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3,945 books
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4,148 voters
When Bismarck decided to forge a brand-new nation state in the fires of war against Denmark, Austria and France, he created a Germany whose only binding experience was conflict against external enemies.
“Economics is a political argument. It is not – and can never be – a science; there are no objective truths in economics that can be established independently of political, and frequently moral, judgements. Therefore, when faced with an economic argument, you must ask the age-old question ‘Cui bono?’ (Who benefits?), first made famous by the Roman statesman and orator Marcus Tullius Cicero.”
― Economics: The User's Guide
― Economics: The User's Guide
“Questions you cannot answer are usually far better for you than answers you cannot question.”
― 21 Lessons for the 21st Century
― 21 Lessons for the 21st Century
“Fascism is an act of contempt, in fact. Inversely, every form of contempt, if it intervenes in politics, prepares the way for, or establishes, Fascism.”
― The Rebel: An Essay on Man in Revolt
― The Rebel: An Essay on Man in Revolt
“The Great Transformation (1944) that ‘the utopian experiment of a self-regulating market will be no more than a memory’. In the 1980s, the decade of deregulation and privatization in the West, however, this experiment was revived. The collapse of communist regimes in 1989 further emboldened the bland fanatics, who had been intellectually nurtured during the Cold War in a ‘paradise’, as Niebuhr called it, albeit one ‘suspended in a hell of global insecurity’. The old Hegelian-Marxist teleology was retrofitted rather than discarded in Fukuyama’s influential end-of-history hypothesis.”
― Age of Anger: A History of the Present
― Age of Anger: A History of the Present
“Ultimately, forgiveness is usually about one thing—“This is for me, not for you.” Hatred is exhausting; forgiveness, or even just indifference, is freeing. To quote Booker T. Washington, “I shall allow no man to belittle my soul by making me hate him.” Belittle and distort and consume. Forgiveness seems to be at least somewhat good for your health—victims who show spontaneous forgiveness, or who have gone through forgiveness therapy (as opposed to “anger validation therapy”) show improvements in general health, cardiovascular function, and symptoms of depression, anxiety, and PTSD. Chapter 14 explored how compassion readily, perhaps inevitably, contains elements of self-interest. The compassionate granting of forgiveness epitomizes this.41”
― Behave: The Biology of Humans at Our Best and Worst
― Behave: The Biology of Humans at Our Best and Worst
Michael’s 2025 Year in Books
Take a look at Michael’s Year in Books, including some fun facts about their reading.
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88 books
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2 books
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6,464 friends
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94 friends
13,494 books
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117 books
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2 friends
3,898 books
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51 friends
33 books
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