Joren

“But now she couldn’t deny what was staring her plainly in the face: dogs in China ate better than doctors in North Korea.”
― Barbara Demick, Nothing to Envy: Ordinary Lives in North Korea

“Every man always has handy a dozen glib little reasons why he is right not to sacrifice himself.”
― Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, The Gulag Archipelago 1918–1956

“Our goal over the next few chapters is to address the origin of complex structures—including, but not limited to, living creatures—in the context of the big picture. The universe is a set of quantum fields obeying equations that don’t even distinguish between past and future, much less embody any long-term goals. How in the world did something as organized as a human being ever come to be?”
― Sean Carroll, The Big Picture: On the Origins of Life, Meaning, and the Universe Itself

“North Korea invites parody. We laugh at the excesses of the propaganda and the gullibility of the people. But consider that their indoctrination began in infancy, during the fourteen-hour days spent in factory day-care centers; that for the subsequent fifty years, every song, film, newspaper article, and billboard was designed to deify Kim Il-sung; that the country was hermetically sealed to keep out anything that might cast doubt on Kim Il-sung's divinity. Who could possibly resist?”
― Barbara Demick, Nothing to Envy: Ordinary Lives in North Korea