Charlotte

“Alexander never did what he said, Cesare never said what he did.

Italian Proverb.

Therefore it is unnecessary for a prince to have all the good qualities I have enumerated, but it is very necessary to appear to have them. And I shall dare to say this also, that to have them and always to observe them is injurious, and that to appear to have them is useful; to appear merciful, faithful, humane, religious, upright, and to be so, but with a mind so framed that should you require not to be so, you may be able and know how to change to the opposite.

And you have to understand this, that a prince, especially a new one, cannot observe all those things for which men are esteemed, being often forced, in order to maintain the state, to act contrary to fidelity, friendship, humanity, and religion. Therefore it is necessary for him to have a mind ready to turn itself accordingly as
the winds and variations of fortune force it, yet, as I have said above, not to diverge from the good if he can avoid doing so, but, if compelled, then to know how to set about it.”
― Niccolò Machiavelli, Niccolo Machiavelli The Prince

“If Jesus were alive today, we would kill him with lethal injection. I call that progress. We would have to kill him for the same reason he was killed the first time. His ideas are just too liberal.”
― Kurt Vonnegut Jr., Armageddon in Retrospect

“The white man’s happiness cannot be purchased by the black man’s misery. Virtue cannot prevail among the white people, by its destruction among the black people, who form a part of the whole community. It is evident that the white and black “must fall or flourish together.” In the light of this great truth, laws ought to be enacted, and institutions established — all distinctions, founded on complexion, ought to be repealed, repudiated, and forever abolished — and every right, privilege, and immunity, now enjoyed by the white man, ought to be as freely granted to the man of color.”
― Frederick Douglass

“How could this kind of contentment coexist with the mess in my head? How could this love coexist with the desire for a whole other love? Shouldn't they cancel each other out? I had watched my husband and child sleep, choked with feeling. I wanted to press a woman against a wall with the length of my body--a woman who looks like a boy--and fuck her. Does one life preclude another? I wanted both. Two lives in this body. Running alongside each other in parallel, like ski tracks.”
― Molly Wizenberg, The Fixed Stars