[quotes] Safari Ants, Baggy Pants and Elephants - Susie Kelly 2017

 

"The emergency was that the people whom this country rightfully belonged now wanted to run it themselves."

"[On trophy hunting:] It is not even as if there is any skill needed, just sufficient money and an adequate gun. It seems such an utterly pointless and negative activity."

"... I was dubious that even if it ever became law it would lead to an equitable distribution of land, as the wealthiest landowners would find ways to circumnavigate the law - easily done by forming a company - and therefore not count as individuals."

"All those who made comments like that had one thing in common, which was that they had never been to Kenya."

"'I am sure that there are a lot of people who have never visited Africa or Kenya. They think Kenya is Africa and Africa is Kenya. Showing your photographs that you took helps them to know exactly what you are talking about."

"The wind,
In it was a scent,
So hard to remember,
So hard to forget,
Memories long forgotten,
A past so vivid,
A stranger so familiar.

I wake up to a dream,
And see the wind,
In it is a scent,
So hard to remember,
So hard to forget,
Africa.
The scent of my childhood."

[quotes] Ishmael - Daniel Quinn 1992

 

"... no one knows anything that can't be found on a shelf in the public library."

"You, who have had a name from birth and who probably think that even a pet dog is aware of having a name (which is untrue), cannot imagine what a revolution in perception the acquisition of a name produced in me."

"... uttering that which must be said but which must not be heard by anyone."

"'You're captives of a civilizational system that more or less compels you to go on destroying the world in order to live.'"

"I was once again having impure thoughts about saving the world."

"The mythology of your culture hums in your ears so constantly that no one pays the slightest bit of attention to it. Of course man is conquering space and the atom and the deserts and the oceans and the elements. According to your mythology, this is what he was born to do."

"They don't know such a law even exists, but this ignorance affords them no protection from its effects."

"Once you exempt yourself from the law of limited competition, everything in the world except your food and the food of your food becomes an enemy to be exterminated."

"It's the idea that people living close to nature tend to be noble. It's seeing all those sunsets that does it. You can't watch a sunset and then go off and set fire to your neighbor's tepee."

"'Whatever I can justify doing is good and whatever I cannot justify doing is evil.'"

"'The Takers accumulate knowledge about what works well for things. The Leavers accumulate knowledge about what works well for people.'"

"They're going to go on treating the world as if it were a piece of human property and they're going to go on conquering it as if it were an adversary. You can't change these things with laws. You must change people's minds."

[quotes] Passionate Nomad, The Life of Freya Stark - Jane Fletcher Geniesse 1999

 

"No crime short of murder... can be comparable to the crime of destroying in another the capacity to love: and this happens sometimes through the rashness of parents... but more often through some bitterness of experience when youth is still defenseless."

"I cannot help believing that if she had wanted life more, she could have held it: but she was not interested, and accepted death as she had accepted her marriage and her baptism, and no one outside her could help."

"I hope I shall not become so, resenting ideas that are not my ideas, and seeing the world with all its changes and growth as a series of congealed formulas."

"I never imagined that my first sight of the desert would come with such a shock of beauty and enslave me right away."

"But anything was possible, Freya was now allowing herself to believe, if she could only detach herself from the tender shackles that had kept her bound to home for so long."

"It came I think from a feeling which influences me greatly, whose beginning I cannot remember and whose origin I cannot trace - a feeling for the value of affection in itself, and a reluctance to waste any of it that happened to come my way."

"Freya was burnishing her new persona, burying the shy girl of her youth and creating a self-sufficiency to match her growing reputation as a person of fearless, even heroic, deeds."

"How brittle in reality are all the things whose permanence is never questioned."

"Freya, the chronic nomad, liked the thought of Venetia's stable life, while Venetia enjoyed the open horizons of Freya's."

"It is ridiculous to care so much, but after all there is less difference between us and a lizard than between us and God and we expect Him to feel an interest."

"Bribing people to adjust their beliefs was both cynical and repugnant."

"After Flora's death she used the writing to understand their complicated relationship and came to a forgiveness and reconciliation she could not have achieved had Flora been alive."

"... and the art of learning fundamental common values is perhaps the greatest gain of travel to those who wish to live at ease among their fellows."

"Perseverance is often praised, but it is not so often realized that another quality must accompany it to make it of any value - and that is elasticity; perseverance in only one direction very often fails: but if one is ready to take whatever road is offered, and to change the chosen way, if circumstances change, and yet to keep the end in view - then success is infinitely more probable."

"And it hardly made sense, she insisted, to make Palestinians pay with their homes and lands for injuries done to Jews by European Christians."

