Wednesday, July 9, 2025

The Art of Conversation

Nature has given us two ears, two eyes
and but one tongue to the end that we should
hear and see more than we speak.

Socrates


Every word has consequences.
Every silence, too.

Jean-Paul Sartre


The more you discipline yourself,
the less you will be disciplined by others.

Napoleon Hill


I'm not entitled to have an opinion unless
I can state the arguments against my position
better than the people who are in opposition.
I am qualified to speak only when
I've reached that state.

Charlie Munger


Change happens by listening and then
starting a dialogue with the people who are
doing something you don't believe is right.

Jane Goodall


Love your enemies, for they tell you you faults.
Benjamin Franklin


One of the most sincere forms of respect is
actually listening to what another has to say.

Bryant H. McGill


People are taught how to speak,
but their major concern
should be how to keep silent.

Leo Tolstoy


1. Your plans. Move in silence.
2. Your finances.
3. Your love life.
4. Someone else's confidential information (malicious gossip).
5. Your drama.
6. Your controversial views (religion, politics, social taboos).
7. Your good deeds.

Three can keep a secret,
if two of them are dead.

Benjamin Franklin


It is better to be king of your silence
than a slave of your words.

William Shakespeare


A fool is known by his speech;
and a wise man by silence.

Pythagoras


Wise men speak because they have something
to say; fools because they have to say something.

Plato


Strong minds discuss ideas,
average minds discuss events,
weak minds discuss people.

Socrates


If you propose to speak always ask yourself,
is it true, is it necessary, is it kind.

Buddha


He who speaks, sows. He who listens, collect.
Pythagoras


Think before you speak, read before you think.
Fran Lebowitz


Speak only if it improves upon the silence.
Mahatma Gandhi


The trouble with the world is that the stupid are
cocksure and the intelligent are full of doubt.

Bertrand Russell


Opinion is really the lowest form of human
knowledge. It requires no accountability, no
understanding. The highest form of knowledge
is empathy, for it requires us to suspend
our egos and live in another's world.

Bill Bullard


You can tell more about a person by what
he says about others than you can by
what others say about him.

Audrey Hepburn


1. Jokes about something that is true and sensitive.
2. Jokes with your opinions that are not positive.
3. Sarcasm that goes too far (if the person does not understand that you're being sarcastic). 
4. Jokes about stereotypes (racial/stereotypes/sexist/groups of people).
5. Vulgar jokes (sexist/sex/toilet humor/swearing).
6. Self-deprecating humor.
7. A badly told joke (storytelling - how the build-up process works. Work with pauses).

Nothing shows a man's character
more than what he laughs at.

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe


If you think your belief is based upon reason,
you will support it by argument rather than
by persecution, and will abandon it if
the argument goes against you.
But if your belief is based upon faith,
you will realize that argument is useless,
and will therefore resort to force.

Bertrand Russell


Words are the clothes thoughts wear.
Samuel Becket


Listen with the intent to understand,
not the intent to reply.

Stephen Covey


There is an almost universal tendency, to suspect
the good faith of a man who holds opinions
that differ from our own opinions. It obviously
endangers the freedom and objectivity of our
discussion if we attack a person instead of
attacking an opinion, or more precisely, a theory.

Karl Popper


I don't want easy. Easy doesn't make you grow.
Easy doesn't make you think.

Madonna


Intelligence is measured by a person's
ability to see validity within both sides
of contradicting arguments.

F. Scott Fitzgerald


The greatest thing in the world is not so much
where we stand as in what direction
we are moving.

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe


People will forget what you said,
people will forget what you did, but
people will never forget how you made dem feel.

Maya Angelou


In order for the truth to be heard, it must
be spoken with love. No matter how wise
and true a spoken word will not be conveyed
to someone if it's spoken in anger.

Leo Tolstoy

Feminine Energy 🌺

Life is not a problem to be solved,
but a mystery to be lived.
Follow the path that is no path,
follow your bliss.

