“What people do isn't determined by where they live. It happens to be their damned fault. They decided to watch TV instead of thinking when they were in high school. They decided to blow-off courses and drink beer instead of reading and trying to learn something. They decided to chicken out and be intolerant bastards instead of being openminded and, finally, they decided to go along with their buddies and do things that were terribly wrong when there was no reason they had to. Anyone who hurts someone else decides to hurt them, goes out of their way to do it…. The fact that it's hard to be a good person doesn't excuse going along and being an asshole. If they can't overcome their own fear of being unusual, it's not my fault, because any idiot ought to be able to see that if he just acts reasonably and makes a point of not hurting others, he'll be happier.”
Sarah
The Big U (1984)
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Neal Stephenson 167
American science fiction writer 1959Related quotes
1910s, California's Policies Proclaimed (Feb. 21, 1911)
Context: When a judge decides a constitutional question, when he decides what the people as a whole can or cannot do, the people should have the right to recall that decision if they think it wrong. We should hold the judiciary in all respect; but it is both absurd and degrading to make a fetish of a judge or of anyone else.
Source: The Perks of Being a Wallflower
A chat with Meat Loaf (2006)
“The people do not decide issues, they decide who shall decide.”
Column, January 15, 2009, "Of Judges, By Judges, For Judges" http://www.jewishworldreview.com/cols/will.html at jewishworldreview.com.
2000s
Source: On the career fugue that led him to create the album New Green Clear Blue in “Dan Hartman Manages to Turn a Career Valley into Peak” https://news.google.com/newspapers?nid=943&dat=19890307&id=gGkLAAAAIBAJ&sjid=OlMDAAAAIBAJ&pg=6768,567004&hl=en in Mohave Daily Miner (1989 Mar 7)
Context: Frodo: I wish the Ring had never come to me. I wish none of this had happened.
Gandalf: So do all who live to see such times, but that is not for them to decide. All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given to us.