[quotes] The Story of My Experiments with Truth - Mohandas K. Gandhi autobiography 1948

 

"Her duty was easily converted into my right to exact faithfulness from her, and if it had to be exacted, I should be watchfully tenacious of the right."

"I saw that bad handwriting should be regarded as a sign of an imperfect education. I tried later to improve mine, but it was too late."

"True friendship is an identity of souls rarely to be found in this world. Only between like natures can friendship be altogether worthy and enduring."

"... the change harmonized my inward and outward life. It was also more in keeping with the means of my family. My life was certainly more truthful and my soul knew no bounds of joy."

 "So long as we are children we are attracted by toys, and the Tower was a good demonstration of the fact that we are all children attracted by trinkets. That may be claimed to be the purpose served by the Eiffel Tower."

"The hardship to which I was subjected was superficial - only a symptom of the deep disease of colour prejudice... Redress for wrongs I should seek only to the extent that would be necessary for the removal of the colour prejudice."

"Was this the meaning of Christianity? Did they cease to be Indians because they had become Christians?"

"I should not exhaust my skill as a fighter in insisting on retaining my turban. It was worthy of a better cause."

"It has always been a mystery to me how men can feel themselves honoured by the humiliation of their fellow-beings."

"It is only the English-speaking ones who will not learn it, as though knowledge of English were an obstacle to learning our own languages."

"Such service can have no meaning unless one takes pleasure in it. When it is done for show or for fear of public opinion, it stunts the man and crushes the spirit."

"A patriot cannot afford to ignore any branch of service to the motherland."

"A public institution means an institution conducted with the approval, and from the funds, of the public. When such an institution ceases to have public support, it forfeits the right to exist. Institutions maintained on permanent funds are often found to ignore public opinion, and are frequently responsible to acts contrary to it."

"It is the reformer who is anxious for the reform, and not society, from which he should except nothing better than opposition, abhorrence and even mortal persecution."

"The deeper the search in the mine of truth the richer the discovery of the gems buried there, in the shape of openings for an ever greater variety of service."

"I believed then and I believe even now, that, no matter what amount of work one has, one should always find some time for exercise, just as one does for one's meals... far from taking away from one's capacity for work, it adds to it."

"A writer almost always presents one aspect of a case, whereas every case can be seen from no less than seven points of view, all of which are probably correct by themselves, but not correct at the same time and in the same circumstances."

"The newspaper press is a great power, but just as an unchained torrent of water submerges whole countrysides and devastates crops, even so an uncontrolled pen serves but to destroy."

"It is a rare thing in this world to be born as a human being, and I would far rather die in your arms than pollute my body with such abominations."

"... even truthfulness in the practice of the profession cannot cure it of the fundamental defect that vitiates it."

"I had seen packets of indigo, but little dreamed that it was grown and manufactured in Champaran at great hardship to thousands of agriculturists."

"My coworkers and I had built many castles in the air, but they all vanished for the time being."

"... whose desperate struggle for bread renders them insensible to all feelings of decency and self-respect. And our philanthropists, instead of providing work for them and insisting on their working for bread, give them alms."

"Civility does not here mean the mere outward gentleness of speech cultivated for the occasion, but an inborn gentleness and desire to do the opponent good."

"The lesson was indelibly imprinted on the public mind that the salvation of the people depends upon themselves, upon their capacity for suffering and sacrifice."

"What a tragedy that the language of the country should be taboo in meetings held in the country, for work relating to the country, and that a speech there in Hindustani by a stray individual like myself should be a matter for congratulations!"

"It was one interwoven with my course of life which is guided by principles no longer depending upon outside authority."

"To see the universal and all-pervading Spirit of Truth face to face one must be able to love the meanest of creation as oneself."

"That is why my devotion to Truth has drawn me into the field of politics; and I can say without the slightest hesitation, and yet in all humility, that those who say that religion has nothing to do with politics do not know what religion means."

"In bidding farewell to the reader... I ask him to join with me in prayer to the God of Truth that He may grant me the boon of Ahimsa in mind, word and deed."

[quotes] Gilead - Marilynne Robinson 2004

 

"If you're a grown man when you read this - it is my intention for this letter that you will read it then - I'll have been gone a long time. I'll know most of what there is to know about being dead, but I'll probably keep it to myself. That seems to be the way of things."

"... and I wonder what it expends out of your system, so that you have to do it till you're done, like crying in a way, I suppose, except that laughter is much more easily spent."

"So the congregation took up collections to put him in college and then to send him to Germany. And he came back an atheist. That's what he always to be, at any rate."

