Sufffering

Suffering is part of life and it's not a bad thing, it is an essential thing in life.
--Rick Santorum (town hall meeting in Iowa, November 18, 2011)

Enmeshed

It is precisely our enmeshments that make us who we are and give our lives meaning.
--Kathy Rudy

Recognize

Things are always changing, so nothing can be yours. We don't need to learn how to let things go; we just need to learn to recognize when they've already gone.
--Shunryu Suzuki

With Love

If your life is a leaf
that the seasons tear off and condemn,
they will bind you with love
that is graceful and green as a stem.
--Leonard Cohen

The Holidays

The holidays are upon us again--it sounds vaguely aggressive, as if the holidays were some sort of mugger, or overly enthusiastic lover.
--Eric Weiner

The Word

Is the human word truly powerful enough to change the world and influence history?
--Václav Havel

To See

To see the world in a grain of sand, and heaven in a wild flower, hold infinity in the palm of your hand and eternity in an hour.
--William Blake

Adjectives

I truly, truly hate it when technocrats extol "efficient" and "cheap" as if these things were inherent virtues rather than simply...adjectives. Masturbation may be the most efficient, least expensive (no dinners or anniversary gifts required!) way to achieve an orgasm. Doesn't make it the best way.
--Lisa K.

Patience

Patience joins time to eternity.
--Wendell Berry

The Time

Can you taste
what I'm saying? It is onions or potatoes, a pinch
of simple salt, the wealth of melting butter, it is obvious,
it stays in the back of your throat like a truth
you never uttered because the time was always wrong...
--Philip Levine

Truth

Truth is one. It doesn't change.
--William Faulkner

Glimpse

To love is to receive a glimpse of heaven.
--Karen Sunde

Simplest Answer

Entia non sunt multiplicanda sine necessitate.
(Plurality should not be assumed without necessity.)
(The mind should not multiply entities beyond necessity.)
(What can be done with fewer...is done in vain with more.)
(The simplest answer is usually the correct one.)
--William of Ockham (aka, Occam's Razor)

Control

You who must leave everything that you cannot control.
It begins with your family, but soon it comes 'round to your soul.
--Leonard Cohen

The Valleys

No one lives on the top of the mountain. It's fine to go there occasionally--for inspiration, for new perspectives. But you have to come down. Life is lived in the valleys. That's where the farms and gardens and orchards are, and where the plowing and the work is done. That's where you apply the visions you may have glimpsed from the peaks.
--Arthur Gordon

Who You Are

Be who you are and say what you feel, because those who mind don't matter, and those who matter don't mind.
--Dr. Seuss

Whole

Dogs are not our whole life, but they make our lives whole.
--Roger Caras

Dogs

No one is a saying that dogs or any animals are human. They are saying that dogs are sentient beings with a rich and complex life of their own, and that they deserve to be allowed to live that life or as close to it as possible.
--Fara Field

Stories

It is said that babies learn language in order to tell the stories already in them.
--Roger Rosenblatt

Chains

Those who do not move, do not notice their chains.
--Rosa Luxemburg

Capitalism

For my part I think that capitalism, wisely managed, can probably be made more efficient for attaining economic ends than any alternative system yet in sight, but that in itself it is in many ways extremely objectionable.
--John Maynard Keynes

Sacred

There are no unsacred places;
there are only sacred places
and desecrated places.
--Wendell Berry

Life

Life is far too important a thing ever to talk seriously about.
--Oscar Wilde

Gangs

This is not a collegial body anymore. It is more like gang behavior.
--Rep. Jim Cooper (D-TN, since 1982)

Aspire

That's the "war without end" objection. It's not that it will take a long time. It's that it will take forever, and we will cease being what we aspire to be in the meantime.
--Carlo Graziani

Fear

Fear is the foundation of most governments.
--John Adams

The Machine

There is a time when the operation of the machine becomes so odious, makes you so sick at heart, that you can't take part; you can't even passively take part, and you've got to put your bodies upon the gears and upon the wheels, upon the levers, upon all the apparatus, and you've got to make it stop. And you've got to indicate to the people who run it, to the people who own it, that unless you're free, the machine will be prevented from working at all.
--Mario Savio (Sproul Hall, UC Berkeley, 1964)

Beautiful Place

The world is a beautiful place
to be born into
if you don't mind happiness
not always being
so very much fun
if you don't mind a touch of hell
now and then
just when everything is fine
because even in heaven
they don't sing
all the time.
--Lawrence Ferlinghetti

Labor

The labor movement means just this: it is the last noble protest of the American people against the power of incorporated wealth.
--Wendell Phillips (b. 1811)

Traces of Happiness

This is the aim of my explorations: examining the traces of happiness still to be glimpsed.
--Italo Calvino

