Compulsive Quest for Certainty
The compulsive quest for certainty is not the expression of genuine faith but is rooted in the need to conquer the unbearable doubt.
The compulsive quest for certainty is not the expression of genuine faith but is rooted in the need to conquer the unbearable doubt.
There are many people who reach their conclusions about life like schoolboys: they cheat their master by copying the answer out of a book without having worked the sum out for themselves.
— Søren Kierkegaard
We have to see, I think, that questioning the value of old rules is different from simply breaking them.
— Elizabeth Janeway, Between Myth & Morning: Women Awakening
What is a poet? A poet is an unhappy being whose heart is torn by secret sufferings, but whose lips are so strangely formed that when the sighs and the cries escape them, they sound like beautiful music. . . . And men crowd about the poet and say to him, “Sing for us again;” that is as much to say, “May new sufferings torment your soul, but may your lips be formed as before; for the cries would only frighten us but the music is delicious.”
When you live in times of authoritarian rule one of the first things that end up in the cross hairs is culture. We believe firmly that artists and writers and dramatists and actors and musicians play a vital role in defending the integrity of who we are as human beings.
— Jeremy Scahill, on the Trump’s Cabinet of Killers and Why Orange is the New Anti-Black episode of The Intercepted.
I have never been more grateful for organizations like the ACLU and the plethora of lawyers we have in this country. Likewise, I am inspired by the power of our marches and protests as we stand up for our values. But, in addition to the direct tangible actions we can take, we also need a 100 million voices writing and singing and laughing and, in general, sounding our barbaric yawps over the roofs of the world.