"We'd go through the possibilities we were aware of. There weren't many."

"You may not remember me at all, and it may seem to you to be no great thing to have been the good child of an old man in a shabby little town you will no doubt leave behind. If only I had the words to tell you."

"But in fact one lapse in judgment can quickly create a situation in which only foolish choices are possible."

"I have been thinking lately how I have loved my physical life."

"These people who can see right through you never quite do you justice, because they never give you credit for the effort you're making to be better than you actually are, which is difficult and well meant and deserving of some little notice."

"I never dared to ask him what he'd been up to. I couldn't risk the possibility of knowing things that were worse than my suspicions."

"It was kindly intended, but not considerate, I understand that."

"Calvin says somewhere that each of us is an actor on a stage and God is the audience... How well do we understand our role? With how much assurance to we perform it?"

"... she did by loving that unremarkable book so much that I noticed and read it, too. That was providence telling me what she could not have told me."

"I wish I could leave you certain of the images in my mind, because they are so beautiful that I hate to think they will be extinguished when I am."

"Because nothing true can be said about God from a posture of defense."

"... just an old man struggling with the difficulty of understanding what it is he's struggling with."

"I truly suspect I never left because I was afraid I would not come back."

"How could I accept the advice of someone who had such a low estimation of me?"

"... and he would protect him like a father cannot, defend him with a strength he does not have, sustain him with a bounty beyond any resource he could ever dream of having."

"They mattered or they didn't and that's the end of it."

"Here on the prairie there is nothing to distract attention from the evening and the morning, nothing on the horizon to abbreviate or to delay. Mountains would seem an impertinence from that point of view."

"I love this town. I think sometimes of going into the ground here as a last wild gesture of love - I too will smolder away the time until the great and general incandescence."

[quotes] The Joy Luck Club - Amy Tan 1989

 

"And she waited, year after year, for the day she could tell her daughter this in perfect American English."

"In me, they see their own daughters, just as arrogant, just as ignorant, just as unmindful of all the truths and hopes they have brought to America. They see daughters who grow impatient when their mothers talk in Chinese, who think they are stupid when they explain things in fractured English."

"I saw these things with my Chinese eyes, the part of me I got from my mother."

"It was one of complete despair and horror, for losing Bing, for being so foolish to think she could use faith to change fate."

"And I think now that fate is shaped half by expectation, half by inattention. But somehow, when you lose something you love, faith takes over. You have to pay attention to what you lost. You have to undo the expectation."

"And in a way, I felt disappointed. I had been waiting for her to start shouting, so I could shout back and blame her for all my misery."

"But my therapist said, Why do you blame your culture, your ethnicity? And I remembered reading an article about baby boomers, how we expect the best and when we get it we worry that maybe we should have expected more, because it's all diminishing returns after a certain age."

"The power of my words was that strong."

"That's the way Chinese mothers show they love their children, not through hugs and kisses but with stern offerings of steamed dumplings, duck's gizzards, and crab."

"Then you must teach my daughter this same lesson. How to lose your innocence but not your hope. How to laugh forever."

"Secrets are kept from children, a lid on top of the soup kettle, so they do not boil over with too much truth."

"It's my fault she is this way. I wanted my children to have the best combination: American circumstances and Chinese character. How could I know these two things do not mix?"

"In America, nobody says you have to keep the circumstances somebody else gives you."

[quotes] The Wise Man's Fear - Patrick Ruthfuss 2011

"That is how heavy a secret can become. It can make blood flow easier than ink."

"It's like Teccam said, nothing in the world is harder than convincing someone of an unfamiliar truth."

[quotes] The Name of the Wind - Patrich Rothfuss 2008

"Lovely as the moon: not flawless, perhaps, but perfect."

"We understand how dangerous a mask can be. We all become what we pretend to be."

[quotes] The Autobiography of Martin Luther King Jr. - Ed. Clayborne Carson 1998

"I have never experienced the feeling of not having the basic necessities of life. These things were always provided by a father who always put his family first."

"But this uncritical attitude could not last long, for it was contrary to the very nature of my being. I had always been the questioning and precocious type."

"I would end up having to go to the back of that bus with my body, but every time I got on that bus I left my mind up on the front seat. And I said to myself, 'One of these days I'm going to put my body up there where my mind is."

"It is my conviction that the minister must somehow take profound theological and philosophical views and place them in a concrete framework. I must forever make the complex the simple."

"Above all, I see the preaching ministry as a dual process. On the one hand I must attempt to change the soul of individuals so that their societies may be changed. On the other I must attempt to change the societies so that the individual soul will have a change."

