Positive Quotes - page 76
![It [abortion] is supposed to make us a bad person. But I must say, I never felt that. I used to sit and try and figure out how old the child would be, trying to make myself feel guilty. But I never could! I think the person who said: 'Honey, if men could get pregnant, abortion would be a sacrament' was right. Speaking for myself, I knew it was the first time I had taken responsibility for my own life. I wasn't going to let things happen to me. I was going to direct my life, and therefore it felt positive. But still, I didn't tell anyone. Because I knew that out there it wasn't [positive]. (Gloria Steinem)](https://cdn.quotesdtb.com/img/quotes_images_webp/40/gloria-steinem-abortion-anyone-1015340.webp)
The Puritans had accused the Quakers of "troubling the world by preaching peace to it." They refused to pay church taxes; they refused to bear arms; they refused to swear allegiance to any government. (In so doing they were direct actionists, what we may call negative direct actionists.) So the Puritans, being political actionists, passed laws to keep them out, to deport, to fine, to imprison, to mutilate, and finally, to hang them. And the Quakers just kept on coming (which was positive direct action); and history records that after the hanging of four Quakers, and the flogging of Margaret Brewster at the cart's tail through the streets of Boston, "the Puritans gave up trying to silence the new missionaries"; that "Quaker persistence and Quaker non-resistance had won the day."
Voltairine de Cleyre
I receive death threats on a daily basis. I'm a well-known writer in the Arab world. My writings expose me to millions of devout Muslims who have nothing positive to prove but the sheer cruelty of their teachings. Islam has deprived them of their intellectual ability to face criticism with an effective and acceptable way.
Wafa Sultan
Common sense and the truth should feel authorless, writ by time itself. It is actually really hard to write something that will make a terminally ill person feel better. And Positive has rules, you can't just lift your guidance from the Bible or a book about Zen; they want original material. So far none of my submissions have gotten in, but I'm getting closer.
Miranda July
I bow before the authority of special men because it is imposed upon me by my own reason. I am conscious of my inability to grasp, in all its details and positive developments, any very large portion of human knowledge. The greatest intelligence would not be equal to a comprehension of the whole. Thence results, for science as well as for industry, the necessity of the division and association of labor. I receive and I give - such is human life. Each directs and is directed in his turn. Therefore there is no fixed and constant authority, but a continual exchange of mutual, temporary, and, above all, voluntary authority and subordination.
Mikhail Bakunin
Michael didn't care if we knew everything he did for people, because God knows. God knows his intentions, and knows the results. I know my brother is in a very secure, serene, peaceful place. When we live on earth, we are judged not only by who we are, but also by what we do for others. When we leave, we take the good and bad deeds with us. Michael took nothing but good deeds with him.
Michael and I were raised to believe there is a Supreme Being. Having success told us God had a plan for us. Michael used his success in a positive way. He knew that it's not what you get from others, it's what you do for others. We all achieve things in life, but the greatest achievement is doing God's work. Michael was a man of God because he was doing His work. Eternal life is the ultimate reward from God – and Michael has eternal life.
Michael Jackson
I mean we live in a society full of double standards and hypocritical paradox. I don't understand why the ultra conservatives in America have a problem with a porn star being portrayed in a videogame. I mean, there is no nudity, and the game will be rated accordingly. I mean kids play games where senseless killing is ok (like Grand Theft Auto, or even BYW2), and no one questions people jumping off the roof and slamming someone's face into an abandoned car, or shooting little old ladies! No one ever need kill anyone in real life, yet sex is something that everyone, except maybe Dick Cheney, will experience as a positive thing in their lifetime! People need to relax! I want to design and star in a real adult videogame! Let people get their sexual frustrations out!
Tera Patrick
When once true adjustment between spirit and matter is secured there is no phase of life which cannot be utilised for the expression of divinity. No longer is there any need to run away from everyday life and its tangles. The freedom of the spirit, which is sought by avoiding contact with the world and by going to the caves or mountains, is a negative freedom. When such retirement is temporary and is meant to digest worldly experiences and develop detachment it has its own advantages. It gives breathing time in the race of life. But when such retirement is grounded in fear of the world or lack of confidence in the spirit, it is far from helpful towards the attainment of real freedom. Real freedom is essentially positive and must express itself through unhampered dominion of the spirit over matter. This is the true life of the spirit.
Meher Baba
It would finally be much easier for me to say what I do not believe than what I do believe. This initial statement might be attributed to a negativism with which I am wrongly charged because I have repeatedly said that the first duty of free people is to say no, or because I have often taken up the Hegelian concept of the positive nature of the negative. But it is a mistake to infer pessimism of negativity from this perspective, for no one is at root more optimistic than I am. My ultimate vision is always positive. Hasty reading allows of rash judgments.
