Being Contested Quotes & Sayings

Hark, the Herald Tribune sings, Advertising wondrous things! — Tom Lehrer

I believe that man is in the last resort so free a being that his right to be what he believes himself to be cannot be contested. — Georg C. Lichtenberg

Hierarchies must rise and conglomerate as they extend over fewer and larger corporations. A seat in a high-rise job is the most coveted and contested product of expanding industry. The lack of schooling, compounded with sex, color, and peculiar persuasions, now keeps most people down. Minorities organized by women, or blacks, or the unorthodox succeed at best in getting some of their members through school and into an expensive job. They claim victory when they get equal pay for equal rank. Paradoxically, these movements strengthen the idea that unequal graded work is necessary and that high-rise hierarchies are necessary to produce what an egalitarian society needs. If properly schooled, the black porter will blame himself for not being a black lawyer. At the same time, schooling generates a new intensity of frustration which ultimately can act as social dynamite. 6 — Ivan Illich

I'm not anyone," he says. "I'm nobody. That's what being factionless is. — Veronica Roth

It's best to think of these as two things - they're related, but there's different dynamics going on with each of them. A key difference is Abyei is contested territory. We still do not know whether Abyei is going to belong to the new country of South Sudan or effectively the new country of Sudan, the northern part. That was supposed to be decided by a referendum in January; that referendum never happened, so it was being dealt with through political negotiations. — Rebecca Hamilton

I'd never met coffee that wasn't wonderful. It was just a matter of how
wonderful it was. — Laurell K. Hamilton

Yeah," Nicole said, her straw noisily hitting the
bottom of her Gut Buster. "Well, I would have
appreciated it if you guys had wrecked a little less
stuff. Because my house smelled like smoke for
months. And construction on the Tarantinos' new
garage starts at eight on the dot every morning, and
it's still going on, and you know how I get if I don't
have my full ten hours of beauty sleep."
"So that's what happened to your face," Cody said.
"I was wondering. — Meg Cabot

Trying to assassinate the president should not be funny. It really shouldn't. It's not like I was cracking up when we read about Lincoln or JFK. But let's face it, they were real presidents. Gerald Ford ranks right up there with Millard Fillmore and Bush the First on the list of unexciting white men who have run this country, made their way into history books, and otherwise been human sleeping pills. If all the presidents had been television shows, Gerald Ford would probably have been a PBS fund drive. So I'd bet the fact that anyone would try to kill Gerald Ford, Gerald Rudolph Ford, was kind of hard to get excited about, even back in the day. — Alison Umminger

Time is a corrosive fluid, dissolving motivation, destroying novelty, and leaching the joy from life. — Charles Stross