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Constructs Quotes

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Constructs Quotes

“Sometimes life abruptly opens up in ways so vast that it engulfs all of our constructs and theories and beliefs in the swiftness of that single moment. At times such as these, life does nothing less than demand a brutally exacting reconstruction of everything that we’ve expended the raw essence of our lives constructing.”

LifeUnderstandingEssenceBeliefsConstructsPerspectivesRebuildReorient
Book:The Eighth Page: A Christmas Journey
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“There is a strange emptiness to life without myths. I am African American — by which I mean, a descendant of slaves, rather than a descendant of immigrants who came here willingly and with lives more or less intact. My ancestors were the unwilling, unintact ones: children torn from parents, parents torn from elders, people torn from roots, stories torn from language. Past a certain point, my family’s history just… stops. As if there was nothing there. I could do what others have done, and attempt to reconstruct this lost past. I could research genealogy and genetics, search for the traces of myself in moldering old sale documents and scanned images on microfiche. I could also do what members of other cultures lacking myths have done: steal. A little BS about Atlantis here, some appropriation of other cultures’ intellectual property there, and bam! Instant historically-justified superiority. Worked great for the Nazis, new and old. Even today, white people in my neck of the woods call themselves “Caucasian”, most of them little realizing that the term and its history are as constructed as anything sold in the fantasy section of a bookstore. These are proven strategies, but I have no interest in them. They’ll tell me where I came from, but not what I really want to know: where I’m going. To figure that out, I make shit up.”

MythAfrican AmericanConstructsPersonal HistoryMaking Stuff Up
Author:N.K. Jemisin
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“Many things as we have constructed them can be redefined and are neither correct nor incorrect. I love making love to a woman. I love her every quiver, her every movement, her every moan, her every breath. I love the journey my hands make over her every soft curve, the smell of her skin, and I revel in the feminine beauty, unmatched by anything else on this earth. But the core connection is what matters most and, while I don’t know what draws me to the essence of women rather than men or both, I wanted to be swallowed up by exactly that – the mystery of why we don’t want to be without each other.”

LoveSexMysteryGayLgbtConstructsLesbianLesbian Sex
Book:Borderless
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“Moreover, we were to each other aspects of a dream unrealized. I emblemized the excitement of freedom, a life untethered by the confines of constructs. She illustrated a sense of belonging, of ongoing laughter in the face of those constructs, a true lifeline within the walking dead. We were standing in different places, yet the same, seeing within each other a sense of truth within the lies, a radiant light that illuminated the dark.”

LifeTruthFreedomSocietyLgbtConstructsStatus QuoLesbianFree SpiritConfines
Book:Borderless
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“In Uganda, I wrote a questionaire that I had my research assistants give; on it, I asked about the embalasassa, a speckled lizard said to be poisonous and to have been sent by Prime minsister Milton Obote to kill Baganda in the late 1960s. It is not poisonous and was no more common in the 1960s than it had been in previous decades, as Makerere University science professors announced on the radio and stated in print… I wrote the question, What is the difference between basimamoto and embalasassa? Anyone who knows anything about the Bantu language—myself included—would know the answer was contained in the question: humans and reptiles are different living things and belong to different noun classes… A few of my informants corrected my ignorance… but many, many more ignored the translation in my question and moved beyond it to address the history of the constructs of firemen and poisonous lizards without the slightest hesitation. They disregarded language to engage in a discussion of events… My point is not about the truth of the embalasassa story… but rather that the labeling of one thing as ‘true’ and the other as ‘fictive’ or ‘metaphorical’—all the usual polite academic terms for false—may eclipse all the intricate ways in which people use social truths to talk about the past. Moreover, chronological contradictions may foreground the fuzziness of certain ideas and policies, and that fuzziness may be more accurate than any exact historical reconstruction… Whether the story of the poisionous embalasassa was real was hardly the issue; there was a real, harmless lizard and there was a real time when people in and around Kampala feared the embalasassa. They feared it in part because of beliefs about lizards, but mainly what frightened people was their fear of their government and the lengths to which it would go to harm them. The confusions and the misunderstandings show what is important; knowledge about the actual lizard would not.”

