Best 686 quotes in «left quotes» category

That a work of the imagination has to be “really” about some problem is, again, an heir of Socialist Realism. To write a story for the sake of storytelling is frivolous, not to say reactionary. The demand that stories must be “about” something is from Communist thinking and, further back, from religious thinking, with its desire for self-improvement books as simple-minded as the messages on samplers. The phrase “political correctness” was born as Communism was collapsing. I do not think this was chance. I am not suggesting that the torch of Communism has been handed on to the political correctors. I am suggesting that habits of mind have been absorbed, often without knowing it. There is obviously something very attractive about telling other people what to do: I am putting it in this nursery way rather than in more intellectual language because I see it as nursery behavior. Art — the arts generally — are always unpredictable, maverick, and tend to be, at their best, uncomfortable. Literature, in particular, has always inspired the House committees, the Zhdanovs, the fits of moralizing, but, at worst, persecution. It troubles me that political correctness does not seem to know what its exemplars and predecessors are; it troubles me more that it may know and does not care. Does political correctness have a good side? Yes, it does, for it makes us re-examine attitudes, and that is always useful. The trouble is that, with all popular movements, the lunatic fringe so quickly ceases to be a fringe; the tail begins to wag the dog. For every woman or man who is quietly and sensibly using the idea to examine our assumptions, there are 20 rabble-rousers whose real motive is desire for power over others, no less rabble-rousers because they see themselves as anti-racists or feminists or whatever.

That in my left pocket I have "heaven"... doesn't mean that in my right pocket I don't have "hell".

The concept of “microaggression” is just one of many tactics used to stifle differences of opinion by declaring some opinions to be “hate speech,” instead of debating those differences in a marketplace of ideas. To accuse people of aggression for not marching in lockstep with political correctness is to set the stage for justifying real aggression against them.

The gospel that has been preached in our churches has not been fair to the African continent. It has left us in a beggarly state, waiting on God for things we could produce by and for ourselves

The heart of a man is a small thing but it desires great matters. It is not big enough for a dog’s dinner but the whole world is not big enough for it. Man spares nothing that lives; he kills to feed himself, he kills to clothe himself, he kills to adorn himself, he kills to attack, he kills to defend himself, he kills to instruct himself, he kills to amuse himself, he kills for the sake of killing. From the lamb he tears its guts and makes his harp resound; from the wolf his most deadly tooth to polish his pretty works of art; from the elephant his tusks to make a toy for his child.(...)And who will exterminate him who exterminates all others?

The more energy taken, the less energy that is left for us to implement our goals and the smaller the probability of realization of our innate potential

...the heart of a child can take forty-nine blows before it’s damaged for ever and what’s done can never be undone.

The knowledge that he had left me with no intent ever to return had come over me in tiny droplets of realization spread over the years. And each droplet of comprehension brought its own small measure of hurt...He had wished me well in finding my own fate to follow, and I never doubted his sincerity. But it had taken me years to accept that his absence in my life was a deliberate finality, an act he had chosen, a thing completed even as some part of my soul still dangled, waiting for his return.

The Left finds itself up to its knees in these paradoxes because - deprived of its old aims by the end of the Cold War and the end of heavy industry - it needs new masses to serve as a replacement proletariat. It too readily and thoughtlessly accepted Muslims as convenient substitutes for the white working class which has now ceased to support it, or vanished altogether. It has also fallen under the influence of revolutionaries far more subtle and effective than the Russian Bolsheviks and Trotskyist rump. The gaping space left by the death of classical political revolutionary socialism has been filled by the spirit of 1968. That spirit will accept almost any ally against social and cultural conservatism, and against the Christianity that lies beneath those forces. This is why the sexual revolution has become so inseparably linked to the cultural and political revolutions. The 1968 ideology is not merely a ready-made and self-righteous political system, with clear position on every major controversy. It is a limitless process of personal liberation from conscience, guilt and restraint, dressed in the flashy robes of moral superiority. These features are happily combined - in this particular generation - with personal ambition and worldly wealth. In all the most well-regarded and rewarded trades and professions, especially broadcasting, the law and the arts, a full set of 1968 opinions is an asset and an aid to social advancement. Rejection of these opinions is a grave disadvantage.

The point of Political Correctness is not and has never been merely about any of the items that it imposes, but about the imposition itself. (The Rise of Political Correctness)

There is no sin that will be left unpunished.

The tale of a righteous leftist - THE BRAND DEMAND

There outside there is a lot of stuff which you learn, the clock illusion, that you live in the past, that you can survive without a brain but not for long period...What Is Consciousness? And many other stuff... (so the question which has left, do you have the time to do it?)

Times have changed in research and if you are not using Facebook, Twitter, Youtube, Wikipedia, Google, and the like, you will be left in the dark.

