Yennifer West > Yennifer's Quotes

“I can normally tell how intelligent a man is by how stupid he thinks I am.”
― Cormac McCarthy, All the Pretty Horses

“Our lives are not as limited as we think they are; the world is a wonderfully weird place; consensual reality is significantly flawed; no institution can be trusted, but love does work; all things are possible; and we all could be happy and fulfilled if we only had the guts to be truly free and the wisdom to shrink our egos and quit taking ourselves so damn seriously.”
― Tom Robbins

“Love is the ultimate outlaw. It just won't adhere to any rules. The most any of us can do is to sign on as its accomplice. Instead of vowing to honor and obey, maybe we should swear to aid and abet. That would mean that security is out of the question. The words "make" and "stay" become inappropriate. My love for you has no strings attached. I love you for free.”
― Tom Robbins, Still Life with Woodpecker

“The highest function of love is that it makes the loved one a unique and irreplaceable being.”
― Tom Robbins, Jitterbug Perfume

“When we're incomplete, we're always searching for somebody to complete us. When, after a few years or a few months of a relationship, we find that we're still unfulfilled, we blame our partners and take up with somebody more promising. This can go on and on--series polygamy--until we admit that while a partner can add sweet dimensions to our lives, we, each of us, are responsible for our own fulfillment. Nobody else can provide it for us, and to believe otherwise is to delude ourselves dangerously and to program for eventual failure every relationship we enter.”
― Tom Robbins

“He said that those who have endured some misfortune will always be set apart but that it is just that misfortune which is their gift and which is their strength.”
― Cormac McCarthy, All The Pretty Horses

“We waste time looking for the perfect lover, instead of creating the perfect love.”
― Tom Robbins

“Scared money can’t win and a worried man can’t love.”
― Cormac McCarthy, All the Pretty Horses

“The closest bonds we will ever know are bonds of grief. The deepest community one of sorrow.”
― Cormac McCarthy, All the Pretty Horses

“He saw very clearly how all his life led only to this moment and all after led to nowhere at all. He felt something cold and soulless enter him like another being and he imagined that it smiled malignly and he had no reason to believe that it would ever leave.”
― Cormac McCarthy, All the Pretty Horses

“I just keep losing. I mean, some people just...are supposed to lose? For balance in the universe? I mean, like, are there just some people on earth who...are supposed to be here just to make it easier for the winners?”
― Donald Glover

“The smart way to keep people passive and obedient is to strictly limit the spectrum of acceptable opinion, but allow very lively debate within that spectrum....”
― Noam Chomsky, The Common Good

“All over the place, from the popular culture to the propaganda system, there is constant pressure to make people feel that they are helpless, that the only role they can have is to ratify decisions and to consume.”
― Noam Chomsky

“I was never aware of any other option but to question everything.”
― Noam Chomsky

“Armaments, universal debt, and planned obsolescence—those are the three pillars of Western prosperity. If war, waste, and moneylenders were abolished, you'd collapse. And while you people are overconsuming the rest of the world sinks more and more deeply into chronic disaster.”
― Aldous Huxley, Island

“What the mass media offers is not popular art, but entertainment which is intended to be consumed like food, forgotten, and replaced by a new dish.”
― W. H. Auden, The Dyer's Hand and Other Essays

“People sometimes imagine that just because they have access to so many newspapers, radio and TV channels, they will get an infinity of different opinions. Then they discover that things are just the opposite: the power of these loudspeakers only amplifies the opinion prevalent at a certain time, to the point where it covers any other opinion.”
― Amin Maalouf, The First Century After Beatrice

“Once upon a time there were mass media, and they were wicked, of course, and there was a guilty party. Then there were the virtuous voices that accused the criminals. And Art (ah, what luck!) offered alternatives, for those who were not prisoners to the mass media.

Well, it's all over. We have to start again from the beginning, asking one another what's going on.”
― Umberto Eco, Travels In Hyperreality

“Base your understanding of the world on data, rather than journalism.
Journalism is a highly non random sample of the worst things that have happened in any given period.

It is an availability machine, in the sense of Tversky and Kahneman's availability heuristic; namely - our sense of risk, danger and prevalence is driven by anecdotes, images and narratives that are available in memory.

A lot of good things are either things that "don't happen" (like a country at peace, or a city that has not been attacked by terrorists, which almost by definition are not news), or things that build up incrementally, a few percentage points a year, and then compound (like the decline of extreme poverty).

