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Franta
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“Words do have consequences, and what one generation says but does not really believe, the next generation may believe, and even act upon.”
― Ethics in the Real World: 82 Brief Essays on Things That Matter
― Ethics in the Real World: 82 Brief Essays on Things That Matter
“North Korea may be the craziest country in the world. It’s certainly a good competitor for that title. But it does make sense to try to figure out what’s in the minds of people when they’re acting in crazy ways. Why would they behave the way they do? Just imagine ourselves in their situation. Imagine what it meant in the Korean War years of the early 1950s for your country to be totally leveled, everything destroyed by a huge superpower, which furthermore was gloating about what it was doing. Imagine the imprint that would leave behind.
Bear in mind that the North Korean leadership is likely to have read the public military journals of this superpower at that time explaining that, since everything else in North Korea had been destroyed, the air force was sent to destroy North Korea’s dams, huge dams that controlled the water supply -- a war crime, by the way, for which people were hanged in Nuremberg. And these official journals were talking excitedly about how wonderful it was to see the water pouring down, digging out the valleys, and the Asians scurrying around trying to survive. The journals were exulting in what this meant to those “Asians,” horrors beyond our imagination. It meant the destruction of their rice crop, which in turn meant starvation and death. How magnificent! It’s not in our memory, but it’s in their memory.”
―
Bear in mind that the North Korean leadership is likely to have read the public military journals of this superpower at that time explaining that, since everything else in North Korea had been destroyed, the air force was sent to destroy North Korea’s dams, huge dams that controlled the water supply -- a war crime, by the way, for which people were hanged in Nuremberg. And these official journals were talking excitedly about how wonderful it was to see the water pouring down, digging out the valleys, and the Asians scurrying around trying to survive. The journals were exulting in what this meant to those “Asians,” horrors beyond our imagination. It meant the destruction of their rice crop, which in turn meant starvation and death. How magnificent! It’s not in our memory, but it’s in their memory.”
―
“If our best-educated citizens have no idea how to answer these basic questions, we will struggle to build a democracy that can solve the problems we face, whether they are what to do about climate change, the world’s poor, the problems of Australia’s Indigenous people, or the prospect of a future in which we can genetically modify our offspring. An education in the humanities is as valuable today as it was in Plato’s time.”
― Ethics in the Real World: 86 Brief Essays on Things that Matter
― Ethics in the Real World: 86 Brief Essays on Things that Matter
“Cutting out meat would do more to help combat climate change than any other action we could feasibly take in the next 20 years.”
― Ethics in the Real World: 82 Brief Essays on Things That Matter
― Ethics in the Real World: 82 Brief Essays on Things That Matter
“Listening to uninformed people is worse than having no answers at all.”
― Principles: Life and Work
― Principles: Life and Work
Leaders' Book Club
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We read books that can make us better leaders. We read business, philosophy, psychology, non-fiction, self-development books, or any book that can ref ...more
Anarchist & Radical Book Club
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— last activity Feb 08, 2026 01:40PM
This is a group to read and discuss anarchist practice and theory, by gathering a large body of anarchist literature, non-fiction, and theory, as well ...more
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