Best 686 quotes in «left quotes» category

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.

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.

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?

Tacit collaboration by millions who bite their lip is even more essential than lip service by thousands of favor seekers. Hence, to stimulate at least passive cooperation, the party strives to give the impression that “everybody” is already on its side. (The Rise of Political Correctness)

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

...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 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.

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.

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 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.

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?)

The tale of a righteous leftist - THE BRAND DEMAND

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

Champions keep going when they don't have anything left in their tank!

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.

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.

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

Would anyone notice if I just... left

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

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

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 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.

A lot of unions are doing the same thing on the left that the NRA is doing on the right.

A loyal liberal can get away with anything with other liberals, as long as that loyal liberal is liberal and attacks conservatives left and right, spouts the right words, they get away with anything.

Although the big word on the left is 'compassion,' the big agenda on the left is dependency.

Amarillio, just turn to the left and 500 yards down

And as I was sort of doodling, I was thinking, surprise and fear - probably fairly similar so let's just lose surprise. And that left us with five.

And he would listen, making only a few comments, always sympathetic, so that when I left him I had the distinct impression he had solved everything for me.

And if he left off dreaming about you, where do you suppose you'd be?

And if incision of the temple is made on the left, spasm seizes the parts on the right, while if the incision is on the right, spasm seizes the parts on the left.

And my sister, my Lindsey, left me in her memories, where I was meant to be.

As if he was beating me to the punch, his words living forever, while I was left speechless, no rebuttal, no words left to say.

A smart girl leaves before she is left.

As soon as we left the ground, I knew I had to fly.

A woman could do that to you - reach that place in your soul where the best and worst of you was kept. And once she was there, she owned that place and never left.

A wrongdoer is often a man who has left something undone, not always one who has done something.

Be careful..you're all I've got left, to remind me who I really am.

Before I left, I opened a lot of doors for a lot of people to play the blues.