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The System Quotes

Browse 9 quotes about The System.

The System Quotes

“She’s fulfilled her obligation, assuaged her conscience by finding me in the hallway and giving me the chance to freak out, and I’ve played my role too, by remaining calm, pretending to be okay, and therefore giving her permission to cross me off her things-to-do list. Now she can move on, and I can too. Once you understand how adults are controlled by the system, manipulating them is elementary.”

High SchoolCaringManipulationInteractionThe System
Book:Forgive Me, Leonard Peacock
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“… our nation's truly critical problems are built into the very structure of the economic and political system; they are not something passing in the night that will go away even when we elect forward-looking leaders and actively pressure them to move in a different direction.”

AmericaEconomic Inequality2013Systemic FailureThe SystemLate Stage Capitalism
Book:What Then Must We Do?: Straight Talk about the Next American Revolution
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“I suppose this anger and manipulation was my pseudo-conscious method of giving the system, and all it entailed, the big fat birdie finger. What I failed to realize was that my inward disposition of fuming vindictiveness and self-justification only caused me to rob myself. I was giving myself the middle finger, not them.”

ManipulationVindictivenessSelf JustificationThe System
Book:Pursued: God’s relentless pursuit and a drug addict’s journey to finding purpose
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“When a guy goes out there and kills somebody, he might look at himself as the winner. But in truth he’s also a loser, because now he would be lost in the system. If you were listening to the news recently, some people you know well are doing 45, and 64 years for murder. They might have won their fight, but they lost their lives to the system. Franco ‘Co’ Bethel, former gang leader and right hand man to Scrooge.”

FightingMurderPrisonLoserThug LifePrison LifeThe SystemStreet FightsConvicted For MurderKillingsA KillerGang FightsGang KillingsLost In The SystemLost To The System
Book:The Fight of My Life is Wrapped Up in My Father
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“After my sentencing from the judge, I started getting drug tested regularly. As a result, I had to stop smoking weed. In place of weed, I started doing other drugs that stayed in my system for shorter amounts of time and were harder to detect. It started with nontraceable substances like mushrooms, acid, and 2-CB (a derivative of mescaline), but it quickly turned into hard drugs. While weed was detectable on tests for up to a month, hard drugs were only traceable for a few days or a week at most. Ironically, the drug tests which were meant to discourage me from drug use, turned me on to hard drugs.”

WeedHeroinThe GovernmentThe SystemHard DrugsThe Government Is Not PerfectDrug TestsGateway Drugs
Book:Pursued: God’s relentless pursuit and a drug addict’s journey to finding purpose
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“During voir dire, the interviews for jury selection, each person is asked under oath about their experience with the criminal justice system, as defendant or victim, but usually not even the most elementary effort is made to corroborate those claims. One ADA [Associate District Attorney] told me about inheriting a murder case, after the first jury deadlocked. He checked the raps for the jurors and found that four had criminal records. None of those jurors were prosecuted. Nor was it policy to prosecute defense witnesses who were demonstrably lying--by providing false alibis, for example--because, as another ADA told me, if they win the case, they don't bother, and if they lose, "it looks like sour grapes." A cop told me about a brawl at court one day, when he saw court officers tackle a man who tried to escape from the Grand Jury. An undercover was testifying about a buy when the juror recognized him as someone he had sold to. Another cop told me about locking up a woman for buying crack, who begged for a Desk Appearance Ticket, because she had to get back to court, for jury duty--she was the forewoman on a Narcotics case, of course. The worst part about these stories is that when I told them to various ADAs, none were at all surprised; most of those I'd worked with I respected, but the institutionalized expectations were abysmal. They were too used to losing and it showed in how they played the game.”

PoliceIronyPatheticCopsJurorsJury DutyThe SystemVoir DireDistrict Attorney
Book:Blue Blood by Conlon, Edward (2004) Paperback
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“The bottom line was, if I could outsmart the judicial/legal system, then I could keep my addiction. But was that really what I wanted? Here I am, talking about my addiction as if it were some small and innocent pet, something that merited my unconditional affection. Wasn’t it tearing my life apart?”

AddictionAddiction And RecoveryAddiction MemoirsThe SystemLoving That Which Kills Us
Book:Pursued: God’s relentless pursuit and a drug addict’s journey to finding purpose
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