Keith > Keith's Quotes

“We sometimes hear people voice doubts about opposition to sex trafficking, genital cutting, or honor killings because of their supposed inevitability. What can our good intentions achieve against thousands of years of tradition? Our response is China. A century ago, China was arguably the worst place in the world to be born female. Foot-binding, child marriage, concubinage, and female infanticide were embedded in traditional Chinese culture...So was it cultural imperialism for Westerners to criticize foot-binding and female infanticide? Perhaps. But it was also the right thing to do. If we believe firmly in certain values, such as the equality of all human beings regardless of color or gender, then we should not be afraid to stand up for them; it would be feckless to defer to slavery, torture, foot-binding, honor killings, or genital cutting just because we believe in respecting other faiths or cultures. One lesson of China is that we need not accept that discrimination is an intractable element of any society. If culture were immutable, China would still be impoverished and [women] would be stumbling around on three-inch feet.”
― Nicholas D. Kristof, Half the Sky: Turning Oppression into Opportunity for Women Worldwide

“In the nineteenth century, the central moral challenge was slavery. In the twentieth century, it was the battle against totalitarianism. We believe that in this century the paramount moral challenge will be the struggle for gender equality around the world.”
― Nicholas D. Kristof, Half the Sky: Turning Oppression into Opportunity for Women Worldwide

“Conservatives, who have presumed that the key to preventing AIDS is abstinence-only education, and liberals, who have focused on distribution of condoms, should both note that the intervention that has tested most cost-effective in Africa is neither... Secular bleeding hearts and religious bleeding hearts will have to forge a common cause.”
― Nicholas D. Kristof

“But these American women! They had opinions, which they didn’t hesitate to offer—and the men listened. They joined their husbands at social gatherings and official ceremonies. They presided at table. Men gave up their seats for women, doffed their hats to them, made way for them on the sidewalk, fetched and carried for them. In public. Clearly, American women had a happier lot than their Japanese sisters. Why? The answer, Kuroda concluded, was education.”
― Janice P. Nimura, Daughters of the Samurai: A Journey from East to West and Back

“Whenever I get dumped, I nail the door shut so that no one can come inside, get a towel and clip it around my neck so it's like a Superman cape, take off my shoes so I can slide across the room, and...get a fake mic, like a celery stick or a pen, and I play any record that features the vocalist Ronnie James Dio. And you can just pretend you're Dio, because on every album he does, he has minimum one, usually three, *EVIL WOMAN LOOK OUT!*- songs. And if you wanna point like Dio, it's a three-finger point. (heavy metal voice) 'The exit is that way. Evil LURKS! Evil lurks in twilight! Dances in the DARK! Evil woman! Just WALK AWAY!”
― Henry Rollins, The Portable Henry Rollins

“Jesus is a little problematic for Christian nationalists, and Matthew 10: 34 is one of the mechanisms they use to blunt his impact where it is not welcome. He was something of a nonjudgmental, socialistic peacenik, which is inconvenient to a movement characterized by judgment, unfettered capitalism, and war. So Christian nationalists gave Jesus a makeover, combining the unflinching, violent judgment and punishments of the Old Testament with a Jesus who provides eternal life through his death and resurrection for our sins. I often wonder how Jesus would feel in a modern, evangelical megachurch, as he would have precious little ideology in common with his followers there.”
― Elicka Peterson Sparks, Devil You Know: The Surprising Link between Conservative Christianity and Crime

“It is interesting, really: The Old Testament fits far more easily with Christian nationalism but is so problematic to defend that they often retreat from it when pressed. For example, you might have noticed in Leviticus that the wording for the verse condemning homosexuality is almost identical to those condemning cursing or attacking one's parents and adultery. The wages of those sins are death, and the sinner is held responsible for that outcome. But a significant number of Christians commit these sins, including many clergy members (at least, it would seem, when it comes to adultery), so it is very difficult to hide the hypocrisy inherent in strongly enforcing one rule while taking a relatively understanding stance on the others. In some cases, the rules are deemed historical artifacts to sidestep troublesome challenges. The Bible is the literal Word of God… but Christians see no problem in wearing clothing woven of two materials, wearing gold, pearls, and expensive clothing, cutting their hair and beards, and getting tattoos. Those commands are deemed no longer relevant, while, inexplicably, other very similar proscriptions are still thought to apply to modern life.”
― Elicka Peterson Sparks, Devil You Know: The Surprising Link between Conservative Christianity and Crime

