Positive Psychology

 Oppressive language does more than represent violence; it is violence; does more than represent the limits of knowledge; it limits knowledge. ”

Toni Morrison | Nobel Lecture, 1993

Things won are done;
joy’s soul lies in the doing. ”

Troilus and Cressida, Act I, scene ii

Those whose lives are fruitful to themselves, to their friends, or to the world, are inspired by hope and sustained by joy: they see in imagination the things that might be and the way in which they are to be brought into existence. In their private relations they are not preoccupied with anxiety lest they should lose such affection and respect as they receive: they are engaged in giving affection and respect freely, and the reward comes of itself without their seeking. In their work they are not haunted by jealousy of competitors, but are concerned with the actual matter that has to be done. In politics, they do not spend time defending unjust privileges of their class or nation, but they aim at making the world as a whole happier, less cruel, less full of conflict between rival greeds, and more full of human beings whose growth has not been dwarfed and stunted by oppression. ”

Bertrand Russell | Proposed Roads to F

reedom - Anarchy, Socialism and Syndicalism (NY, 1919), pp. 186-7

 "the cure for boredom is curiosity. there is no cure for curiosity. ”

- Dorothy Parker. yes, ma’am.
(via ahnka)

“ Who controls the past controls the future; who controls the present controls the past. ”

George Orwell | 1984 

 "Medical treatment is mistaken for health care, social work for the improvement of community life, police protection for safety, military poise for national security, the rat race for productive work. Health, learning, dignity, independence, and creative endeavour are defined as little more than the performance of institutions which claim to serve these ends ”

Ivan Illich | Deschooling Society, 1970

 Science tells us what we can know, but what we can know is little, and if we forget how much we cannot know we become insensitive to many things of very great importance. Theology, on the other hand, induces a dogmatic belief that we have knowledge where in fact we have ignorance, and by doing so generates a kind of impertinent insolence towards the universe. Uncertainty, in the presence of vivid hopes and fears, is painful, but must be endured if we wish to live without the support of comforting fairy tales. It is not good either to forget the questions that philosophy asks, or to persuade ourselves that we have found indubitable answers to them. To teach how to live without certainty, and yet without being paralyzed by hesitation, is perhaps the chief thing that philosophy, in our age, can still do for those who study it. ”

Bertrand Russell | History of Western Philosophy