Quotes & Sayings About Self Entertainment

It is the lot of mankind to feel not only insecure but also bored. To combat that experience, people long to be passively entertained, which requires less effort than assuming responsibility for self-improvement. — Thomas Szasz

People don't need enormous cars; they need admiration and respect. They don't need a constant stream of new clothes; they need to feel that others consider them to be attractive, and they need excitement and variety and beauty. People don't need electronic entertainment; they need something interesting to occupy their minds and emotions. And so forth. Trying to fill real but nonmaterial needs-for identity, community, self-esteem, challenge, love, joy-with material things is to set up an unquenchable appetite for false solutions to never-satisfied longings. A society that allows itself to admit and articulate its nonmaterial human needs, and to find nonmaterial ways to satisfy them, world require much lower material and energy throughputs and would provide much higher levels of human fulfillment. — Donella H. Meadows

... And I wondered if we had disappointed God so much, that he wrote us off as pets, just alive to entertain. — Bethany Brookbank

The case for exploiting animals for food, clothing and entertainment often relies on our superior intelligence, language and self-awareness: the rights of the superior being trump those of the inferior. — Michael Shermer

What self-respecting teenage kid growing up in the U.S. hasn't played Truth or Dare? Before cell phones, we kids spent a lot of time in the same place and actually had to come up with our own entertainment. Truth or Dare was the game of choice to break the ice between the boys and the girls. — Catherine Bybee

Contemporary culture encourages us to make islands of ourselves for the sake of self-fulfillment, of career advancement, of entertainment, of diversion, and all the demands of the sovereign self. When suffering and death come for you--and it will--you want to be in a place where you know, and are known. You want--no, you need--to be able to say, as Mike did, "We're leaning, but we're leaning on each other. — Rod Dreher

Hangovers are a vivid form of vengeance. Last night my apartment became the venue for a small, introverted chardonnay festival. A melancholy choir of Bulgarians provided the entertainment, via a set of headphones that ended up irredeemably tangled beneath the bed. Part of me just watched. The other part was in charge. — Liz Jensen

We have a habit of turning to scientists when we want factual answers and artists when we want entertainment, but where are the facts about the nature of the self? Neurologists peering at PET scans and fMRIs know they aren't seeing the soul in there. — James Gleick

Modernism has a reputation for being a forbidding phenomenon: its visual arts disconcertingly non-representational, its literary efforts devoid of the consolations of plot and character - even its films, it's argued, fall well short of that true desideratum: entertainment. — Will Self

While American roads offer predictable safety, Indian roads compensate by providing unending entertainment, and even some opportunities for self growth. An Indian road is a stage where Life seems to be unabashedly living itself out. — Ajit Harsinghani

An image, a dance step, a song may function from time to time as entertainment, but the root and full practice of the arts lies in the recognition that art is power, an instrument of communion between the self and all that is important, all that is sacred. — Peter London

Linton did not appear to remember what she talked of and he had evidently great difficulty in sustaining any kind of conversation. His lack of interest in the subjects she started, and his equal incapacity to contribute to her entertainment, were so obvious that she could not conceal her disappointment. An indefinite alteration had come over his whole person and manner. The pettishness that might be caressed into fondness, had yielded to a listless apathy; there was less of the peevish temper of a child which frets and teases on purpose to be soothed, and more of the self-absorbed moroseness of a confirmed invalid, repelling consolation, and ready to regard the good-humoured mirth of others as an insult. Catherine perceived, as well as I did, that he held it rather a punishment, than a gratification, to endure our company. — Emily Bronte

Whereas the Odyssey represents the maturity of the moral consciousness of a whole people, Huckleberry Finn shows only its beginnings in the mind of a child. And with a self-protective dexterity that would not have surprised Mark Twain in the least, the adult racist mentality of America has dealt with the threat of that beginning by decreeing that Huckleberry Finn is not a book for the chastening of adults, which to a large extent it certainly is, but a book for the entertainment of children. — Wendell Berry

Thomas Edison reads not for entertainment but to increase his store of knowledge. He sucks in information as eagerly as the bee sucks honey from flowers. The whole world, so to speak, pours its wisdom into his mind. He regards it as a criminal waste of time to go through the slow and painful ordeal of ascertaining things for one's self if these same things have already been ascertained and made available by others. In Edison's mind knowledge is power. — B.C. Forbes

Anything that inspires addiction or obsession - substances, entertainment, beauty, secrecy - is dangerous in that it can lead to isolation, self-absorption, and disconnection, to paralyzed stasis: an immobility that gathers like a force. — Greg Carlisle

Every time you close another door - be it the door of immediate satisfaction, the door of distracting entertainment, the door of busyness, the door of guilt and worry, or the door of self-rejection - you commit yourself to go deeper into your heart and thus deeper into the heart of God. — Henri J.M. Nouwen

When believers have a low view of God, everything focuses on meeting felt needs within the body of Christ. When the church adopts such a perspective, it often offers people nothing more than spiritual placebos. It centers on psychology, self-esteem, entertainment, and a myriad of other diversions to attempt to meet perceived and felt needs. — John F. MacArthur Jr.

