James

“It is crucial to understand that economic policy is not scientifically
ordained. You can impose austerity and hope the economy grows, even
though such a policy deprives it of demand; or you can focus on investing
in areas like health, training, education, research and infrastructure with
the belief that these areas are critical for long-run growth in GDP. In the
end, the choice of policy depends heavily on one’s perspective on the role
of government in the economy – is it key to creating value, or at best a
cheerleader on the sidelines?”
― Mariana Mazzucato, The Value of Everything: Making and Taking in the Global Economy

“In course of time I was more and more conscious, too, that this affliction was not due to any defects of nature, but rather to a profusion of gifts and powers which had not attained to harmony. I saw that Haller was a genius of suffering and that in the meaning of many sayings of Nietzsche he had created within himself with positive genius a boundless and frightful capacity of pain. I saw at the same time that the root of his pessimism was not world-contempt but self-contempt; for however mercilessly he might annihilate institutions and persons in his talk he never spared himself. It was always at himself first and foremost that he aimed the shaft, himself first and foremost whom he hated and despised.”
― Hermann Hesse, Steppenwolf

“Rather than repair the conditions that people want to flee, we construct a politics that makes mobility the answer to inequality”
― Michael J. Sandel, The Tyranny of Merit: What's Become of the Common Good?

“I knew the tension in me between love and power, between pain and rage, and the curious, the grinding way I remained extended between these poles—perpetually attempting to choose the better rather than the worse.”
― James Baldwin, The Fire Next Time