“It’s also humbling. We like to think we make up our minds about important issues based on rational, unbiased assessment of the available facts. But the evidence assembled by Kahan and Peters shows that our beliefs, even something as scientifically oriented as climate change, are driven by a psychological need to fit in. And so we create strategies for doing this.”
~Stephen Dubner, Freakonomics podcast “The Truth Is Out There…Isn’t it?”
“There are two different ways of getting in to a swimming pool. The first way, you take your toe, you carefully test the water’s temperature. And if that feels OK slowly get in to the water letting your body adjust to the cold. Then there’s the second way of getting in to a pool..You…JUMP! That’s me.”
~Molly Shannon, Superstar
Yesterday I posted a part of this quote. Upon reflection, I realized that it was better in its entirity.
“The goal of leadership is not to get things done. The goal of leadership is to get things done through other people and the ultimate goal of leadership is to get things done through other leaders, who get things done through other people”
-Andy Stanley, The Power of Apprenticing podcast
This quote from David Wells struck me this morning. From his book, God in the Wasteland:
turned to a God that we can use rather than to a God we must obey; we have turned to a God who will fulfill our needs rather than to a God before whom we must surrender our rights to ourselves. He is a God for us, for our satisfaction — not because we have learned to think of him in this way through Christ but because we have learned to think of him in this way through the marketplace. In the marketplace, everything is for us, for our pleasure, for our satisfaction, and we have come to assume that it must be so in the church as well. And so we transform the God of mercy into the God who is at our mercy…if the sunshine of his benign grace fails to warm us as we expect, if he fails to shower prosperity and success on us, we will find ourselves unable to believe in him anymore.
“No one can make you feel inferior without your consent.”
~Eleanor Roosevelt
I work in a manufacturing environment that sits next to our national office. As a result you wind up with people in uniforms from the manufacturing environment and people from the national office who wear business casual. It’s easy to perceive this as a class distinction. Folks in the manufacturing environment allow themselves to feel this class distinction, to feel inferior. The same could go for people who work in cubicles versus having an office. It’s a perceived class distinction. You can choose to believe it or choose not to. It all comes down to fear and self-confidence. Are you going to allow a uniform or a cubicle to define your worth?
Recently, we attended my husband’s eleven year high school reunion. It made me recall this quote from Hope Floats:
“Childhood is what you spend the rest of your life trying to overcome.”
~Birdee Pruitt
Perfection is the enemy!
~ Lyrics from the song “Free to Be Me” by Francesca Battistelli
Recently I saw this quote in my weekly calendar.
“A man who stands for nothing will fall for anything.”
It was misattributed to Malcom X. Peter Marshall really said it. It’s unfortunate that a calendar publisher would print false information. Aren’t they supposed to check this stuff out?
From Bones episode Back in the Saddle:
Booth: It’s got to be (crappy sex).
Bones: Why?
Booth: Why? I’ll tell you why. Here we are, all of us, basically alone, separate creatures circling each other, all searching for the slightest hint of a real connection. Some look in the wrong places, some just give up hope because in their mind they’re thinking there’s nobody out there for me…but all of us, we keep trying, over and over again. Why? Because every once in a while, every once in a while, two people meet and there’s that spark and, yes bones, he’s handsome and she’s beautiful and maybe that’s all they see at first, but making love, making love that’s when two people become one.
Bones: It is scientifically impossible for two objects to occupy the same space.
Booth: Yea, but what’s important is we try…and when we do it right we get close.
Bones: To what? Breaking the laws of physics
Booth: Yea Bones, a miracle. Those people role-playing, fetishes and their little sex games – it’s crappy sex; well, at least compared to the real thing.
Bones: You’re right.
“You’re talking about the American dream. You find something that you love and then you twist and you torture it, try to find a way to make money at it. You spend a lifetime doing that and at the end you can’t find a trace of what you started out loving.”
~Justin Matisse