Obscure Scholar

For the ever-inquisitive, sometimes overly ambitious, chaotic scholars of the modern era.

[obscurescholar]

"You have power over your mind - not outside events. Realize this, and you will find strength."

— Marcus Aurelius, Meditations

[obscurescholar]

"The world is indeed full of peril, and in it there are many dark places; but still there is much that is fair, and though in all lands love is now mingled with grief, it grows perhaps the greater."

— J.R.R. Tolkien, The Fellowship of the Ring

[litsnaps]

[obscurescholar]

"Lack of direction, not lack of time, is the problem. We all have twenty-four hour days."

— Zig Ziglar

[obscurescholar]

"Why am I trying to become what I don't want to be...when all I want is out there, waiting for me the minute I say I know who I am."

— Arthur Miller, Death of a Salesman

[obscurescholar]

"The liberty of a democracy is not safe if the people tolerated the growth of private power to a point where it becomes stronger than the democratic state itself. That in its essence is fascism: ownership of government by an individual, by a group, or any controlling private power."

— Franklin D. Roosevelt

[obscurescholar]

"Evil begins when you begin to treat people as things."

— Terry Pratchett, I Shall Wear Midnight

[obscurescholar]

"Courage. Kindness. Friendship. Character. These are the qualities that define us as human beings, and propel us, on occasion, to greatness."

— R.J. Palacio, Wonder

[philosophybits]

“Our readiness to believe evil, without investigating it adequately, results from pride and laziness. We want to find the guilty party, and we do not want to go to the trouble of investigating the crime.”

— François de La Rochefoucauld, Moral Reflections

[obscurescholar]

"I've never fooled anyone. I've let people fool themselves. They didn't bother to find out who and what I was. Instead they would invent a character for me. I wouldn't argue with them. They were obviously loving somebody I wasn't."

— Marilyn Monroe

[obscurescholar]

"Make up a story...For our sake and yours forget your name in the street; tell us what the world has been to you in the dark places and in the light. Don't tell us what to believe, what to fear. Show us belief's wide skirt and the stitch that unravels fear's caul."

— Toni Morrison, The Nobel Lecture in Literature (1993)

[obscurescholar]

"All animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others."

— George Orwell, Animal Farm

[obscurescholar]

"I have learned now that while those who speak about one's miseries usually hurt, those who keep silence hurt more."

— C.S. Lewis

[obscurescholar]

"Do what you feel in your heart to be right—for you'll be criticized anyway."

— Eleanor Roosevelt

[obscurescholar]

"We shouldn't be looking for heroes, we should be looking for good ideas."

— Noam Chomsky

[obscurescholar]

"Generally I find men are a lot more concerned with limiting the freedoms of women than exercising personal freedom for themselves."

— Sally Rooney, Normal People

[litsnaps]