Bartlebian Quotes & Sayings

Like everything metaphysical the harmony between thought and reality is to be found in the grammar of the language. — Ludwig Wittgenstein

Hate is a terrible thing. It's a wasteful, stupid emotion. You can hate someone with all your heart, but it'll never do them a bit of harm. The only person it hurts is you. You can spend your days hating, letting it eat away at you, and the person you hate will go on living just the same. So, what's the point? — Stuart Neville

When we combine very real workplace inequalities with these romantic opt-out stories, the idea that "having it all" is a laughable goal becomes enshrined as immutable truth. And when we portray opting out as a simple matter of "choice," we ignore the systematic problems that make combining work and motherhood so difficult. — Emily Matchar

Better to do nothing than to engage in localized acts whose ultimate function is to make the system run more smoothly. The threat today is not passivity, but pseudo-activity, the urge to "be active", to "participate", to mask the Nothingness of what goes on. People intervene all the time, "doing something"; academics participate in meaningless "debates," etc.; but the truly difficult thing is to step back, to withdraw from it all. Those in power often prefer even "critical" participation or a critical dialogue to silence, since to engage us in such a "dialogue" ensures that our ominous passivity is broken. The "Bartlebian act" I propose is violent precisely insofar as it entails ceasing this obsessive activity-in it, violence and non-violence overlap (non-violence appears as the highest violence), likewise activity and inactivity (the most radical thing is to do nothing). — Slavoj Zizek

The Democrats smell blood and don't want to be told that it's their own. — Mark Steyn

If, then, my awareness of the past and future makes me less aware of the present, I must begin to wonder whether I am actually living in the real world. — Alan W. Watts

Why are the patriots the ones who don't want to spend money on trains? — Bill Maher

No one can upset you, unless you give them permission. — Paul Robert Hanna