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Book: Thinking About It Only Makes It Worse: And Other Lessons from Modern Life
Quotes of Book: Thinking About It Only Makes
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  1. David Mitchell _ Thinking About It Only Makes

    When watching the news, it's so easy to forget what most of us are like: pleasant, polite, socially shy. We don't want rows, we want a quiet life. We feel inadequate because we don't protest and argue more – we don't stand up for ourselves. And, in feeling that, we forget that the sort of people who do stand up for themselves are cut from the same cloth as the sort of people you have to stand up to.
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  2. David Mitchell _ Thinking About It Only Makes

    As Boris Johnson has pointed out, it's now an offence to swear at a police officer. So should you incur a public-spirited 50,000-volt warning shot – perhaps for brandishing your pension book in an aggressive manner or because a young PC has mistaken your tartan shopping trolley for a piece of field artillery – don't accidentally shout "Oh fuck!" or you might get sent to prison.
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  3. David Mitchell _ Thinking About It Only Makes

    What women want is still what it's always been: either you or, more likely, not you.
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  4. David Mitchell _ Thinking About It Only Makes

    So we surrender to stupidity, do we?" Freedom of speech is sacrificed at the altar of manufactured rage.
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  5. David Mitchell _ Thinking About It Only Makes

    Brainchild" is an odd word. You hear it a lot in explanatory voiceovers and I suppose I was trying to join in, but I don't really like it. I'm not keen on the idea that my brain could have a child. Would it be made of brain – a child, made of grey brain, like a squelchy zombie? As metaphors for inspiration go, I prefer the lightbulb.
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  6. David Mitchell _ Thinking About It Only Makes

    Taking it all the way to a disciplinary procedure and talking to a national newspaper is the mark of an unusual man. But is he principled or just stubborn? Righteous or self-righteous? Would it be a better world if everyone was like him? God, no! It would be a much better world if no one was. The only useful role for people like that is to stand up to each other. You need the unbending Churchills to save us from the mass-murdering Hitlers but, with no Hitlers around, the Churchills are annoying as hell.
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  7. David Mitchell _ Thinking About It Only Makes

    With a story, as with a well-chosen gift, we're happiest when surprised by something we didn't know we wanted.
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  8. David Mitchell _ Thinking About It Only Makes

    British Airways: "No one is actually going to save the environment, so you might as well enjoy it while it lasts."
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  9. David Mitchell _ Thinking About It Only Makes

    There's something fishy about Google's motto, "Don't Be Evil." I'm not saying it's controversial but it makes you think, "Why bring that up? Why have you suddenly put the subject of being evil on the agenda?" It's suspicious in the same way as Ukip constantly pointing out how racist they're not –
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  10. David Mitchell _ Thinking About It Only Makes

    The dissolution and sale of British Rail, transforming it into a disjointed network charging exorbitant prices for an unimproved and still taxpayer-subsidised service, darkened the joke a bit much for popular tastes. We stopped chuckling. It was like the tipsy uncle had assaulted a receptionist.
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  11. David Mitchell _ Thinking About It Only Makes

    The Cookie Monster is anarchic, dynamic and madly driven by a very specific, but also totally random, aim: he wants cookies. He wants to charge around crazily smashing cookies into his mouth. He will never get enough cookies. It's unclear whether he understands this. Maybe he imagines some future stage of sated calm which he might achieve if, miraculously, he were to obtain all the cookies he desires. Or maybe he is wiser than that and knows it's all about the journey, his endless quest for biscuits.
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