I emphasize this because some of my colleagues, for whose academic attainments I have great respect, argue" 'You assume too much; this is not proved; this is not strictly scientific. We disagree with your neurology and your psychiatry is misleading, ...
The surpluses will have to be expended somehow, and trust the oligarchs to find a way. Magnificent roads will be built. There will be great achievements in science, and especially in art. When the oligarchs have completely mastered the people, they w...
We are in this together. None of us truly walk in isolation, even when we cannot sense the presence of another for miles upon miles. Even in the worst of our desolation. Even during our coldest 3am breakdown. Even when we shut out the world and spin ...
The fatal misconception behind brainstorming is that there is a particular script we should all follow in group interactions.... [W]hen the composition of the group is right—enough people with different perspectives running into one another in unpr...
We habitually erect a barrier called blame that keeps us from communicating genuinely with others, and we fortify it with our concepts of who's right and who's wrong. We do that with the people who are closest to us and we do it with political system...
Not speaking and speaking are both human ways of being in the world, and there are kinds and grades of each. There is the dumb silence of slumber or apathy; the sober silence that goes with a solemn animal face; the fertile silence of awareness, past...
I thank the bullies who bullied me in many ways they taught how not to treat other human beings, not to manipulate, to not to lack empathy, to not lack morals, not to to abuse physically and/or emotionally. I thank them for the assumptions that I was...
Who constitutes the nation? Only the elite?Or do the hundreds of millions of poor in India also make up the nation? Are their interests never identified with national interest? Or is there more than one nation? That is the question you often run up a...
If I marry: He must be so tall that when he is on his knees, as one has said he reaches all the way to heaven. His shoulders must be broad enough to bear the burden of a family. His lips must be strong enough to smile, firm enough to say no, and tend...
Moral philosophers say things like, ‘What is actually wrong with cannibalism?’ There are two ways of responding to that: one is to shrink back in horror and say, ‘Cannibalism! Cannibalism! We can’t talk about cannibalism!’ The other is to s...
It’s all about self-discipline. Like, self-obsession is connected completely with self-loathing, and it’s the same with, if you’ve got a weight problem. It’s all about… finding some worth in yourself, knowing that you’ve got the disciplin...
I think it's much more interesting to live not knowing than to have answers which might be wrong. I have approximate answers and possible beliefs and different degrees of uncertainty about different things, but I am not absolutely sure of anything an...
The taxi driver felt that it was a good observation, and said he was planning to build for the future, too: he had some money on the horses, and if he won, he would buy his own taxicab, and really do well. I felt very sorry. I told him that betting o...
Do unto others…’ is a good rule of thumb. I live by that. Forgiveness is probably the greatest virtue there is. But that’s exactly what it is - a virtue. Not just a Christian virtue. No one owns being good. I’m good. I just don’t believe I�...
It’s always the end of the world,” said Russell Grandinetti, one of Amazon’s top executives. “You could set your watch on it arriving.” He pointed out, though, that the landscape was in some ways changing for the first time since Gutenberg ...
Wesley Crusher: Say goodbye, Data. Lt. Cmdr. Data: Goodbye, Data. [crew laughs] Lt. Cmdr. Data: Was that funny? Wesley Crusher: [laughs] Lt. Cmdr. Data: Accessing. Ah! Burns and Allen, Roxy Theater, New York City, 1932. It still works. [pauses] Lt. C...
This war ends, then so do the taxpayer-funded contracts, the drumbeats in the media, the nice Combatant faces, and the patriotic cause to lull the civilians and shame the dissenters. The other thing that comes to an end is all the justification for w...
Futures can and do change, something as simple as you're supposed to turn right down a street one day... In your bones u know it, and yet for reasons no one understands, you decide to debunk fate and go left. Now instead of meeting your spouse of you...
Let the old year be gone and with it your old habit of getting in your own way! This is your year! It will reveal itself to you one day at a time. In each day you will have countless opportunities to have your actions reflect your goals. Don't throw ...
Reason is overrated. Many pundits have argued that a good heart and steadfast moral clarity are superior to triangulations of overeducated policy wonks, like the best and brightest and that dragged us into the quagmire of Vietnam. And wasn't it reaso...
democracy is about the conditions that make it possible for ordinary people to better their lives by becoming political beings and by making power responsive to their hopes and needs. What is at stake in democratic politics is whether ordinary men an...
