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Quote by Larissa MacFarquhar

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Strangers Drowning: Grappling with Impossible Idealism, Drastic Choices, and the Overpowering Urge to Help

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Larissa MacFarquhar

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“Socialists, charity workers, carers, people who volunteer to help others; they're all - and he's quite convinced about this - they're all in reality mean-spirited bastards, either self-deceiving bastards or - for their own filthy left-wing reasons - deliberately trying to destroy the self-esteem of normal, healthily ambitious people like him. Because if only everybody looked after their own interests everything would be fine, see? Level playing field, with everybody nakedly ambitious and selfish; everybody knows where they are. If some people aren't totally selfish, or, even worse, 'pretend' not to be selfish, then it messes up the whole system. It makes it more unfair, not fairer, the way they'd claim. He calls people like that do-gooders, and they make him angry. I think he would actually prefer do-badders, which is a pretty fucked up attitude when you think about it. He feels quite strongly about them. Never misses an opportunity to complain that they're liars and frauds. Frankly, Ade, altogether, it makes him sound like - and I firmly believe he actually is - a complete cunt.”

Do GoodersCunts
Book:Transition
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“Our political culture is now so debased that we regularly hear ‘do gooders’ getting the blame for things. Enviromentalists trying to stop a coal-burning power plant or a new runway that will (let’s just remember) DESTROY THE EARTH are branded as our enemies, these ‘do gooders’. Like doing good is a bad thing. You read all the time in the press that ‘do gooders’ are to blame—a sweepingly derogatory term. Or even worse, the ‘so-called do gooders’. I’ve never once read that the blame was being put fairly and squarely on ‘cunts’, and let’s face it ‘cunts’ must be behind fucking things up far more things than ‘do gooders’. If it’s not ‘cunts’ then I blame those ‘so-called cunts’.”

EnvironmentalismDo Gooders
Book:My Shit Life So Far
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“Read good books to improve yourself.”

SelfLife QuotesImprovementSelf RealizationEducatedSelf MotivationEducational PhilosophyYourselfBook LoversEducation SystemEducational QuotesReading QuotesBooks QuotesCollege EducationSelf Awareness QuotesBooks ReadingReading HabitsCollege LifeSelf Determination QuotesSelf Confidence QuotesReading For LifeLifelong EducationReading MotivationBookstoreRead And WriteLearner QuotesRead And LearnLifelong ReadersRead And Think
Book:Think Great: Be Great!
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“The day before the Queen's Ball, Father had a visitor--a very young girl with literary aspirations, someone Lord Lytton had recommended visit Father and sent over–and while Father was explaining to her the enjoyment he was having in writing this Drood book for serialisation, this upstart of a girl had the temerity to ask, 'But suppose you died before all the book was written?' [...] He spoke very softly in his kindest voice and said to her, 'One can only work on, you know--work while it is day.”

WritingAgeDeathWorkOld AgeCharles Dickens
Book:Drood
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