Max

“The university’s retreat from public benefits damaged their independence as institutions. It damaged their intellectual ability to see over the horizon to the next economy and society and not just adapt to the current one. The retreat damaged their financial solvency, as it undermined the case for public good provision on which public universities depended to offer high-quality education on a mass scale. The public university could not be heard arguing that it absolutely had to offer mass quality. What good were the educated masses in a tech age when all the valuable workers could fit onto the Google bus?”
― Christopher Newfield, The Great Mistake: How We Wrecked Public Universities and How We Can Fix Them

“We concoct neologisms (quark, meme, clone, deep structure), invent slang (to spam, to diss, to flame, to surf the web, a spin doctor), borrow useful words from other languages (joie de vivre, schlemiel, angst, machismo), or coin new metaphors (waste time, vote with your feet, push the outside of the envelope).”
― Steven Pinker, The Blank Slate: The Modern Denial of Human Nature

“If it walks like a duck and quacks like a duck, it probably is a duck. If it’s a duck, it’s likely to swim, fly, have a back off which water rolls, and contain meat that’s tasty when wrapped in a pancake with scallions and hoisin sauce.”
― Steven Pinker, The Blank Slate: The Modern Denial of Human Nature

“The arrival of the virus was like an examination of state capacity. A handful of Western countries passed. Germany was an outstanding performer in Europe, while Denmark, Norway, Switzerland, and, surprisingly, Greece did well. New Zealand and Australia were champions on the Pacific rim. But most Western countries, particularly America and Britain, failed the test, humiliatingly so when compared with countries in Asia.”
― John Micklethwait, The Wake-Up Call: Why the Pandemic Has Exposed the Weakness of the West, and How to Fix It