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Samizdata quote of the day

· Slogans & Quotations

Being happy is really just an ability to accept survival as success.

– Robert Stacy McCain

November 9th, 2014 |

13 comments to Samizdata quote of the day

  • Paul Marks
    November 9, 2014 at 10:28 am

    Pity you could not get to my talk Brian.

    I would have interested to hear your opinions.

  • PeterT
    November 9, 2014 at 10:57 am

    Great quote. That one I will remember. Seems particularly poignant just now as I am juggling career and young family and don’t exactly feel like a star in either department.

  • ragicknick
    November 9, 2014 at 10:58 am

    Robert Stacy McCain has managed to be a lone fighter against the lying, criminal and larcenous leftists of the Kimberlin Clan. He is also a race realist which is a brave position to take in these times.

  • Perry de Havilland (London)
    November 9, 2014 at 3:47 pm

    I found myself agreeing with much of the linked article, and still came away thinking I would not care to be stuck next to the author at dinner. He is redolent with a sort of conservative sensibility that is not my cup of tea at all.

    He is also a race realist which is a brave position to take in these times.

    That is probably what I am smelling then: someone unable to tell the difference between correlation and causation, right-wing edition. Feh. An expendable asset at best.

  • Runcie Balspune
    November 9, 2014 at 4:33 pm

    Being happy gets you a whipping in Iran.

  • no face
    November 9, 2014 at 5:10 pm

    Another brilliantly pointless comment by Runcie. Pure class

  • Laird
    November 9, 2014 at 8:53 pm

    I guess I’m just too shallow, but the quote does nothing for me and I couldn’t get far enough into that pointless article to find the context. I have zero interest in the solipsistic maunderings of talentless feminist writers; why would I read an article about one?

  • Nick (Natural Genius) Gray
    November 9, 2014 at 11:54 pm

    I feel happy when I set myself a goal, and then achieve it. Who needs anything else?

  • Fraser Orr
    November 10, 2014 at 2:08 am

    I’m with Laird. I muddled through most of the article, but to summarize for those of you who have better things to do (such as cleaning out your sock drawer) the article says “the Oprah generation is shallow.” Insightful, huh? I might add that although the quotes from the lady who was the target of his scorn were hardly inspiring or interesting, they were hardly especially bad. They were just standard Oprah generation fare. I mean really there are lots of much more interesting and loathsome targets, and really he came off as just being mean to someone who isn’t a particularly interesting or admirable person, but I’m sure if you met her you’d think her a perfectly nice gal.

  • Very retired
    November 10, 2014 at 5:23 am

    No, I disagree. Happiness is not a state, but an ongoing process. I have found, over the course of my life, that when I busied myself properly with my tasks as a man, a husband, and a father, the days passed quickly, and without much negativity. I found it easy to laugh, to enjoy my life and my family, and to look forward to each new day and it’s challenges.

    I know, as sure as I know where the sun will rise in the morning, why my life has been, and is, a pleasant, joyful fantasy, far above and beyond anything I thought possible in my younger days.

    And I told her as much, as I try to do often, while we were having dinner tonite.

  • Fraser Orr
    November 10, 2014 at 5:37 am

    I’m also with Very retired. I think anyone who thinks that survival is success is perhaps setting their sights a little too low.

  • Alisa
    November 10, 2014 at 11:51 am

    I found the article insightful, even though I didn’t like the general tenor of smugness or something similar. The point that did strike a cord with me is the the question I have often been contemplating myself: what did prosperity do to our perception of the world and of ourselves? Or, put more simply and bluntly: have we been mortally spoiled? This is not a rhetorical as far as I’m concerned – I really am not sure what the answer is.

    Thinking further about this, as it may relate to Fraser’s last comment: survival has more than the single, very basic physical component to it. YMMV.

  • Paul Marks
    November 12, 2014 at 12:30 pm

    A “race realist” – i.e. someone who believes that Swedish socialists (or white and non Jewish Mr Stalin for that matter) are friends – but that people such as Walter Williams, Thomas Sowell, Star Parker, Tim Scott, Mia Love (and on and on) are foes.

    Very hard to understand these “race realists”.

    They seem to be confusing skin colour with the ideas (the beliefs) that people hold.

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