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M Quotes

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All M Quotes

“Many of us understand giving, but some of us may still be confused about the meaning of forgiveness. Some people may go through life in a groveling mode, mistakenly believing they have to receive forgiveness from others. Forgiveness offers more than a reprieve granted to us by another person. True forgiveness is a process of giving up the false for the true and allows us to rid our thinking of rigid ideas. We can develop the flexibility to change our mind and our behavior patterns to higher and greater expressions and find new avenues to freedom.”

“Many of us understand that America was built on the brutality of slavery and the looting of Indigenous land. Fewer recognize the colonization of Mexico by the United States as a third pillar in the creation of present-day America. The first colonization of Mexico was of course by Spain. But the second colonization of my people came at the hands of the United States during the Mexican-American War. In school we learn of it as Manifest Destiny, as the God-given right of white people to steal native land. The result was not only the taking of land...but the reluctant acquisition of Mexicans. ...The annexation of Texas into the United States and a dispute over where the Texas border should be drawn gave President James Polk an excuse to loot more Mexican land...There were between 80,000 and 100,000 Mexicans living in the land stolen by the United States. Polk wanted the land, but not the Mexicans on it. They were never immigrants; they didn't come to the United States or cross the border; the border crossed them. After the war, the Mexico-U.S. border was carefully drawn to keep as many Mexicans out as possible, a purpose it still serves. But the border never stopped out roots from growing on both sides.”

“Many of us want one of the other events: we want to be part of a political revolution, a scientific discovery, an artistic innovation, and - because our society tells us that this is the event that in the end makes up for all our misery - we want to fall deeply in love and stay so. Suffering, in turn, is not an even that any of us want. Unfortunately, it is probably the one that many of us are more likely to experience than any of the others. As tempting as it is to try to offer a more sanguine conclusion to the distilliation of ideas that this book has attempted to accomplish, I cannot end on a polite lie. I know that if falling in love is an event, losing that love is no less so.”

“Many of us want one of the other events: we want to be part of a political revolution, a scientific discovery, an artistic innovation, and - because our society tells us that this is the event that in the end makes up for all our misery - we want to fall deeply in love and stay so. Suffering, in turn, is not an event that any of us want. Unfortunately, it is probably the one that many of us are more likely to experience than any of the others. As tempting as it is to try to offer a more sanguine conclusion to the distilliation of ideas that this book has attempted to accomplish, I cannot end on a polite lie. I know that if falling in love is an event, losing that love is no less so.”

“Many of us want to have relationships because we want a nest, a cozy place of acceptance; that unconditional circumstance. Relationships have become the using of another person as soft stuff to build nests with. Many can do this without even liking the other person, or feeling connected to them, or even wanting to actually be near them. I think the animals are better; an animal would never live with someone they don't like, because they don't have to. They have no religion, no laws, no society. And yet, we see swans and wolves and others: mating for life! For no other reason than that they've found their one-and-only.”

“Many of us were a little to early to assume that the most logical uses of the internet in authoritarian states would be to empower people. And to force them towards participation in politics. If you look at most authoritarian states, they are very grim places to live in. The only good thing about it is fast internet. That's the only way you can find some meaning in an otherwise very dark and gloomy life.”

“Many of us were the unplanned children of talented, creative women whose lives had been changed by unplanned and unwanted pregnancies. We witnessed their bitterness, their rage, their disappointment with their lot in life and we were clear that there could be no genuine sexual liberation for women and men without better, safer contraceptives, without the right to a safe, legal abortion.”

“Many of us who grew up playing golf know that our kids aren't doing it. A great way to enhance the game, make it cool again and bring back some of the interest among younger people is to make golf the greenest sport in an environmental sense. Every course's greenkeeper should think of himself or herself as the greenkeeper: responsible for preserving the green, not just the greens.”

“Many of us who read the literature of social science as laymen are conscious of being admitted at a door which bears the watchword "scientific objectivity" and of emerging at another door which looks out upon a variety of projects for changing, renovating, or revolutionizing society. In consequence, we feel the need of a more explicit account of how the student of society passes from facts to values or statements of policy.”