Joseph Campbell


We have a tendency to think in terms of doing
and not in terms of being... Our time is first
of all for us to be... To be alive, to be peaceful,
to be joyful, to be loving. And that is what
the world needs most.

Thich Nhat Hanh


You surrender to love;
you do not accomplish love by willpower.

Richard Rohr


Vulnerability is the core of shame and fear
and our struggle for worthiness, but
it appears it's also the birthplace of joy,
of creativity, of belonging, of love.

BrenΓ© Brown


- Creativity.
- Radiance/inner joy (passion & purpose).
- Cleanliness (your appearance & environment).
- Warmth (being inviting & approachable).
- Body language (flowing, slow, graceful, soft) & posture.
- The desire to nurture (care for yourself, plants, animals & people).
- Appearance (skirts/dresses, heels, bright & soft colors that amplify your skintone, soft materials, hair accessories, jewelry, makeup, nailpolish, handbags, gloves).
- Smile (be a pleasure to be around).
- Vulnerability (heal yourself).

1. Radiance (a childlike spirit, self-care).
2. Inner joy (smile, gratitude).
3. Creativity (beautify yourself & the world around you).

1. Cleanliness (routines & schedules).
2. Warmth (empathy & kindness, eye contact & presence, listening).
3. Movement.

1. Vulnerability
2. Submission


Create all the happiness you are able to create;
remove all the misery you are able to remove.
Every day will allow you, will invite you to
add something to the pleasure of others,
or to diminish something of their pains.

Jeremy Bentham


Humility is the foundation of all virtues,
for it allows us to approach every situation
with an open mind and a willingness
to learn from others.

Marcus Aurelius


There are two ways through life:
the way of Nature and the way of Grace.
You have to decide which one you'll follow.

Terrence Malick


1. Makes him feel valued.
2. Playfulness & flirtatiousness.
3. Presentation.
4. Positive energy.
5. Knows how to speak.
6. Avoids drama.
7. Lets him lead.


Outer work (nurture yourself)

- Spend time with yourself. Get 8 hours sleep per night. Have a self care-day every week. Pamper yourself or go to a professional.

- Make your home/personal space look feminine. Decorate with flowers & feminine colors. Light candles, play relaxing music. Seduce your senses.

- Always look your best. Smile. Plan trips. Do creative things.

- Read books that help you grow.

Inner work (journal)

- Reflect on your day/week. What did you do? How did you treat people? What happened and why did it happen? What do you need to change? What can you learn? How do you contribute to others? What can you do? How can you improve yourself? Focus on one thing at a time. Slowly incorporate new habits into your life.

- Visualize. Write down what you want to have/experience/achieve in the next 3 years of your life. Imagine yourself having and doing the things that you're working towards. Make a vision board. Pray about it. Believe.

- Evaluate people in your life. Are they adding value to your life? How do they influence you? Who do you want to be? What do you like/dislike? Decide what your priorities are. Set boundaries. You teach people how to treat you. Break free from people and habits that's hurting you.

- Focus on gratitude.

The habits, thought patterns, and perceptions
you display will be amplified in the years
to come. Don't practice what you don't
want to become.

J.Mike Fields


1. Be still & present. Indulge your senses. Allow people to help you.
2. Connect with nature. Spend time outdoors. Have plants/flowers in your home.
3. Have fun. Laugh. Do something different. Take care of yourself. Love your body.
4. Embrace your emotions - but don't act out. Listen to your intuition.
5. Explore your creativity. Discover your talents. Find your purpose.

Inspiration exists, but it has
to find you working.

Pablo Picasso


The divine feminine is the energy of pure
creation; the embodiment of love,
compassion and nurturing.

Lisa Michaels


Patience is waiting.
Not passively waiting, that is laziness.
But to keep going when the going is hard
and slow - that is patience.

Leo Tolstoy


Curiosity is one of the forms of feminine bravery.
Victor Hugo


Harm no other beings.
They are just your brothers and sisters.

