Quotes from A Woman of the Iron People

424 pages

Rating: (328 votes)


“I am the Little Bug Spirit. I come to people when they begin to take themselves too seriously. They think they are big. I cut them down to size." This angered me. I tried to speak, but I couldn't get my thoughts together. The person went on, “I am the stone under your foot. I am the bug that bites you in the ass. I am the fart that comes when you are introduced to the important visiting professor. I am menstrual cramps and diarrhea." I kept getting angrier. “My tools are lies and tricks, misunderstandings and accidents. Everything stupid and undignified happens because of me. Hola! I am something!”
― quote from A Woman of the Iron People


“I am the Little Bug Spirit. I come to people when they begin to take themselves too seriously. They think they are big. I cut them down to size.”
― quote from A Woman of the Iron People


“Knowledge—by itself—is an intervention. Our presence changes the way the natives see the world. According to her, there is no way to study these people without causing change." “The Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle,”
― quote from A Woman of the Iron People


“What had they been thinking of, those people then? They had left their descendants almost no water and great mountains of uranium. What kind of inheritance was that? How did they think we were going to survive?”
― quote from A Woman of the Iron People


“It's a typical Western bias. You think a tool is more important than a dream because a tool can be measured and a dream cannot.”
― quote from A Woman of the Iron People



Popular quotes

“Q. But it seems to me there are circumstances that simply induce one to have negative emotions!

A. This is one of the worst illusions we have. We think that negative emotions are produced by circumstances, whereas all negative emotions are in us, inside us. This is a very important point. We always think our negative emotions are produced by the fault of other people or by the fault of circumstances. We always think that. Our negative emotions are in ourselves and are produced by ourselves. There is absolutely not a single unavoidable reason why somebody else's action or some circumstance should produce a negative emotion in me. It is only my weakness. No negative emotion can be produced by external causes if we do not want it. We have negative emotions because we permit them, justify them, explain them by external causes, and in this way we do not struggle with them.”
― P.D. Ouspensky, quote from The Fourth Way


“Some months earlier one of his oldest friends, Junto charter member Hugh Roberts, had written with news of the club and how the political quarreling in Philadelphia had continued to divide the membership. Franklin expressed hope that the squabbles would not keep Roberts from the meetings. “’tis now perhaps one of the oldest clubs, as I think it was formerly one of the best, in the King’s dominions; it wants but about two years of forty since it was established.” Few men were so lucky as to belong to such a group. “We loved and still love one another; we are grown grey together and yet it is too early to part. Let us sit till the evening of life is spent; the last hours were always the most joyous. When we can stay no longer ’tis time enough then to bid each other good night, separate, and go quietly to bed.” And”
― H.W. Brands, quote from The First American: The Life and Times of Benjamin Franklin


“Rafe jumped Miller!” Gabe said. The problem was, it was true. There were about three dozen witnesses.”
― James Patterson, quote from Middle School: The Worst Years of My Life


“توجد في داخل كل إنسان حياة بكل معانيها الوجودية:
في داخل كل منا جزء من رغبة في الكرامة البشرية, والشرف الأخلاقي, والخبرات الوجودية الحرة, وكمال العالم.
لكن لدى كل منا في نفس الوقت وبدرجات متفاوتة القدرة على التأقلم مع الحياة المزيفة, كلنا بطريقة ما يسقط في المادية الفاحشة والمصلحة الشخصية, في كل منا شيء من رغبة في الذوبات في جمع مجهول, ينساب معه بسعادة عبر مجرى حياة زائفة.
فالأمر ليس إذن صراع بين هويتين.
إنه شيء أسوأ من ذلك: إنها أزمة الهوية نفسها.”
― Václav Havel, quote from The Power of the Powerless


“Spiritual revolutionaries must be committed not to what is easiest, but to what is most beneficial to themselves and the world.”
― Noah Levine, quote from Against the Stream: A Buddhist Manual for Spiritual Revolutionaries


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