Sunday, August 9, 2015 – The Summer of Trump
Regarding bullies and controversies…
The way to work with a bully is to take the ball and go home. First time, every time. When there’s no ball, there’s no game. Bullies hate that. So they’ll either behave so they can play with you or they’ll go bully someone else. ~ Seth Godin
Bullies are always cowards at heart and may be credited with a pretty safe instinct in scenting their prey. ~ Anna Julia Cooper
One of the great attractions of patriotism – it fulfills our worst wishes. In the person of our nation we are able, vicariously, to bully and cheat. Bully and cheat, what’s more, with a feeling that we are profoundly virtuous. ~ Aldous Huxley
Life is a fight, but not everyone’s a fighter. Otherwise, bullies would be an endangered species. ~ Andrew Vachss
Ignoring is what you are supposed to do with bullies, so they get bored and leave you alone. But the problem in school is that they don’t get bored, because whatever else there is to do is more boring still. ~ Paul Murray
He’s a bully. I love bullies. They have such big, shiny red buttons to push. ~ Carrie Vaughn
If you are neutral in situations of injustice, you have chosen the side of the oppressor. If an elephant has its foot on the tail of a mouse, and you say that you are neutral, the mouse will not appreciate your neutrality. ~ Desmond Tutu
Perhaps it is only human nature to inflict suffering on anything that will endure suffering, whether by reason of its genuine humility, or indifference, or sheer helplessness. ~ Honoré de Balzac, Père Goriot
Courage is fire, and bullying is smoke. ~ Benjamin Disraeli
No one can make you feel inferior without your consent. ~ Eleanor Roosevelt
People who say they don’t care what people think are usually desperate to have people think they don’t care what people think. ~ George Carlin
I found one day in school a boy of medium size ill-treating a smaller boy. I expostulated, but he replied: “The bigs hit me, so I hit the babies; that’s fair.” In these words he epitomized the history of the human race ~ Bertrand Russell
You will never reach higher ground if you are always pushing others down. ~ Jeffrey Benjamin
Liston is like most big bullies, if you can stay away and make him miss for a few rounds he’ll get frustrated. Once you strip away that feeling of invincibility, he can be had. ~ Rocky Marciano
I was bullied at school, called all kinds of different names. But one day I turned to my bullies and said – “Sticks and stones may break my bones but names will never hurt me” – and it worked! From there on it was sticks and stones all the way. ~ Harry Hill
Success and failure are both difficult to endure. Along with success come drugs, divorce, fornication, bullying, travel, meditation, medication, depression, neurosis and suicide. With failure comes failure. ~ Joseph Heller
When a resolute young fellow steps up to the great bully, the world, and takes him boldly by the beard, he is often surprised to find it comes off in his hand, and that it was only tied on to scare away the timid adventurers. ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson
The ultimate measure of a man is not where he stands in moments of comfort and convenience, but where he stands at times of challenge and controversy. ~ Martin Luther King, Jr.
In a controversy the instant we feel anger we have already ceased striving for the truth, and have begun striving for ourselves. ~ Buddha
It is not he who gains the exact point in dispute who scores most in controversy – but he who has shown the better temper. ~ Samuel Butler
Controversy equalizes fools and wise men – and the fools know it. ~ Oliver Wendell Holmes
Controversy is part of the nature of art and creativity. ~ Yoko Ono
When a thing ceases to be a subject of controversy, it ceases to be a subject of interest. ~ William Hazlitt
Controversy is only dreaded by the advocates of error. ~ Benjamin Rush
The greater the controversy, the more you need manners. ~ Judith Martin
The long and distressing controversy over capital punishment is very unfair to anyone meditating murder. ~ Geoffrey Fisher
When both sides of a controversy revel in the defeat and humiliation of the other side, in fact they are on the same side: the side of war. ~ Charles Eisenstein
If a man isn’t willing to take some risk for his opinions, either his opinions are no good or he’s no good. ~ Ezra Pound
The most savage controversies are about matters as to which there is no good evidence either way. ~ Bertrand Russell
Most controversies would soon be ended, if those engaged in them would first accurately define their terms, and then adhere to their definitions. ~ Tryon Edwards
The passionate controversies of one era are viewed as sterile preoccupations by another, for knowledge alters what we seek as well as what we find. ~ Freda Adler
The dust of controversy is merely the falsehood flying off. ~ Thomas Carlyle
To think everything disputable is a proof of a weak mind and captious temper. ~ James Beattie
I cannot fall out, or contemn a man for an error, or conceive why a difference in opinion should divide an affection: for controversies, disputes, and argumentations, both in philosophy and in divinity, if they meet with discreet and peaceable natures, do not infringe the laws of charity. In all disputes, so much as there is of passion so much there is of nothing to the purpose; for then reason, like a bad hound, spends upon a false scent, and forsakes the question first started. And this is one reason why controversies are never determined: for though they be amply proposed they are scarce at all handled, they do so swell with unnecessary digressions: and the parenthesis on the party is often as large as the main discourse upon the subject. ~ Sir Thomas Browne
In order to keep that temper which is so difficult, and yet so necessary to preserve, you may please to consider, that nothing can be more unjust or ridiculous, than to be angry with another because he is not of your opinion. The interests, education, and means by which men attain their knowledge, are so very different, that it is impossible they should all think alike; and he has at least as much reason to be angry with you, as you with him. Sometimes, to keep yourself cool, it may be of service to ask yourself fairly, what might have been your opinion, had you all the biases of education and interest your adversary may possibly have? ~ Eustace Budgell
Avoid as much as you can, in mixed companies, argumentative, polemical conversations; which, though they should not, yet certainly do, indispose for a time the contending parties towards each other: and if the controversy grows warm and noisy, endeavor to put an end to it by some genteel levity or joke. I quieted such a conversation hubbub once by representing to them that, though I was persuaded none there present would repeat out of company what passed in it, yet I could not answer for the discretion of the passengers in the street, who must necessarily hear all that was said. ~ Lord Chesterfield: Letters to his Son, Oct. 19, 1748
It is impossible to fall into any company where there is not some regular and established subordination, without finding rage and vehemence produced only by difference of sentiments about things in which neither of the disputants have any other interest, than what proceeds from their mutual unwillingness to give way to any opinion that may bring upon them the disgrace of being wrong. I have heard of one that, having advanced some erroneous doctrines of philosophy, refused to see the experiments by which they were confuted. ~ Samuel Johnson: Rambler, No. 31
It is very unfair in any writer to employ ignorance and malice together; because it gives his answerer double work. ~ Jonathan Swift
Just Above Sunset 