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Nonfiction Quotes

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Nonfiction Quotes

“When we first wake up our minds are clear, which makes this the opportune time to direct our focus inwards, to organize our thoughts and to set our daily intentions through a few moments of meditation. Our duties and obligations have not yet begun to crowd our schedule, and the clarity of the dawn creates an open, undistracted mental space.”

“By meditating on our thoughts, feelings, and desires, we are encouraging a sense of self-awareness and self-mastery. We observe the whimsical and impulsive movements of our mind without getting caught up in them, and in doing so we develop a greater understanding of ourselves.”

“The marketing message is that women need to have a reason to drink, whether it’s girls’ night, a fancy occasion, or just getting through another day of exhaustion. It’s implied that we need permission to drink, as we do when we buy things.”

“I believe that there is something in all of us that is seeking expression, that wants to be heard, that wants to be accepted and respected and loved. We each express ourselves in different ways - through manipulation or domination, through receiving and giving pain, through crying, through loving, through giving hope and inspiration to others. We are all seeking the same thing - expression of who we are and what we want from this life.”

“from the Basement tapes Eric outdid Dylan with the apologies. To the untrained eye, he seemed sincere. The psychologists on the case found Eric less convincing. They saw a psychopath. Classic. He even pulled the stunt of self-diagnosing to dismiss it. "I wish I was a fucking sociopath so I didn't have any remorse," Eric said. "But I do." Watching that made Dr. Fuselier angry. Remorse meant a deep desire to correct a mistake. Eric hadn't done it yet. He excused his actions several times on the tapes. Fuselier was tough to rattle, but that got to him. "Those are the most worthless apologies I've ever heard in my life," he said. It got more ludicrous later, when Eric willed some of his stuff to two buddies, "if you guys live." "If you live?" Fuselier repeated. "They are going to go in there and quite possibly kill their friends. If they were the least bit sorry they would not do it!”

“Soon you catch your first glimpse of a vineyard basking in the sun, its broad leaves silently turning sunlight into sugar, ripening vitis vinifera, the European grapes that make the world’s finest wines. For a moment you might imagine you’ve been mysteriously wafted to the French countryside, but no, this is the East End of Long Island, the most exciting new wine region in North America. You’ve reached your destination, but your journey of discovery has barely begun”

“Until that fateful moment, I did not quite understand the anatomy of fear. Creeping up surreptitiously, it could permeate your skin and, before you knew it, course through your veins like a tidal wave. A thumping heart and a parched mouth were classic symptoms of surrender. With the rational side of the brain hijacked, fear could paralyse you at will or compel you to jump out of your skin when you most need to stay calm. Standing in those raging waters, I learnt that fear most certainly could kill”

“In love with Tawang. I still am. I’ve clung on to every bit of its wonder within the snow globe of my memory, whilst an instrumental piece of music plays in the background. It was a CD that my father played often in his room at the barracks. I had read somewhere that every memory has a soundtrack of its own. ’Tis true! Th at piece of instrumental music and Tawang are inextricably entwined in my head.”

“Nice isn’t strength. Nice is just insecurity in a button-up shirt.”

“Identify your Radar – it’s your brain functioning optimally; not a vague intuition or cosmic sixth sense. Train your Radar in key areas like: evaluating people, personal safety, healthy relationships, physical and mental well-being, money and credit cards, career choice, how to get organized. Meet the Radar Jammers. They have the power to turn down or turn off our clear thinking Radars.
Some are well known: alcohol and drugs, peer pressure, infatuation, sleep deprivation.
Others are surprising: showing off, fake complexity, anger, unthinking religions, the need for speed, dangerous personality disorders, and even fast food!
Learn reasonable approaches and specific techniques to deal with them all.”

