Gordon

“Our grandfathers were less well-housed, well-fed, well-clothed than we are. The strivings by which they bettered their lot are also those which deprived us of pigeons. Perhaps we now grieve because we are not sure, in our hearts, that we have gained by the exchange. The gadgets of industry bring us more comforts than the pigeons did, but do they add as much to the glory of the spring?”
― Aldo Leopold, A Sand County Almanac with Other Essays on Conservation from Round River

“The human impact on biodiversity, to put the matter as briefly as possible, is an attack on ourselves.”
― Edward O. Wilson, The Meaning of Human Existence

“Over more than nine centuries the Habsburgs produced simpletons and visionaries, dabblers in magic and freemasonry, fanatics in religion, rulers committed to the welfare of their peoples, patrons of art and champions of science, and builders of great palaces and churches. Some Habsburgs were dedicated to peace, while others embarked on fruitless wars. Even so, as the politics of Central Europe continues to sour, it is hard to avoid the conclusion that the Hungarian historian [Domokos Kosáry] was a right after all -- a Habsburg [like Otto von Habsburg in 1990] would have done no worse.”
― Martyn Rady, The Habsburgs: To Rule the World

“But the harsh reality that we have achieved quite unequal success and at times appalling failures in our quest to attain a true meritocracy does not in any way compromise the validity of the principle nor obviate the imperative to strive for its greater realization. The model of a meritocracy can still be a sacrosanct model, a goal to which all societies might strive. I cling to the ideal of a true meritocracy, not because it is the societal model most closely consistent with the French Radical Enlightenment thinkers (which it happens to be), but because I believe it is the only model that aspires to simultaneously establish a just society and preserve the American spirit of innovation and entrepreneurship. It is also the model I would design if given the authority to do so while under Rawls’s compulsory “veil of ignorance.”
― Seth David Radwell, American Schism: How the Two Enlightenments Hold the Secret to Healing our Nation