Noah Nelson

“I began to study trigonometry. There was solace in its strange formulas and equations. I was drawn to the Pythagorean theorem and its promise of a universal--the ability to predict the nature of any three points containing a right angle, anywhere, always. What I knew of physics I had learned in the junkyard, where the physical world often seemed unstable, capricious. But here was a principle through which the dimensions of life could be defined, captured. Perhaps reality was not wholly volatile. Perhaps it could be explained, predicted. Perhaps it could be made to make sense.”
― Tara Westover, Educated

“The bigger the entity and the more things it touches, the more susceptible it is to forces beyond its control. Maintaining stability requires far more work than formenting instability. Analysts of modern terrorism wring their hands over a version of the same dilemma: governments can win only by defending everywhere; terrorists can win by succeeding anywhere.”
― Cullen Murphy, Are We Rome?: The Fall of an Empire and the Fate of America

“The problem with these top-down accounts of political change is that they privilege institutions over citizen agency and thus understate the role of civil society and different forms of civic activity. This is unfortunate because civil society, by making the exercise of state power more accountable to the public, can help to make state institutions more democratic.”
― Megan Ming Francis, Civil Rights and the Making of the Modern American State

“I: You’re a communist then. S: Let’s say I’m old enough not to be dazzled by Ayn Rand.”
― Kameron Hurley, The Light Brigade