“No matter how old or how sick you are, how much or little you have done, your business in life not only isn’t finished, but hasn’t yet received its final, decisive meaning until your very last breath.”
“If it were possible for any nation to fathom another people's bitter experience through a book, how much easier its future fate would become and how many calamities and mistakes it could avoid. But it is very difficult. There always is this fallacious belief: 'It would not be the same here; here such things are impossible.'
Alas, all the evil of the twentieth century is possible everywhere on earth.”
― The Gulag Archipelago 1918–1956
Alas, all the evil of the twentieth century is possible everywhere on earth.”
― The Gulag Archipelago 1918–1956
“If you can't understand why someone is doing something, look at the consequences of their actions, whatever they might be, and then infer the motivations from their consequences.
For example if someone is making everyone around them miserable and you'd like to know why, their motive may simply be to make everyone around them miserable including themselves.”
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For example if someone is making everyone around them miserable and you'd like to know why, their motive may simply be to make everyone around them miserable including themselves.”
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“I don't think that you have any insight whatsoever into your capacity for good until you have some well-developed insight into your capacity for evil.”
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“Everything—that’s far too much. It was specific things that fell apart, not everything; identifiable beliefs failed; particular actions were false and inauthentic.”
― 12 Rules for Life: An Antidote to Chaos
― 12 Rules for Life: An Antidote to Chaos
Evan’s 2025 Year in Books
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