I once heard a political theorist friend—a Kenyan woman who studies the concept of progress—discuss her work. She said one possible definition is simply “Get your boot off my neck, thank you.”
“Civilization is often a thing that is barely managed.”
― The Tainted Cup
― The Tainted Cup
“One of the recurrent paradoxes of populism is that it starts by warning us that all human elites are driven by a dangerous hunger for power, but often ends by entrusting all power to a single ambitious human.”
― Nexus: A Brief History of Information Networks from the Stone Age to AI
― Nexus: A Brief History of Information Networks from the Stone Age to AI
“Are you like one of the lousy crowd cheering the Coptics who row out to the boat? You are not. You are a distinguished personality. You are a man of feeling. Among us poor drips at the human masquerade you come like an angel.”
― The Adventures of Augie March
― The Adventures of Augie March
“…I saw an old beggar with his eyes closed sitting in the shells who had had written on his chest in mercurochrome: ‘Profit by my imminent death to send a greeting to your loved ones in Purgatory: 50 lire.”
― The Adventures of Augie March
― The Adventures of Augie March
“From what I know of Sheckley’s work, I should say that he is quite clever enough to have known what he was doing, and it hardly matters if he didn’t, because, as we all know, a writer’s view of what he was doing is no more valid than anyone else’s.”
― New Maps of Hell: Penguin Modern Classics
― New Maps of Hell: Penguin Modern Classics
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