Swoop

“The fact that college campuses, once the cornerstone of free expression and open debate, are now among the most intellectually intolerant spaces in America should concern us deeply.”
― Ben Sasse, Them: Why We Hate Each Other--and How to Heal

“Or take an instance from the student’s childhood: His parents made him take violin lessons. He was not very gifted and his teacher would interrupt him to criticize his mistakes in a cold, unbearable voice. He felt humiliated, and he wanted to cry. But instead of trying to play in tune and not make mistakes, he would deliberately play wrong notes, the teacher’s voice would become still more unbearable and harsh, and he himself would sink deeper and deeper into his litost.
What then is litost?
Litost is a state of torment created by the sudden sight of one’s own misery.”
― Milan Kundera, The Book of Laughter and Forgetting

“The way contemporary history is told is like a huge concert where they present all of Beethoven’s one hundred thirty-eight opuses one after the other, but actually play just the first eight bars of each.”
― Milan Kundera, Slowness

“Turning points in the evolution of a relationship are not always the result of dramatic events; they often stem from something that at first seems completely inconsequential.”
― Milan Kundera, The Joke