GovernmentTruthLanguageKnowledgeHistoryInterviewsBeliefsConstructsMethodologyInterviewUgandaOral HistoryInterviewingConstructionsBasimamotoEmbalasassaGovernment PowerSocial TruthSocial Truths
Book:Speaking with Vampires: Rumor and History in Colonial Africa (Studies on the History of Society and Culture)
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“Matter and force were enough. There was as yet no thought of an unrepresented base; for if the particles kept growing smaller there would always be bigger and better glasses to see them through. The collapse of the mechanical model was not yet in sight, nor had any of those other factors which have since contributed to the passing of the dead-centre of literalness - idealist philosophies, genetic psychology, psycho-analysis - as yet begun to take effect. Consequently there was as yet no dawning apprehension that the phenomena of the familiar world may be representations in the final sense of being the mental construct of the observer.”

Constructs
Book:Saving the Appearances: A Study in Idolatry
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“The struggle to reach reality—that’s the main objective of this creature who tries, in every way, to cling to whatever exists by means of a total vision of things. I meant to make clear too the way vision—the way of seeing, the viewpoint—alters reality, constructing it. A house is not only constructed with stones, cement etc. A man’s way of looking constructs it too.”

RealityConstructsIllusionsAwareness Of Life
Book:The Besieged City
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“News is anyway a construct, as different from truth. And then further news on the same subject uses the construct as the truth and soon the news anyway is far removed from the truth. As this is happening, the constructs based on lies are moving towards the truth. So the incremental change in lies, is towards truth, and the delta change in truth, is towards lies. So if someone is looking at the current direction of truth and lie constructs they seems to reflect the opposite. Narratives get fed to us, riding on jokes and tidbits constructed at opposite ends and so on till the truths become lies, and lies, the truth. - Vineet REALITY IS ABOUT TRUTH ADDED TO LIES हक़ीक़त सच और झूठ का समावेश है”

RealityTruthNewsLiesNarrativeConstructsHindi QuotesNewspaperह दNewsquote
Author:Vineet Raj Kapoor
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“By dismantling the narrow politics of racial identity and selective self-interest, by going beyond 'black' and 'white,' we may construct new values, new institutions and new visions of an America beyond traditional racial categories and racial oppression.”

MaySelfAmericaValuesBlackInterestWhiteVisionIdentityInstitutionsTraditionalOppressionCategoriesBlack And WhiteConstructsSelf InterestSelectiveNew VisionRacial Identity
Book:Beyond Black and White: Transforming African-American Politics
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“But as the work proceeded I was continually reminded of the fable about the elephant and the tortoise. Having constructed an elephant upon which the mathematical world could rest, I found the elephant tottering, and proceeded to construct a tortoise to keep the elephant from falling. But the tortoise was not more secure than the elephant, and after some twenty years of very arduous toil, I came to the conclusion that there was nothing more that I could do in the way of making mathematical knowledge indubitable.”

WorldWayYearsFallFoundLogicTwentiesConclusionSecureCertaintyMathematicalUncertaintyReasoningElephantsToilConstructsFablesOntologyTortoisesGreat Math
Book:Autobiography
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“The world runs on individuals pursuing their self interests. The great achievements of civilization have not come from government bureaus. Einstein didn't construct his theory under order from a bureaucrat. Henry Ford didn't revolutionize the automobile industry that way.”

WorldWaySelfGovernmentRunningOrderIndividualInterestTheoryIndustryCivilizationAchievementCapitalismConstructsFree MarketSelf InterestAutomobileBureaucratsGreat AchievementAutomobile Industry
Author:Milton Friedman
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“THE FIRST STEP in changing the future is Desire, that is, define your objective - know definitely what you want. SECOND: construct an event which you believe you would encounter following the fulfillment of your desire - an event which implies fulfillment of your desire - something which will have the action of Self predominant.”

KnowsWantFirstsBelieveSelfActionDesireStepsEventsFollowingWhat You WantObjectivesFulfillmentEncountersFirst StepsConstructs
Book:The Neville Goddard Collection
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“I would warn against too much of a radical devotion to rationality. Rationality is an illusion, an invented concept, a construct from the mind of man. It is not a property of the universe. Rationality may be a useful tool when it suits our purposes, however, it is merely a measuring stick, calibrated against what we know of the nature of the universe - all of which may or may not be completely inaccurate.”

KnowsMenLifeMindMayPurposeUniverseToo MuchIllusionConceptsToolsPropertySticksDevotionSuitsRadicalRationalityConstructsMeasuring
Author:Derek R. Audette
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“Descartes, the father of modern philosophy ... would never-so he assures us-have been led to construct his philosophy if he had had only one teacher, for then he would have believed what he had been told; but, finding that his professors disagreed with each other, he was forced to conclude that no existing doctrine was certain.”

