A Quote by Benjamin F. Wade
I know how easy it is for some minds to glide along with the current of popular opinion, where influence, respectability, and all those motives which tend to seduce the human heart are brought to bear.
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Of all the ingenious mistakes into which erring man has fallen, perhaps none have been so pernicious in their consequences, or have brought so many evils into the world, as the popular opinion that the way of the transgressor is pleasant and easy.
In the stormy current of life characters are weights or floats which at one time make us glide along the bottom, and at another maintain us on the surface.
Interruption, incoherence, surprise are the ordinary conditions of our life. They have even become real needs for many people, whose minds are no longer fed by anything but sudden changes and constantly renewed stimuli. We can no longer bear anything that lasts. We no longer know how to make boredom bear fruit. So the whole question comes down to this: can the human mind master what the human mind has made?
We perceive no charms that are not sharpened, puffed out, and inflated by artifice. Those which glide along naturally and simply easily escape a sight so gross as ours.
It's easy to hurl abuse at those awards ceremonies like the Oscars and all that, which we tend to do. We tend to vent our anger at things which we feel are unjust or undeserving. But when you're the recipient, it makes it a lot different.
In fairness, Latin America's elected civilian leaders have made progress in some areas. They have brought their countries back to international respectability, curbed flagrant human rights violations, and sought to build democratic political institutions.
As no scripture is of private interpretation, so is there no feeling in a human heart which exists in that heart alone - which is not, in some form or degree, in every human heart.
It is not always easy to diagnose. The simplest form of stupidity - the mumbling, nose-picking, stolid incomprehension - can be detected by anyone. But the stupidity which disguises itself as thought, and which talks so glibly and eloquently, indeed never stops talking, in every walk of life is not so easy to identify, because it marches under a formidable name, which few dare attack. It is called Popular Opinion.
Above all, it was the style of Quakerism I was brought up with - an aggressive contempt for popular opinion. The assumption is that most people think something that is wrong, which is great.
I'll tell you what gives me hope. After the struggle for marriage equality, the LGBTQ community has built some very powerful organizations; in particular, I'm thinking of HRC (the Human Rights Campaign), GLAAD... but there are many, many others, too. Along with those organizations come some savvy and tested leaders who have come to understand not only how to change hearts and minds but also legislators and judges votes.
I say seduce her, seduce her tonight. Break the door down if you have to. Tell her all those things you said to me about her. You will love her more tomorrow than today and how you want to die with her hand in yours–which is an excellent line, by the way, that I fully intend to borrow when the time comes.
One of the nice things about looking at a bear is that you know it spends 100 per cent of every minute of every day being a bear. It doesn't strive to become a better bear. It doesn't go to sleep thinking, "I wasn't really a very good bear today". They are just 100 per cent bear, whereas human beings feel we're not 100 per cent human, that we're always letting ourselves down. We're constantly striving towards something, to some fulfilment
The radical novelty of modern science lies precisely in the rejection of the belief, which is at the heart of all popular religion, that the forces which move the stars and atoms are contingent upon the preferences of the human heart.
The human moral sense can excuse any atrocity in the minds of those who commit it, and it furnishes them with motives for acts of violence that bring them no tangible benefit.
Our motives and thoughts ultimately influence our actions. Jesus repeatedly emphasized the power of good thoughts and proper motives: 'Look unto me in every thought; doubt not, fear not' In Proverbs we read, 'For as he thinketh in his heart, so is he
Take a good long look at human beings in their actual practices and motives; bring the utmost psychological and bio-economic factors to bear on making sense of their illusions and delusions. What then would the truth have to be, such that such human beings are FIT TO KNOW IT at all, even provisionally or tentatively?
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