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I Quotes

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All I Quotes

“Imagine two black holes that lived a long life together. At the end of their lives they are going around each other, crossing a thousand of kilometeres in a fraction of a second. As they do so they leave behind in their wake a ringing of space, an actual wave on space-time. Space squeezes and streches as it emanates out from these black holes banging on the universe.Those are the gravitational waves and are literally the sounds of space ringing and they will travel out from these black holes at the speed of light as they ring down and coalesce into one, spinning, quiet, black hole. If you were standing near enough, your ear would resonate with squeezing and streching of space, you would literally hear the sound. - The sound the universe makes | Ted”

“Imagine two incidents of theft. In the first case, a bandit takes something valuable from someone else. Deprived of this important source of wealth, the victim and his family live a life of relative destitution, even as the thief and his family flourish, with nary a thought about the crime that served as the basis of their wealth, nor the fate of those they stole from. Eventually the perpetrator and his family forget about the theft altogether and come to view their wealth as legitimate. In the second case, a bandit also takes something precious from someone else, likewise leaving the victim and his family in a state of relative destitution, even as the robber and his family prosper. But in the second case, the bandit constantly acknowledges that his own prosperity was achieved at the victim’s expense. He explicitly and repeatedly recognizes the state of privation that the victim and his family live in as a result of the crime. He publicly praises the victim at every turn. Yet he nonetheless declines to return the stolen resources. Instead, he continues to actively leverage the seized assets in order to build his own wealth, but incessantly laments the poor state of the victim and his family, and the horror of the crime that was done to them, and insists that someone really ought to do something to help “those people” out. The second scenario describes the practice of land acknowledgments, which have grown increasingly popular in symbolic capitalist spaces in recent years (while the first scenario depicts how the people who do make land acknowledgments describe those who don’t; I’ll leave it to the reader to decide which is worse). One stated purpose of land acknowledgments is to show respect to those who have been dispossessed. But of course, precisely as a function of that very dispossession, there are almost never people from the affected tribes “in the room” to receive these acknowledgments—particularly in symbolic capitalist spaces (where this practice is most pronounced). Instead, these acknowledgments typically consist of non-Indigenous people virtue signaling exclusively to other non-Indigenous people, who nod along approvingly, leading all in attendance to feel good about how enlightened they are … and then everyone gets on with business as usual.”

“Imagine um doutor ser aprovado simplesmente porque ninguém consegue entender o que ele fez, isso nunca ocorria nem mesmo na pior universidade. Temos essa ideia, que é o alicerce da religião, de que mistério é sabedoria. Mistério é o maior sintoma de incompetência. Muito dizem que teríamos uma justiça melhor se a suprema corte não tivesse de explicar suas decisões. Uma decisão do STF pode levar dias, tudo gravado e público. O fato da justiça decidir de forma escondida não vai tornar a decisão melhor.”

“Imagine un peu : tu es conscient, mais pas vivant. Tu vois et même tu comprends, mais tu ne vis pas. Tu as le nez collé au carreau. Tu reconnais les choses, mais ça ne fait pas de toi un vivant. On peut mourir et durer encore. Parfois, ce qui t'observe derrière les yeux de quelqu'un est mort dans l'enfance. C'est mort et c'est là, et ça regarde toujours. Ce n'est pas simplement le corps, sans rien dedans, qui te regarde ; non, il y a encore quelque chose à l'intérieur qui est mort depuis longtemps mais continue à regarder au-dehors, et regarde et regarde encore sans pouvoir s'arrêter.”

“Imagine walking along a sidewalk with your arms full of groceries, and someone roughly bumps into you so that you fall and your groceries are strewn over the ground. As you rise up from the puddle of broken eggs and tomato juice, you are ready to shout out, 'You idiot! What's wrong with you? Are you blind?' But just before you can catch your breath to speak, you see that the person who bumped into you is actually blind. He, too, is sprawled in the spilled groceries, and your anger vanishes in an instant, to be replaced by sympathetic concern: 'Are you hurt? Can I help you up?' Our situation is like that. When we clearly realize that the source of disharmony and misery in the world is ignorance, we can open the door of wisdom and compassion.”

