The reason we feel alienated is because the society is infantile, trivial, and stupid. So the cost of sanity in this society is a certain level of alienation. I grapple with this because I’m a parent. And I think anybody who has children, you come ...
When considering grand plans for effective communicable disease control in this time of Ebola peril, malaria continues to kill nearly a million people a year world-wide, and by far the single most reliable protection against malaria is to sleep under...
All types of societies are limited by economic factors. Nineteenth century civilization alone was economic in a different and distinctive sense, for it chose to base itself in a motive rarely acknowledged as valid in history of human societies, and c...
Humans are most imaginative when they need a means of self-destruction. If the world existed in an overflowing amount of happiness; a utopian state, then the suicide rate would dwarf any extinction level threat. Humans cannot be trusted with their ow...
The tension between autonomy and expertise had been, at a basic level, fundamental to the Protestant experience itself from the Reformation forward, as the doctrine of the priesthood of all believers, increasing literacy, and vernacular translations ...
The beginning of wisdom, I believe, is our ability to accept an inherent messiness in our explanation of what's going on. Nowhere is it written that human minds should be able to give a full accounting of creation in all dimensions and on all levels....
Can we talk real for a minute then? Do you "really" think that your problem is that you just need to gather more information and data before you start to "do" better with your commitment to yourself? Or isn't the real truth more like -> you are alrea...
Today I am 65 years old. I still look good. I appreciate and enjoy my age. A lot of people resist transition and therefore never allow themselves to enjoy who they are. Embrace the change, no matter what it is; once you do, you can learn about the ne...
Everything has a spirit and it's all connected. If you think about that, if you live your life by it, then you're less likely to cause any hurt. It's like how our bodies go back into the ground when we die, so that connects us to the earth. If you du...
Freedom is essentially a condition of inequality, not equality. It recognizes as a fact of nature the structural differences inherent in man — in temperament, character, and capacity — and it respects those differences. We are not alike and no la...
Words are little houses, each with its cellar and garret. Common-sense lives on the ground floor, always ready to engage in "foreign commerce" on the same level as the others, as the passers-by, who are never dreamers. To go upstairs in the word hous...
In the closing of this chapter, Lutzer describes the choice of forgiveness in more detail: 'Without both honesty and forgiveness, there can be no freedom from the fits of rage.' What happens through the years when such anger is left unattended or is ...
A man, any man, will go considerably out of his way to pick up a silver dollar; but here are golden words, which the wisest men of antiquity have uttered, and whose worth the wise of every succeeding age have assured us of; — and yet we learn to re...
Language is one of the more complex human cognitive functions,” Narly Golestani, Group Leader of the university’s Brain and Language Lab, tells me during a recent visit. “There’s been a lot of work on bilingualism. Interpretation goes one ste...
I am a lifelong lover of form–content interplay, and this book is no exception. As with several of my previous books, I have had the chance to typeset it down to the finest level of detail, and my quest for visual elegance on each page has had coun...
What good is your reality, when justice fails and dishonesty is glossed over and the ones who keep faith suffer .... What good is your reality then?" " .... I never promised you a rose garden. I never promised you perfect justice .... and I never pro...
Noah Vosen: Our target is a British national - Simon Ross, a reporter. I want all his phones, his BlackBerry, his apartment, his car, bank accounts, credit cards, travel patterns - I want to know what he's going to think before he does. Every dirty l...
[Frederick is talking about TV] Frederick: You see the whole culture. Nazis, deodorant salesmen, wrestlers, beauty contests, a talk show. Can you imagine the level of a mind that watches wrestling? But the worst are the fundamentalist preachers. Thir...
[first lines] Nemo Nobody adult: Like most living creatures, the pigeon quickly associates the pressing of the level with the reward. But when a timer releases a seed automatically every 20 seconds, the pigeon wonders, what did I do to deserve this? ...
Peter Gibbons: You're gonna lay off Samir and Michael? Bob Slydell: Oh yeah, we're gonna bring in some entry-level graduates, farm some work out to Singapore, that's the usual deal. Bob Porter: Standard operating procedure. Peter Gibbons: Do they kno...
Sherlock Holmes: Are you familiar with the study of graphology? Professor Moriaty: I have never given it any serious thought, no. Sherlock Holmes: The psychological analysis of handwriting. The upwards strokes on the p, the j, the m indicate a genius...