We can be unaware, out to lunch about what's happening in the world if we base our view on the news. If instead we base our view on data, then not only do we see that many (although not all) things have gone better (not linearly, not without setbacks and reversals, but in general a lot better... and that paradoxically, as I've cheekily put it, progressives hate progress), but also that the best possible case for progress - that is, for striving for more progress in the future, for being a true progressive - is not to have some kind of foolish hope, but to look at the fact that progress has taken place in the past; and that means: why should it stop now?”
― Steven Pinker

“The intolerance of uncertainty and ignorance flows not only from pridefulness, but from a universal human desire to find meanings and patterns everywhere. The mind abhors a vacuum.”
― Jon Elster, Explaining Social Behavior: More Nuts and Bolts for the Social Sciences

“We are a society of notoriously unhappy people: lonely, anxious, depressed, destructive, dependent — people who are glad when we have killed the time we are trying so hard to save.”
― Erich Fromm, To Have or to Be? The Nature of the Psyche

“We humans are pretty bad at knowing the truth. In fact, our brains suffer from so many distortions, omissions and biases that our perceptions can be completely at odds with reality.”
― Tom Albrighton, Copywriting Made Simple: How to write powerful and persuasive copy that sells

“Experts in ancient Greek culture say that people back then didn't see their thoughts as belonging to them. When ancient Greeks had a thought, it occurred to them as a god or goddess giving an order. Apollo was telling them to be brave. Athena was telling them to fall in love.

Now people hear a commercial for sour cream potato chips and rush out to buy, but now they call this free will.
At least the ancient Greeks were being honest.”
― Chuck Palahniuk, Lullaby

“Optimism is a strategy for making a better future. Because unless you believe that the future can be better, you are unlikely to step up and take responsibility for making it so.”
― Noam Chomsky

“If you assume that there is no hope, you guarantee that there will be no hope. If you assume that there is an instinct for freedom, that there are opportunities to change things, then there is a possibility that you can contribute to making a better world.”
― Noam Chomsky

“The Master said, “If your conduct is determined solely by considerations of profit you will arouse great resentment.”
― Confucius

“Perception is all about assumption,
Our brain hasn't evolved to observe reality.
Biases prevent the observation of biases, unless,
You are hellbent to expand across comfort and luxury.”
― Abhijit Naskar, Find A Cause Outside Yourself: Sermon of Sustainability

“Yes, it is difficult to believe that we are not entirely rational in our daily decisions and actions. However, by admitting that we are biased, realizing that we should question our choices, and stepping outside of our comfort zone, we are able to open up our eyes to a whole new horizon.”
― Ahmed AlAnsari, The Brand Dependence Model: Identify & Mitigate Your Danger Blocks

“Esperanza Impossible Sonnet 30

There is nothing free about your will,
All of it is conditioned to the hilt.
If you are to foster any original will,
A lot of soil you've got to till.
Perception is not observation,
Perception is prediction.
The brain doesn't care about observing,
It only puts forward a self-serving illusion.
Your will is but puppet to that illusion,
Which means you are but a puppet to evolution.
You do have the brain power to take control,
But it'll take a lot of inconvenient self-correction.
If you can do that, you shall rise as sapiens.
Or you'll just end up as compost in nature's garden.”
― Abhijit Naskar, Esperanza Impossible: 100 Sonnets of Ethics, Engineering & Existence

“Wikipedia: False consensus effect

In psychology, the false consensus effect, also known as consensus bias, is a pervasive cognitive bias that causes people to “see their own behavioral choices and judgments as relatively common and appropriate to existing circumstances”. In other words, they assume that their personal qualities, characteristics, beliefs, and actions are relatively widespread through the general population.

This false consensus is significant because it increases self-esteem (overconfidence effect). It can be derived from a desire to conform and be liked by others in a social environment. This bias is especially prevalent in group settings where one thinks the collective opinion of their own group matches that of the larger population. Since the members of a group reach a consensus and rarely encounter those who dispute it, they tend to believe that everybody thinks the same way. The false-consensus effect is not restricted to cases where people believe that their values are shared by the majority, but it still manifests as an overestimate of the extent of their belief.

The false-consensus effect can be contrasted with pluralistic ignorance, an error in which people privately disapprove but publicly support what seems to be the majority view (regarding a norm or belief), when the majority in fact shares their (private) disapproval”
― Wikipedia Contributors