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66 books
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2 voters
“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.”
― Galápagos
― Galápagos
“We are here to help each other get through this thing, whatever it is.”
― A Man Without a Country
― A Man Without a Country
“As long as they killed people with conventional rather than nuclear weapons, they were praised as humanitarian statesmen. As long as they did not use nuclear weapons, it appeared, nobody was going to give the right name to all the killing that had been going on since the end of the Second World War, which was surely “World War Three.”
― Galápagos
― Galápagos
“For so many families, here and abroad, the war is just beginning. The emotional and political fallout will crawl across generations—the casualties can never be fully counted.
Every war, no matter how brutal, is built on the premise that one day, when all is said and done, the ends will justify the means. But over and over again we learn that in real life, there is no ends. There’s just the means. All there is is means.”
―
Every war, no matter how brutal, is built on the premise that one day, when all is said and done, the ends will justify the means. But over and over again we learn that in real life, there is no ends. There’s just the means. All there is is means.”
―
“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.”
― Galápagos
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.”
― Galápagos
Joe’s 2025 Year in Books
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