“While Christian nationalists very much want to see the Ten Commandments play a larger role in the United States, they - and the majority of Americans (60 percent) - cannot name even five of the Ten Commandments. Surprisingly, research revealed that only 60 percent of American adults could even identify “thou shalt not kill” as a commandment. Given this, it should not be surprising that most people do not realize the number of commandments that would create an exclusively Judeo-Christian orientation for the government, and that they constitute almost half of God's decrees from the Mount, making the wish for a biblical justice system less than promising for religious freedom in the United States. The goal of Christian nationalism is not religious freedom, however: It is Christian supremacy[....]”
― Elicka Peterson Sparks, Devil You Know: The Surprising Link between Conservative Christianity and Crime

“For all these years, you’ve lived under the illusion that, somehow, you made it because you were tough enough to overpower the abuse, the hatred, the hard knocks of life. But really you made it because love is so powerful that tiny little doses of it are enough to overcome the pain of the worst things life can dish out. Toughness was a faulty coping mechanism you devised to get by. But, in reality, it has been your ability to never give up, to keep seeking love, and your resourcefulness to make that love last long enough to sustain you. That’s what has gotten you by”
― Rachel Reiland, Get Me Out of Here: My Recovery from Borderline Personality Disorder

“Envisioning the movie version of a beloved book is at once an act of tenderness and of violence.”
― Dana Stevens

“But the act of rereading contains profundities, and challenges, all its own. Going back to a book — sometimes the same physical copy of it — that you fell in love with years ago is a way both of measuring the distance you’ve traveled in the intervening years and of daring that past self to find new evidence for that old love.”
― Dana Stevens

“Sooner or later, all conspiracy theories, no matter how outlandish, must eventually rest a certain set of facts. And facts can be checked.”
― Vincent Bugliosi, Reclaiming History – The Assassination of John F Kennedy

“We can know only that we know nothing. And that is the highest degree of human wisdom.”
― Leo Tolstoy, War and Peace

“Nothing is so necessary for a young man as the company of intelligent women.”
― Leo Tolstoy, War and Peace

“If everyone fought for their own convictions there would be no war.”
― Leo Tolstoy, War and Peace

“Pierre was right when he said that one must believe in the possibility of happiness in order to be happy, and I now believe in it. Let the dead bury the dead, but while I'm alive, I must live and be happy.”
― Leo Tolstoy, War and Peace

“I simply want to live; to cause no evil to anyone but myself.”
― Leo Tolstoy, War and Peace

“Nobody would believe what an effort it is to do what little I am able, - to dress and entertain, and order things”
― Charlotte Perkins Gilman, The Yellow Wall-Paper

“You think you have mastered it, but just as you get well underway in following, it turns a back-somersault and there you are. It slaps you in the face, knocks you down, and tramples upon you. It is like a bad dream.”
― Charlotte Perkins Gilman, The Yellow Wallpaper

“I am glad my case is not serious! But these nervous troubles are dreadfully depressing. John does not know how much I really suffer. He knows there is no reason to suffer, and that satisfies him.”
― Charlotte Perkins Gilman, The Yellow Wall-Paper

“I really have discovered something at last. Through watching so much at night, when it changes so, I have finally found out. The front pattern does move - and no wonder! The woman behind shakes it! Sometimes I think there are a great many women behind, and sometimes only one, and she crawls around fast, and her crawling shakes it all over. Then in the very ' bright spots she keeps still, and in the very shady spots she just takes hold of the bars and shakes them hard. And she is all the time trying to climb through. But nobody could climb through that pattern - it strangles so:...”
― Charlotte Perkins Gilman, The Yellow Wall-Paper

“I want to know everything about you, so I tell you everything about myself.”
― Amy Hempel

“I meet a person, and in my mind I'm saying three minutes; I give you three minutes to show me the spark.”
― Amy Hempel, The Collected Stories

“Just because you have stopped sinking doesn't mean you're not still underwater.”
― Amy Hempel

“Dreams: the place most of us get what we need.”
― Amy Hempel, The Collected Stories

“if it's true your life flashes past your eyes before you die, then it is also the truth that your life rushes forth when you are ready to start to truly be alive.”
― Amy Hempel, The Collected Stories

“I get rational when I panic.”
― Amy Hempel, The Collected Stories

“I moved through the days like a severed head that finishes a sentence.”
― Amy Hempel

“There's no such thing as luck. Luck is where preparation meets opportunity.”
― Amy Hempel

“I thought, my love is so good, why isn't it calling the same thing back.”
― Amy Hempel, The Collected Stories