“Imagine wasting all that perfectly good anger on paranoid fantasies. Not since Emily Litella got upset about "Soviet jewelry" has there been such a waste of anger. You will notice a certain theme to these Emily Litella Moments. Behind them all is a touching faith that someone, somewhere is actually in charge of what's happening - a proposition I beg leave to doubt.”

“Imagine we all today sit together, Join our hands together, Pray to God to bring our hearts all together, So we are grateful to God for his blessings together, We pray to unite everyone under one community together, Let there be no discrimination between all of us together, You have created us all with a single soul altogether, You have given us life on this planet to live together, Everyone is traveling within and outside together, We are going to meet you one after another together, In your hands is our destiny all together, We are your creation gathered today together, All of us awaits your glance of mercy together, To you, we are calling oh the listener together, To you, we are calling oh the seen together, To you, we are calling oh the sustainer together, To you, we are calling oh the merciful together, To you, we are calling the creator together!”

“Imagine we could accelerate continuously at 1 g-what we're comfortable with on good old terra firma-to the midpoint of our voyage, and decelerate continuously at 1 g until we arrive at our destination. It would take a day to get to Mars, a week and a half to Pluto, a year to the Oort Cloud, and a few years to the nearest stars.”

“Imagine what it must be like for teenagers who don't feel they have room to breathe in their own homes. If you are a parent reading this book, you care about your child. If she is quirky, unusual, or nonconformist, ask yourself whether you are doing everything you can to nurture her unusual interests, style, or skills, or whether instead you are directly or subtly pushing her to hide them.”

“Imagine what our culture would be like if Americans sold ideas, words, and books with the same creativity we use to sell designer jeans, shampoo, and rock stars. Why, we might end up with people whos attention span for the printed word is longer than the time it takes to read a T-shirt.”

“Imagine what our real neighbors would be like if each of us offered, as a matter of course, just one kind word to another person. There have been so many stories about the lack of courtesy, the impatience of today's world, road rage and even restaurant rage. Sometimes, all it takes is one kind word to nourish another person. Think of the ripple effect that can be created when we nourish someone. One kind empathetic word has a wonderful way of turning into many.”

“Imagine what the public outcry would be if the president stated he didn’t wish Blacks or Jews to settle in the United States, not because they’re Jewish or black, but because he is afraid of them. Since his motivation is fear, not race or religion, he is not discriminating. That rationale, as fictional President Andrew Shepard declared in the movie The American President, would make him the ‘President of Fantasyland.”

“Imagine what we could achieve if everyone were given a proper chance in life rather than being herded, controlled and patronised by the powers that be. Eventually all of the new voices on the internet will amount to a great shout that will bring down the walls of the Power Elite like the tired walls of old Jericho. Don’t let anyone crush your creativity. Don’t let anyone censor you. Don’t let anyone control you. Say No to the Abrahamists. You are not alone.”

“Imagine what we could achieve if we all tried to help, or if at the very least we caused no harm. Imagine if we tried to be of worth rather than stockpile wealth. Or if we tried to contribute rather than compete. What if we committed to not just being the best husbands or wives, mothers or fathers, siblings and friends, but also the best neighbours and the best strangers?”

“Imagine what will happen to this nation if large numbers of American women start using the Wonderbra. It will be catastrophic. The male half of the population will be nothing but mindless drooling Zombies of Lust. Granted, this is also true now, but it will be even worse.”

“Imagine what would happen if the government were to take the wealth of 200,000 of India's richest people and redistribute it amongst 2 million of India's poorest? We would hear a lot about socialist appropriation and the death of democracy. Why should taking from the rich be called appropriation and taking from the poor be called development?”