Category: Quotes

lying

Bradley FarlessLeave a comment

We know that they are lying, they know that they are lying, they even know that we know they are lying, we also know that they know we know they are lying too, they of course know that we certainly know they know we know they are lying too as well, but they are still lying. In our country, the lie has become not just moral category, but the pillar industry of this country.

Source unknown, but attributed to Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

Wherever this quote originated, it’s definitely relevant to the United States today. They lie. We see the lies. They know we see them lying. They keep moving on as if the lie is reality and they haven’t been caught. Why? Because there’s nothing we can do.

We can’t even be sure the elections are fair anymore. Diane Feinstein was in office until she died, but she’ll probably get reelected anyway.

It’s incredibly discouraging to have no faith in one’s own government and realize that the founding ideals of your country have been completely shattered by the institutions designed to protect them. We’re going somewhere other than intended now, and it’s not going to be pretty.

the beginning of happiness

Bradley FarlessLeave a comment

Happiness is not a goal, it is a by-product. Paradoxically, the one sure way not to be happy is deliberately to map out a way of life in which one would please oneself completely and exclusively. After a short time, a very short time, there would be little that one really enjoyed. For what keeps our interest in life and makes us look forward to tomorrow is giving pleasure to other people.

[…]

It is easy to slip into self-absorption and it is equally fatal. When one becomes absorbed in himself, in his health, in his personal problems, or in the small details of daily living, he is, at the same time losing interest in other people; worse, he is losing his ties to life. From that it is an easy step to losing interest in the world and in life itself. That is the beginning of death.

I have always liked Don Quixote’s comment, ‘Until death it is all life.’

Someone once asked me what I regarded as the three most important requirements for happiness. My answer was: ‘A feeling that you have been honest with yourself and those around you; a feeling that you have done the best you could both in your personal life and in your work; and the ability to love others.’

But there is another basic requirement, and I can’t understand now how I forgot it at the time: that is the feeling that you are, in some way, useful. Usefulness, whatever form it may take, is the price we should pay for the air we breathe and the food we eat and the privilege of being alive. And it is its own reward, as well, for it is the beginning of happiness, just as self-pity and withdrawal from the battle are the beginning of misery.

Eleanor Roosevelt, “You Learn by Living: Eleven Keys for a More Fulfilling Life“