"He does not deserve your praise, but he deserves to be treated as if someday he might."

James Richardson Politics See all quotes by James Richardson →

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“First he gathered what he needed. Then he needed to keep gathering what he used to need.”

“Books serve us simply by opening a window on all we wanted to say and feel and think about. We may not even notice that they have not said it themselves till we go back to them years later and do not find what we loved in them. You cannot keep the view by taking the window with you.”

“Happiness, like water, is always available, but so often it seems we’d prefer a different drink.”

“Why would we write if we’d already heard what we wanted to hear?”

“The best way to get people to do what you want is not to be too particular about what you want.”

“It is less important to escape pain than to avoid exceptionless rules.”

Resonant Thoughts

"What an astonishing thing a book is. It's a flat object made from a tree with flexible parts on which are imprinted lots of funny dark squiggles. But one glance at it and you're inside the mind of ano…"

— Carl Sagan

Science1934–1996

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"If we don't address the genetic causes of suffering we will find ourselves in 500 years enjoying material abundance via nanotech, living in a perfect democracy, colonizing space, and still sitting aro…"

— David Pearce (philosopher)

Philosophy1959

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"We are on average, moving towards four degrees warming this century. And we haven’t been in a four-degree warmer world for the past four million years. So it’s not as if it’s a place we know very well…"

— Johan Rockström

Economics1965

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"To me, literature is a calling, even a kind of salvation. It connects me with an enterprise that is over 2,000 years old. What do we have from the past? Art and thought. That's what lasts. That's what…"

— Susan Sontag

Literature1933–2004

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