“Many of us with anxiety don’t look like we’ve got a problem because outwardly we function ludicrously well. Or so the merry story goes. Our anxiety sees us make industrious lists and plans, run purposefully from one thing to the next, and move fast upstairs and across traffic intersections. We are a picture of efficiency and energy, always on the move, always doing. We’re Rabbit from Winnie the Pooh, always flitting about convinced everyone depends on us to make things happen and to be there when they do. And to generally attend to happenings. But beneath that veneer were being pushed by fear and doubt and a voice that tells us we’re a bad husband, and insufficient sister, we’re wasting time, we’re not producing enough, - that we turn everything into a clusterfuck.”

“Many of us worry today about a growing gap between the great mass of mere mortals and an internationalised and (metaphorically) incestuous elite, flitting between the luxury hotels and Michelin-starred restaurants of London, New York and Singapore or gathering for closed-door festivals of self-congratulation in the picture-book-perfect Alpine resort of Davos.”

“Many of us, utterly overcome by Tamas, the dark and heavy demon of inertia, are saying nowadays that it is impossible, that India is decayed, bloodless and lifeless, too weak ever to recover; that our race is doomed to extinction. It is a foolish and idle saying. No man or nation need be weak unless he chooses, no man or nation need perish unless he deliberately chooses extinction.”

“Many of you have already found out, and others will find out in the course of their lives, that truth eludes us if we do not concentrate our attention totally on it's pursuit. But even while it eludes us, the illusion of knowing it still lingers and leads to many misunderstandings. Also, truth seldom is pleasant; it is almost invariably bitter.”

“Many of you struggle to see the signs. Grief builds a wall that can keep us apart. Do you wonder why you can’t see me, sense me, feel me? It’s because when you weep and whine and brood and think yourself guilty when you are not, it pushes against my energy so I cannot reach you. When you have such an outpouring of emotion and sorrow, it’s like me trying to swim upstream through a waterfall of tears to get to you. But if you can try to relax and have faith in me, I can sail right over to you on the calm waters of your soul.”

“Many of you wished me dead. Many of you perhaps still do. But I hold no grudges and seek no revenge. I demand only this...that you join with me in building a new Rome, a Rome that offers justice, peace and land to all its citizens, not just the privileged few. Support me in this task, and old divisions will be forgotten. Oppose me, and Rome will not forgive you a second time. Senators, the war is over.”

“Many of you would like to take evil and step on it, destroying it like you would a bug. Squish, smash! Begone into another reality! This practice of eliminating human life because it is perceived as evil does you no good. In the end your history and experience are filled with war of one kind or another; humans fighting one another for the right to speak their truth and share their perception.And one human or another is always wanting to suppress someone else's ideas, someone else's thinking.”

“Many officers of the obvious have commented that poverty makes people do terrible things. And indeed they are right, but you know what? Their acts are nothing compared to the atrocities of the wealthy. And the irony of the matter is, wrongdoings caused by poverty can be reduced exponentially if we improve the living conditions of those people and help them become self-reliant, whereas there's nothing we can do to reduce the atrocities committed by the wealthy, except for legally taking away their wealth beyond necessity altogether. That is why I say. Always stay as far away as possible from luxury. It's a terrible, terrible thing.”

“Many older wealthy families have learned to instill a sense of public service in their offspring. But newly affluent middle-classparents have not acquired this skill. We are using our children as symbols of leisure-class standing without building in safeguards against an overweening sense of entitlement--a sense of entitlement that may incline some young people more toward the good life than toward the hard work that, for most of us, makes the good life possible.”

“Many opportunities have been lost and hundreds of valuable lives uselessly sacrificed for want of a strict observance of discipline. Its object is to enable an army to bring promptly into action the largest possible number of its men, in good order and under the control of their officers. Its effects are visible in all military history, which records the triumphs of discipline and courage far more frequently than those of numbers and resources.”