Rob Wilson

“Another way that we avoid a full confrontation with these anxieties is by avoiding too much self-reflection. We do this by surrounding ourselves with activities that ensure we never have to really be alone with our thoughts. Indeed it is even common for people to discourage too much self-reflection by pointing to the link between thinking and depression. It is thought that too much self-reflection can lead to a dark melancholy. However, what if thinking doesn’t make one depressed but rather unveils a depression that had, up until then, gone unnoticed? What if one can be profoundly depressed and yet not even be aware of it?”
― Peter Rollins, Insurrection: To believe is human; to doubt, divine

“You are stubborn."

"That’s what people say when you won’t do what they want.”
― Lexie Talionis, Dreams of Lethe

“The academic reflection of the massive social and economic changes that took place between 1970 and 1981 could be seen in the gradual marginalization of serious social theory and political philosophy, and particularly of “leftist” thought. The usual story that is told about the history of “political philosophy” since World War II holds that political philosophy was “dead” until it was revived by Rawls, whose Theory of Justice appeared in 1971. This seems to me seriously misleading. Rather than the publication of Theory of Justice being a renewal of political philosophy, it seems to me more fruitful to see it as part of a failure of nerve, and a turning away from the real world of institutions, politics and history toward the never-never land of purely normative theory.”
― Raymond Geuss, Reality and Its Dreams

“Then there is the other secret. There isn't any symbolysm [sic]. The sea is the sea. The old man is an old man. The boy is a boy and the fish is a fish. The shark are all sharks no better and no worse. All the symbolism that people say is shit. What goes beyond is what you see beyond when you know.”
― Ernest Hemingway, Ernest Hemingway Selected Letters 1917-1961