One thing that history teaches us is that we should never underestimate human stupidity…It's one of the most powerful forces in the world…You can't trust humans and even human leaders to do what is best for humanity. You can hope for it, but it's not certain.
Henry David Thoreau On Solitude
But alone in distant woods or fields, in unpretending sprout lands or pastures tracked by rabbits, even on a black and, to most, cheerless day, like this, when a villager would be thinking of his inn, I come to myself, I once more feel myself grandly related, and that the cold and solitude are friends …
Stanley Kunitz On Language
I used to sit in that green Morris chair and open the heavy dictionary on my lap, and find a new word every day. It was a big word, a word like eleemosynary or phantasmagoria - some word that, on the tongue, sounded great to me, and I would go out into the fields and …
Maria Popova On Communication
Every act of communication is an act of tremendous courage in which we give ourselves over to two parallel possibilities: the possibility of planting into another mind a seed sprouted in ours and watching it blossom into a breathtaking flower of mutual understanding; and the possibility of being wholly misunderstood, reduced to a withering weed…And …
Antonio Damasio On Culture And Life
What one hopes for and how one faces the life ahead depend on how the past has been lived, not only in objective, factually verifiable terms, but also in the experience or reconstruction of the objective data in one’s remembrances. Recollection is at the mercy of all that makes us unique individuals. The styles of …
Arthur Rimbaud On My Bohemian Life
My Bohemian Life by Arthur RimbaudI went off with my hands in my torn coat pockets;My overcoat too was becoming ideal;I travelled beneath the sky, Muse! and I was your vassal;Oh dear me! what marvelous loves I dreamed of!My only pair of breeches had a big whole in them.– Stargazing Tom Thumb, I sowed …
Mark Boyle On Simplicity
Life is an unceasing trade-off between comfort and feeling fully alive. My experiences have taught me that perhaps the law of diminishing returns might apply to comfort – and the technologies that promise it – too.I love the simple, complex life. While it is not a realistic solution for the mass of people now, unless …
