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  "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/steve-toltz/a-fraction-of-the-whole/dad-always-mentioned",
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  "text": "Dad always mentioned that people don't go on journeys at all but spend a lifetime searching for and gathering evidence to rationalize the beliefs they've held in their hearts since day one. They have new revelations, certainly, but these rarely shatter their core belief structure - they just build on it. He believed that if the base remains intact, it doesn't matter what you build on it, it is not a journey at all. It is just layering. He didn't believe that anyone ever started from scratch. \"People aren't looking for answers,\" he often said. \"They're looking for facts to prove their case.\"",
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  "author": {
    "name": "Steve Toltz",
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  "book": {
    "title": "A Fraction Of The Whole",
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      "name": "beliefs",
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      "slug": "its-hard-enough",
      "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/steve-toltz/a-fraction-of-the-whole/its-hard-enough",
      "text": "It's hard enough to go through life disappointing yourself every second day, but disappointing others takes it out of you too. That's why you should never answer the phone or the door. So you don't have to say no to whoever's on the other side.",
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      "slug": "people-always-say",
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      "text": "People always say, \"It's good to be a part of a something bigger than yourself,\" but you already are. You're part of a huge thing. The whole of humanity. That's enormous. But you can't see it, so you pick, what? An organization? A culture? A religion? That's not bigger than you. It's much, much smaller!",
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      "slug": "what-a-disappointment",
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      "text": "What a disappointment my brain turned out to be. After everything I had witnessed in my life, I had almost convinced myself that the wheel of personal history spins on thought, and therefore my history was muddy because my thinking had been muddy. I imagined that everything I'd experienced to date was likely to be a materialization of my fears (especially my fear of Dad's fears). In short, I had briefly believed that if man's character is his fate, and if his character is the sum of his actions, and his actions are a result of his thoughts, then man's character, actions, and fate are dependent on what he thinks. Now I wasn't so sure.",
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