"...the chronicle of fifty thousand Negroes who took to heart the principles of nonviolence, who learned to fight for their right with the weapon of love, and who, in the process, acquired a new estimate of their own human worth."

"And as I watched them I knew that there is nothing more majestic than the determined courage of individuals willing to suffer and sacrifice for their freedom and dignity."

"I soon saw that I was the victim of an unwarranted pessimism because I had started out with an unwarranted optimism."

"Those who had previously trembled before the law were now proud to be arrested for the cause of freedom."

"What the opposition failed to see was that our mutual suffering had wrapped us all in a single garment of destiny. What happened to one happened to all."

"Often the path to freedom will carry you through prison."

"The aftermath of nonviolence is the creation of the beloved community, so that when the battle is over, a new relationship comes into being between the oppressed and the oppressor."

"Our ultimate aim was not to defeat or humiliate the white man but to win his friendship and understanding. We had a moral obligation to remind him that segregation is wrong. We protested with the ultimate aim of being reconciled with our white brothers."

"But I had to look at something else beyond the man - the people who surrounded him - and I felt that Kennedy was surrounded by better people. It was on that basis that I felt that Kennedy would make the best president."

"The people of Albany had straightened their backs, and, as Gandhi had said, no one can ride on the back of a man unless it is bent."

"The ultimate tragedy of Birmingham was not the brutality of the bad people, but the silence of the good people."

"There comes a time in the atmosphere of leadership when a man surrounded by loyal friends and allies realizes he has come face-to-face with himself and with ruthless reality. I was along in that crowded room."

"We know through painful experience that freedom is never voluntarily given by the oppressor; it must be demanded by the oppressed."

"...one has a moral responsibility to disobey unjust laws. I would agree with St. Augustine that 'an unjust law is no law at all.'"

"I have tried to make clear that it is wrong to use immoral means to attain moral ends. But now I must affirm that it is just as wrong, or perhaps even more so, to use moral means to preserve immoral ends."

"A social movement that only moves people is merely a revolt. A movement that changes both people and institution is a revolution."

"American political thought was not committed to conservatism, nor radicalism, nor moderation. It was above all fluid. As such it contained trends rather than hard lines, and affirmative leadership could guide it into constructive channels."

"Occasionally in life there are those moments of unutterable fulfillment which cannot be completely explained by those symbols called words. Their meaning can only be articulated by the inaudible language of the heart."

"But then I realized that this was no mere recognition of the contribution of one man on the stage of history. It was a testimony to the magnificent drama of the civil rights movement and the thousands of actors who had played their roles extremely well. In truth, it is these 'noble' people who had won this Novel Prize."

"Racial justice around the world. Poverty. War. When man solves these three great problems he will have squared his moral progress with his scientific progress. And, more importantly, he will had learned the practical art of living in harmony."

"Cities that had been citadels of the status quo became the unwilling birthplace of significant national legislation. Montgomery led to the Civil Rights Act of 1957 and 1960; Birmingham inspired the Civil Rights Act of 1964; and Selma produced the Voting Rights Act of 1965."

"When all is finally entered into the annals of sociology; when philosophers, politicians, and preachers have all had their say, we must return to the fact that a person participates in this society primarily as an economic entity. At rock bottom we are neither poets, athletes, nor artists; our existence is centered in the fact that we are consumers, because we first must eat and have shelter to life."

"I should have been reminded that disappointment produces despair and despair produces bitterness, and that the one thing certain about bitterness is its blindness."

"Power at its best is love implementing the demands of justice. Justice at its best is love correcting everything that stands against love."

"I refuse to determine what is right by taking a Gallup poll of the trends of the time. I imagine that there were leaders in Germany who sincerely opposed what Hitler was doing to the Jews. But they took their poll and discovered that anti-Semitism was the prevailing trend. In order to 'be in step with the times,' in order to 'keep in touch,' they yielded to one of the most ignominious evils that history has ever known."

"We must rapidly begin the shift from a thing-oriented society to a person-oriented society. When machines and computers, profit motives and property rights, are considered more important than people, the giant triples of racism, extreme materialism, and militarism are incapable of being conquered."

"On some positions, Cowardice asks the question, 'Is it safe?' Expediency asks the question, 'Is it politic?' And Vanity comes along and asks the question, 'Is it popular?' But Conscience asks the question, 'Is it right?' And there comes a time when one must take a position that is neither safe, not politic, nor popular, but he must do it because Conscience tells him it is right."

