Why has mankind had such a craving to be imposed upon? Why this lust after imposing creeds, imposing deeds, imposing buildings, imposing language, imposing works of art? The thing becomes an imposition and a weariness at last. Give us things that are alive and flexible, which won't last too long and become an obstruction and a weariness….. It is all a question of sensitiveness. Brute force and overbearing may make a terrific effect. But in the end, that which lives lives by delicate sensitiveness. If it were a question of brute force, not a single human baby would survive for a fortnight. It is the grass of the field, most frail of all things, that supports all life all the time. But for the green grass, no empire would rise, no man would eat bread: for grain is grass…. Brute force crushes many plants. Yet the plants rise again. The Pyramids will not last a moment compared with the daisy. And before Buddha or Jesus spoke the nightingale sang, and long after the words of Jesus and Buddha are gone into oblivion the nightingale still will sing. Because it is neither preaching nor teaching nor commanding nor urging. It is just singing. And in the beginning was not a Word, but a chirrup. 

D. H. Lawrence, Etruscan Places

In current Catholic dogma, [purgatory] is a state of being rather than an actual realm between Hell and Heaven: an inner fire in the conscience of sinners that refines their impurities.

Judith Thurman, Reading Dante’s Purgatory While the World Hangs in the Balance, The New Yorker (September 13, 2021)

Boy, you got me confused with a man who repeats himself.

Omar Little (Michael K. Williams), The Wire

No one starts a war--or rather, no one in his sense ought to do so--without first being clear in his mind what he intends to achieve by the war and how he intends to conduct it.

Carl Von Clausewitz

On Consciousness as MetaThinking about Thinking

It seems much more accurate to say that consciousness is along for the ride — watching the show, rather than creating or controlling it. In theory, we can go as far as to say that few (if any) of our behaviors need consciousness in order to be carried out…. the obstacle we face here once again seems to be a case of confusing consciousness with the concept of a self....[we are] machines that think about thinking.

Annaka Harris, Conscious : exploring the mystery of consciousness

Popular delusions occur when appealing but baseless stories spread contagiously from one person to another. Some ideas are more virulent than others: people have been found to react most enthusiastically to narratives of fear.

Edward Chancellor, "Waiting to Deflate" New York Review (August 19, 2021)

Fear is the antithesis of peace.

David Crosby

In Honor of Brood X

Nothing in the cry of cicadas suggests they are about to die.

Matsuo Bashō

 

If studying history mainly makes you feel happy and proud, you probably aren’t really studying history.

Quoted without attribution by Fara Dabhoiwala in the New York Review (July 1, 2021)

Every parent of a teenager gets used to it: the moment in a child's life when he or she decides that certain facts are just too much trouble to explain to Mom or Dad.

Neal Stephenson, Seveneves

The various modes of worship which prevailed in the Roman world were all considered by the people as equally true; by the philosopher as equally false; and by the magistrate as equally useful.

Edward Gibbon

A life is not such a tremendous time to learn to express your ideas.

Henry Adams

Politics is the systematic organization of hatreds.... Practical politics consists in ignoring facts.

Henry Adams

The market could only reward ideas that turned a profit. Nobody stood to profit from clean parks; they were just nicer to live with than dirty parks. But if nobody made the political judgment that clean parks were better, a society organized around profit incentives from production alone would almost automatically end up with dirty parks. The market was not an impartial guide to the beliefs of the public, and some of its verdicts were crazy…. When public goods fell into disorder or neglect, people found them unpleasant and satiated their desires with what the market had to offer…. The economic organization of society was devoted not to maximizing social comfort and harmony but to satisfying the consumer desires created by advertising and production itself. And that in turn was hampering society’s ability to grapple with poverty. 

Kenneth Galbraith, according to Zachary D.Carter in The Price of Peace

Though his American followers would pursue fine-tuned tax-and-spending plans to lift demand during recessions, Keynes instead called for the government to manage future stages of overall economic scarcity through direct investment spending…. the government should seek “to prevent large fluctuations” in employment by enacting “a stable long-term programme” that would spend money on things like infrastructure, factory equipment, and scientific research. 

Zachary D.Carter in The Price of Peace

Keynes had come to believe that the problem was really much simpler: Unemployment was a breeding ground for fascism. It created dangerous political instability and a source of anger that could easily be weaponized. The terms of trade might help or hurt efforts to establish international goodwill, but tariffs or no tariffs, the legitimacy of an international economic order depended entirely on whether it did, in fact, provide for mutual prosperity.

Zachary D.Carter in The Price of Peace

According to Keynes

Uncertainty about the future—not irrationality or stupidity—makes crowds prone to calamity in both finance and politics, particularly under conditions of significant anxiety. Markets are no more self-correcting than a mob hailing a demagogue.

Zachary D.Carter in The Price of Peace

[Keynes argued that] money...was an inherently political tool. It was the state that determined what substance—gold, paper, whatever—actually counted as money—what “thing” people and the government would accept as valid payment. The state thus created money and had always regulated its value.... The very idea of capitalism required active state economic management—the regulation of money and debt.

Zachary D.Carter in The Price of Peace

It is not a correct deduction from the principles of economics that enlightened self-interest always operates in the public interest.

 
John Maynard Keynes, The End of Laissez-Faire, as quoted by Zachary D.Carter in The Price of Peace

Self knowledge, however, cannot itself redeem.

Jeremy Black, England in the Age of Shakespeare