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Peter’s 2025 Year in Books
Take a look at Peter’s Year in Books, including some fun facts about their reading.
Peter Pink-Howitt’s Followers (14)
2,104 books
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5,399 friends
46 books
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1,198 friends
485 books
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50 friends
223 books
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164 friends
622 books
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25 friends
9 books
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111 friends
3 books
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33 friends
0 books
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47 friends
More friends…
Peter Pink-Howitt
Goodreads Author
Born
The United Kingdom
Website
Member Since
September 2011
World Democracy Monitor
Democracy, Backsliding and the Need for a Weekly Radar
IntroductionIn March 2026, the V‑Dem Institute published its tenth global Democracy Report: Unraveling the Democratic Era?
For the “average global citizen”, they conclude, the level of democracy is now back to where it stood in 1978. The gains of the so‑called “third wave of democratisation”, which began with Portugal’s Carnation Revolution in
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"Andy Weir cannot write and I'm tired of people pretending he can.
First, let's talk about characters- well, there is no character here. I only see a vague man-shaped science textbook in an astronaut suit. Wait, let me put my glasses on. OH, I know him" Read more of this review » |
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“What could be more apt for enlightenment than to return to our earlier evolutionary home in the trees?
Perhaps at the dawn of Homo sapiens and even before, with our ancestral relatives, some beings looked around at teeming life and upwards, above the canopy – to the silvery stars – with a sense of wonder, full of longing for the shining universe and a feeling of belonging on Earth.”
― Ethics of Life: freedom and diversity
Perhaps at the dawn of Homo sapiens and even before, with our ancestral relatives, some beings looked around at teeming life and upwards, above the canopy – to the silvery stars – with a sense of wonder, full of longing for the shining universe and a feeling of belonging on Earth.”
― Ethics of Life: freedom and diversity
“Just, for a moment, meditate on the extraordinary improbability: a raw and tiny rock, hurtling through the heavens whilst growing a fragile, living skin; and that skin deciphering how to join the fiery firmament, how to leap between the stars … reaching out towards infinity… ∞
If we must talk of freedom, let us talk about that world. For that is the world we live in, if we could but see it.”
― Ethics of Life: freedom and diversity
If we must talk of freedom, let us talk about that world. For that is the world we live in, if we could but see it.”
― Ethics of Life: freedom and diversity
“many religions have too often failed on their own terms; they are, or have often been, unholy. Their doctrines and structures have been misused to kill, hurt, or steal from non-believers and even those with only slightly different opinions on certain aspects of the ‘truth’.
Preachings of the community of woman and man, of love and compassion, have given way to violence and holy perfidy.
This is similar to how communism’s intended remedy for inequity was more than outweighed by its violence and reduction in our humanity and freedom in the name of equality.”
― Ethics of Life: freedom and diversity
Preachings of the community of woman and man, of love and compassion, have given way to violence and holy perfidy.
This is similar to how communism’s intended remedy for inequity was more than outweighed by its violence and reduction in our humanity and freedom in the name of equality.”
― Ethics of Life: freedom and diversity
“Follow, poet, follow right
To the bottom of the night,
With your unconstraining voice
Still persuade us to rejoice;
With the farming of a verse
Make a vineyard of the curse,
Sing of human unsuccess
In a rapture of distress;
In the deserts of the heart
Let the healing fountain start,
In the prison of his days
Teach the free man how to praise.”
― Another Time
To the bottom of the night,
With your unconstraining voice
Still persuade us to rejoice;
With the farming of a verse
Make a vineyard of the curse,
Sing of human unsuccess
In a rapture of distress;
In the deserts of the heart
Let the healing fountain start,
In the prison of his days
Teach the free man how to praise.”
― Another Time
“The threat to men of great dignity, privilege and pretense is
not from the radicals they revile; it is from accepting their own myth.
Exposure to reality remains the nemesis of the great -- a little understood
thing.”
―
not from the radicals they revile; it is from accepting their own myth.
Exposure to reality remains the nemesis of the great -- a little understood
thing.”
―
“If only it were all so simple! If only there were evil people somewhere insidiously committing evil deeds, and it were necessary only to separate them from the rest of us and destroy them. But the line dividing good and evil cuts through the heart of every human being. And who is willing to destroy a piece of his own heart?”
― The Gulag Archipelago 1918–1956
― The Gulag Archipelago 1918–1956
“Bless you prison, bless you for being in my life. For there, lying upon the rotting prison straw, I came to realize that the object of life is not prosperity as we are made to believe, but the maturity of the human soul.”
― The Gulag Archipelago 1918–1956
― The Gulag Archipelago 1918–1956
“… What about the main thing in life, all its riddles? If you want, I'll spell it out for you right now. Do not pursue what is illusionary -property and position: all that is gained at the expense of your nerves decade after decade, and is confiscated in one fell night. Live with a steady superiority over life -don't be afraid of misfortune, and do not yearn for happiness; it is, after all, all the same: the bitter doesn't last forever, and the sweet never fills the cup to overflowing. It is enough if you don't freeze in the cold and if thirst and hunger don't claw at your insides. If your back isn't broken, if your feet can walk, if both arms can bend, if both eyes can see, if both ears hear, then whom should you envy? And why? Our envy of others devours us most of all. Rub your eyes and purify your heart -and prize above all else in the world those who love you and who wish you well. Do not hurt them or scold them, and never part from any of them in anger; after all, you simply do not know: it may be your last act before your arrest, and that will be how you are imprinted on their memory.”
― The Gulag Archipelago 1918–1956
― The Gulag Archipelago 1918–1956
