Jan Frederik Solem

“One of the greatest advantages of the totalitarian elites of the twenties and thirties was to turn any statement of fact into a question of motive.”
― Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism

“Always after a defeat and a respite, the Shadow takes another shape and grows again.’ ‘I wish it need not have happened in my time,’ said Frodo. ‘So do I,’ said Gandalf, ‘and so do all who live to see such times. But that is not for them to decide. All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given us. And already, Frodo, our time is beginning to look black. The Enemy is fast becoming very strong.”
― J.R.R. Tolkien, The Lord of the Rings

“Certainly, Chesterton seemed to understand asceticism, at least in theory. For the contemplative vision, he says, reveals the world as it really is by turning it upside-down, and revealing the fragile dependence of all that seemed solid and certain upon the fine thread of the mercy of God, on which it hangs. This is the discovery of an infinite debt, of the kind that lovers delight in: we love to be in each other’s debt, and so to be continually paying it back. Thus the saint, who is nothing if he is not a lover, “will always be throwing things away into a bottomless pit of unfathomable thanks.”
― Robert Wild, The Tumbler of God: Chesterton as Mystic

“The poet, the artist, the sleuth - whoever sharpens our perception tends to be antisocial; rarely "well-adjusted", he cannot go along with currents and trends. A strange bond often exists between antisocial types in their power to see environments as they really are. This need to interface, to confront environments with a certain antisocial power is manifest in the famous story "The Emperor's New Clothes".”
― Marshall McLuhan, The Medium is the Massage