Diana Eidson

“At no time have governments been moralists. They never imprisoned people and executed them for having done something. They imprisoned and executed them to keep them from doing something. They imprisoned all those POW's, of course, not for treason to the motherland, because it was absolutely clear even to a fool that only the Vlasov men could be accused of treason. They imprisoned all of them to keep them from telling their fellow villagers about Europe. What the eye doesn't see, the heart doesn't grieve for.”
― Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, The Gulag Archipelago

“The thing that give me the mos' trouble was, it didn' make no sense. You don't look for no sense when lightnin' kills a cow, or it comes up a flood. That's jus' the way things is. But when a bunch of men take an' lock you up four years, it ought to have some meaning. Men is supposed to think things out. Here they put me in, an' keep me an feed me four years. That ought to either make me so I won't do her again or else punish me so I'll be afraid to do her again"- he paused- "but if Herb or anybody else come for me, I'd do her again. Do her before I could figure her out. Specially if I was drunk. That sort of senselessness kind a worries a man.”
― John Steinbeck, The Grapes of Wrath

“Ironically, their shocking success also awakened the very forces that eventually would marginalize them within the empire they had created.”
― Sven Beckert, Empire of Cotton: A Global History

“Beliefs matter because people act upon their beliefs—whether those beliefs are true or not (and it’s far easier to be wrong than right).”
― Peter Boghossian, How to Have Impossible Conversations: A Very Practical Guide