Citat – Side 11

New decalogue

“The Ten Commandments that, as a teacher, I should wish to promulgate, might be set forth as follows,

1: Do not feel absolutely certain of anything.

2: Do not think it worthwhile to produce belief by concealing evidence, for the evidence is sure to come to light.

3: Never try to discourage thinking, for you are sure to succeed.

4: When you meet with opposition, even if it should be from your husband or your children, endeavor to overcome it by argument and not by authority, for a victory dependent upon authority is unreal and illusory.

5: Have no respect for the authority of others, for there are always contrary authorities to be found.

6: Do not use power to suppress opinions you think pernicious, for if you do the opinions will suppress you.

7: Do not fear to be eccentric in opinion, for every opinion now accepted was once eccentric.

8: Find more pleasure in intelligent dissent than in passive agreement, for, if you value intelligence as you should, the former implies a deeper agreement than the latter.

9: Be scrupulously truthful, even when truth is inconvenient, for it is more inconvenient when you try to conceal it.

10. Do not feel envious of the happiness of those who live in a fool’s paradise, for only a fool will think that it is happiness.”

– Bertrand Russell, New York Times 16. December 1951 (link) – via artikel hos Open Culture

Vælg at vælge

I chose and my world was shaken
So what?
The choice may have been mistaken,
The choosing was not.

– Steven Sondheim

To sider

I am two fools, I know,
For loving, and for saying so
In whining poetry.

– John Donne: Triple Fool

Invers læring

The opposite of “it’s like riding a bike” is “it’s like programming in bash”.

A phrase which means that no matter how many times you do something, you will have to re-learn it every single time.

Via Jake Wharton på Twitter

Men bag horisonten

They are ill discoverers that think there is no land, when they can see nothing but sea.

– Francis Bacon

Lad mig vælge dit valg

Anti-vaxxers chanting “my body, my choice” outside a Texas hospital – many of whom oppose a woman’s right to control her own body – is beyond parody.

– A hopeful citizen

This one was mine

“This is the only poem
I can read
I am the only one
can write it
I didn’t kill myself
when things went wrong
I didn’t turn
to drugs or teaching
I tried to sleep
but when I couldn’t sleep
I learned to write
I learned to write
what might be read
on nights like this
by one like me.”

—Leonard Cohen, The Only Poem

Hvorfor SKULLE man lige åbne?

I can now see, for the first time, just how many worms a can holds, and why it’s not a good idea to open one under any circumstances.

– Nick Hornby: How to be good

Tegn dig op på ny

(hovedpersonen Katie kæmper med sit ægteskab med David og sin affære med Stephen)

You see, what I really want, and what I’m getting with Stephen, is the opportunity to rebuild myself from scratch. David’s picture of me is complete now, and I’m pretty sure neither of us likes it much; I want to rip the page out and start again on a fresh sheet, just like I used to do when I was a kid and had messed a drawing up. It doesn’t even matter who the fresh sheet is, really, so it’s beside the point whether I like Stephen, or whether he knows what to do with me in bed, or anything like that. I just want his rapt attention when I tell him that my favourite book is Middlemarch, and I just want that feeling, the feeling I get with him, of having not gone wrong yet.

– Nick Hornby: How to be good

Sifting, always sifting

“Always, before any of this began, I enjoyed gossip, an essential qualification for the [psychotherapist] job. Now I get to hear a lot of it, a river of human effluvium flowing into me, day after day, year after year. Like many modernists, Freud privileged detritus; you could call him the first artist of the ‘found’, making meaning out of that which is usually discarded. It is dirty work, getting closely acquainted with the human.”

– Hanif Kureishi: Something to tell you