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Quote by Jeannette Walls

“You know you're down and out when Okies laugh at you,' she said. With our garbage bag taped window, our tied down hood, and art supplies strapped to the roof, we'd out-Okied the Okies.”

Quote by Jeannette Walls

Work

The Glass Castle

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Author

Jeannette Walls
Jeannette Walls

Jeannette Walls is an American author who gained fame with her memoir, 'The Glass Castle'. The book tells the story of her upbringing in poverty and chaos with her family in the American West. more

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“In the social production of their existence, men inevitably enter into definite relations, which are independent of their will, namely relations of production appropriate to a given stage in the development of their material forces of production. The totality of these relations of production constitutes the economic structure of society, the real foundation, on which arises a legal and political superstructure and to which correspond definite forms of social consciousness. The mode of production of material life conditions the general process of social, political and intellectual life. It is not the consciousness of men that determines their existence, but their social existence that determines their consciousness. At a certain stage of development, the material productive forces of society come into conflict with the existing relations of production or – this merely expresses the same thing in legal terms – with the property relations within the framework of which they have operated hitherto. From forms of development of the productive forces these relations turn into their fetters. Then begins an era of social revolution. The changes in the economic foundation lead sooner or later to the transformation of the whole immense superstructure.”

“Those who are in ideology believe themselves by definition outside ideology: one of the effects of ideology is the practical denegation of the ideological character of ideology by ideology: ideology never says, ‘I am ideological’. It is necessary to be outside ideology, i.e. in scientific knowledge, to be able to say: I am in ideology (a quite exceptional case) or (the general case): I was in ideology. As is well known, the accusation of being in ideology only applies to others, never to oneself (unless one is really a Spinozist or a Marxist, which, in this matter, is to be exactly the same thing). Which amounts to saying that ideology has no outside (for itself), but at the same time that it is nothing but outside (for science and reality).”

“The internet is like everything that came before it, but so much more. More powerful than the greatest words ever written or spoken in any language, more powerful than any image or symbol ever seen, more powerful than hope or fear, more powerful than religion, faith itself, the totality of the human spirit. The invisible infinite that rules over our lives whether we want it to or not. But really, who doesn’t? Everyone wants a master, everyone needs some version of God.”

“The Berlin conference has been subject to a relentless campaign of debunking by modern intellectuals. One claim they make is that the assembled delegates “carved up” Africa like a bunch of gluttons. This is wrong. For one, the carving was already happening when Bismarck acted. The conference was a response to, not a cause of, expanded colonial claims. Critics seem to think that absent the conference Africa would have been left untouched. Quite the opposite. The scramble for Africa created tensions, suspicions, and fears on all sides. Bismarck wanted to set some ground rules.”

“The negationist proposition, in the age in which it is being advanced, cannot therefore be truly denied, since everything, all of us, including those who reject it, have passed over, whether we like it or not, into an age where there is no longer any objective recourse. The proposition, therefore, can be rejected only by a kind of mirror denial. And that is where its victory lies - though in fact it is not its victory, but the victory of real time over the present, over the past, over any form whatsoever of logical articulation of reality.”

“The profoundly negationist character of information, the demand for which has no concern for any historical reality or any moral meaning. Shoah or no Shoah, if Hitler were alive he would be on all the screens. Might Network Man be the model for the disabled person of the future? It is perhaps to him, rather than to the paralytic, that we shall have forcibly to restore the use of his body. An illness that breaks out opportunely just before the departure date and ends exactly on the day the trip was scheduled to end.”

“While God does want us to be open with others, he also encourages us to put boundaries in place as we do. He talks repeatedly about guarding our hearts. So what’s the difference? Hiding is a response out of fear, while guarding is a proactive choice to protect what matters most. In other words, we’re not to deliberately put something of worth where it won’t be valued.”