1989 Quotes

“Maybe you lost someone you never expected you would lose. Maybe you lost yourself. That’s even worse. When you have bad days that just won’t let up, I just hope that you will look in the mirror and remind yourself of what you are and what you are not.

You are not your mistakes.
You are not damaged goods or money from your failed explorations.
You are not the opinion of someone who doesn’t know you.

You are a product of the lessons that you’ve learned.
You are wiser because you went through something terrible.
And you are the person who survived a bunch of rainstorms and kept walking.

I now believe that pain makes you stronger. And now I believe that walking through a lot of rainstorms gets you clean.”
― Taylor Swift

“She lost him, but she found herself, and somehow, that was everything.”
― Taylor Swift

“I hope you know that you've given me the courage to change. I hope you know that who you are is who you choose to be, and that whispers behind your back don't define you. You are the only one who gets to decide what you will be remembered for.”
― Taylor Swift

“We mistake our mistakes as being damaged.”
― Taylor Swift

“Since the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989, historians have become both more accurate and more honest—fractionally more brave, one might say—about that 'other' cleansing of the regions and peoples that were ground to atoms between the upper and nether millstones of Hitlerism and Stalinism. One of the most objective chroniclers is Professor Timothy Snyder of Yale University. In his view, it is still 'Operation Reinhardt,' or the planned destruction of Polish Jewry, that is to be considered as the centerpiece of what we commonly call the Holocaust, in which of the estimated 5.7 million Jewish dead, 'roughly three million were prewar Polish citizens.' We should not at all allow ourselves to forget the millions of non-Jewish citizens of Belarus, Russia, Ukraine, and other Slav territories who were also massacred. But for me the salient fact remains that anti-Semitism was the regnant, essential, organizing principle of all the other National Socialist race theories. It is thus not to be thought of as just one prejudice among many.”
― Christopher Hitchens, Hitch 22: A Memoir

“There is no such thing as notoriety in the United States these days, let alone infamy. Celebrity is all.”
― Christopher Hitchens, For the Sake of Argument: Essays and Minority Reports

“The light of the sun is the manifestation of the clarity of the sky; and the sky is the basic condition necessary for the manifestation of the sun's light. So, too, in the sky two, three, four, or any number of suns could arise; but the sky always remains indivisibly one sky. Similarly, every individual's state of presence is unique and distinct, but the void nature of the individual is universal, and common to all beings.”
― Namkhai Norbu, Dzogchen: The Self-Perfected State

“Controlling the position of one's body and keeping a straight back are not contemplation, but can in fact become an obstacle to contemplation. ...when leaving the body 'uncontrolled' is spoken of, what is meant is simply allowing the body to remain in an authentic, uncorrected condition, in which it is not necessary to modify or improve anything. This is because, since all our attempts at correcting the body come from the reasoning mind, they are all false and artificial.”
― Chögyal Namkhai Norbu, Dzogchen: The Self-Perfected State

“Enlightenment, or Nirvana, is nothing other than the state beyond all obstacles, in the same way that from the peak of a very high mountain one always sees the sun. Nirvana is not a paradise or some special place of happiness, but is in fact the condition beyond all dualistic concepts, including those of happiness and suffering.

When all our obstacles have been overcome, and we find ourselves in a state of total presence, the wisdom of enlightenment manifests spontaneously without limits, just like the infinite rays of the sun. The clouds have dissolved, and the sun is finally free to shine once again.”
― Namkhai Norbu, Dzogchen: The Self-Perfected State

“Whenever I see that kind of story, where everybody agrees, I know there's something wrong.”
― Nat Hentoff

“But beyond the mind, beyond our thoughts, there is something we call the 'nature of the mind', the mind's true condition, which is beyond all limits. If it is beyond the mind, though, how can we approach an understanding of it?