"If I can help somebody as I pass along, if I can cheer somebody with a word or song, if I can show somebody he's traveling wrong, then my living will not be in vain. If I can do my duty as a Christian ought, it I can bring salvation to a world once wrought, if I can spread the message as the master taught, then my living will not be in vain."

[quotes] The Knowledge Illusion - Steven Sloman and Phillip Fernbach 2017

"Our intelligence resides not in individual brains but in the collective mind."

"We all suffer, from a greater or lesser extent, from an illusion of understanding, an illusion that we understand how things work when in fact our understanding is meager."

"Our skulls may delimit the frontiers of our brains, but they do not delimit the frontier of our knowledge."

"Looking closer at things just raises more questions. There is always more to understand."

"... It's about what causes people to act and how you can modify their motivations, to make them think they're doing something for a different reason than they initially thought."

"When a community agrees to buy into a particular story, they are accepting the attitude implied by the story."

"My ability to act doesn't depend on the knowledge that happens to be in my head at a given moment; it depends on what knowledge I can access when I need it."

"The curse of knowledge is that we tend to think what is in our heads is in the heads of others. In the knowledge illusion, we tend to think what is in others' heads is in our heads. In both cases, we fail to discern who knows what."

"Each of us has our little window on the world, a little bit of knowledge that we have access to."

"We may individually suffer from the knowledge illusion, but the expertise that's present in a crowd can overcome individual biases."

"The power that culture has over cognition just swamps these attempts at education."

"Apparently, the fact that a strong majority of people has some preference does not mean that their opinion is informed."

"... great philosopher and political activist Bertrand Russell said, 'The opinions that are held with passion are always those for which no good ground exists.'"

"Getting people to think beyond their own interests and experiences may be necessary for reducing their hubris and thereby reducing polarization."

"... thinking through the consequences of a policy is hard - very hard. It's much easier just to hide one's ignorance in a veil of platitudes about sacred values."

"... people are less inclined to seek new information after finding out they were wrong. Causal explanation is an effective way to shatter the illusion, but people don't like having their illusion shattered."

"A good leader must be able to help people realize their ignorance without making them feel stupid."

"The idolization of individuals, as well as our corresponding failure to appreciate the role of the communities they represent, is more than just a ruse to simplify complex histories. The images we retain of these individuals shape how we think about the events they participated in."

"Understanding where you fit requires understanding not only what you know but also what others know that you don't."

"In every domain of life, knowledge is interdependent. The knowledge that I'm legally responsible for is not necessarily in my head."

"Learning and performance benefit from having a greater range of expertise. Having a diverse group of people of different backgrounds, classes, genders, and races can only increase that range."

"The big lesson of the nudge approach is that it is easier and more effective to change the environment than it is to change the person."

[quotes] Pachinko - Min Jin Lee 2017

 

"If it were possible for a man and his wife to share one heart, Hoonie was this steady, beating organ."

"Most people told you their thoughts in words and later confirmed them in actions. There were more people who told the truth than those who lied. Very few people lied well. What was most disappointing to him was when a person turned out to be no different than the next."

"'Most people are rotten everywhere you go. They're no good. You want to see a bad man?  Make an ordinary man successful beyond his imagination. Let's see how good he is when he can do whatever he wants.'"

"He had become almost inured to death; his frailty had reinforced his conviction that he must do something of consequence while he had the time."

"'One bad Korean ruins it for thousands of others. And one bad Christian hurts tens of thousands of Christians everywhere, especially in a nation of unbelievers.'"

"Yoseb would have crawled on his belly across the floor of the station if that would have made Isak free. Their eldest brother, Samoel, had been the brave one, the one who would've confronted the officers with audacity and grace, but Yoseb knew he was no hero [...] Yoseb didn't understand the point of anyone dying for his country or for some greater ideal. He understood survival and family."

"Save your family. Feed your belly. Pay attention, and be skeptical of the people in charge."

"Without the others around, it was possible to be kind to her son. Parents weren't supposed to praise their children, she knew this - it would only invite disaster."

"The factory owner believed that if all Asian countries were run with a kind of Japanese efficiency, attention to detail, and high level of organization, Asia as a whole would prosper and rise - able to defeat the unscrupulous West."

"Patriotism is just an idea, so is capitalism or communism. But ideas can make men forget their own interests. And the guys in charge will exploit men who believe in ideas too much."

"'Although, if you like everything you read, I can't take you seriously. Perhaps you didn't think about these books long enough.'"

"she would not believe that she was no different than her parents, that seeing him as only Korean - good or bad - was the same as seeing him only as a bad Korean. She would not see his humanity, and Noa realized that this was what he wanted most of all: to be seen as human."

