Ben Shee

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The Power Broker:...
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  (page 299 of 1246)
"Listening to the 99% invisible podcast to reinvigorate this read. Just finished the FDR chapter about how he was really petty and vindictive." Mar 23, 2025 07:30AM

 
There There
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Oliver Burkeman
“And here lies the essential between Stoicism and the modern-day 'cult of optimism.' For the Stoics, the ideal state of mind was tranquility, not the excitable cheer that positive thinkers usually seem to mean when they use the word, 'happiness.' And tranquility was to be achieved not by strenuously chasing after enjoyable experiences, but by cultivating a kind of calm indifference towards one's circumstances.”
Oliver Burkeman, The Antidote: Happiness for People Who Can't Stand Positive Thinking

Barbara W. Tuchman
“No one is so sure of his premises as the man who knows too little.”
Barbara W. Tuchman, The March of Folly: From Troy to Vietnam

Oliver Burkeman
“True security lies in the unrestrained embrace of insecurity - in the recognition that we never really stand on solid ground, and never can.”
Oliver Burkeman, The Antidote: Happiness for People Who Can't Stand Positive Thinking

Dan Simmons
“Words bend our thinking to infinite paths of self-delusion, and the fact that we spend most of our mental lives in brain mansions built of words means that we lack the objectivity necessary to see the terrible distortion of reality which language brings.”
Dan Simmons, Hyperion

“I can well imagine an athiest's last words: "White, white! L-L-Love! My God!" - and the deathbed leap of faith. Whereas the agnostic, if he stays true to his reasonable self, if he stays beholden to dry, yeastless factuality, might try to explain the warm light bathing him by saying "Possibly a f-f-failing oxygenation of the b-b-brain," and, to the very end, lack imagination and miss the better story.”
Yann Martel, Life of Pi

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