Nick Patten

Add friend
Sign in to Goodreads to learn more about Nick.


The Psychology of...
Rate this book
Clear rating

progress: 
 
  (page 19 of 146)
Dec 05, 2025 06:59PM

 
HMS Ulysses
Nick Patten is currently reading
bookshelves: currently-reading
Rate this book
Clear rating

progress: 
 
  (55%)
"This is the unluckiest ship of all time jesus christ." Dec 27, 2025 02:35PM

 
Polyglot: How I L...
Rate this book
Clear rating

 
See all 12 books that Nick is reading…
Book cover for Hannah Coulter
You mustn’t want to be somebody else. What you must do is this: “Rejoice evermore. Pray without ceasing. In every thing give thanks.” I am not all the way capable of so much, but those are the right instructions.
Sarah liked this
Loading...
Mark Twain
“Whenever you find yourself on the side of the majority, it is time to reform (or pause and reflect).”
Mark Twain

George Orwell
“All the war-propaganda, all the screaming and lies and hatred, comes invariably from people who are not fighting.”
George Orwell, Homage to Catalonia

Samuel R. Delany
“But I realized something. About art. And psychiatry. They're both self-perpetuating systems. Like religion. All three of them promise you a sense of inner worth and meaning, and spend a lot of time telling you about the suffering you have to go through to achieve it. As soon as you get a problem in any one of them, the solution it gives is always to go deeper into the same system. They're all in rather uneasy truce with one another in what's actually a mortal battle. Like all self-reinforcing systems. At best, each is trying to encompass the other two and define them as sub-groups. You know: religion and art are both forms of madness and madness is the realm of psychiatry. Or, art is the study and praise of man and man's ideals, so therefore a religious experience just becomes a brutalized aesthetic response and psychiatry is just another tool for the artist to observe man and render his portraits more accurately. And the religious attitude I guess is that the other two are only useful as long as they promote the good life. At worst, they all try to destroy one another. Which is what my psychiatrist, whether he knew it or not, was trying, quite effectively, to do to my painting. I gave up psychiatry too, pretty soon. I just didn't want to get all wound up in any systems at all.”
Samuel R. Delany, Dhalgren

Howard Zinn
“I wonder how the foreign policies of the United States would look if we wiped out the national boundaries of the world, at least in our minds, and thought of all children everywhere as our own.”
Howard Zinn

Samuel R. Delany
“There is no articulate resonance. The common problem, I suppose, is to have more to say than vocabulary and syntax can bear. That is why I am hunting in these desiccated streets. The smoke hides the sky's variety, stains consciousness, covers the holocaust with something safe and insubstantial. It protects from greater flame. It indicates fire, but obscures the source. This is not a useful city. Very little here approaches any eidolon of the beautiful.”
Samuel R. Delany, Dhalgren

698846 International Information Syndicate — 24 members — last activity Jan 01, 2019 05:55PM
The Official GoodReads group of the International Information Syndicate, AKA /r/Chomsky and /r/breadtube.
8115 The History Book Club — 25755 members — last activity Dec 27, 2025 12:18PM
"Interested in history - then you have found the right group". The History Book Club is the largest history and nonfiction group on Goodread ...more
206510 Democratic Socialists of America — 50 members — last activity Dec 30, 2016 05:53AM
For leftist articles and books.
year in books
abigail
2,703 books | 125 friends

Neil
3,015 books | 96 friends

Dany Sa...
1,140 books | 585 friends

Ina
Ina
1,300 books | 528 friends

Guillermo
1,045 books | 800 friends

Sharon ...
6,998 books | 4,823 friends

Kiran D...
2,165 books | 1,882 friends

Bechir ...
511 books | 378 friends

More friends…



Polls voted on by Nick

Lists liked by Nick