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Insidious Quotes

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Insidious Quotes

“The insidious nature of government surveillance extends beyond the violation of privacy; it corrodes the foundations of trust essential for a healthy democracy. When citizens are constantly under the watchful eye of those in power, it creates an environment ripe for abuse and manipulation. The emotional toll is immeasurable, breeding a culture of fear and self-censorship as individuals navigate a world where every action is potentially scrutinized. Examples from history, such as the misuse of surveillance by authoritarian regimes, serve as stark warnings against the encroachment of unchecked power into the private lives of citizens. The unlawfulness of such surveillance is not just a legal matter but a moral imperative to safeguard the very essence of individual freedom.”

GovernmentNatureDemocracyEmotionalTrustAbusePrivacyManipulationSurveillanceInsidious
Author:James William Steven Parker
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“I asked Morrie if he felt sorry for himself. "Sometimes, in the mornings," he said. "That's when I mourn. I feel around my body, I move my fingers and my hands - whatever I can still move - and I mourn what I've lost. I mourn the slow, insidious way in which I'm dying. But then I stop mourning.”

SelfLostDyingSorryIllMournInsidiousSlow
Book:Tuesdays With Morrie: An old man, a young man, and life's greatest lesson
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“Attitude Is Everything We live in a culture that is blind to betrayal and intolerant of emotional pain. In New Age crowds here on the West Coast, where your attitude is considered the sole determinant of the impact an event has on you, it gets even worse.In these New Thought circles, no matter what happens to you, it is assumed that you have created your own reality. Not only have you chosen the event, no matter how horrible, for your personal growth. You also chose how you interpret what happened—as if there are no interpersonal facts, only interpretations. The upshot of this perspective is that your suffering would vanish if only you adopted a more evolved perspective and stopped feeling aggrieved. I was often kindly reminded (and believed it myself), “there are no victims.” How can you be a victim when you are responsible for your circumstances? When you most need validation and support to get through the worst pain of your life, to be confronted with the well-meaning, but quasi-religious fervor of these insidious half-truths can be deeply demoralizing. This kind of advice feeds guilt and shame, inhibits grieving, encourages grandiosity and can drive you to be alone to shield your vulnerability.”

SufferingAttitudeResponsibilityShameGuiltMental HealthTraumaBetrayalPositive AttitudeIntolerancePtsdStigmaEmotional PainInsidiousVictimsBelief In SelfVictimhoodTraumatizedDemoralizingVictim BlamingBad AdviceTraumaticInvalidationStigmatizationHalf TruthsTraumatizationUnsupportiveLoss Of BeliefBlind To BetrayalFalse Perspective
Author:Sandra Lee Dennis
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“The death of a friendship was usually slow and insidious, like the wearing away of a hillside after years of too much rain. A handful of misunderstandings, a season of miscommunication, the passing of time, and where once stood two women with a dozen years of memories and tears and conversation and laughter—where once stood two women closer than sisters—now stood two strangers.”

YearsTwoMemoriesToo MuchTearsConversationLaughterRainSeasonsStrangerPassingPassingsDozenMisunderstandingHandfulInsidiousMiscommunication
Book:The Lost Love Collection: Even Now and Ever After
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“The habit some writers indulge in of perpetual quotation is one it behooves lovers of good literature to protest against, for it is an insidious habit which in the end must cloud the stream of thought, or at least check spontaneity. If it be true that le style c'est l homme, what is likely to happen if l homme is for ever eking out his own personality with that of some other individual?”

IfsEndsHappensLiteratureIndividualStylePersonalityHabitLoversCloudsChecksBeing TrueStreamsProtestPerpetualQuotationsIndulgeSpontaneityIndulge InInsidiousGood Literature
Book:Streaks of life
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“Your photography is a record of your living - for anyone who really sees. You may see and be affected by other people's ways, you may even use them to find your own, but you will have eventually to free yourself of them. That is what Nietzche meant when he said, 'I have just read Schopenhauer, now I have to get rid of him.' He knew how insidious other people's ways could be, particularly those which have the forcefulness of profound experience, if you let them get between you and your own personal vision.”

PeopleIfsWayMaySaidUseVisionRecordsPhotographyProfoundAffectedInsidiousFree YourselfPersonal Vision
Author:Paul Strand
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“If we're all led to believe that poverty is just a matter of laziness or stupidity or whatever other justifications we can come up with, then we're not likely to be in a real position to do much about it when it comes to attacking the root cause of the problem. Instead of demanding a more equitable system for the distribution of social and economic goods, we blame the victim. This is insidious, because ideology is something we carry around with us in our heads; it forms the basis of our day-to-day understanding of the world.”

