The average person appreciates a value only "in the course of, and through comparison” with the possessions, condition, plight or quality of other persons. ... The awareness that the acquisition and enjoyment of that value is beyond the person's capacity ... triggers two mutually opposite, but equally vigorous reactions: an overwhelming desire (all the more tormenting because of the suspicion that it might be impossible to fulfill); and ressentiment-a rancor caused by a desperate urge to ward off self-deprecation and self-contempt by demeaning, deriding and degrading the value in question, together with its possessors.
Zygmunt BaumanRelated topics
acquisition average beyond capacity comparison condition course degrading deriding desire desperate enjoyment impossible might off opposite overwhelming person plight quality question rancor suspicion tormenting urge value ward awareness self-contempt self-deprecationRelated quotes
The question of whether America is in decline cannot be answered yes or no. There is no yes or no. Both answers are wrong, because the assumption that somehow there exists some predetermined inevitable trajectory, the result of uncontrollable forces, is wrong. Nothing is inevitable. Nothing is written. For America today, decline is not a condition. Decline is a choice. Two decades into the unipolar world that came about with the fall of the Soviet Union, America is in the position of deciding whether to abdicate or retain its dominance. Decline - or continued ascendancy - is in our hands.
Charles Krauthammer
The significance of a work of art is determined then by the quality of its growth. This involves intangible forces inherent in the process of development. Although these forces are surreal (that is, their nature is something beyond physical reality), they, nevertheless, depend on a physical carrier. The physical carrier (commonly painting or sculpture) is the medium of expression of the Surreal. Thus, an idea is communicable only when the surreal is converted into material terms. The artist's technical problem is how to transform the material with which he works back into the sphere of the spirit.
Hans Hofmann
Pray go back and recollect one of the conclusions to which I sought to lead you in my very first lecture. You may remember how I there argued against the notion that the worth of a thing can be decided by its origin. Our spiritual judgment, I said, our opinion of the significance and value of a human event or condition, must be decided on empirical grounds exclusively. If the fruits for life of the state of conversion are good, we ought to idealize and venerate it, even though it be a piece of natural psychology; if not, we ought to make short work of it, no matter what supernatural being may have infused it.
William James
Annihilation has no terrors for me, because I have already tried it before I was born-a hundred million years-and I have suffered more in an hour, in this life, than I remember to have suffered in the whole hundred million years put together. There was a peace, a serenity, an absence of all sense of responsibility, an absence of worry, an absence of care, grief, perplexity; and the presence of a deep content and unbroken satisfaction in that hundred million years of holiday which I look back upon with a tender longing and with a grateful desire to resume, when the opportunity comes.
Mark Twain
Steal music from napster while you have the chance. find free porn on the internet. sneak across the border into mexico just for the irony. how come every one on the internet is "hot"? tell your parents the truth. start your own army. adopt a dog. tell your children the truth. stop complaining and go out and do something about it. jump out of a fucking plane. stop reading this crap right now. don't listen to me. i don't have any answers and i stole the questions from someone else. read a good book. dont beat yourself up. question authority but don't forget to do what your told. turn off your computer right now and go outside and let people into your life.
Jared Leto
