The United States still has a stranglehold on the silicon chips that gave Silicon Valley its name, though its position has weakened dangerously.
“Most people do not really want freedom, because freedom involves responsibility, and most people are frightened of responsibility.”
― Civilization and Its Discontents
― Civilization and Its Discontents
“There is no means of testing which decision is better, because there is no basis for comparison. We live everything as it comes, without warning, like an actor going on cold. And what can life be worth if the first rehearsal for life is life itself? That is why life is always like a sketch. No, "sketch" is not quite a word, because a sketch is an outline of something, the groundwork for a picture, whereas the sketch that is our life is a sketch for nothing, an outline with no picture.”
― The Unbearable Lightness of Being
― The Unbearable Lightness of Being
“The only relationship that can make both partners happy is one in which sentimentality has no place and neither partner makes any claim on the life and freedom of the other.”
― The Unbearable Lightness of Being
― The Unbearable Lightness of Being
“The brain appears to possess a special area which we might call poetic memory and which records everything that charms or touches us, that makes our lives beautiful ... Love begins with a metaphor. Which is to say, love begins at the point when a woman enters her first word into our poetic memory.”
― The Unbearable Lightness of Being
― The Unbearable Lightness of Being
“Making love with a woman and sleeping with a woman are two separate passions, not merely different but opposite. Love does not make itself felt in the desire for copulation (a desire that extends to an infinite number of women) but in the desire for shared sleep (a desire limited to one woman).”
― The Unbearable Lightness of Being
― The Unbearable Lightness of Being
Vladimir’s 2025 Year in Books
Take a look at Vladimir’s Year in Books, including some fun facts about their reading.
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