"He would not understand. Her son could not feel compassion for those who did not try."

"the players also came to escape the eerily quiet streets where few said hello, to keep away from the loveless homes where wives slept with children instead of husbands, and to avoid the overheated rush-hour train cars where it was okay to push but not okay to talk to strangers."

"'People are awful. Drink some beer'"

"Etsuko Nagatomi loved all three of her children, but she did not love them all the same. Being a mother had taught her that this kind of emotional injustice was perhaps inevitable."

"her ex-husband used to dismiss this idea of fate as a lazy explanation for the bad choices people made. Regardless, life had only confirmed her belief that there was indeed a pattern to it all."

"There were so many errors. If life allowed revisions, she would let them stay in their baths a little longer, read them one more story before bed, and fix them another plate of shrimp."

"'I have never been to Japan [...] but I hope that wherever I am in life and whatever I do, I can be a good Japanese. I hope to never bring shame to my people.'"

"The Japanese said that Koreans had too much heat in their blood. Seeds, blood. How could you fight such hopeless ideas? Noa had been a sensitive child who had believed that if he followed all the rules and was the best, then somehow the hostile world would change its mind. His death may have been her fault for having allowed him to believe in such cruel ideas."

"'So then success tax comes from envy, and the shit tax comes from exploitation. Okay [...] then what's the mediocre tax?' [...] 'Good question, young Jedi. The tax for being mediocre comes from you and everyone else knowing that you are mediocre. It's a heavier tax than you'd think.'"

[quotes] The Year of Living Danishly - Helen Russell 2015

 

"It's not just Prius drivers, help-fans and hipsters who are passionate about the environment in Denmark. Being eco-friendly here is seen as a basic duty and something you do to be a part of Danish society."

"You know you're going to get taxed a lot anyway, so you may as well just focus on doing what you love, rather than what's going to land you a massive salary."

"'A fear of God isn't included in the Danish version of the Protestant religion,' explains Pernille."

"The Global Index of Religion and Atheism also assessed that poverty was a key indicator of a society's tendency towards religion - so that poorer countries tend to be more religious. The one exception tot the rule? America."

"Not long ago we [women] were second-rate citizens. We have to stay alert and be aware not to fall into old patterns. It's a big problem when young women - and men - don't have the historical perspective and mistakenly think that they're 'free' to do what they want, without seeing the structural and cultural forces that are still at work."

"Growing up in a female-centric bubble of delusion was a distinct advantage - it never occurred to me that I couldn't do absolutely anything."

"Danish preteens cover homosexuality, bisexuality, and heterosexuality and as the first country in the world to recognize registered partnerships for same-sex couples and the first European country to allow legal changes to gender without sterilization, Denmark has long placed an emphasis on inclusion."

"It's a bit like the school system and even the job market here - the individual has freedom within safe boundaries."

"One you trust 'the system' and can get your head around the fact that it's not trying to screw you over, it's easier to pay your taxes with grace 0 safe in the knowledge that the money is going to a good place."

"Danes want to be thought of as tolerant - it's important to them. And so The Danish Way is slowly adapting to incorporate new influences and arrivals."

[quotes] Lost Decades: the Making of America's Debt Crisis and the Long Recovery - Menzie D. Chinn and Jeffry A. Frieden 2011

  

"Republicans cut taxes to create deficits that restrained their opponents."

"Foreign borrowing, like any borrowing, makes sense if the borrowed money is used productively."

"Foreign debts made the good times better; they made the bad times worse."

"Facing a trade-off between recession now versus recession later makes the choice easy: you're in office now, somebody else will be in office later."

"Greater risks get lenders additional return on each dollar's investments. Leverage augmented this increased appetite for risk: owners of highly leveraged financial institutions have less of their own money at stake. If something goes wrong and the firm goes under, its owners' downside losses are limited to their own capital."

"As complexity grew, transparency declined. With each additional layer of securitization, it became more and more difficult to figure out the real worth of a given security, and in particular how risky it might be."

"A bank that is facing liquidity problems is out of ready cash; a bank that is insolvent is out of business."

"There are times when, in order to protect the innocent, society has to bail out the guilty, and this crisis was one of those times."

"Ironically, one of the principal results of the debt crisis [in Latin America] was a wave of democratization."

"Outrage grew apace, as the government threw hundreds of billions of dollars of taxpayer money into bailing out some of those most responsible for the crisis, while the culprits continued to pay themselves huge bonuses."

"Merrill Lynch lost $27.6 billion in 2008, collapsed spectacularly, had to be bought by Bank of America, and was rescued with $10 billion in federal money; yet at the end of that disastrous year, its management approved bonuses of $3.6 billion."

