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The most important thing to know about prehistoric humans is that they were insignificant animals with no more impact on their environment than gorillas, fireflies or jellyfish.
What an interesting observation!
“Indira used cannons to maim a small potentate that could be done by an ordinary swatter. It was an overkill and perhaps not necessary for the geo-political insularity of India. Expanding its borders cannot ensure the security of a nation. Security comes from within the people. Indira faltered again on that front. The people of India were disenchanted with the Durga of 1971.”
― Open Secrets: The Explosive Memoirs of an Indian Intelligence Officer
― Open Secrets: The Explosive Memoirs of an Indian Intelligence Officer
“I realised that ideological unrest should not be treated as mere ethnic disturbance and that there was no military solution for that. To keep a people with the country the country should also convince the people that it was worth a paradise to live and die for. I still nurse this value. But Manipur was not the last horizon of India’s imbalanced approach to its own people. I had chanced to face the similar crisis of faith in Punjab, Kashmir, Assam and other areas of internal conflict.”
― Open Secrets: The Explosive Memoirs of an Indian Intelligence Officer
― Open Secrets: The Explosive Memoirs of an Indian Intelligence Officer
“During the twenty-first century the border between history and biology is likely to blur not because we will discover biological explanations for historical events, but rather because ideological fictions will rewrite DNA strands; political and economic interests will redesign the climate; and the geography of mountains and rivers will give way to cyberspace. As human fictions are translated into genetic and electronic codes, the intersubjective reality will swallow up the objective reality and biology will merge with history. In the twenty-first century fiction might thereby become the most potent force on earth, surpassing even wayward asteroids and natural selection. Hence if we want to understand our future, cracking genomes and crunching numbers is hardly enough. We must also decipher the fictions that give meaning to the world.”
― Homo Deus: A Brief History of Tomorrow
― Homo Deus: A Brief History of Tomorrow
“So, as long as your inner life is enslaved to external situations, it will remain a precarious condition. There is no other way for it to be. What then is the way out? The way out is a very simple change in direction. You just need to see that the source and basis of your experience is within you. Human experience may be stimulated or catalyzed by external situations, but the source is within. Pain or pleasure, joy or misery, agony or ecstasy, happens only inside you. Human folly is that people are always trying to extract joy from the outside. You may use the outside as a stimulus or trigger, but the real thing always comes from within.”
― Inner Engineering: A Yogi’s Guide to Joy
― Inner Engineering: A Yogi’s Guide to Joy
“IF
If you can keep your head when all about you Are losing theirs and blaming it on you; If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you, But make allowance for their doubting too: If you can wait and not be tired by waiting, Or, being lied about, don’t deal in lies, Or being hated don’t give way to hating, And yet don’t look too good, nor talk too wise;
If you can dream—and not make dreams your master; If you can think—and not make thoughts your aim, If you can meet Triumph and Disaster And treat those two impostors just the same: If you can bear to hear the truth you’ve spoken Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools, Or watch the things you gave your life to, broken, And stoop and build ’em up with worn-out tools;
If you can make one heap of all your winnings And risk it on one turn of pitch-and-toss. And lose, and start again at your beginnings, And never breathe a word about your loss: If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew To serve your turn long after they are gone, And so hold on when there is nothing in you Except the Will which says to them: “Hold on!”
If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue, Or walk with Kings—nor lose the common touch, If neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you, If all men count with you, but none too much: If you can fill the unforgiving minute With sixty seconds’ worth of distance run, Yours is the Earth and everything that’s in it, And—which is more—you’ll be a Man, my son!
RUDYARD KIPLING”
― Wisdom of the Ages: A Modern Master Brings Eternal Truths into Everyday Life
If you can keep your head when all about you Are losing theirs and blaming it on you; If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you, But make allowance for their doubting too: If you can wait and not be tired by waiting, Or, being lied about, don’t deal in lies, Or being hated don’t give way to hating, And yet don’t look too good, nor talk too wise;
If you can dream—and not make dreams your master; If you can think—and not make thoughts your aim, If you can meet Triumph and Disaster And treat those two impostors just the same: If you can bear to hear the truth you’ve spoken Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools, Or watch the things you gave your life to, broken, And stoop and build ’em up with worn-out tools;
If you can make one heap of all your winnings And risk it on one turn of pitch-and-toss. And lose, and start again at your beginnings, And never breathe a word about your loss: If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew To serve your turn long after they are gone, And so hold on when there is nothing in you Except the Will which says to them: “Hold on!”
If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue, Or walk with Kings—nor lose the common touch, If neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you, If all men count with you, but none too much: If you can fill the unforgiving minute With sixty seconds’ worth of distance run, Yours is the Earth and everything that’s in it, And—which is more—you’ll be a Man, my son!
RUDYARD KIPLING”
― Wisdom of the Ages: A Modern Master Brings Eternal Truths into Everyday Life
Sudhir’s 2025 Year in Books
Take a look at Sudhir’s Year in Books, including some fun facts about their reading.
0 books
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385 friends
21 books
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26 friends
4 books
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45 friends
51 books
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40 friends
9 books
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37 friends
105 books
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502 friends
31 books
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14 friends
3 books
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57 friends
More friends…
Favorite Genres
Polls voted on by Sudhir
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