Evert de Ruiter

“If there is no struggle, there is no progress. Those who profess to favor freedom, and yet depreciate agitation, are men who want crops without plowing up the ground. They want rain without thunder and lightning. They want the ocean without the awful roar of its many waters. This struggle may be a moral one; or it may be a physical one; or it may be both moral and physical; but it must be a struggle. Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and it never will.”
― Frederick Douglass, Frederick Douglass: Selected Speeches and Writings

“Books. Cats. Life is good.”
― T.S. Eliot

“Once you learn to read, you will be forever free.”
― Frederick Douglass

“A system* is an interconnected set of elements that is coherently organized in a way that achieves something.”
― Donella H. Meadows, Thinking in Systems: A Primer