"All of these reasons to worry about chronic, large-scale deficits are subsumed by the most important reason: they impose massive costs on future generations, who did nothing to incur them. Excessive borrowing now means that our descendants inherit a smaller capital stock and a smaller economy."

"Meanwhile, the country's taxpayers appear unwilling to accept that higher taxes are the price a society pays for the programs it adopts."

"National policies to address desperate national conditions ended up imposing costs on other countries - not on purpose, but as an unintended consequence of measures undertaken in grave circumstances under serious political stress."

"The danger [to globalization] is not a sudden plunge into trade wars, but a gradual erosion of support for compromise with commercial and financial partners, a gradual decline in patterns of cooperation and collaboration."

"John Maynard Keynes is said to have remarked, 'If you owe your bank manager a thousand pounds, you are at his mercy. If you owe him a million pounds, he is at your mercy.' The same is true of countries: debtors can hold their creditors hostage just as surely as the other way around."

"A government (or firm, or household) does not impose externalities on others on purpose; they are an inadvertent result of self-interested behavior that does not take the well-being of neighbors into account."

"In both [the US and China], clearly, it's the producers who dominate currency politics; consumers are too disparate a group to play an organized role."

"But conscientious politicians have a duty to use their access to greater information and greater authority to avoid policy traps, not to exploit them."

"Americans need to decide which services they want their government to deliver and then pay for those services."

"Because the government taxes income rather than consumption, it makes consuming today more attractive than saving for the future."

"Institutions too big to fail create the possibility of 'private profits and socialized losses.'"

"Americans face a serious economic challenge. They lost the first decade of the century to a boom that enriched the wealthiest, and a subsequent bust that impoverished the rest."

"it is the job of policymakers to make difficult choices, informed by knowledge and understanding that the average citizen does not have."

[quotes] A Brief History of Time - Stephen Hawking 1988

 

"At early times the universe would probably be in a disordered state. This would mean that disorder would decrease with time. You would see broken cups gathering themselves together and jumping back onto the table. However, any human beings who were observing the cups would be living in a universe in which disorder decreased with time. I shall argue that such beings would have a psychological arrow of time that was backwards. That is, they would remember events in the future, and not remember events in their past. When the cup was broken, they would remember it being on the table, but when it was on the table, they would not remember it being on the floor."

[quotes] The Water Will Come - Jeff Goodell 2017

 

"eventually, when we've exhausted every other alternative we finally do the right thing."

"The loss of Venice is about the loss of a part of ourselves that reaches back in time and binds us together as civilized people."

"If it not built right , a wall can create as many problems as it solves."

"'Workers in the processing plants often don't get bathroom breaks and have to pee on themselves.'"

"...under the Compact of Free Association, there are no restrictions on the number of Marshallese who can come to America. The entire population of the country could move to Arkansas."

"'You can drastically reduce your greenhouse gas emissions so that the seas do not rise so much... Or, when we show up on your shores in our boats, you can let us in... Or, when we show up on your shores in our boats, you can shoot us. You pick.'" 

"Instead, many people in the military end up talking about climate in much the way eighth graders talk about sex - with code words and winks and suggestive language."

"Military leaders embraced desegregation long before the rest of the nation, in part because they wanted the best people they could find, no matter what color."

"In order words, just because I can tell you how to solve the problem, if it doesn't fit within the culture of this city and the future of this city, then it's not the right solution."

"It was as clear a picture of the insanity of modern life as I've ever seen."

"But the future will not take care of itself. It will be shaped by decisions we made yesterday and will make tomorrow."

"It also means that wealthy, politically connected residents will be able to dictate how and where cities and towns spend their money, which will of course mean less spending for poor neighborhoods that don't have the means to threaten lawsuits."

"... our memories adhere to places in surprising ways."

"'It is going to require a rethinking of the social contract between governments and citizens.'"

[quotes] Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance - Robert M. Pirsig 1974

 

"It's a puzzling thing. The truth knocks on the door and you say, 'Go away, I'm looking for the truth,' and so it goes away."

"Not deliberately to irritate him but because the irritation seems symptomatic of something deeper, something under the surface that isn't immediately apparent."

"You always suppress momentary anger at something you deeply and permanently hate."

"But one does not convert individuals into mass people with the simple coining of a mass term."

"a thing that exists here because everything else does not and can be noticed because other things are absent."

"Caring about what you are doing is considered either unimportant or taken for granted."

"But the world as discovered by its scientific discoveries is also reality, and people in John's dimension will have to do more than just ignore it if they want to hang on to their vision of reality."

