rattus rattus’ blog

[Ratta says that with some people it’s a good option to keep silent and just wait.]

If you really want to be tolerant
the first thing you have to learn
is to tolerate intolerance;
your very own as much as others,
and not any less our world’s confinement.

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(c) Photo “Ratflection” by dallsoppuk

Every time I look into a mirror I wonder how it comes that people look into mirrors in order to see what they look like.

If I was a mirror I couldn’t but laugh my glass off.

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Do you mean that you not only want a wrong answer, but a certain wrong answer?

— Tobaben (from a computer fortune)

Whoever picks up a stone to throw
might as well be the one standing against the wall.

If I was blaming myself because of something wrong I had done
I am afraid I might blame myself because I blamed myself.

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You need to apply some weight
in order to see how much nothing is.

Or: Are we free to be free?
Or: The tyranny of the liberty of meaning.

We all declare for liberty; but in using the same word we do not all mean the same thing. With some the word liberty may mean for each man to do as he pleases with himself, and the product of his labor; while with others, the same word may mean for some men to do as they please with other men, and the product of other men’s labor. Here are two, not only different, but incompatible things, called by the same name — liberty. And it follows that each of the things is, by the respective parties, called by two different and incompatible names — liberty and tyranny.

— The Collected Works of Abraham Lincoln edited by Roy P. Basler, Volume VII, “Address at Sanitary Fair, Baltimore, Maryland” (April 18, 1864), p. 301-302; quoted from A collection of Abraham Lincoln Quotes by Roger Norton.

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