Who can fathom the soundless depths?

Jules Verne, riffing on the Book of Ecclesiastes in his 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea

Capitalism is a partnership between governors and merchants that secures the power of both.... merchants grow rich because state power protects them or looks away when the time is right.

Martha Howell, The New York Review (April 7, 2016)

Complaining doesn't have to do good, it just feels good!

Jules Verne, 20000 Leagues Under the Sea

Suffering is not as easy as it looks.


Overheard...

In essence, the planet runs on a cycle of water-splitting by photosynthesis to form oxygen and the production of water by respiration.

Paul G. Falkowski in Life's Engines:  How Microbes Made Earth Habitable

Today, not carrying a smartphone indicates eccentricity, social marginalization, or old age.


Jacob Weisberg, The New York Review (February 55, 2016)

It was impossible for any one to open his grief to a neighbor and to concert measures to defend himself, as he would have had to speak either to one whom he did not know, or whom he knew but did not trust.

Thucydides, The History of the Peloponnesian War

How many fruitless pranks this ruffian hath botch'd up.

Shakespeare -- Twelfth Night

Love of country is what I do not feel when I am wronged, but what I felt when secure in my rights as a citizen.... the true lover of his country is not he who consents to lose it unjustly rather than attack it, but he who longs for it so much that he will go all lengths to recover it.

Alcibiades, as quoted by Thucydides, (The History of the Peloponnesian War)

It will be said, perhaps, that democracy is neither wise nor equitable, but that the holders of property are also the best fitted to rule.  I say, on the contrary, first, that the word demos, or people, includes the whole state, oligarchy only a part; next, that if the best guardians of property are the rich, and the best counselors the wise, none can hear and decide so well as the many; and that all these talents, severally and collectively, have their just place in a democracy. But an oligarchy gives the many their share of the danger, and not content with the largest part takes and keeps the whole of the profit.

 Thucydides, The History of the Peloponnesian War