Money

We see 10 million commercials a day, and every day is the same life-killing chase for money, money and more money; the only thing that changes from minute to minute is that every tick of the clock brings with it another space-age vendor dreaming up some new way to try to sell you something or reach into your pocket.
--Matt Taibbi

The Dots

You can't connect the dots looking forward; you can only connect them looking backwards. So you have to trust that the dots will somehow connect in your future. You have to trust in something--your gut, destiny, life, karma, whatever.
--Steve Jobs

Disconnect

The disconnect between the seriousness of our angst and the silliness of our politics--between how big our problems are and how hopeless or just plain stuck the people who are supposed to address them seem--defies belief.
--Frank Bruni

Success

You have reached the pinnacle of success as soon as you become uninterested in money, compliments, or publicity.
--Thomas Wolfe

Champion

We forget that the United States is to boardroom looting what Nigeria is to email scams--the undisputed heavyweight champion of the world.
--Brett Arends

Truth

The definition of hell: truth realized too late.
--E. O. Wilson

Experience

Experience is the name everyone gives to their mistakes.
--Oscar Wilde

Be...

Be civil to all; sociable to many; familiar with few.
--Benjamin Franklin

Remembering

Some would have us believe that remembering every year has no significance, that it is laughable, that it is important to move past the memory of a thing to create art, or to make jokes, or to have a new and different life. Those things happen, because time will not allow us to remain physically in one position. Remembering is about being human. It is about being alive.
--Kara VanderBijl

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

Ideas

I can't understand why people are frightened of new ideas. I'm frightened of the old ones.
--John Cage

Don't Even Know

We don't even know what we are, where we come from, why we're here, what we're supposed to do. How can we know the nature of something much bigger than us? We are limited by sight, hearing, physical senses, smells, tastes, thoughts, emotions. How can we think these tools give us a clear picture of what is beyond self-preservation in an unknown sea of hazards? Why do we feel we need God, a notion or understanding of God? Isn't it to feel safe?
--Steve Eatenson

Markets

The markets didn't crash because we were paying too much to teachers.
--Eric Schneiderman (Attorney General, New York State)

More Is More

My editor at Random House, Joe Fox, used to tell me, "Stanley, less is more." He wanted to strike--oh, he had a marvelous eye for the "good" stuff--and that's what he wanted to strike. I had to fight him tooth and nail in the better restaurants to maintain excess because I don't believe that less is more. I believe that more is more. I believe that less is less, fat fat, thin thin and enough is enough.
--Stanley Elkin

Again

I bequeath myself to the dirt to grow from the grass I love,
If you want me again look for me under your boot-soles.
--Walt Whitman

Humble

Man in his arrogance thinks himself a great work worthy of the interposition of a deity. More humble and I think truer is to consider him created from animals.
--Charles Darwin

Cuts

If too many Americans don't believe in or understand what government does to help them, to offset recessions, to protect their security in retirement and in hard times, to maintain the infrastructure, to provide educational opportunities and health care decent enough to offset the disadvantages so many are born with...if those functions are unknown, underfunded, and/or carried out poorly, why should they care about how much this deal or the next one cuts?
--Jared Bernstein

Capital Gains

In my experience earning income from capital gains is a lot easier than earning ordinary income. Why not tax both at the same rate? It only seems fair.
--Leonard E. Burman (deputy assistant Treasury secretary in the Clinton administration)

Values

The values to which people cling most stubbornly under inappropriate conditions are those values that were previously the source of their greatest triumphs over adversity.
--Jared Diamond

Kindness

I respect kindness in human beings first of all, and kindness to animals. I don't respect the law; I have a total irreverance for anything connected with society except that which makes the roads safer, the beer stronger, the food cheaper and the old men and old women warmer in the winter and happier in the summer.
--Brendan Behan

Black Dots

Looking at the stars always makes me dream, as simply as I dream over the black dots representing towns and villages on a map.
--Vincent van Gogh

Social Media

Social media isn't about having a conversation with people you know. It's about advertising yourself. It's not social; it's media. Real conversations don't happen in public.
--Erin Biba

Storytelling

Every political failure in a democracy begins with bad storytelling. When false narratives and incoherent story lines dominate public conversation, poor decisions are sure to follow.
--Gene Lyons

Learning

Learning carries within itself certain dangers because out of necessity one has to learn from one's enemies.
--Leon Trotsky

Not A Thing

When the recession began there were many wise words about having learnt the lessons of both the Great Depression and Japan's long malaise. Now we know we didn't learn a thing.
--Joseph Stiglitz

Double Dip

I keep wondering when they'll stop saying "double-dip recession," making it sound like a Baskin-Robbins promotion. I keep wondering when they'll start saying the dread D-word: Depression.
--Ron Rosenbaum

Climate Change

The whole situation sort of reminds me of Trotsky's quip about the dialectic. Neither Governor Perry nor the bulk of Texas' citizens may be interested in climate change, but climate change is interested in them.
--Matthew Yglesias