"A classic understanding sees the world primarily as underlying form itself. A romantic understanding sees it primarily in terms of immediate appearance."

"Persons tend to think and feel exclusively in one mode or the other and in doing so tend to misunderstand and underestimate what the other mode is all about."

"What makes his world so hard to see clearly is not its strangeness but its usualness. Familiarity can blind you too."

"We take a handful of sand from the endless landscape of awareness around us and call that handful of sand the world."

"Black and white. Now and then. The discrimination is the division of the conscious universe into parts."

"He wanted to destroy it because the ghost was what he was and he wanted to be free from the bondage of his own identity."

"If all hypotheses cannot be tested, then the results of any experiment are inconclusive and the entire scientific method falls short of its goal of establishing proven knowledge."

"... needing these mountains in an almost physiological way."

"... and his thoughts were already independent to a degree few people are familiar with."

"It's so hard when contemplated in advance, and so easy when you do it."

"What we think of as reality is a continuous synthesis of elements from a fixed hierarchy of a priori concepts and the ever changing data of the senses."

"The range of human knowledge today is so great that we're all specialists and the distance between specializations has become so great that anyone who seeks to wander freely among them has to forego closeness with the people around him."

"No one is fanatically shouting that the sun is going to rise tomorrow. They know it's going to rise tomorrow. When people are fanatically dedicated to political or religious faiths or any other kind of dogmas or goals, it's always because these dogmas or goals are in doubt."

"If the machine produces tranquility it's right. If it disturbs you it's wrong until either the machine or your mind is changed."

"'You look at where you're going and where you are and it never makes sense, but then you look back at where you've been and a pattern seems to emerge. And if you project forward from that pattern, then sometimes you can come up with something."

"You climb the mountain in an equilibrium between restlessness and exhaustion. Then, when you're no longer thinking ahead, each footstep isn't just a means to an end but a unique event in itself."

"Any effort that has self-glorification as its final endpoint is bound to end in disaster."

"He rejects the here, is unhappy with it, wants to be farther up the trail but when he gets there will be just as unhappy because then it will be 'here'."

"Definitions are the foundation of reason."

"When you are trained to despise 'just what you like' then, of course, you become a much more obedient servant of others - a good slave. When you learn not to do 'just what you like' then the System loves you."

"The past exists only in our memories, the future only in our plans. The present is our only reality."

"The past cannot remember the past. The future can't generate the future. The cutting edge of this instant right here and now is always nothing less than the totality of everything there is."

"We keep passing unseen through little moments of other people's lives."

"You have to be awfully stylish yourself not to get sick of it once in a while. It's the style that gets you; technological ugliness syruped over with romantic phoniness in an effort to produce beauty and profit by people who, though stylish, don't know where to start because no one has told them there's such a thing as Quality in this world and it's real, not style."

"We have artists with no scientific knowledge and scientists with no artistic knowledge and both with no spiritual sense of gravity at all, and the results is not just bad, it is ghastly."

"The place to improve the world is first in one's own heart and head and hands, and then work outward from there."

"A person filled with gumption doesn't sit around dissipating and stewing about things. He's at the front of the train of his own awareness, watching to see what's up the track and meeting it when it comes. That's gumption."

"If you have a high evaluation of yourself then your ability to recognize new facts is weakened. Your ego isolates you from the Quality of reality."

"You want to know how to paint a perfect painting? It's easy. Make yourself perfect and then just paint naturally. That's the way all the experts do it. The making of a painting or the fixing of a motorcycle isn't separate from the rest of your existence."

"'Quality is the continuous stimulus which causes us to create the world in which we live. All of it. Every last bit of it.'"

"The media has convinced them that what's right around them is unimportant. And that's why they're lonely."

"... the tendency to do what is 'reasonable' even when it isn't any good."

"A good student seeks knowledge fairly and impartially."

"'What moves the Greek warrior to deeds of heroism,' Kitto comments, 'is not a sense of duty as we understand it - duty towards others: it is rather duty towards himself. He strives after that which we translate "virtue" but is in Greek arete, "excellence".'"

"We always condemn most in others, he thought, that which we most fear in ourselves."

"If it was all bricks and concrete, pure form of substance, clearly and openly, he might survive. It is the little, pathetic attempts at Quality that kill. The plaster false fireplace in the apartment, shaped and waiting to contain a flame that can never exist. Or the hedge in front of the apartment building with a few feet of grass behind it. A few feet of grass, after Montana. If they just left out the hedge and grass it would be alright. Now it serves only to draw attention to what has been lost."