Jacques Ellul
One cannot see the modern world as it is unless one recognizes the overwhelming strength of patriotism, national loyalty. In certain circumstances it can break down, at certain levels of civilization it does not exist, but as a positive force there is nothing to set beside it. Christianity and international Socialism are as weak as straw in comparison with it. Hitler and Mussolini rose to power in their own countries very largely because they could grasp this fact and their opponents could not.
George Orwell
When people have no choice, life is almost unbearable. As the number of available choices increases... the autonomy, control and liberation... are powerful and positive. But as the number of choices keeps growing, negative aspects... begin to appear. As the... choices grow further, the negatives escalate until we become overloaded. At this point, choice no longer liberates, but debilitates. It might even be said to tyrannize.
Barry Schwartz
You never see a positive drug story on the news. They always have the same LSD story. You've all seen it: "Today a young man on acid ... thought he could fly ... jumped out of a building ... what a tragedy!" What a dick. He's an idiot. If he thought he could fly, why didn't he take off from the ground first? Check it out? You don't see geese lined up to catch elevators to fly south; they fly from the fucking ground. He's an idiot. He's dead. Good! We lost a moron? Fucking celebrate. There's one less moron in the world.
Bill Hicks
We are not about to leave the field of doing good simply because harm might happen ... In our four-year publishing history no one has ever come to physical harm that we are aware of or that anyone has alleged. On the other hand, we have changed governments and constitutions and had tremendous positive outcomes...We wanted to make the news, not be the news. But that produced extraordinary curiosity as to who we were ... this attempt not to be the news, made us the news... We are creating a space behind us that permits a form of journalism which lives up to the name that journalism has always tried to establish for itself. We are creating that space because we are taking on the criticism that comes from robust exposure of powerful groups... We do not have national security concerns. We have concerns about human beings.. We have had over 100 legal attacks. We have been victorious in almost every single legal attack... we operate within the rule of law.
Julian Assange
As political philosophy derives its sanction from ethics, and ethics from the truth of religion, it is only by returning to the the eternal source of truth that we can hope for any social organisation which will not, to its ultimate destruction, ignore some essential aspect of reality. The term 'democracy', as I have said again and again, does not contain enough positive content to stand alone against the forces you dislike-it can easily be transformed by them. If you will not have God (and He is a jealous God) you should pay your respects to Hitler or Stalin.
T. S. Eliot
Our patience wore rather thin. Visitors do tend to chafe one, though impeccable as friends. L. and I discussed this. He says that with people in the house his hours of positive pleasure are reduced to one; he has I forget how many hours of negative pleasure; and a respectable margin of the acutely unpleasant. Are we growing old?
Virginia Woolf
I met Malcolm X once in Washington, but circumstances didn't enable me to talk with him for more than a minute. He is very articulate ... but I totally disagree with many of his political and philosophical views - at least insofar as I understand where he now stands. I don't want to seem to sound self-righteous, or absolutist, or that I think I have the only truth, the only way. Maybe he does have some of the answer. I don't know how he feels now, but I know that I have often wished that he would talk less of violence, because violence is not going to solve our problem. And in his litany of articulating the despair of the Negro without offering any positive, creative alternative, I feel that Malcolm has done himself and our people a great disservice. Fiery, demagogic oratory in the black ghettos, urging Negroes to arm themselves and prepare to engage in violence, as he has done, can reap nothing but grief.
Malcolm X
There is a tendency in the Muslim community to play the victim and the target of media and political conspiracies. Whilst I don't dispute the media is unfair in its portrayal of Muslims, and that our governments have hidden agendas to protect their financial interests in lands where populations are primarily Muslim, I think we should take up the example of the Prophet and be more "in control" of our reactions and our opportunities to make dawa through personally instigating positive change in our local communities. We must reach out to our neighbours not with an agenda of conversion, but in simple acts of sincere love. We must stop blaming everybody else for our struggles and hardships and start to take action in our own lives through sincere efforts to improve who we are as individuals.
Dawud Wharnsby
Positive philosophy made its counter-attack against critical rationalism on two fronts. Comte fought against the French form of negative philosophy, against the heritage of Descartes and the Enlightenment. In Germany, the struggle was directed against Hegel's system. Schelling received an express commission from Frederick William IV ‘to destroy the dragon seed' of Hegelianism, while Stahl, another anti-Hegelian, became the philosophical spokesman of the Prussian monarchy in 1840.
Herbert Marcuse
It's not uncommon for me to sink when good things are happening in my life, something I'm positive others experience, as well. That rewarding high can leave you wanting more and when "more" doesn't show up, you're left disappointed. After the book's publication, dozens of these moments eventually avalanched and left me feeling worthless and hopeless and crushed and alone despite having some of the greatest friends ever.
Adam Silvera
