Timothy Volpert

“What would it mean in practice to eliminate all the 'negative people' from one's life? It might be a good move to separate from a chronically carping spouse, but it is not so easy to abandon the whiny toddler, the colicky infant, or the sullen teenager. And at the workplace, while it's probably advisable to detect and terminate those who show signs of becoming mass killers, there are other annoying people who might actually have something useful to say: the financial officer who keeps worrying about the bank's subprime mortgage exposure or the auto executive who questions the company's overinvestment in SUVs and trucks. Purge everyone who 'brings you down,' and you risk being very lonely, or, what is worse, cut off from reality.”
― Barbara Ehrenreich, Bright-Sided: How the Relentless Promotion of Positive Thinking Has Undermined America

“Who can forget the contract issued at Apple’s Foxconn plants in China, in 2010, forcing workers to sign a pledge not to commit suicide due to workplace stress?4”
― Paul Mason, Postcapitalism: A Guide to Our Future

“We honor our parents by carrying their best forward and laying the rest down. By fighting and taming the demons that laid them low and now reside in us.”
― Bruce Springsteen, Born to Run

“Imagine if we had locally supported, collectively organized agriculture, where our apples were grown in--I dunno--Kent, and if you lived in Kent you could buy and eat those apples in Kent. And then someone turned up and said "I've got a better idea! Let me take over yourr orchard and all orchards like it, fly their produce around the globe to be spruced up and then we'll give em back to ya! Sound like a plan?" We'd tell em to fuck off, wouldn't we? Well it has happened, and we didn't because nobody explained it to us. The reason they don't explain this to us is that they know if we find out the extraordinary lengths that they're going to to fuck us over we will overthrow the current system and replace it with something fair. That is why all this important stuff is made to seem inaccessible, boring, and abstract. That is why our participation in politics has been sanded down into an impotent nub: Stick your X into this box and congratulate yourself on being free.”
― Russell Brand, Revolution