IfsHas BeensPhilosophyScienceCertainFatherTeacherModernFindingsDoctrineProfessorsConstructsModern Philosophy
Book:Unpopular Essays
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“During all those years of experimentation and research, I never once made a discovery. All my work was deductive, and the results I achieved were those of invention, pure and simple. I would construct a theory and work on its lines until I found it was untenable. Then it would be discarded at once and another theory evolved. This was the only possible way for me to work out the problem.”

WayYearsMadeProblemWould BeFoundLinesSimpleResultsTheoryPureResearchDiscoveryWork OutInventionConstructsExperimentationDiscarded
Author:Thomas A. Edison
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“I will make an attempt to attain freedom, the youthful soul says to itself; and is it to be hindered in this by the fact that two nations happen to hate and fight one another, or that two continents are separated by an ocean, or that all around it a religion is taught with did not yet exist a couple of thousand years ago. All that is not you, it says to itself.”

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Author:Friedrich Nietzsche
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“The history of the Roman Empire is also the history of the uprising of the Empire of the Masses, who absorb and annul the directing minorities and put themselves in their place. Then, also, is produced the phenomenon of agglomeration, of "the full." For that reason, as Spengler has very well observed, it was necessary, just as in our day, to construct enormous buildings. The epoch of the masses is the epoch of the colossal.”

WellsReasonBuildingMassEnormousMinoritiesEmpiresPhenomenonConstructsRoman EmpireUprisingEpochColossal
Book:the Revolt of the Masses
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“All serious art, music, literature is a critical act. It is so, firstly, in the sense of Matthew Arnold's phrase: "a criticism of life." Be it realistic, fantastic, Utopian or satiric, the construct of the artist is a counter-statement to the world.”

WorldArtLife IsArtistLiteratureSeriousCriticismCriticalStatementsFantasticPhrasesRealisticConstructsUtopianMatthewArt Music
Book:Real Presences: Is There Anything in What We Say?
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“The director is the most important because, ultimately, as an actor, when you watch a movie, it looks like an actor is giving a performance, and they kind of are. But, what's actually happening is that an actor has given a bunch of ingredients over to a director, who then constructs a performance. That's movie-making.”

GivingLooksKindImportantActorsGivenWatchesDirectorsHappeningsPerformancesBunchIngredientsConstructsMovie Making
Author:Joseph Gordon-Levitt
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“It is worth repeating that powerful imagination is not false outward vision, but intense inward representation, and a creative energy constantly fed by susceptibility to the veriest minutiæ of experience, which it reproduces and constructs in fresh and fresh wholes; not the habitual confusion of provable fact with the fictions of fancy and transient inclination, but a breadth of ideal association which informs every material object, every incidental fact with far-reaching memories and storied residues of passion, bringing into new light the less obvious relations to human existence.”

HumansFactsLightPassionEnergyImaginationMemoriesPowerfulExistenceFictionVisionCreativeObjectsMaterialsIdealsRelationObviousIntenseConfusionFancyReachingFedsAssociationInwardRepresentationConstructsInclinationHuman ExistenceHabitualTransientBreadthCreative EnergySusceptibility
Author:George Eliot
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“The problem of education in a democratic society is to do away with ... dualism and to construct a course of studies which makes thought a guide of free practice for all and which makes leisure a reward of accepting responsibility for service, rather than a state of exemption from it.”

StatesProblemCoursesResponsibilityAcceptingPracticeStudyDemocraticRewardsGuidesLeisureConstructsDemocratic SocietyDualismExemptionAccepting Responsibility
Book:Democracy And Education
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“As we educate a child -- removing out of its path those obstacles over which we ourselves, in early days, have stumbled, and strengthening its mind with the aid of our own matured experience -- we, as it were, construct a new and better replica of ourselves, and thus enable the race to move slowly, but surely, forward towards the ultimate goal of existence -- towards perfection.”

MindChildrenMovingGoalRaceExistencePathPerfectionUltimateObstaclesAidsEducateConstructsStrengtheningUltimate GoalMaturedMoving OutReplicaSlowly But Surely
Author:Leonid Andreyev
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“Gender is not something that one is, it is something one does, an act... a "doing" rather than a "being". There is no gender identity behind the expressions of gender; that identity is performatively constituted by the very "expressions" that are said to be its results. If the immutable character of sex is contested, perhaps this construct called 'sex' is as culturally constructed as gender; indeed, perhaps it was always already gender, with the consequence that the distinction between sex and gender turns out to be no distinction at all.”

IfsDoeSaidCharacterTurnsSexResultsBehindsIdentityExpressionConsequenceGenderDistinctionConstructsBeing ThereGender IdentitySex And Gender
Author:Judith Butler
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