Zaid

“NC: You’re right, but I think it tells you something very interesting about Western culture. When they went to the concentration camps and were appalled, they did not say, “Let’s save the survivors”; they said, “Let someone else pay for saving the survivors.” IP: Exactly. NC: This tells you something about the West, the deeply rooted imperial mentality that affects the West like a plague. Yes, there are these people living in misery. We are the ones able to help them, but we are not going to even raise that possibility. Somebody else, who does not have the capacity, they have to suffer for it.”
― Noam Chomsky, On Palestine

“Still, most testimonies focus on creativity as a form of defiance—the dogged fortitude with which many attempt to pursue art, or music, or writing, or poetry, serves as an antidote to the pointlessness of their “real” paid work.”
― David Graeber, Bullshit Jobs: A Theory

“The higher civilization rises, the viler man becomes.”
― Thomas Hager, The Alchemy of Air: A Jewish Genius, a Doomed Tycoon, and the Scientific Discovery That Fed the World but Fueled the Rise of Hitler

“I have come to believe that we desire hope, but what we really need is meaning. Hopelessness arises in dire situations, and being hopeful is not always rational or possible. Meaninglessness, though, is death before death. Reminding someone of the meaning of their life, even if they can’t be cured, can be transformative. Hope and meaning. Two powerful motivating forces in Medicine and in life.”
― F. Perry Wilson, How Medicine Works and When It Doesn't: Learning Who to Trust to Get and Stay Healthy