beth

“I don’t ever want to forget that resistance must be its own reward, since resistance, at least within the life span of the resistors, almost always fails.”
― Ta-Nehisi Coates, We Were Eight Years in Power: An American Tragedy

“The most precious thing I had then is the most precious thing I have now—my own curiosity. That is the thing I knew, even in the classroom, they could not take from me. That is the thing that buoyed me and eventually plucked me from the sea.”
― Ta-Nehisi Coates, We Were Eight Years in Power: An American Tragedy

“The United States of America has had the world’s largest economy for most of our history, with enough money to feed and educate all our children, build world-leading infrastructure, and generally ensure a high standard of living for everyone. But we don’t. When it comes to per capita government spending, the United States is near the bottom of the list of industrialized countries, below Latvia and Estonia. Our roads, bridges, and water systems get a D+ from the American Society of Civil Engineers. With the exception of about forty years from the New Deal to the 1970s, the United States has had a weaker commitment to public goods, and to the public good, than every country that possesses anywhere near our wealth.”
― Heather McGhee, The Sum of Us: What Racism Costs Everyone and How We Can Prosper Together

“They verbally attacked each other with Mao's quotations, making cynical use of his guru-like elusiveness––it was easy to select a quotation of Mao's to suit any situation, or even both sides of the same argument.”
― Jung Chang, Wild Swans: Three Daughters of China