Eliot Peper > Quotes

“Shankar Vedantam wrote that those who travel with the current will always feel they are good swimmers, while those who swim against the current may never realize they are better swimmers than they imagine,”
― Eliot Peper, Bandwidth

“Critical thinking without hope was cynicism, while hope without critical thinking was naïveté.”
― Eliot Peper, Bandwidth

“How we treat people defines humanity.”
― Eliot Peper, Bandwidth

“There were sharks before there were dinosaurs, and the reason sharks are still in the ocean is that nothing is better at being a shark than a shark.”
― Eliot Peper, Bandwidth

“Like memory, history was synthetic. Humans thought of both as factual records, but study after study confirmed that they were more like dreams, narratives constructed and reconstructed by the mind to fit the demands of the present, not the reality of the past.”
― Eliot Peper, Bandwidth

“He was nothing. A short-lived speck on a meaningless rock orbiting an insignificant star in a forgotten galaxy in a universe bound by the unflinching laws of thermodynamics to descend into ultimate heat death.”
― Eliot Peper, Bandwidth

“Choosing not to care might mitigate the risk of pain, but in doing so it destroyed the capacity for joy, for finding meaning.”
― Eliot Peper, Bandwidth

“there’s one truism that’s worsened the impact of every human misstep, it’s that there’s profit in tragedy.”
― Eliot Peper, Bandwidth

“My statistician friend says they’re harnessing the power of social validation to reinforce a certain worldview. It’s like gardening, only they’re cultivating ideology.”
― Eliot Peper, Bandwidth

“Politics is the gap between what is and what should be.”
― Eliot Peper, Bandwidth

“Everyone worries about the future.” His voice lost its affected madness. He was quiet now, incisive. “They freak out about technology. They obsess over how tomorrow might be different. But it’s the things that do not change that we should pay attention to. If you want to make sense of the world, focus on finding the constants. They’re the rare truths that everyone’s too busy to bother with.”
― Eliot Peper, Borderless

“What better argument for inaction than the promise of future action? What better defenders of the status quo than well-meaning leaders who hedged? A quote floated up from a half-forgotten high-school history class. Change will not come if we wait for some other person or some other time. We are the ones we’ve been waiting for. We are the change that we seek.”
― Eliot Peper, Breach

“On a borderless planet stitched together by feed, nothing conceals the fundamental unfairness of some people owning almost everything while everyone else fights for the scraps.”
― Eliot Peper, Breach

“It was far easier to stop something from getting done in Washington than it was to get anything done at all.”
― Eliot Peper, Bandwidth

“Ends and means didn’t justify one another—they were two sides of the same coin.”
― Eliot Peper, Bandwidth

“If we are the stories we tell ourselves, what happens when someone else controls the narrative? What does it take for a cynic to rediscover authenticity? How is technology changing the structure and exercise of power?”
― Eliot Peper, Bandwidth

“But like so much else, the prize was diminished by possession.”
― Eliot Peper, Bandwidth

“The UN failed to accomplish much of anything. National governments failed to accomplish much of anything. The private sector failed to accomplish much of anything. The scientific community failed to accomplish much of anything. Environmental activists failed to accomplish much of anything. Those failures mean business-as-usual continues and business-as-usual means condemning future generations to climate hell.”
― Eliot Peper, Veil

“building something meaningful requires you to let go of the obsession with perfection. It requires empowering others and trusting them to do their part, even if they do it differently than you might have. But trust is a two-way street. Autonomy means you’re held accountable.”
― Eliot Peper, Bandwidth

“Humanity was burning fossil fuel and releasing greenhouse gas like a hormone-addled teenager.”
― Eliot Peper, Veil

“History was badly plotted and written by committee.”
― Eliot Peper, Bandwidth

“To risk sounding melodramatic, the story of Oakland is the story of America.”
― Eliot Peper, Cumulus

“Money is just one form of power, and the more centralized power becomes, the nastier the fallout when the pendulum swings back.”
― Eliot Peper, Breach

“First, I warn you to stay out of the limelight, and you ride Lowell straight out of the Ranch and into international stardom like a dominatrix on a sex pony. Then, you double down by evicting every skeleton from the collective closet of Commonwealth’s board. You, Ms. Kim, are either a total fucking maniac or seriously out of practice at this whole intrigue thing.”
― Eliot Peper, Breach

“Sexual predilection is a window into the soul.”
― Eliot Peper, Bandwidth

“chaat masala. A”
― Eliot Peper, Uncommon Stock: Exit Strategy

“Her muscles were disobedient noodles.”
― Eliot Peper, Uncommon Stock: Version 1.0

“But even something as inconsequential as wanting a lawn in front of our homes isn’t a true choice. It’s the product of a never-ending series of historical accidents. We take the world we’re born into for granted.”
― Eliot Peper, Bandwidth

“Mara, it’s not an easy life. It breaks you down, builds you up again, and crushes you flat. Great works require great sacrifice. It can be addicting as all hell and I can’t imagine anything more satisfying. But”
― Eliot Peper, Uncommon Stock: Version 1.0

“What eats away at the back of your head even when you’re thinking about other things? What nips at the heels of your soul?” Mara realized she didn’t even have to think”
― Eliot Peper, Uncommon Stock: Version 1.0