary changes as changes; instead, we think of them as quitting or capitulating. Why? We don't have to see changes as capitulations, and it is often better not to. ... In other words, I'll be better off thinking, "I value my health and I'm finding new ways to maintain my flexibility as I age" than "I used to love yoga, but I've given up.”

Values In LifeReinterpretation
Book:What Do You Want Out of Life?: A Philosophical Guide to Figuring Out What Matters
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“I don't know why weighing 140 pounds means I'm middle-aged, but it does. It is a magic number. A matronly number. More important than wishing young people would get their hair out of their eyes and more important than thinking Green Day sounds banal and that MTV is too sexist. If I could lose ten pounds, then maybe I could put off middle age for a while. But the thought of dieting, of thinking of food all the time, seems like too much to contemplate.”

WeightAgingWeight LossOverweightMiddle AgeGaining WeightMothers And Other Monsters
Author:Maureen F. McHugh
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“I have all this empty time in front of me. Tonight and tomorrow and the week after and the next month and all down through the years as I never marry and become a dried-up woman. Evenings spent folding paper. Days cleaning someone else's house. Free afternoons spent shopping a bit, stopping in tea shops because my feet hurt. That is what lives are, aren't they? Attempts to fill our time with activity designed to prevent us from realizing that there is no meaning?”

LifeTimeMeaningBoredomLivesSpare TimeMothers And Other MonstersFilling Time
Author:Maureen F. McHugh
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“That kind of thinking [that writers must alleviate their guilt for leading a creative life] is based on the idea that the creative life is somehow self-indulgent. Artists and writers have to understand and live the truth that what we are doing is nourishing the world. William Carlos Williams said, "It is difficult to get the news from poems yet men die miserably every day for lack of what is found there." You can't eat a book, right, but books have saved my life more often than sandwiches. And they've saved your life... But we don't say, oh, Maya Angelou should have silenced herself because other people have other destinies. It's interesting, because artists are always encouraged to feel guilty about their work. Why? Why don't we ask predatory bankers how they alleviate their guilt?”

Writing
Author:Ariel Gore
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“Where did this wolf-tribe appear from among our people? Does it really stem from our own roots? Our own blood? It is our own. And just so we don't go around flaunting too proudly the white mantle of the just, let everyone ask himself: "If my life had turned out differently, might I myself not have become just such an executioner?" It is a dreadful question if one really answers it honestly.”

NonfictionRussian History
Book:The Gulag Archipelago
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“Russians love a good plot--camarillas, Masons, whatever--where in fact there is usually just plain sloppiness. Someone mistrusted someone else; someone failed to warn someone else. So someone decided to take out more insurance, called up the troops and removed the tsar from Petersburg. Great and terrible events in Russia are usually due to someone's stupidity or laziness.”

Russian History
Book:The Last Tsar: The Life and Death of Nicholas II
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