Timothy Hicks

“Nobody has the right to not be offended. That right doesn't exist in any declaration I have ever read.

If you are offended it is your problem, and frankly lots of things offend lots of people.

I can walk into a bookshop and point out a number of books that I find very unattractive in what they say. But it doesn't occur to me to burn the bookshop down. If you don't like a book, read another book. If you start reading a book and you decide you don't like it, nobody is telling you to finish it.

To read a 600-page novel and then say that it has deeply offended you: well, you have done a lot of work to be offended.”
― Salman Rushdie

“It ought to be plain how little you gain
by getting excited and vexed.
You'll always be late for the previous train,
and always on time for the next.”
― Piet Hein

“They who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety.

—written for the Pennsylvania Assembly in its Reply to the Governor, 11 November 1755”
― Benjamin Franklin, Memoirs of the Life and Writings of Benjamin Franklin Volume 2

“Yesterday I was clever, so I wanted to change the world. Today I am wise, so I am changing myself.”
― Rumi