Buddha


We're exploiting female bodies and abusing
the magic of female animals
to create eggs and milk.

Nathalie Portman


Competition is the law of the jungle,
but cooperation is the law of civilization.

Peter Kropotkin


The universe experiences itself through you
for a brief moment called life.

Eckhart Tolle


 A woman is the full circle.
Within her is the power to create,
nurture and transform.

Diane Mariechild

Tuesday, July 8, 2025

Someone Not Something

The animals of the world exist for their own
reasons. They were not made for humans
any more than black people were made
for white, or women created for men.

Alice Walker


Human are best protector or worst destroyer
of nature and humanity itself.

Sandeep Sahajpal


The problem is that humans have victimized
animals to such a degree that they are
not even considered victims.
They are not considered at all.

Gary Yourofsky


Animals are my friends...
and I don't eat my friends.

George Bernard Shaw


Animals are not ours to eat, wear,
experiment on, use for entertainment
or for any exploitative purpose.

Sharon Gannon


Anyone who moves is not
supposed to be eaten.

Bob Marley


I don't see why someone should lose their life
just so you can have a snack.

Russell Brand


I hold that the more helpless a creature,
the more entitled it is to protection
by man from the cruelty of man.

Mahatma Gandhi


The soul given to each of us is moved by
the same living spirit that moves the Universe.

Albert Einstein


In every living being there is the desire for love.
D.H. Lawrence


There is no fundamental difference between man
and animals in their ability to feel pleasure
and pain, happiness and misery.

Charles Darwin


We've objectified certain animals so much
that we refer to them as 'livestock'.
'Stock' that just so happens to be alive.
An inconvenience that they were
even alive to begin with.

Ed Winters


I don’t want to eat anything that had a mother.
Fred Rogers


The pain that we cause is the cause of our pain.
Leif Erikson

Jo Frederiks

Every bit of meat, chicken or fish you eat,
every bit of leather or fur you wear,
has come from an animal that has
been tortured, pulled away from their
family and brutally killed.

Lewis Hamilton


Only those who are capable of loving strongly
can also suffer great sorrow, but this same
necessity of loving serves to counteract
their grief and heals them.

Leo Tolstoy


One should not kill a living being,
nor cause anyone to be killed,
nor should one incite another to kill.
Do not injure any being,
either strong or weak, in the world.

Buddha


The world is not a factory and
animals are not products for our use.

Arthur Schopenhauer

πŸ’£ Unpopular Opinions & Controversial Figures πŸ”₯

Freethinkers are those who are willing to
use their minds without prejudice and
without fearing to understand things that
 clash with their own customs, privileges,
or beliefs. This state of mind is not common,
but it is essential for right thinking.

Leo Tolstoy


Everything that irritates us about others
can lead us to an understanding of ourselves.

Carl Jung


If you do not say a thing in an irritating way,
you may as well not say it at all
because people will not trouble themselves
about anything that does not trouble them.

George Bernard Shaw


Those who are able to see beyond
the shadows and lies of their culture
will never be understood, let alone
believed, by the masses.

Plato


Free thinkers will always seem crazy to
those who can't see beyond conventions.
Never apologize for evolving
beyond people's comfort zone.

Albert Einstein


People who say things like "I can't worry
about animals when there are humans
who need help" tend to do f*ck all
to help humans neither...
Kindness is kindness. Simple as that.

Ricky Gervais


The minority is generelly formed by those who
really have an opinion, while the strenght
 of the majority is illusory, formed by 
the gangs who have no opinion.

Soren Kierkegaard


It's easy to stand in the crowd
but it takes courage to stand alone.

Mahatma Gandhi


Cowards can never be moral.
Mahatma Gandhi


The question is not whether we will be extremists,
but what kind of extremists we will be. For hate
or for love? For the preservation of injustice
or for the extension of justice?

Martin Luther King, Jr.