Let's take the example of a mirror. When we look into a mirror we see in it the reflected images of any objects that are in front of it; we don't see the nature of the mirror. But what do we mean by this 'nature of the mirror'? We mean its capacity to reflect, definable as its clarity, its purity, and its limpidity, which are indispensable conditions for the manifestation of reflections. This 'nature of the mirror' is not something visible, and the only way we can conceive of it is through the images reflected in the mirror. In the same way, we only know and have concrete experience of that which is relative to our condition of body, voice, and mind. But this itself is the way to understand their true nature.”
― Chögyal Namkhai Norbu, Dzogchen: The Self-Perfected State

“To produce a primary [karmic] cause which is potentially capable of having an effect, three things are necessary: intention, the actual action, and then satisfaction.”
― Chögyal Namkhai Norbu, Dzogchen: The Self-Perfected State

“But it can happen that a phrase intended to indicate a state beyond concepts just becomes another concept in itself, in the same way that if you ask a person their name and they reply that they have no name, you will then perhaps mistakenly call them 'No name'.”
― Chögyal Namkhai Norbu, Dzogchen: The Self-Perfected State

“But karma is not in fact a material accumulation, and does not depend on externals; rather its power to condition us depends on the obstacles that impede our knowledge. If we compare our karma and the ignorance that creates it to a dark room, knowledge of the primordial state would be like a lamp, which, when lit in the room, at once causes the darkness to disappear, enlightening everything. In the same way, if one has the presence of the primordial state, one can overcome all hindrances in an instant.”
― Namkhai Norbu, Dzogchen: The Self-Perfected State

“Let me put it this way. Canada is not so much a country as a holding tank filled with the disgruntled progeny of defeated peoples.”
― Mordecai Richler

“In Amsterdam. Eeuwen geleden het centrum van Europa, nu een gore provinciestad vol boeven, hoeren en ruïnes, maar door de burgemeester nog altijd voor een wereldstad gehouden.”
― Willem Frederik Hermans, Au Pair

“Alcune caratteristiche dell'ondata rivoluzionaria - in primo luogo gli aspetti di sincronia e concatenazione tra i processi - hanno motivato e in parte giustificano il confronto con alcuni precedenti come il 1848, il 1968 o il 1989, che hanno coinvolto e scosso diverse aree regionali o continentali - e per certi versi sovra-continentali. Tuttavia una delle tesi principali di questa opera è che il valore della rivoluzione della gente comune cui abbiamo assistito - e, per quanto ci riguarda, intensamente vissuto - risieda come in tutte le rivoluzioni autentiche innanzitutto nell'aver messo al centro alcune fondamentali questioni umane e nel come e quanto esse abbiano iniziato a cercare e suggerire risposte all'insegna della vivibilità, in un'ottica possibilmente aggregante e complessivamente migliorativa per tutte e tutti. Questi processi sono preziosi per chi cerca la liberazione e l'autoemancipazione, mentre sono stati ritenuti pericolosi dagli oppressori di tutto il mondo per il principio di rivoluzione umana che hanno incarnato, soprattutto in Egitto e in Siria, in termini diversi nell'enigmatico quanto importante Yemen. In ciò si trovano delle differenze significative rispetto alle rivoluzioni del Novecento, in cui spesso sin dall'inizio sono prevalse le logiche politiche, politico-religiose e/o politico-militari. Questi processi presentano tratti nuovi e di grande valore in cui abbiamo rintracciato un filo conduttore che ce ne ha fatto formulare un'idea sintetica e un'analisi, nonché trarre insegnamenti utili alla ricerca di un bene comune in chiave universale. Al principio e al centro ci sono le persone e le personalità - non gli Stati e i partiti -, le donne e gli uomini coinvolti di tutte le età e generazioni, ciò che hanno sentito, pensato ed espresso operando ancora prima che facendo: le persone e le idee, di cui valutare il valore e le contraddizioni, i meriti e i deficit.”
― Mamadou Ly, Dall'Egitto alla Siria. Il principio di una Rivoluzione Umana e i suoi antefatti

“If the world is a Watch, as the Deists claim, then it is evidently two minutes behind.
—James Beresford, The Miseries of Human Life”
― Tad Tuleja, The Catalog of Lost Books: An Annotated and Seriously Addled Collection of Great Books that Should Have Been Written but Never Were

“Poppe, once a leading figure at a scientific research institute, found a job as a swimming pool attendant”
― Victor Sebestyen, Revolution 1989: The Fall of the Soviet Empire

“The doctrine of parliamentary sovereignty has become the doctrine of the executive in Parliament....”
― Shirley Williams

“Mistaking cause and effect was the single most critical misreading of the lessons of 1989.”
― Michael R. Meyer, The Year That Changed The World: The Untold Story Behind the Fall of the Berlin Wall

“As turning points in history go, this was pretty ad hoc . . . it was the shrug that changed the world.”
― Michael R. Meyer, The Year That Changed The World: The Untold Story Behind the Fall of the Berlin Wall