Brendan

“It is thus inevitable that the New Man of rock ’n’ roll was incarnated in the mid-seventies in the figure of Bruce Springsteen, a singer-songwriter whose principal merit was that of showing us the entire DNA map of American music. There is not one paradigm of modern music that he did not bend to comply with his personal narrative urgency: rockabilly, soul, rhythm and blues, punk, folk, country, pop, jazz . . . Springsteen does not change popular music, he incessantly reworks it, keeping its roots alive.”
― Leonardo Colombati, Bruce Springsteen: Like a Killer in the Sun: Selected Lyrics 1972-2017

“On the one hand, Puritans hinted that God would reward the diligent and godly with prosperity. On the other hand, they cautioned that wealth must not be an end unto itself lest carnal temptations overwhelm the ultimate purpose of human life: preparation for salvation in the next world.”
― Alan Taylor, American Colonies: The Settling of North America

“Most people around the globe today are better off than our ancestors because citizens and workers in early industrial societies organized, challenged elite-dominated choices about technology and work conditions, and forced ways of sharing the gains from technical improvements more equitably.”
― Daron Acemoğlu, Power and Progress: Our Thousand-Year Struggle Over Technology and Prosperity

“America will never be destroyed from the outside. If we falter and lose our freedoms, it will be because we destroyed ourselves. —Abraham Lincoln”
― Steven D. Price, 1001 Smartest Things Ever Said