“Genocide, after all, is an exercise in community building. A vigorous totalitarian order requires that the people be invested in the leader's scheme, and while genocide may be the most perverse and ambitious means to this end, it is also the most comprehensive. In 1994, Rwanda was regarded in much of the rest of the world as the exemplary instance of chaos and anarchy associated with collapsed states. In fact, the genocide was the product of order, authoritarianism, decades of modern political theorizing and indoctrination, and one of the most meticulously administered states in history. And strange as it may sound, the ideology–or what Rwandans call "the logic"–of genocide was promoted as a way not to create suffering but alleviate it. The specter of an absolute menace that requires absolute eradication binds leader and people in a hermetic utopian embrace, and the individual–always an annoyance to totality–ceases to exist.”

“I proposed limits to tech’s addictive design features and reforms to confront tech’s political censorship. This followed from my efforts as Missouri attorney general to investigate Facebook (and Google) for antitrust and consumer protection violations. I was the first state attorney general in the nation to launch such a probe. Facebook, Inc. was not amused.”

“For I am not ashamed of the Gospel, because it is the power of God for salvation for everyone who believes, Jewish first and then Greek. (Romans 1:16 - ONM) To the Jew first. What an incredible yet controversial proposition. To some, Israel is a political argument centred on the issue of land acquisition and misdemeanours against other nations. On the other hand, some perceive Israel as a religious representation of all things that are opposed to things biblical (under the law and not under grace...and all that), both camps missing the point completely.”

“In the room, the clocks tick, unseen. It has been a day of shadows and redirection, revelation and lies. Diane gets the vague sense that Kotey — with his confi dence and his silence — might think himself to be the smartest person in the room. He is intelligent yes, but it’s an intelligence that needs to wear a disguise. And besides, the smartest person in the room is the one who knows she, or he, is never the smartest at all: herein lies the contradiction. She wonders now if he has just said exactly the things she wanted to hear? She knows herself to be naïve at times: she admits this to herself. Yes, it is true, she has often been far too open to people in the past. She has been stung. Government offi cials who have deceived her. Pretenders from the FBI. Misdirection from the State Department and White House. Politicians. Negotiators. Informers. Conmen. And, perhaps now, Kotey. But she also knows that the naivety is necessary to cultivate something deeper. She wants to remain open to the world. Compassion, Lord. And mercy. And patience. There will be one more session tomorrow. Perhaps they will achieve something more than this intimate stand-off . But then again, perhaps nothing. She pulls back her chair and thanks him. It is dangerous, she knows, to thank him, her son’s murderer. But she must do it anyway. Perhaps it’s only politeness. Perhaps it’s something more. “In another life,” she says, “you and Jim might have been friends.”

“It's a bittersweet feeling to finally name what ails you after so long. On the one hand it's a relief because you can finally take action. On the other, endometriosis can feel overwhelming. There isn't enough useful information about it, nothing that encapsulates its all-encompassing nature or defines the all-involving path to recovery - except this book which is mind-blowingly relatable, relieving, and helpful.”

“Endo doesn't just affect the pelvic region. The body's response to the inflammation it causes sensitizes the central nervous system, and if you don't know what's going on - as I didn't - this sensitization ***** with your head. If your head's not right, there's a good chance you're in distress. This is where endo crosses the line from a physical ailment to an emotional one too. -- from the forward, written by Bojana Novakovic”

“At trial, it became clear that in the macho, mustache-man world of drug-trafficking, Chapo had as much use for women, seducing them with saccharine forevers, then putting them to work in his stable—as buyers, as Blackberry-tapping go-betweens to preserve his anonymity on deals—involving their family members because there’s no glue stronger than blood.”

“Human+ operates both as a paradigm for understanding human-machine evolution and as a skill to be cultivated in practice.”

“At this point, I want to say point-blank what I hope is already clear: though agrarianism proposes that everybody has agrarian responsibilities, it does not propose that everybody should be a farmer or that we do not need cities. Nor does it propose that every product be a necessity. Furthermore, any thinkable human economy would have to grant to manufacturing an appropriate and honorable place. Agrarians would insist only that any manufacturing enterprise should be formed and scaled to fit the local landscape, the local ecosystem, and the local community, and that it should be locally owned and employ local people. They would insist, in other words, that the shop or factory owner should not be an outsider, but rather a sharer in the fate of the place and the community. The deciders should live with the results of their decisions.”