Joe

“I get the sense that some people think that influence dilutes – that the more you are someone else, the less you are yourself, as if you were born with some innate distinct youness that is gradually sanded away by the corroding forces of conformity. That if you could somehow tune everything else out and really dig deep within yourself, you’d find your voice there, pure and independent.

That’s bullshit. Your voice isn’t there, already made. You need to make your own voice. You need to make your own voice.”
― Raphael Bob-Waksberg

“There is another human defect which the Law of Natural Selection has yet to remedy: When people of today have full bellies, they are exactly like their ancestors of a million years ago: very slow to acknowledge any awful troubles they may be in. [...]

This was a particularly tragic flaw a million years ago, since the people who were best informed about the state of the planet [...] and rich and powerful enough to slow down all the waste and destruction going on, were by definition well fed.

So everything was always just fine as far as they were concerned.

For all the computers and measuring instruments and news gatherers and evaluators and memory banks and libraries and experts on this and that at their disposal, their deaf and blind bellies remained the final judges of how urgent this or that problem, such as the destruction of North America’s and Europe’s forests by acid rain, say, might really be.

And here was the sort of advice a full belly gave and still gives [...]: “Be patient. Smile. Be confident. Everything will turn out for the best somehow.”
― Kurt Vonnegut, Galápagos

“We are here to help each other get through this thing, whatever it is.”
― Kurt Vonnegut, A Man Without a Country

“What made marriage so difficult back then was yet again that instigator of so many other sorts of heartbreak: the oversize brain. That cumbersome computer could hold so many contradictory opinions on so many different subjects all at once, and switch from one opinion or subject to another one so quickly, that a discussion between a husband and wife under stress could end up like a fight between blindfolded people wearing roller skates.”
― Kurt Vonnegut, Galápagos