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T Quotes

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All T Quotes

“There is a tendency to oversimplify the issue of spay/neuter and to promote the essential benefits without recognizing that our animals do suffer some harm, even if it is only the harm of deprivation—the harm of having their sexual and reproductive experiences stolen from them. It is possible to take this argument to the extreme and assert that we should never interfere with something as basic as sexuality and reproduction. Good stewards would allow their animals to exist in a “natural” state. The problem here is that our companion animals have no “natural” state; as domesticates, they are artifacts of human manipulation, and human control over the processes of reproduction is at the heart of domestication. As Karla Armbruster notes in her essay “Into the Wild,” we cannot simply hand control for reproduction back to our companion animals; this would be an abrogation of our responsibility to them. But we owe it to them to acknowledge their losses.”

“There is a tendency to speak about your suffering and difficulties so that you can draw more people to support you in order to fight the other side. That is a big temptation. You think if you are strong and you will have more support, the other side will have to withdraw. That is the hope of many people. But we know that activities based on that kind of thinking have gone on for many years without bearing any fruit at all.”

“There is a tendency under capitalism system to reduce everything to a kind of commodity fetish, and this order tends to promote extremely conventional and uniform expressions of gender and sexuality in order to promote certain products and lifestyle choices that are commercialized. This necessarily entails a capitulation to heteronormativity, or in the case of the new gay movement, a "homonormativity" that doesn't stray far from the heterosexual paradigm. Anyone who questions these normative values and conventions is subject to disapproval, hostility, or even violence.”

“There is a tension between what is good for someone and what they want to do. This is because people, especially older people, like to do things as they've always done them. The problem is that when the brain develops ingrained habits, it doesn't need to think anymore. Things get done very quickly and efficiently on automatic pilot, often in a very advantageous way. This creates a tendency to stick to routines, and the only way of breaking these is to confront the brain with new information.”

“There is a tension in capitalism's adaptability between the strong desire to do and be empathic and there for the other, and an exhaustion at just getting by and being at a basic level of existence. The lure of the cultivation of individuality as synonymous with liberty continues this exhaustive tension between self and other(s).”

“There is a terrible hunger for love. We all experience that in our lives--the pain, the loneliness. We must have the courage to recognize it. The poor you may have right in your own family. Find them. Love them. ---Before you speak, it is necessary for you to listen, for God speaks in the silence of the heart. Speak tenderly to them. Let there be kindness in your face, in your eyes, in your smile, in the warmth of your greeting. Always have a cheerful smile. Don't only give your care, but give your heart as well.”

“There is a terrible thing that's been happening probably for the last 20 years or so and it's called the music business. And music isn't really business; it's work and you got to pay and you've got to buy your guitar or go into the studio. So there is a business side but when people say, "I'm going into the music business," it's not. It's about expression. It's about creativity. You don't join music, in my mind, to make money. You join it because it's in you; it's in your blood stream.”

“There is a theology to gardening that few of us consider, but to understand this theology means relinquishing much control - our arsenal of books, techniques, tools, chemicals, fertilizers, fancy hybrids, and expectations. Yet, that is exactly what we must do if we are to fully embrace a more spiritual form of gardening. As a part of Nature we must learn to enter our garden as if it were truly sacred, we must learn to enter with humility.”

“There is a theorem that colloquially translates, You cannot comb the hair on a bowling ball. ... Clearly, none of these mathematicians had Afros, because to comb an Afro is to pick it straight away from the scalp. If bowling balls had Afros, then yes, they could be combed without violation of mathematical theorems.”

“There is a theoretical framework that explains ethnocentrism. As the Belgian authority on ethnic relations Pierre L. van den Berghe put it more than 25 years ago, “The degree of cooperation between organisms can be expected to be a direct function of the proportion of the genes they share; conversely, the degree of conflict between them is an inverse function of the proportion of shared genes.” Van den Berghe used the word “organisms” because he found this principle true in animals as well as people. When there is great genetic distance between strangers—in the case of humans, when they are of different races—conflicts are sharper. It is easy to understand the first part of van den Berghe’s proposition. People everywhere make great sacrifices for their families. The evolutionary explanation is that everyone shares more copies of his distinctive genes with close kin than with strangers. All forms of life can be viewed as striving to pass on their genes to future generations. Each individual therefore has a “genetic interest” in close relatives, which helps explain solidarity and cooperation within families.”

“There is a theory going around that the U.S.A. was and still is a gigantic Masonic plot under the ultimate control of the group known as the Illuminati. It is difficult to look for long at the strange single eye crowning the pyramid which is found on every dollar bill and not begin to believe the story, a little. Too many anarchists in 19th-century Europe—Bakunin, Proudhon, Salverio Friscia—were Masons for it to be pure chance. Lovers of global conspiracy, not all of them Catholic, can count on the Masons for a few good shivers and voids when all else fails.”

“There is a theory that creativity arises when individuals are out of sync with their environment. To put it simply, people who fit in with their communities have insufficient motivation to risk their psyches in creating something truly new, while those who are out of sync are driven by the constant need to prove their worth.”

“There is a theory that watching unbearable stories about other people lost in grief and rage is good for you – may cleanse you of your darkness. Do you want to go down to the pits of yourself all alone? Not much. What if an actor could do it for you? Isn’t that why they are called actors? They act for you. You sacrifice them to action. And this sacrifice is a mode of deepest intimacy of you with your own life.”

“There is a theory which states that if ever anyone discovers exactly what the Universe is for and why it is here, it will instantly disappear and be replaced by something even more bizarre and inexplicable.There is another theory which states that this has already happened.”