The Economy

Our hearts want government to come through and save the economy. But our heads know that it's not going to happen. And that failure, in turn, is only going to further weaken institutional legitimacy across the U.S. and the world. It's a vicious cycle.
--Felix Salmon

Solidarity

The opposite of solidarity is dog-eat-dog, which, if we had to choose a motto for the last quarter century of American history, would work as well as any.
--Christopher Hayes

Beauty

Youth is happy because it has the capacity to see beauty. Anyone who keeps the ability to see beauty never grows old.
--Franz Kafka

It's Always Something

When you don't have any money, the problem is food. When you have money, it's sex. When you have both it's health, you worry about getting rupture or something. If everything is simply jake, then you're frightened of death.
--J. P. Donleavy

Tweeting

Tweeting is like sex. Writing a book is like raising a child.
--Jaron Lanier

Collectively

Are you aware that human beings cannot survive on their own? What has made our success as a species is the ability to work (dare I say it?) collectively toward basic common goals. Why the fuck is this simple fact presenting such a particularly huge problem to an extremist faction of the American political spectrum?
--Northen Soul

Money

Conservatives say if you don't give the rich more money, they will lose their incentive to invest. As for the poor, they tell us they've lost all incentive because we've given them too much money.
--George Carlin

Water

Thousands have lived without love, not one without water.
--W.H. Auden

Product

If you want to make the product that everyone else compares their product to, you have to take a risk to build something nobody has told you they want, because they don't know they want it yet.
--Jason Cross

Nation-State

Elite pundits increasingly seem to be making the argument that we simply can't afford to be a nation-state anymore--we can't afford to offer the most basic federal services to our poor and rural citizens. Yet they rarely consider how easily we manage to come up with unbelievable sums to remain an empire.
--Marcy Emptywheel

Obligations

It seems that we are having sometimes esoteric tiffs between Keynesians and Austrians about if and how governments should sustain jobs and growth. But, deep down, we are having a much more significant debate as we are being forced to redefine what we think about the rights and obligations of citizens and the State.
--George Magnus

Mental Illness

When are we going to recognize greed as a form of mental illness? A billionaire who wants more money is the moral and intellectual equivalent of a thousand-pound man who wants to gain weight.
--Silverback66

Fifty Percent

Fifty percent of people won't vote, and fifty percent don't read newspapers. I hope it's the same fifty percent.
--Gore Vidal

Post-Englightenment

We live in a post-Enlightenment age in which rationality, science, evidence, logical argument and debate have lost the battle in many sectors, and perhaps even in society generally, to superstition, faith, opinion and orthodoxy.
--Neal Gabler

Science

We require a common culture in which science is an essential component. Otherwise we shall never see the possibilities, either for evil or good.
--C.P. Snow

Climate Change

There is extraordinarily little political will anywhere to do anything meaningful about climate change. It's time to recognize that we can't stop this train. The only thing we can do is prepare for the destination.
--Dr. Zachary Smith

Government

If you elect people who believe the government does not work, that government is always the problem, never part of the solution, they will work tirelessly to make their beliefs come true.
--Jared Bernstein

Corporations

Corporations are people, my friend....Of course they are. Everything corporations earn ultimately goes to people.
--Mitt Romney (Iowa, August 11, 2011)

Capital

The only sane conclusion is to open our eyes to the fact that finance capital is now bigger than the state. Sovereigns are limited by territory. Capital is not.
--Adam Haslett

Deny

The most effective way to destroy people is to deny and obliterate their own understanding of their history.
--George Orwell

History

History doesn't repeat itself.

It echoes itself, it parodies itself, it shadows and foreshadows itself. Sometimes it mirrors itself, which is to say that it returns but with everything about it in reverse. It haunts itself--we can see ghosts flitting by but those ghosts have lost the power to affect life and besides they have business of their own. It resembles itself, the way grandchildren resemble their grandparents. That doesn't make them the same people though.
--Lance Mannion

Evidence-Based

As you well know there is a movement to teach and practice evidence-based medicine across the United States. Yet there seems to be no move to practice evidence-based economics.
--Meed Houston

Real Life

Money is something you should kind of watch from the corner of your eye while you live your real life.
--Laura Rowley

Twice

And here I sit so patiently,
waiting to find out what price
you have to pay to get out of
going though all these things twice.
--Bob Dylan

Advice

Milton Friedman believes that during a crisis, we only have a brief window of opportunity before society slips back into the "tyranny of the status quo," and that we need to use this opportunity or lose it. This is actually sound advice.
--Anders Behring Breivik

Organized

We know now that government by organized money is just as dangerous as government by organized mob.
--Franklin Delano Roosevelt

Not Knowing

I think it is much more interesting to live not knowing than to have answers that might be wrong.
--Richard Feynman