Do not go where the path may lead. Go instead
where there is no path and leave a trail.

Ralph Waldo Emerson


People's opinions are mainly designed to make
them feel comfortable; truth, for most people,
is a secondary consideration.

Bertrand Russell


Injustice results as much from treating unequals
equally as from treating equals unequally.

Aristotle


If everyone is thinking alike,
then no one is thinking.

Benjamin Franklin


If anyone can show me, and prove to me,
that I am wrong in thought or deed,
I will gladly change. I seek the truth,
which never yet hurt anybody. It is only
persistence in self-delusion and ignorance
which does harm.

Marcus Aurelius


Man proceeds in the fog. But when he looks
back to judge people of the past, he sees no fog
on their path. From his present, which was their
faraway future, their path looks perfectly clear
to him, good visibility all the way. Looking back,
he sees the path, he sees the people proceeding,
he sees their mistakes, but not the fog.

Milan Kundera


Intelligence is measured by a person's
ability to see validity within both sides
of contradicting arguments.

F. Scott Fitzgerald


I don't want to talk, to communicate, with
someone who agrees with me; I want to
communicate with you because
you see it differently.

Stephen Covey



Two percent of the people think.
Three percent of the people think they think.
And ninty-five percent of the people
would rather die than think.

George Bernard Shaw


True morality consists not in following
the beaten track, but in finding the true path
for ourselves, and fearlessly following it.

Mahatma Gandhi


Progress is impossible without change,
and those who cannot change their minds
cannot change anything.

George Bernard Shaw


The reasonable man adapts himself to the world;
the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt
the world to himself. Therefore all progress
depends on the unreasonable man.

George Bernard Shaw

Monday, July 7, 2025

πŸ– Make the Connection πŸ‘

Compassion is ethical intelligence:
it is the capacity to make connections
and the consequent urge to act
to relieve the suffering of others.

Will Tuttle


I stopped eating meat some 50 years ago
when I looked at the pork chop on my plate
and thought: this represents fear, pain, death.

Jane Goodall


Don't talk of love and peace when you
have a dead animal on your plate.

Socrates


I am determined not to kill, not to let others kill,
and not to support any act of killing in the world.
We should consume in such a way that helps
to reduce the suffering of living beings.
And that way we can preserve
compassion in our hearts.

Thich Nhat Hanh



Non-violence, which is the quality of the heart,
cannot come by an appeal to the brain.

Mahatma Gandhi


Until he extends his circle of compassion
to include all living creatures,
man will not himself find peace.

Albert Schweitzer


A person with the capacity but not the inclination
to cease suffering is morally incomplete.

Mirko Bagaric


Compassion, in which all ethics must take root,
can only attain its full breadth and depth
if it embraces all living creatures and
does not limit itself to mankind.

Albert Schweitzer


The whole concept of hunting is a very alien one
to me and I cannot comprehend how any person
can derive enjoyment or pleasure from
the suffering of another creature.

Mark Owen


Compassion is an unstable emotion.
It needs to be translated into action,
or it withers.

Susan Sontag


What do they know - all these scholars, all these
philosophers, all the leaders of the world -
about such as you? They have convinced
themselves that man, the worst transgressor
of all the species, is the crown of creation.
All other creatures were created merely to
provide him with food, pelts,
to be tormented, exterminated.

Isaac Bashevis Singer


Animals and humans suffer and die alike.
Violence causes the same pain, the same
spilling of blood, the same stench of death,
the same arrogant, cruel, and brutal taking
of life. We don't have to be part of it.

Dick Gregory


Violence begins with the fork.
Mahatma Gandhi


The line separating good and evil passes
not through states, nor between political
parties either - but right through
every human heart.

Alexandr Solzhenitsyn


I felt that if I were to continue to live
in this world I had to do what I could
to reduce the suffering around me,
or at the very least, not to add to it....
I gave up eating meat.
I have not eaten it since.

Nick Cave