Julie > Julie's Quotes

“Hope is not blind optimism. It's not ignoring the enormity of the task ahead or the roadblocks that stand in our path. It's not sitting on the sidelines or shirking from a fight. Hope is that thing inside us that insists, despite all evidence to the contrary, that something better awaits us if we have the courage to reach for it, and to work for it, and to fight for it. Hope is the belief that destiny will not be written for us, but by us, by the men and women who are not content to settle for the world as it is, who have the courage to remake the world as it should be.”
― Barack Obama

“I thought: hope cannot be said to exist, nor can it be said not to exist. It is just like roads across the earth. For actually the earth had no roads to begin with, but when many men pass one way, a road is made.”
― Lu Hsun

“In three words I can sum up everything I've learned about life: it goes on.”
― Robert Frost

“在社会关系中，每个名都含有一定的责任和义务。君、臣、父、子都是这样的社会关系的名，负有这些名的人都必须相应地履行他们的责任和义务。这就是孔子正名学说的含义。”
― 冯友兰Feng Youlan, 中国哲学简史 Brief History of Chinese Philosophy (国民阅读经典)

“照某些哲学家说，这是必须的。佛家就说，生就是人生的苦痛的根源。柏拉图也说，肉体是灵魂的监狱。有些道家的人"以生为附赘悬疣，以死为决疴溃痈。"这都是以为，欲得到最高的成就，必须脱离尘罗世网，必须脱离社会，甚至脱离"生"。只有这样，才可以得到最后的解脱。这种哲学，即普通所谓"出世的哲学"。

另有一种哲学，注重社会中的人伦和世务。这种哲学只讲道德价值，不会讲或不愿讲超道德价值。这种哲学，即普通所谓"入世的哲学"。从入世的哲学的观点看，出世的哲学是太理想主义的，无实用的，消极的。从出世的哲学的观点看，入世的哲学太现实主义了，太肤浅了。它也许是积极的，但是就像走错了路的人的快跑：越跑得快，越错得很。”
― 冯友兰Feng Youlan, 中国哲学简史 Brief History of Chinese Philosophy (国民阅读经典)

“The only difference between lying and acting was whether your audience was in on it, but it was all a performance just the same.”
― Brit Bennett, The Vanishing Half

“She hadn’t realized how long it takes to become somebody else, or how lonely it can be living in a world not meant for you.”
― Brit Bennett, The Vanishing Half

“The news is supposed to be a mirror held up to the world, but the world is far too vast to fit in our mirror. The fundamental thing the media does all day, every day, is decide what to cover — decide, that is, what is newsworthy.

Here’s the dilemma: to decide what to cover is to become the shaper of the news rather than a mirror held up to the news. It makes journalists actors rather than observers. It annihilates our fundamental conception of ourselves. And yet it’s the most important decision we make. If we decide to give more coverage to Hillary Clinton’s emails than to her policy proposals — which is what we did — then we make her emails more important to the public’s understanding of her character and potential presidency than her policy proposals. In doing so, we shape not just the news but the election, and thus the country.

While I’m critical of the specific decision my industry made in that case, this problem is inescapable. The news media isn’t just an actor in politics. It’s arguably the most powerful actor in politics. It’s the primary intermediary between what politicians do and what the public knows. The way we try to get around this is by conceptually outsourcing the decisions about what we cover to the idea of newsworthiness. If we simply cover what’s newsworthy, then we’re not the ones making those decisions — it’s the neutral, external judgment of news worthiness that bears responsibility. The problem is that no one, anywhere, has a rigorous definition of newsworthiness, much less a definition that they actually follow.”
― Ezra Klein, Why We're Polarized

“I think we are, or we can be. But toxic systems compromise good individuals with ease. They do so not by demanding we betray our values but by enlisting our values such that we betray each other. What is rational and even moral for us to do individually becomes destructive when done collectively.”
― Ezra Klein, Why We're Polarized

“So here, then, is the last fifty years of American politics summarized: we became more consistent in the party we vote for not because we came to like our party more—indeed, we’ve come to like the parties we vote for less—but because we came to dislike the opposing party more. Even as hope and change sputter, fear and loathing proceed.”
― Ezra Klein, Why We're Polarized

“The political media is biased, but not toward the Left or Right so much as toward loud, outrageous, colorful, inspirational, confrontational. It is biased toward the political stories and figures who activate our identities, because it is biased toward and dependent on the fraction of the country with the most intense political identities.”
― Ezra Klein, Why We're Polarized

“When we participate in politics to solve a problem, we’re participating transactionally. But when we participate in politics to express who we are, that’s a signal that politics has become an identity.”
― Ezra Klein, Why We're Polarized

“The simplest way to activate someone's identity is to threaten it, to tell them they don't deserve what they have, to make them consider that it might be taken away. The experience of losing status -- and being told your loss of status is part of society's march to justice -- is itself radicalizing.
There's a quote I occasionally see ricochet around social media. "When you're accustomed to privilege, equality feels like oppression." There's truth to this line, but it cuts both ways. To the extent that it's true that a loss of privilege feels like oppression, that feeling needs to be taken seriously, both because it's real, and because, left to fester, it can be weaponised by demagogues and reactionaries.”
― Ezra Klein, Why We're Polarized

“We give too much attention to national politics, which we can do very little to change, and too little attention to state and local politics, where our voices can matter much more. The time spent spraying outrage over Trump's latest tweet - which is, to be clear, what he wants you to do; the point is to suck up all the media oxygen so he retains control of the conversation - is better spent checking in with what's happening in your own neighborhood.”
― Ezra Klein, Why We're Polarized