Good Guilt

Guilt is good, people! The only people who don't suffer guilt are sociopaths and serial killers. Guilt means you have a conscience. You have self-awareness.

--Ron Rosenbaum

We All

In the final analysis, our most basic common link is that we all inhabit this small planet. We all breathe the same air. We all cherish our children's future. And we are all mortal.

--John F. Kennedy

Plants Have Exploited Us

Though we self-importantly regard domestication as something people have done to plants, it is at the same time a strategy by which the plants have exploited us and our desires--even our most idiosyncratic notions of beauty--to advance their own interests.

--Michael Pollan

The Story Here

The story here isn't simply the old, familiar tale of the nation's stark racial divide, but also another tale, just as old, less often remarked, of how the white poor and the black poor have long been kept at one another's throats as a means of keeping them from looking too closely or clearly at the ways both are maniuplated by the forces of money and power.

--Leonard Pitts, Jr.

10,000 Ways

I haven't failed. I've found 10,000 ways that don't work.

--Ben Franklin

Ugly Place

Silicon Valley is an ugly place. Not physically, but, for all its gleeful output, socially. We're talking about the global mecca for antisocial, intensely competitive workaholics who aim to beat each other at achieving obscene wealth.

--Farhad Manjoo

Just Go

LUDWIG WITTGENSTEIN'S HAIKU

Our views are made by
Our definitions of them.
Just go ride your bike.

--John Bell

Conventional Thinking

I don't want to go with conventional thinking. I don't care if it's always been done this way. Now, that might be the right way to do it. But that's not the reason to do it.

--Mike D'Antoni

Jaw Not War

Jaw, jaw, is better than war, war.

--Winston Churchill

Solitude

She loved solitude, but she also loved being with people, and a life spent entirely in solitude made no sense to her.

--Brian Morton

Wealthy White Man

If you don't acknowledge that being a wealthy white man with the right ancestors blesses you with the desirable sort of inequality, how can you fix the undesirable sort of inequality?

--Maureen Dowd

Who Are We?

The overriding question here is simple: Who are we? This election represents a giant mirror, a chance to find out who we are as a people. The issue is whether America is still the scared, reactionary, sclerotic, profoundly creaky nation that it has been for the last eight years, or whether it's ready to shrug off the Bush era and begin anew. It comes down to whether America is old or young.

--Gary Kamiya

The Soul of Marriage

The soul of marriage is created by small acts, small words, and small, everyday interactions.

--Thomas Moore

Overt and Unashamed

The attacks will be overt and unashamed, except for the National Review types who will phrase their racism with their usual apparent cognitive dissonance: "Since I know I'm not a racist, I can say whatever racist thing pops into my head, and if you think the racist thing I just said was racist that proves you are the real racist."

--Lance Mannion

Experience, A Spider Web

Experience is never limited, and it is never complete; it is an immense sensibility, a kind of huge spider-web of the finest silken threads suspended in the chamber of consciousness, and catching every air-borne particle in its tissue.

--Henry James

What's the Point

And what's the point of all this excess wealth we have been creating if it doesn't lead to more leisure time? Surely that is the point of earning more than you need? But it seems the wealthier we get, the harder and longer we have to work. It's all upside down.

--Dharmaruci

Hope Alone

Of course, hope alone is not enough, but it's not trivial. It's not trivial to inspire people to want to get up and do something with someone else.

--Tim Shriver

Problems and Beauty

When I am working on a problem I never think about beauty. I only think about how to solve the problem. But when I have finished, if the solution is not beautiful, I know it is wrong.

--Buckminster Fuller

Level of Fame

They should draw an equation: What level of fame do you need to achieve to keep doing what you want? Because you don't want any more than that.

--Tina Fey

Deep Wisdom

There is deep wisdom within our very flesh, if we can only come to our senses and feel it.

--Elizabeth A. Behnke