“The human heart has a tiresome tendency to label as fate only what crushes it. But happiness likewise, in its way, is without reason, since it is inevitable.”
― The Myth of Sisyphus and Other Essays
― The Myth of Sisyphus and Other Essays
“I celebrate ideals of individual excellence, self-reliance, and personal responsibility… But rugged individualism alone did not get us to the moon. It did not end slavery, win World War II, pass the Voting Rights Act, or bring down the Berlin Wall. It didn’t build our dams, bridges, and highways, or map the human genome. Our most lasting accomplishments require mutual effort and shared sacrifice; this is an idea that is woven into the very fabric of this country.”
― United: Thoughts on Finding Common Ground and Advancing the Common Good
― United: Thoughts on Finding Common Ground and Advancing the Common Good
“The central inner conflict is one between the constructive forces of the real self and the obstructive forces of the pride system, between healthy growth and the drive to prove in actuality the perfection of the idealized self.”
― Neurosis and Human Growth: The Struggle Towards Self-Realization
― Neurosis and Human Growth: The Struggle Towards Self-Realization
“A movement’s call for action evokes an eager response in the frustrated, for they see in action a cure for all that ails them. It brings self-forgetting and gives them a sense of purpose and worth. Indeed it seems that frustration stems chiefly from an inability to act, and that the most poignantly frustrated are those whose talents and temperament equip them ideally for a life of action but are condemned by circumstances to rust away in idleness.”
― The True Believer: Thoughts on the Nature of Mass Movements
― The True Believer: Thoughts on the Nature of Mass Movements
“One heart is not connected to another through harmony alone. They are, instead, linked deeply through their wounds. Pain linked to pain, fragility to fragility. There is no silence without a cry of grief, no forgiveness without bloodshed, no acceptance without a passage through acute loss. That is what lies at the root of true harmony.”
― Colorless Tsukuru Tazaki and His Years of Pilgrimage
― Colorless Tsukuru Tazaki and His Years of Pilgrimage
Martin’s 2025 Year in Books
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