IfsWorldBelieveRealMatterProblemFormSocialCausesUnderstandingPovertyEconomicPositionRootsBasesVictimBlameCome UpStupidityIdeologyGoodsLazinessJustificationDay To DayDistributionAttackingInsidiousEquitableRoot Cause
Book:Making a Killing: The Political Economy of Animal Rights
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“American culture is no longer created by the people... A free, authentic life is no longer possible in AmericaTM today. We are being manipulated in the most insidious way. Our emotions, personalities and core values are under siege from media and cultural forces too complex to decode. A continuous product message has woven itself into the very fabric of our existence. Most North Americans now live designer lives-sleep, eat, sit in car, work, shop, watch TV, sleep again. I doubt there's more than a handful of free, spontaneous minutes anywhere in that cycle. We ourselves have been branded.”

PeopleWayHas BeensTodayLife IsValuesCultureForceSleepEmotionExistenceWatchesDoubtMinutesMediaCarTvsProductsPersonalityMessagesComplexesCoreDesignerShopsCyclesFabricConsumerismSpontaneousHandfulAmerican CultureWovenOverconsumptionInsidiousCore ValuesSiegeBrandedAuthentic LifeUnder Siege
Author:Kalle Lasn
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“The environmental crisis is somber evidence of an insidious fraud hidden in the vaunted productivity and wealth of modern, technology-based society. This wealth has been gained by rapid short-term exploitation of the environmental system, but it has blindly accumulated a debt to nature-a debt so large and so pervasive that in the next generation it may, if unpaid, wipe out most of the wealth it has gained us.”

IfsMayHas BeensNextTermWealthTechnologyGenerationsModernEvidenceCrisisEnvironmentalDebtProductivityFraudExploitationRapidsNext GenerationShort TermWipeInsidiousSomberModern TechnologyEnvironmental Crisis
Author:Barry Commoner
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“In many ways, large profits are even more insidious than large losses in terms of emotional destabilization. I think it's important not to be emotionally attached to large profits. I've certainly made some of my worst trades after long periods of winning. When you're on a big winning streak, there's a temptation to think that you're doing something special, which will allow you to continue to propel yourself upward. You start to think that you can afford to make shoddy decisions. You can imagine what happens next. As a general rule, losses make you strong and profits make you weak.”

ThinkingWayLongMadeImportantBigsHappensNextWinningStrongTermLossDecisionImagineWorstSpecialEmotionalPeriodsWeakTradeProfitTemptationSomething SpecialStreaksInsidious
Author:William Eckhardt
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“It is important that the remaining scenic areas of the country be at once made into State or National Parks. Fortunately there still are a number of these wild places, but it will require effort to save them. Each Park proposed will have powerful and insidious opposition. The insidious opposition to National Parks will say, ‘There is a feeling in Congress that we should not have any more National Parks at this time’; or, ‘We should wait until present ones are improved.’”

ShouldMadeStillsImportantCountryStatesFeelingsWaitingPowerfulNumbersEffortAreasCongressParksOppositionInsidiousNational ParksScenicWild Places
Author:Enos Mills
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“It has always seemed to me that the social order was implicit in the very nature of things, and required nothing more from the human spirit than care in arranging the various elements; that a people could be governed without being made thralls or libertines or victims thereby; that man was born for peace and liberty, and became miserable and cruel only through the action of insidious and oppressive laws. And I believe therefore that if man be given laws which harmonize with the dictates of nature and of his heart he will cease to be unhappy and corrupt.”

PeopleIfsMenBelieveHumansHeartMadeCareActionLawSpiritOrderGivenI BelieveSocialBornLibertyElementsVictimVariousCeaseUnhappyMiserableHuman SpiritImplicitSocial OrderInsidiousArrangingLibertine
Author:Louis Antoine de Saint-Just
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“One of the most insidious myths in American wine culture is that a wine is good if you like it. Liking a wine has nothing to do with whether it is good. Liking a wine has to do with liking that wine, period. Wine requires two assessments: one subjective, the other objective. In this it is like literature. You may not like reading Shakespeare but agree that Shakespeare was a great writer nonetheless.”

IfsMayTwoCultureReadingLiteraturePeriodsAgreeWineMythObjectivesSubjectiveYou Like ItAssessmentGreat WritersInsidiousReading Shakespeare
Author:Karen MacNeil
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“One of the most insidious consequences of the present burden of personal income tax is that it strips many middle class families of financial reserves & seems to lend support to campaigns for socialized medicine, socialized housing, socialized food, socialized every thing. The personal income tax has made the individual vastly more dependent on the State & more avid for state hand-outs. It has shifted the balance in America from an individual-centered to a State-centered economic & social system.”

