J.M.

“If only it were all so simple! If only there were evil people somewhere insidiously committing evil deeds, and it were necessary only to separate them from the rest of us and destroy them. But the line dividing good and evil cuts through the heart of every human being. And who is willing to destroy a piece of his own heart?”
― Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, The Gulag Archipelago 1918–1956

“If I ever figured out how to go back in time, I'd tell my nine-year-old self to run the other way when a gnome showed up in her room promising a life of magic and adventure.”
― Anna Staniszewski, My Very UnFairy Tale Life

“Why do so many kids fail to master academic skills naturally? Well, why shouldn't they? These skills are not hardwired into our children's brains. Evolution didn't prepare them for these tasks. Our brains are hardwired for eating, sleeping, finding a mate, and talking. There are no hardwired parts of the brain for academic skills such as underlining key concepts while you read.”
― Martin L. Kutscher and Marcella Moran

“For a society to fracture along identity lines, you need mouthpieces - people who are willing to make discriminatory appeals and pursue discriminatory policies in the name of a particular group. They are usually people who are seeking political office or trying to stay in office. They provoke and harness feelings of fear as a way to lock in the constituencies that will support their scramble for power. Experts have a term for these individuals: ethnic entrepreneurs. [...] Though the catalyst for conflict is often ostensibly something else - the economy, immigration, freedom of religion - ethnic entrepreneurs make the fight expressly about their group's position and status in society. Harnessing the power of the media, which they often control, they work to convince citizens that they are under threat from an out-group and must band together under the entrepreneur to counter the threat.”
― Barbara F. Walter, How Civil Wars Start: And How to Stop Them