August 2011
“I actually attack the concept of happiness. The idea that - I don’t mind people being happy - but the idea that everything we do is part of the pursuit of happiness seems to me a really dangerous idea and has led to a contemporary disease in Western society, which is fear of sadness. It’s a really odd thing that we’re now seeing people saying “write down 3 things that made you happy today before you go to sleep”, and “cheer up” and “happiness is our birthright” and so on. We’re kind of teaching our kids that happiness is the default position - it’s rubbish. Wholeness is what we ought to be striving for and part of that is sadness, disappointment, frustration, failure; all of those things which make us who we are. Happiness and victory and fulfillment are nice little things that also happen to us, but they don’t teach us much. Everyone says we grow through pain and then as soon as they experience pain they say “Quick! Move on! Cheer up!” I’d like just for a year to have a moratorium on the word “happiness” and to replace it with the word “wholeness”. Ask yourself “is this contributing to my wholeness?” and if you’re having a bad day, it is.”
—Hugh Mackay
“The only way to battle shame is with pride; we have to be proud of the choices we make and stand behind them. We have to take the power out of sexual insults like ‘whore’ and ‘slut.’ There aren’t many feminists my age who don’t remember musician Kathleen Hanna — of Bikini Kill and Le Tigre fame — scrawling SLUT across her stomach as a way to reclaim the word. We need to do the same thing, not just with the word, but with the idea. There’s nothing wrong with having sex; don’t let anyone forget that”
—Full Frontal Feminism by Jessica Valenti
“There are causes worth dying for but none worth killing for.”
—Albert Camus (via thinksquad)
“Imagining the future is a kind of nostalgia. You spend your whole life stuck in the labyrinth, thinking about how you’ll escape it one day, and how awesome it will be, and imagining that future keeps you going, but you never do it. You just use the future to escape the present.”
—John Green: Looking for Alaska (via thinksquad)
“I must remind you that starving a child is violence. Suppressing a culture is violence. Neglecting school children is violence. Punishing a mother and her family is violence. Discrimination against a working man is violence. Ghetto housing is violence. Ignoring medical need is violence. Contempt for poverty is violence.”
—Coretta Scott King