MadeStatesHandsSeemsAmericaIndividualSocialClassSupportEconomicMiddleBalanceTaxesConsequenceMedicineFinancialBurdenCampaignsIncomeDependentMiddle ClassReservesHousingIncome TaxInsidiousSocial SystemsAvidMiddle Class FamilySocialized Medicine
Author:William Henry Chamberlin
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“Medical thinking usually sees stress as highly disturbing but isolated events such as, for example, sudden unemployment, a marriage breakup, or the death of a loved one. These major events are potent sources of stress for many, but there are chronic daily stresses in people's lives that are more insidious and more harmful in their long-term biological consequences. Internally generated stresses take their toll without in any way seeming out of the ordinary.”

PeopleThinkingWayLongPainTermEventsExampleSourceMajorsOrdinaryConsequenceStressMedicalTherapyLong TermBreakupInjuryLoved OnesIsolatedDeath Of A Loved OneUnemploymentDisturbingSeemingTollsInsidious
Author:Gabor Mate
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“the last decade has seen a powerful counterassault on women's rights, a backlash, an attempt to retract the handful of small and hard-won victories that the feminist movement did manage to win for women. This counterassault is largely insidious: in a kind of pop-culture version of the Big Lie, it stands the truth boldly on its head and proclaims that the very steps that have elevated women's position have actually led to their downfall.”

KindHardBigsLastsLyingCultureWinningPowerfulStepsRightsFeminismMovementPositionVictoryFeministPopsDecadesVersionsManageWomens RightsHandfulPop CultureDownfallInsidiousBacklashFeminist Movement
Book:Backlash: the undeclared war against American women
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“For twenty years it had been generally known that an insidious Lobby was maintained in Washington to influence legislation and executive action on behalf of vested interests. ... The lobby was a creature of darkness. It worked behind closed doors and whispered in corners. This ancient industry was one form of invisible government.”

YearsGovernmentActionFormPoliticsInterestBusinessBehindsKnownDarknessDoorsInfluenceIndustryCreaturesTwentiesAncientCornersInvisibleExecutivesLegislationBehalfInsidiousClosed DoorsVested InterestsBehind Closed Doors
Author:Margaret Case Harriman
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“Conventional opinions fit so comfortably into the dominant paradigm as to be seen not as opinions but as statements of fact, as 'the nature of things.' The very efficacy of opinion manipulation rests on the fact that we do not know we are being manipulated. The most insidious forms of oppression are those that so insinuate themselves into our communication universe and the recesses of our minds that we do not even realize they are acting upon us.”

KnowsMindFactsFormPoliticalUniverseRealizingActingOpinionCommunicationFitStatementsOppressionManipulationConventionalDominantParadigmInsidiousEfficacyRecess
Book:The Culture Struggle
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“Kafka's writings often display an insidious power to describe a wholly secular and "factical" world in which the eerie or "unheimlich" elements gang up behind or beneath the ego's awareness and immerse it in a waking dream of something Other, an alien world-order similar to ancient irrationalist cultures (in transition from primitivism to civilized mythos-culture).”

WorldWritingSoulDreamOrderCultureBehindsAwarenessEgoElementsAncientAliensCivilizedTransitionWakingDisplaySecularGangWorld OrderInsidiousEerie
Author:Kenny Smith
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“O ye whose years unfolding fair Are fresh with youth, and free from care, Should vice and indolence desire The garden of your souls to hire, No parleys hold-reject the suit, Nor let one seed the soil pollute. My child their first approach beware, With firmness break the insidious snare, Lest as the acorns grew and throve Into a sun-encircled grove, Thy sins, a dark o'ershadowing tree Shut out the light of Heaven from thee.”

ShouldYearsFirstsChildrenSoulLightCareDesireHeavenDarkSinBreakSunTreeYouthGrewApproachFairsGardenVicesSeedsSuitsTheeYour SoulMy ChildrenSoilRejectsUnfoldingIndolenceInsidiousSnaresFirmnessGroveAcorns
Author:Lydia Sigourney
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“Washington has seldom seen so numerous, so industrious or so insidious a lobby. There is every evidence that money without limit is being spent to sustain this lobby.... I know that in this I am speaking for the members of the two houses, who would rejoice as much as I would to be released from this unbearable situation.”

KnowsTwoHouseSituationLimitsMembersEvidenceRejoiceUnbearableInsidiousIndustrious
Book:Selected Addresses and Public Papers of Woodrow Wilson
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“Billy was fascinated by the television. At its most basic level, it occupied his time and shut out the demons of isolation. This was another irony because, for so long, he had shunned the tube for a similar purpose-to prevent it from bombarding his brain with demons of banality. However, each time he turned the machine on, he began to discover a world of assorted delights, as well as gain insight into the insidious manner in which this medium was shaping the mass psyche. If nothing else, he learned there was nothing innocuous about it.”

IfsWorldWellsLongPurposeLevelsBrainTelevisionMassGainsMachinesDelightInsightMediumsIronyDemonIsolationFascinatedTubesInsidiousBanalityAssorted
Book:The Petting Zoo: A Novel
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