Here we are with the first of our monthly round-ups of recently encountered quotes for this year.
Sometimes words aren’t enough and that’s why we have middle fingers.
[unknown]
There’s always a story. It’s all stories, really. The sun coming up every day is a story. Everything’s got a story in it. Change the story, change the world.
[Terry Pratchett, Hat Full of Sky]
If there was an asteroid headed towards earth, [the Republicans] would all get in a room and say y’know what we need? We need tax cuts for the wealthy.
[Barack Obama]
We live in capitalism. Its power seems inescapable. So did the divine right of kings. Any human power can be resisted and changed by human beings. Resistance and change often begin in art, and very often in our art, the art of words.
[Ursula K Le Guin, 1929-2018]
May the long time Sun
Shine upon you
All love surround you
and the pure light within you
Guide your way on.
[Believed (based it seems on no evidence) to be from an old Celtic lyric poem. Used by Mike Heron of Incredible String Band in the lyrics of “A Very Cellular Song”, on their album The Hangman’s Beautiful Daughter (1968)]
What we need are garage sales for our souls, to clean out the tattered sweaters of bad memories, the gently used futons of childhood trauma, and the rusty bicycles of unrequited love.
[@EdmondsScanner; https://twitter.com/EdmondsScanner]
Our bodies are like tubes or levers or computers, but they are, above all things, like bags. Bags that are stuffed in other bags, stuffed in still more bags. Our bodies are nesting bag situations like the used bags stuffed under your kitchen sink, with the added bonus of thumbs and anxiety.
[Bethany Brookshire; https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/the-human-body-is-bags-bags-and-more-bags/]
You may never know what results come of your actions, but if you do nothing, there will be no results.
[Mahatma Gandhi]
Everyone you will ever meet knows something you don’t.
[Bill Nye]
Religions like all other ideas deserve criticism, satire and fearless questioning.
[Salman Rushdie]
Our society tends to view the big blue expanses on maps as mere liquid filler with fish in it.
[Helen Czerski, https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2024/jan/07/ocean-breathing-climate-crisis-carbon-oxygen-helen-czerski-blue-machine]
What is said is never what was thought, and what is heard is never quite what was said.
[Kevin Powers; The Yellow Birds]
Have spent the last two days writing detailed descriptions of non-human cosplay … you just haven’t lived until you’ve imagined how a worm would wear a wedding gown originally designed for a moose.
[Annalee Newitz; https://wandering.shop/@annaleen/111733412615696439]
Pugwash has two qualities which I believe are present in all of us to some degree: cowardice and greed … It may be that the captain is popular because we all have something in common with him. What would YOU do if you saw a delicious toffee on the nose of a crocodile?
[John Ryan; creator of Pugwash]
I fold my worries into paper planes and turn them into flying fucks.
[unknown]