“Ignorance is only bliss if you want to get caught.”
― Vengeful
― Vengeful
“Do what you will, there is going to be some benevolence, as well as some malice, in your patient's soul. The great thing is to direct the malice to his immediate neighbours whom he meets every day and to thrust his benevolence out to the remote circumference, to people he does not know. The malice thus becomes wholly real and the benevolence largely imaginary.”
― The Screwtape Letters
― The Screwtape Letters
“The waste is important. It’s only by doing something that serves no concrete survival function that artists are able to advertise their survival surplus. An underground bunker stocked with food, guns, and ammo may have been expensive and difficult to build (especially if it was built by hand), and it may well reflect the skills and resources of its maker. But it’s not attractive in the same way art is. The bunker reflects a kind of desperation of an animal worried about its survival, rather than the easy assurance of an animal with more resources than it knows what to do with. Thus impracticality is a feature of all art forms. But we can see it with special clarity in those art forms that need to distinguish themselves from closely related practical endeavors.”
― The Elephant in the Brain: Hidden Motives in Everyday Life
― The Elephant in the Brain: Hidden Motives in Everyday Life
“And if you think tough men are dangerous, wait until you see what weak men are capable of.”
― 12 Rules for Life: An Antidote to Chaos
― 12 Rules for Life: An Antidote to Chaos
“Helping is not, as conventionally thought, a charitable act that is praiseworthy to do but not wrong to omit. It is something that everyone ought to do.”
― Practical Ethics
― Practical Ethics
Patrick’s 2025 Year in Books
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