Elizabeth Moon Quotes

To keeping silence I resigned My friends would think I was a nut Turning water into wine Open doors would soon be shut So I went from day to day Though my life was in a rut 'Til I thought of what I'd say Which connection I should cut

The moment we begin to fear the opinions of others and hesitate to tell the truth that is in us, and from motives of policy are silent when we should speak, the divine floods of light and life no longer flow into our souls.

If you are not willing to be a lone wolf, keep your truth to yourself. If you want acceptance and your truths to be spoken, it is a slippery slope.

Be Sure you Are Stepping to the Music you Hear - No Matter what Other People Think.

You know you're walking around with a mask on, and you desperately want to take it off and you can't because everybody else thinks it's your face.

I don't know how to write without thinking what people would want. You don't know whether they want you to be black or white, so you kind of get a gray, something in the middle.

If one had to worry about one's actions in respect of other people's ideas, one might as well be buried alive in an antheap or married to an ambitious violinist. Whether that man is the prime minister, modifying his opinions to catch votes, or a bourgeois in terror lest some harmless act should be misunderstood and outrage some petty convention, that man is an inferior man and I do not want to have anything to do with him any more than I want to eat canned salmon.

The trouble with this world is that everybody has to compromise and conform.

Everybody sacrifices something in an attempt to reach what they think society wants.

Who, with tame cowardice familiar grown, would hear my thoughts, but fear to speak their own.

I don't know how to sell out. If I tried to sell out I don't think I could.

It is easier not to say anything. Shut your trap, button your lip, can it. All that crap you hear on TV about communication and expressing feelings is a lie. Nobody really wants to hear what you have to say.

We think we need to create ourselves, always doing a paste-up job on our personalities. That is because we're trying to be special rather than real. We're pathetically trying to conform with all the other people trying to do the same.

We try to do what's right, or rather what other say is right. But sometimes, when that goes against who we are...you have to choose.

What’s the difference between spending your life trying to be invisible, or pretending to be the person you think everyone wants you to be? Either way, you’re faking.

Let’s be honest. Who here thinks your professors can say what they really believe? It scares me to death, and should scare you too, that the superstition of political correctness rules the halls of reason. What does all of this mean? It means that telling us what to think has evolved into telling us what to say, so telling us what to do can’t be far behind. Before you claim to be a champion of free thought, tell me: Why did political correctness originate on America’s campuses? And why do you continue to tolerate it? Why do you, who’re supposed to debate ideas, surrender to their suppression?

Each time we don't say what we wanna say, we're dying.

This world is bullshit. And you shouldn't model your life — wait a second — you shouldn't model your life about what you think that we think is cool and what we're wearing and what we're saying and everything. Go with yourself. Go with yourself.

How much of my true self I camouflage and choke in order to commend myself to him, denying the fullness of me. How often have I paraded sweetness and interest when I felt otherwise; pretended to take careful leave of him on many an occasion when I would rather have walked right out. How I've toned myself down, diluted myself to maintain his approval.

I don't want people to be inspired or offended by what I do. If you determine your behavior by what [other people] want, you're screwed.

Partly, I'm worried that no one is saying anything because they are afraid of being seen as politically correct.

I never say the things I really want to. If I did, I'd have no friends.

Pretending to be 'normal' is a lot harder than you think.

If you do things merely because you think some other fool expects you to do them, and he expects you to do them because he thinks you expect him to expect you to do them, it will end in everybody doing what nobody wants to do, which is in my opinion a silly state of things.

The man who alters his way of thinking to suit others is a fool.