January 2011
101 posts
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Think the Bible is pro-life?
This post was originally published here, on the Rabble Pro Choice site, and sent my way by the lovely pianycist. Enjoy!
Exodus 21:22-23
If an attack on a woman causes a miscarriage the attacker must pay a fine. If he causes serious damage to the mother it’s “an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth”.
This indicates that a fetus does not have equal standing under God’s law.
Leviticus 27:6
...
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Wiener: What about Stalin? He wasn’t religious. [and he committed all those atrocities]
Hitchens: Stalin—easier still. For hundreds of years, millions of Russians had been told the head of state should be a man close to God, the czar, who was head of the Russian Orthodox Church as well as absolute despot. If you’re Stalin, you shouldn’t be in the dictatorship business if you can’t exploit...
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“Зачем вы говорите, что целовали землю, по которой я ходила? Меня надо убить. Я...”
–
Нина, Чайка
Антон Чехов
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“Я - чайка… Нет, не то. Я - актриса.”
– Nina, The Seagull
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“Oh threats of Hell and hopes of Paradise!
One thing at least is certain; this...”
– The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam
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“Moments of doubt were continually coming upon her, when she was uncertain...”
– Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy
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4theboyz asked: Favorite movie of all time?
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“People sometimes accuse me of knowing a lot. ‘Stephen,’ they say, accusingly,...”
– Stephen Fry in the foreword to General Ignorance
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“Those who make peaceful revolution impossible, make violent revolution...”
– John F. Kennedy
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“Lolloping on the waves and braiding her tresses, she seemed, having that gift...”
– Virginia Woolf, Mrs. Dalloway
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“Why do you say that you have kissed the ground I walked on? You should kill me...”
– Nina, The Seagull
Anton Chekhov
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“I believe that for all our imperfections, we are full of decency and goodness,...”
– President Obama
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And the secrecy of it! The blessed privacy! No-one else can get in the way, no-one else can invade it, no-one else even knows what’s going on in that wonderful space that opens up between the reader and the book. That open democratic space full of thrills, full of excitement and fear, full of astonishment, where your own emotions and ideas are given back to you clarified, magnified, purified,...
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I am good without god.
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“On The Blue album, there’s hardly a dishonest note in the vocals. At that period...”
– Joni Mitchell on her 1971 album, Blue
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“He stepped down, trying not to look long at her, as if she were the sun, yet he...”
– Anna Karenina
“So avoid using the word ‘very’ because it’s lazy. A man is not very tired, he is...”
– John Keating, Dead Poet’s Society
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Some Favourite Quotes
Be kind, for everyone you meet is fighting a hard battle. plato. It is our choices far more than our abilites that show us for who we truly are. dumbedore.
For in the end what are we, who are convinced that suicide is obligatory and yet cannot resolve to commit it, other than the weakest, the most inconsistent and, speaking frankly, the most stupid of people, making...
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There are some friends you will have for the rest of your life. You’re welded together by love, trust, respect, or loss. Or in our case, simple embarrassment.
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“Books. They are lined up on shelves or stacked on a table. There they are...”
– David Almond
“The written word is a part of the world into which you wish to dissolve the...”
– Ian McEwan - The Child In Time
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I HATE EVERYONE*
*Exceptions: Stephen Fry, Baby Tom, Hannah from Playbox 2 and my Nan.
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“You might be driven by a fear of failure quite as much as a desire for success. Indeed, your conception of failure might not be too far from the average person’s idea of success, so high have you already flown… It is impossible to live without failing at something, unless you live so cautiously that you might as well not have lived at all – in which case, you fail by default.”
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“I think it’s about time. I think we’re all mourners at a funeral possession and...”
– An Awfully Big Adventure
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Things that are worse than not getting into Cambridge.
(AKA Giving myself some perspective)
Getting into Oxford
Being stuck on an island with a smoke monster
Being dead
Lord Voldemort killing my parents
Being someone who counts calories
Not having the ambition to apply to somewhere like Cambridge
Getting stuck on a raft in the middle of an ocean
Living in a world where books are banned
...
Didn’t get into Cambridge. Pretty much totally gutted.