Thorn gazed back and forth between the two of us. "You could have left me behind, but you stayed. I won't forget that.

too many left-wing student groups treat no one as badly as students of color or women who consider themselves to be classical liberals, libertarians, or conservatives, or who merely disagree with the actions of progressive protesters on campus. They’re seen as special kinds of traitors.

t was once famously said that it is as well that wars are so ruinously expensive, else we would never stop fighting them. However well said, it seems also to be endlessly forgotten that, while there may be just wars and unjust wars, there are never any cheap wars.

Typically, in politics, more than one horse is owned and managed by the same team in an election. There's always and extra candidate who will slightly mimic the views of their team's opposing horse, to cancel out that person by stealing their votes just so the main horse can win. Elections are puppet shows. Regardless of their rainbow coats and many smiles, the agenda is one and the same.

When a political opponent resorts to the racist card, it's a sure sign of moral bankruptcy: there's no decent argument left in the armoury.

They left like you knew they would. They went away and you fell like a stone. All the way to the bottom of your room. I see you, yes I see you. Sitting in your chair, hating every minute of it. Falling like a stone without even moving. It hurt you to know that you were right about all the shit you wanted to be wrong about. They always leave you. You put yourself in the right place to get left.

Unlike many conservatives, I do not view Leftism as dishonourable or deliberately evil. On the contrary, I respect its impulses and wish they led where they seek to go. I reject them because they lead somewhere entirely different, and rather unpleasant.

We bleed our sorrows dry on the chance that laughter will save what is left of our dignity

What the privileged do with what is left, how to make alive what will one day be yours?

When you're full and done with your meal, you can leave the table but clean up your mess before you walk away.

Where were you when I undressed and told the tales of my day? Where were you when I was silent with God in prandial pray? Where were you when I recited love poems as I lay? Where were you?

- Why you? - (...) I’m the best. - Modest of you. - I am the best. Modesty has nothing to say about it.

Whenever those immersed in the bureaucratic culture of the age try to think their way through to the moral foundations of what they are and what they do, they will discover suppressed Nietzschean premises. And consequently it is possible to predict with confidence that in the apparently quite unlikely contexts of bureaucratically managed modern societies there will periodically emerge social movements informed by just that kind of prophetic irrationalism of which Nietzsche's thought is the ancestor. Indeed just because and insofar as contemporary Marxism is Weberian in substance we can expect prophetic irrationalisms of the left as well as of the Right.

Would anyone notice if I just... left

YOU ARE JUST You are not just for the right or left, but for what is right over the wrong. You are not just rich or poor, but always wealthy in the mind and heart. You are not perfect, but flawed. You are flawed, but you are just. You may just be conscious human, but you are also a magnificent reflection of God.

You are not just white, but a rainbow of colors. You are not just black, but golden. You are not just a nationality, but a citizen of the world. You are not just for the right or left, but for what is right over the wrong. You are not just rich or poor, but always wealthy in the mind and heart. You are not perfect, but flawed. You are flawed, but you are just. You may just be human, but you are also a magnificent reflection of God.

You are not what you left behind.

You are not white, but a rainbow of colors. You are not black, but golden. You are not just a nationality, but a citizen of the world. You are not just for the right or left, but for what is right over the wrong. You are not just rich or poor, but always wealthy in the mind and heart. You are not perfect, but flawed. You are flawed, but you are just. You may just be conscious human, but you are also a magnificent reflection of God.

When I reached the street I didn't know whether to go right or left. Soon I'd have to start acting like a person who cared about what happened to him.

You left me the kind of broken that fears fixing.

A company will get nowhere if all of the thinking is left to management.

According to liberals, I'm not supposed to exist. I know that I am going to be a target for the Left. I have something to say to them: 'Game On.'

You're gone and you left me. My heart has dissipated. The only thing I can feel is the blood rushing through my veins and the strings that hold my fragile heart together.

A corpse is what's left after waking too often.

Actually, I only left twice. I left then, and then rejoined literally two years later for Going For The One.

After paying for the wedding, about the only thing a father has left to give away is the bride.

A fiancé is neither this nor that: he's left one shore, but not yet reached the other.

A job is never truly finished. It just reaches a stage where it can be left on its own for a while.

After you have wept and grieved for your physical losses, cherish the functions and the life you have left.

A leftist government doesn't exist because being on the left has nothing to do with governments.

All his life he had lived by the law. Often his job had been to stop acts of revenge....And now revenge was all that life had left for him.

All our media are given over to things that are better left unsaid.

All of life like a series of tableaux, and in the living we missed so much, hid so much, left so much undone and unsaid.

All these new methods of how to build the church has left me confused.

A lot of things affect women differently than men, and women get left out.

All tragedies are finished bya death, All comedies are ended bya marriage; The future states of both are left to faith.