Charles Mann (1491) and Elizabeth Kolbert (The Sixth Extinction).
“Man is by nature a social animal; an individual who is unsocial naturally and not accidentally is either beneath our notice or more than human. Society is something that precedes the individual. Anyone who either cannot lead the common life or is so self-sufficient as not to need to, and therefore does not partake of society, is either a beast or a god. ”
― Politics
― Politics
“For in the immediate world, everything is to be discerned, for him who can discern it, and central and simply, without either dissection into science, or digestion into art, but with the whole of consciousness, seeking to perceive it as it stands: so that the aspect of a street in sunlight can roar in the heart of itself as a symphony, perhaps as no symphony can: and all of consciousness is shifted from the imagined, the revisive, to the effort to perceive simply the cruel radiation of what is.”
― Let Us Now Praise Famous Men
― Let Us Now Praise Famous Men
“You are kept apart that you may be separately fleeced of your earnings. You are made to hate each other because upon that hatred is rested the keystone of the arch of financial despotism which enslaves you both. You are deceived and blinded that you may not see how this race antagonism perpetuates a monetary system which beggars both.”
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“If there is meaning in life at all, then there must be a meaning in suffering. Suffering is an ineradicable part of life, even as fate and death. Without suffering and death human life cannot be complete.”
― Man's Search for Meaning
― Man's Search for Meaning
Grand Rapids Nonfiction History Book Club
— 4 members
— last activity Feb 23, 2026 07:42AM
We meet in person in Grand Rapids, MI once a month. We have been meeting since 2018 at Schuler Books. We cover most continents throughout the year and ...more
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