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B Quotes

Browse famous quotes beginning with B. This page is a child index of the full Popular Quotes A-Z directory.

All B Quotes

“Better keep yourself clean and bright; you are the window through which you must see the world.”

“Better kind than correct, Better idiot than arrogant. Better ignorant than bigoted, Better exploited than indifferent. Better broke than bent, Better naive than narcissist. Better mistaken than mindless, Better broken than a cheat. Better wrong than cruel, Better ridiculed than rigid. Better shattered than shallow, Better ignited than idjit.”

“Better known as the Secret of the Golden Flower, this is a famous neidan text that the Western world came to know through Richard Wilhelm's 1929 translation. The Chinese text used by Wilhelm was edited by Zhanran Huizhen zi in 1921. Besides this, at least five more versions are available, all of which date to the late Qing dynasty (1644-1911) and are ascribed to Lu Dongbin, who revealed them through spirit writing.”

“Better mendacities Than the classics in paraphrase! Some quick to arm, some for adventure, some from fear of weakness, some from fear of censure, some for love of slaughter, in imagination, learning later . . . some in fear, learning love of slaughter; Died some, pro patria, non "dulce" non "et decor" . walked eye-deep in hell believing in old men's lies, the unbelieving came home, home to a lie.”

“Better minds have said it before, but I don’t mind repeating it less well again and again: Reading, like the natural world, is good for people (though clearly at a very different level). Pace Levis-Strauss — books are good to think and books are good to be. Books have unique affordances — do things that other media cannot do as well, or at all. Reading books exercises our imaginations (which we will need to break the mind-shackles our overlords are fitting us for); reading books offers us opportunities to expand our ability to connect; reading books encourages the trickster force within, which is play. Right now there’s a whole museum-movement built around staring at a painting for ten minutes, excellent in and of itself, but books hear this and they're like, Ten minutes?! Hold my Pan Galactic Gargle Blaster! Books command our attention for hours, days, weeks, months, years — sometimes for whole lives. Reading books regenerates our ability to focus, to stay mindful. Screens do certain things very well, but collectively what they do best is naturalizing the hysterical reactive lizard logic of our capitalist vampire-squid hegemons. They convince us that to be alive is to capitalist vampire-squid all day, all night. Reading is the zafa for that particularly unbearable fukú. Reading leads us away from the Sunken Place of neoliberal capital, back to the Slow Zone of human thought and human feeling. The Slow Zone where all that truly matters for prospering — deliberation, moderation, imagination, compassion, resilience — is possible. Books are a Slow Zone oasis that can reawaken and sustain us through this age of digital decimation.”