Ben Giers

“American conservatism depends for its continued dominance and even for its very existence on people never making certain mental connections about the world, connections that where until recently treated as obvious or self-evident everywhere on the planet. For example, the connection between mass culture, most of which conservatives hate, and laissez-faire capitalism, which they adore without reservation. Or between the small towns they profess to love and the market forces that are slowly grinding those small towns back into red-state dust-which forces they praise in the most exalted terms.”
― Thomas Frank, What's the Matter with Kansas? How Conservatives Won the Heart of America

“As our trek across time will make clear, life is likely transient, and all understanding that arose with its emergence will almost certainly dissolve with its conclusion. Nothing is permanent. Nothing is absolute. And so, in the search for value and purpose, the only insights of relevance, the only answers of significance, are those of our own making. In the end, during our brief moment in the sun, we are tasked with the noble charge of finding our own meaning.”
― Brian Greene, Until the End of Time: Mind, Matter, and Our Search for Meaning in an Evolving Universe

“It seemed both proper and at the same time deeply unfair that so much of life was left to chance.”
― Claire Keegan, Small Things Like These

“how utterly wondrous it is that a small collection of the universe’s particles can rise up, examine themselves and the reality they inhabit, determine just how transitory they are, and with a flitting burst of activity create beauty, establish connection, and illuminate mystery.”
― Brian Greene, Until the End of Time: Mind, Matter, and Our Search for Meaning in an Evolving Universe