Sal Manzo

“But it’s still really clear to me that many of Rand’s ideas are prevalent in culture, especially American culture, and especially in engineering and technology: they prioritize making things over caregiving and maintenance, the new and novel over what’s sustained, ideas and artifacts that can deliver a profit over activities that need an ongoing commitment of money and other resources, and individualism over acting collectively.”
― Deb Chachra, How Infrastructure Works: Inside the Systems That Shape Our World

“I’m not a Black Nationalist, because I believe the Reconstruction and Nineteenth Amendments could redeem this whole bigoted and misogynist enterprise. But white people won’t let them. It really is that simple. I say the fifteenth Amendment must mean that the votes of Black people cannot be suppressed by voter ID laws, and white people tell me no. I say that Black political power cannot be gerrymandered away by racist white legislatures, and white people tell me no. I say that the Fourteenth Amendment’s grant of equal protection of laws must protect me from racial harassment by the cops, and entitles me to equal pay for my talents, and promises me that my peaceful protest will be treated with the same permissiveness the cops accord to a mob of white insurrectionists storming the nation’s Capitol, and white people tell me no, no, no. These amendments are a tonic white people refuse to drink. They can cure the Constitution of its addiction to white male supremacy, if white people would just take the medicine.”
― Elie Mystal, Allow Me to Retort: A Black Guy’s Guide to the Constitution

“I understand.” He held up his hands. “Praxis must come before philosophy.”
― Seth Dickinson, The Traitor Baru Cormorant

“Economic growth cannot sensibly be treated as an end in itself. Development has to be more concerned with enhancing the lives we lead and the freedoms we enjoy. Expanding the freedoms that we have reason to value not only makes our lives richer and more unfettered, but also allows us to be fuller social persons, exercising our own volitions and interacting with—and influencing—the world in which we live.”
― Deb Chachra, How Infrastructure Works: Inside the Systems That Shape Our World