Myth and Ritual

We're Johnny come lately. We live in the boondocks. We emerged from microbes. Apes are our cousins. Our thoughts and feelings are not fully under our own control. And on top of all of this, we're making a mess of our planet and becoming a danger to ourselves. The trapdoor beneath our feet swings open, we find ourselves in bottomless free-fall. If it takes a little myth and ritual to get us through this, who among us could not sympathize?
--Carl Sagan

Rom Com

I regard romantic comedies as a subgenre of sci-fi, in which the world operates according to different rules than my regular human world.
--Mindy Kaling

Morality

Premature fiscal tightening is, warns experience, as big a danger as delayed tightening would be. There are no certainties here. The world economy--or at least that of the advanced countries--remains disturbingly fragile. Only those who believe the economy is a morality play, in which those they deem wicked should suffer punishment, would enjoy that painful result.
--Martin Wolf (economics editor of the Financial Times)

The Rich

How's that little fairy tale go again? We're supposed to let the rich pile up more and more because then they're going to run around and start all these businesses and employ everybody. How's that workin' out for ya?
--Back Across the River

Change

Social change happens in many ways, but one primary and inescapable way is that people who are passionate and informed and courageous make personal testimony to others.
--Cary Tennis

Own

Those who own the country ought to govern it.
--John Jay

Markets

Our economy is based on artifacts. Property, contract, money, corporations, these are all economic domains based on law and convention. Markets themselves are not natural, they are products of law. There is no such thing as "the market," with necessary and natural features. There are markets.
--The Current Moment

The Future

I've seen the future, and it's much like the present, only longer.
--Dan Quisenberry

Serenity

Peace of mind isn't at all superficial, really. It's the whole thing. That which produces it is good maintenance; that which disturbs it is poor maintenance. What we call workability of the machine is just an objectification of this peace of mind. The ultimate test is always your own serenity.
--Robert M. Pirsig

Tyranny

The rebel, unlike the revolutionary, does not attempt to undermine the social order as a whole. The rebel attacks the tyrant; the revolutionary attacks tyranny.
--Octavio Paz

Empathy

Those lacking empathy don't know they don't have it.
--McTavish

Comprehending

Our weakness may indeed prevent us from winning but not from comprehending the force by which we are crushed.
--Simone Weil

Two Nations

The U.S. is slowly dividing into two nations, one that can't get what it needs and one that has everything and always wants more. That's how you get people in the U.S. making $200,000 a year--unquestionably rich relative to the median--whining that they're just humble middle class.
--David Roberts

Dead Soon

Remembering that I'll be dead soon is the most important tool I've ever encountered to help me make the big choices in life.
--Steve Jobs (commencement address, Stanford University 2005)

Properity

Prosperity cannot be restored by raids upon the Public Treasury.
--President Herbert Hoover (December 1930)

Split

The inhabitants of the executive suites in a lot of our U.S. corporations often display split personalities. One minute they are the CEO as warrior king, ready to brave whatever challenge may come, the next minute they are the CEO as Chicken Little, ready to proclaim that the sky is falling because our government has the gall to ask them to pay the cost of doing business in America.
--Kris Broughton

Offerings

Not that the world was under any obligation to appreciate the gifts he'd tried to give--but the question remained: if what you offer the world isn't needed, then why continue to bring it your offerings?
--Brian Morton