daisy

“Don’t take yourself so seriously. You’re just a monkey with a plan.”
― Naval Ravikant

“Maybe conversations and arguments fail because one—or both—of the parties is just stupid. These are fighting words. No one likes to be called stupid: it’s a judgmental, harsh word that implies not only a lack of intelligence, but a willful ignorance almost to the point of moral failure. (I have used it, more than I should. So have you, most likely.)”
― Thomas M. Nichols, The Death of Expertise: The Campaign Against Established Knowledge and Why it Matters

“All around me the world lies like an immense hypothesis that I can no longer verify.”
― Simone de Beauvoir, The Woman Destroyed

“Manette looked up from her paper. “I’m beginning to think that I’ll see men on the moon with my own eyes.”

“Your own eyes? You’ll make the journey?” asked André, with laughter in his voice.

“You know very well what I mean. I shall know they are there. And it’ll be the Russians, my boy. The Yankees missed by a mile, with their pure oxygen.”

“Yes, Mama, you’ll see the Russians on the moon,” said André affectionately.

“And to think we began in caves,” went on Manette meditatively, "with no more than our ten fingers to help us. And we've reached this point: you must admit it's heartening."

“The history of mankind is very fine, true enough,” said André. “It’s a pity that that of men should be so sad.”

“It won’t always be sad. If your Chinese don’t blow the world to pieces, our grandchildren will know socialism. I’d happily live another fifty years to see that.”

“What a woman! Do you hear that?” he said to me. “She would sign on again for another fifty years.”

“You wouldn’t, André?”

“No, Mama: frankly I wouldn’t. History follows such very curious paths that I scarcely feel it has anything to do with me at all. I have the impression of being on the sideline. So in fifty year's time...

“I know: you no longer believe in anything,” said Manette disapprovingly.

“That’s not quite true.”

“What do you believe in?”

“People’s suffering, and the fact that it is abominable. One should do everything to abolish it. To tell you the truth, nothing else seems to me of any importance.”

“In that case,” I asked, “why not the bomb? Why not annihilation? Let everything go up and there’s an end of it.”

“There are times when one is tempted to wish for it. But I prefer to hope that there can be life, life without suffering.”

“Life to do something with,” said Manette pugnaciously.”
― Simone de Beauvoir, The Woman Destroyed