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(page 62 of 76)
"We are most deeply asleep at the switch when we fancy we control any switches at all. We sleep to time’s Hurdy Gurdy; we wake, if we ever wake, to the silence of God. And then, when we wake to the deep shores of light uncreated, then when the dazzling dark breaks over the far slopes of time, then it’s time to toss things, like our reason, and our will; then it’s time to break our necks for home." — Apr 10, 2026 11:49AM
"We are most deeply asleep at the switch when we fancy we control any switches at all. We sleep to time’s Hurdy Gurdy; we wake, if we ever wake, to the silence of God. And then, when we wake to the deep shores of light uncreated, then when the dazzling dark breaks over the far slopes of time, then it’s time to toss things, like our reason, and our will; then it’s time to break our necks for home." — Apr 10, 2026 11:49AM
Charles McBryde
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"It was always the excesses that we wished to oppose, rather than the whole program. The whole spirit that produced the first steps A,B,C, and D out of which the excesses were bound to come. It is so much easier to oppose the excesses about which one can, of course, do nothing, than it is to oppose the whole spirit about which one can do something every day." — Apr 06, 2026 05:51PM
"It was always the excesses that we wished to oppose, rather than the whole program. The whole spirit that produced the first steps A,B,C, and D out of which the excesses were bound to come. It is so much easier to oppose the excesses about which one can, of course, do nothing, than it is to oppose the whole spirit about which one can do something every day." — Apr 06, 2026 05:51PM
Paracelsus, Albertus Magnus, Trithemius, Hermes Trismegistus, Borellus, and others in a strange alphabet whose titles I could not decipher.
“Like chess masters and firefighters, premodern villagers relied on things being the same tomorrow as they were yesterday. They were extremely well prepared for what they had experienced before, and extremely poorly equipped for everything else. Their very thinking was highly specialized in a manner that the modern world has been telling us is increasingly obsolete. They were perfectly capable of learning from experience, but failed at learning without experience. And that is what a rapidly changing, wicked world demands—conceptual reasoning skills that can connect new ideas and work across contexts. Faced with any problem they had not directly experienced before, the remote villagers were completely lost. That is not an option for us. The more constrained and repetitive a challenge, the more likely it will be automated, while great rewards will accrue to those who can take conceptual knowledge from one problem or domain and apply it in an entirely new one.”
― Range: Why Generalists Triumph in a Specialized World
― Range: Why Generalists Triumph in a Specialized World
“We all have scars, we gonna have more. Rather than struggle against time and waste it, let’s dance with time and redeem it. Cause we don’t live longer when we try not to die. We live longer when we are too busy living.”
― Greenlights
― Greenlights
“Learning stuff was less important than learning about oneself. Exploration is not just a whimsical luxury of education; it is a central benefit.”
― Range: Why Generalists Triumph in a Specialized World
― Range: Why Generalists Triumph in a Specialized World
“The average expert was a horrific forecaster. Their areas of specialty, years of experience, academic degrees, and even (for some) access to classified information made no difference. They were bad at short-term forecasting, bad at long-term forecasting, and bad at forecasting in every domain. When experts declared that some future event was impossible or nearly impossible, it nonetheless occurred 15 percent of the time. When they declared a sure thing, it failed to transpire more than one-quarter of the time.”
― Range: Why Generalists Triumph in a Specialized World
― Range: Why Generalists Triumph in a Specialized World
“We fail...tasks we don't have the guts to quit."...knowing when to quit is such a strategic advantage that every single person, before undertaking an endeavor should enumerate conditions under which they should quit.”
― Range: Why Generalists Triumph in a Specialized World
― Range: Why Generalists Triumph in a Specialized World
Donna Tartt
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For readers who, like me, love both of Donna Tartt's novels, The Secret History (1992) and The Little Friend (2002) and may be wondering what happened ...more
Caroliniana Athenaeum
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— last activity Feb 17, 2021 06:58AM
A bi-weekly reading group for the members of the Caroliniana Athenaeum. Members of the Caroliniana Athenaeum may add events, create polls, submit revi ...more
Charles McBryde’s 2025 Year in Books
Take a look at Charles McBryde’s Year in Books, including some fun facts about their reading.
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