The NRA disgraced itself this morning with a self-serving press event in which they demonized the media and the entertainment industry for gun violence in America, and advocated a national data base for all mentally ill persons. They apparently want armed guards in all American schools, and it seems, armed volunteers as well. Shocking. — Anne Rice

A wealthy mindset minimizes expenses in self-entertainment and maximizes investments in self-education. — Orrin Woodward

The entity God created to traffic His transcendence has fallen far from its mission when it chooses instead to traffic what can be found on any street corner or at the local mall. You may ask, "But how has the church done that?"
* By offering secularists what they find mildly interesting and calling it church.
*By submitting to self-help sermons where encounter with God is not even on the agenda.
* By letting the horizontal excellence of the show stand in for Vertical impact.
*By substituting the surprise or shock of superficial entertainment for the supernatural.
Church was designed to deliver what we were created to long for. Church must again be about a Vertical encounter that interrupts and alters everything. — James MacDonald

People don't listen to karaoke, they endure it until it is their turn. It is the singularly most self-indulgent form of entertainment available. — Will Ferguson

One gift I think is a great one is a gift for self-entertainment. — Marty Rubin

I am truly amazed that after all this time, religious groups still need to attack entertainment and use these tragedies as a pitiful excuse for their own self-serving publicity. In response to their protests, I will provide a show where I balance my songs with a wholesome Bible reading. This way, fans will not only hear my so-called, violent point of view, but we can also examine the virtues of wonderful 'Christian' stories of disease, murder, adultery, suicide and child sacrifice. Now that seems like 'entertainment' to me. — Marilyn Manson

Time alone is the gift of self-entertainment - and that is the font of creativity — Lin-Manuel Miranda

Christians recognize that all social organizations exist as parodies of eschatological hope. And so it is that the city is a poor imitation of heavenly community;13 the modern state, a deformed version of the ecclesia;14 the market, a distortion of consummation; modern entertainment, a caricature of joy; schooling, a misrepresentation of true formation; liberalism, a crass simulacrum of freedom; and the sovereignty we accord to the self, a parody of God himself. As these institutions and ideals become ends in themselves, they become the objects of idolatry. The shalom of God - which is to say, the presence of God himself - is the antithesis to all such imitations. — James Davison Hunter

Self restraint in speech, food, entertainment and vanity are the most essential fundamental of spiritual growth. — Nouman Ali Khan

The late Curt Cobain captured the attitude of today's culture with the line, "Here we are; now entertain us." I believe that, unfortunately, many Christians have made Cobain's line the refrain of their friendships.
In my opinion, our cultural obsession with entertainment is really just an expression of selfishness. The focus in entertainment is not producing something useful for the benefit of others but consuming something for the pleasure of self. And a friendship based on this self-serving, pleasure-seeking mind-set can easily slip into a similarly self-serving romantic relationship that meets the needs of the moment.
But when we shift our relationship orientation from entertainment to service, our friendships move from a focus on ourselves to a focus on the people we can serve. And here's the punch line: In service we find true friendship. In service we can know our friends in a deeper way than ever before. — Joshua Harris

The relatively new trouble with mass society is perhaps even more serious, but not because of the masses themselves, but because this society is essentially a consumers' society where leisure time is used no longer for self-perfection or acquisition of more social status, but for more and more consumption and more and more entertainment ... To believe that such a society will become more "cultured" as time goes on and education has done its work, is, I think, a fatal mistake. The point is that a consumers' society cannot possibly know how to take care of a world and the things which belong exclusively to the space of worldly appearances, because its central attitude toward all objects, the attitude of consumption, spells ruin to everything it touches. — Hannah Arendt

You have to question a cinematic culture that preaches artistic expression, and yet would support a decision that is clearly a product of a patriarchy-dominant society, which tries to control how women are depicted on screen. The MPAA is okay supporting scenes that portray women in scenarios of sexual torture and violence for entertainment purposes, but they are trying to force us to look away from a scene that shows a woman in a sexual scenario, which is both complicit and complex. It's misogynistic in nature to try and control a woman's sexual presentation of self. — Ryan Gosling

The more miserable you get, the less you should look for an escape (socializing, entertainment). Rather, isolate until you see and let go of the reason for it, or move into your real Self. Never let go of - through escape from misery - a good opportunity to grow. — Lester Levenson

Life entertains humble men by giving men with below average looks (intellect, knowledge, etc.) an above average self-esteem. — Mokokoma Mokhonoana

Is it just me or is this like a bad TV sci-fi show? — John Ringo

Self expression is the new entertainment, We never used to question why people sit on the couch for seven hours a day watching bad TV. Nobody ever asked, Why are they doing that for free? We need to celebrate [this desire to contribute for free] rather than question it. — Arianna Huffington