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""Can conservation and efficiency save us from the Energy Trap? Maybe. The United States could significantly reduce gasoline use with the simple expedient of carpooling, for instance, Four vehicle occupants instead of one represents a 75% savings and if the savings were dedicated to building renewable infrastructure(a big "if"), this would go a long way toward solving the problem." — Apr 22, 2015 12:21PM
""Can conservation and efficiency save us from the Energy Trap? Maybe. The United States could significantly reduce gasoline use with the simple expedient of carpooling, for instance, Four vehicle occupants instead of one represents a 75% savings and if the savings were dedicated to building renewable infrastructure(a big "if"), this would go a long way toward solving the problem." — Apr 22, 2015 12:21PM
addressing Christmas cards; every person on her list was in a federal prison. “I bet you didn’t know we had political prisoners in this country,” she said. “Quakers, Jehovah’s Witnesses, draft resisters, I just tell them we care, we’re
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“Every angel is terrifying.”
― Duino Elegies
― Duino Elegies
“Be kind, for everyone you meet is fighting a harder battle.”
―
―
“TO BE HOPEFUL in bad times is not just foolishly romantic. It is based on the fact that human history is a history not only of cruelty, but also of compassion, sacrifice, courage, kindness.
What we choose to emphasize in this complex history will determine our lives. If we see only the worst, it destroys our capacity to do something. If we remember those times and places—and there are so many—where people have behaved magnificently, this gives us the energy to act, and at least the possibility of sending this spinning top of a world in a different direction.
And if we do act, in however small a way, we don’t have to wait for some grand utopian future. The future is an infinite succession of presents, and to live now as we think human beings should live, in defiance of all that is bad around us, is itself a marvelous victory.”
―
What we choose to emphasize in this complex history will determine our lives. If we see only the worst, it destroys our capacity to do something. If we remember those times and places—and there are so many—where people have behaved magnificently, this gives us the energy to act, and at least the possibility of sending this spinning top of a world in a different direction.
And if we do act, in however small a way, we don’t have to wait for some grand utopian future. The future is an infinite succession of presents, and to live now as we think human beings should live, in defiance of all that is bad around us, is itself a marvelous victory.”
―
“If the world were merely seductive, that would be easy. If it were merely challenging, that would be no problem. But I arise in the morning torn between a desire to improve the world and a desire to enjoy the world. This makes it hard to plan the day.”
―
―
“I have observed, indeed, generally, that while in protestant countries the defections from the Platonic Christianity of the priests is to Deism, in catholic countries they are to Atheism. Diderot, D'Alembert, D’Holbach, Condorcet, are known to have been among the most virtuous of men. Their virtue, then, must have had some other foundation than the love of God.
[Letter to Thomas Law, 13 June 1814]”
― Letters of Thomas Jefferson
[Letter to Thomas Law, 13 June 1814]”
― Letters of Thomas Jefferson
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