Bryan > Bryan 's Quotes

“Too much of what led up to the crisis in the old bubble days—the conspicuous consumption, the latter-day Gatsbyism—was fueled by a need to fill a huge emotional and psychological void left by the absence of meaningful work. When people cease to find meaning in work, when work is boring, alienating, and dehumanizing, the only option becomes the urge to consume—to buy happiness off the shelf, a phenomenon we now know cannot suffice in the long term.”
― Richard Florida, The Great Reset: How New Ways of Living and Working Drive Post-Crash Prosperity

“Who can ever forget George W. Bush, in the days and weeks after the terrorist attack of September 11, 2001, exhorting people not to be afraid, to get out and do the right thing, the patriotic thing, the one thing that could get the economy moving forward again: start shopping.”
― Richard Florida, The Great Reset: How New Ways of Living and Working Drive Post-Crash Prosperity

“Hope is like a path in the countryside: originally there was no path, but once people begin to pass, a way appears.”
― Evan Osnos, Age of Ambition: Chasing Fortune, Truth, and Faith in the New China

“Confucius, the philosopher and politician who was born in the sixth century B.C.E. He acquired a place in Chinese history akin to that of Socrates in the West, in part because his ideology encouraged order and loyalty. “There is government,” Confucius said, “when the prince is prince, and the minister is minister; when the father is father, and the son is son.” Confucius linked morality to the strength of the state: “He who exercises government by means of virtue may be compared to the North Star, which holds its place while all other stars turn around it.”
― Evan Osnos, Age of Ambition: Chasing Fortune, Truth, and Faith in the New China

“I believe in one God, and no more; and I hope for happiness beyond this life. I believe in the equality of humans; and I believe that religious duties consist in doing justice, loving mercy, and endeavoring to make our fellow creatures happy.”
― Thomas Paine

“For nonconformity the world will whip you with its displeasure.”
― Ralph Waldo Emerson

“A basic dividing line is age fifty,” says Edward Rogoff, economist at Baruch College, City University of New York. “You lose a good job at age fifty, the chances of getting another are small, so you do something else. You start your own business.”
― Chris Farrell, Unretirement: How Baby Boomers are Changing the Way We Think About Work, Community, and the Good Life

“A common expression among laid-off workers fifty-five years and older who are struggling to find work is “you don’t even exist.” You cobble a job here and a job there, always marginal to management. Apply for a job you’re well qualified for and you’ll probably never hear back from the employer.”
― Chris Farrell, Unretirement: How Baby Boomers are Changing the Way We Think About Work, Community, and the Good Life

“The rise of unretirement is good news for the economy’s vitality, the material well-being of individuals in life’s third stage, and for shoring up the financial health of the social safety net.”
― Chris Farrell, Unretirement: How Baby Boomers are Changing the Way We Think About Work, Community, and the Good Life

“The big difference between the twentysomething and sixtysomething generations is a sense of time. The young believe they have plenty of time, while for older workers time is precious. “Time is running short, and many boomers want work that also offers purpose,” says Marc Freedman. “They too want work that gives meaning.”
― Chris Farrell, Unretirement: How Baby Boomers are Changing the Way We Think About Work, Community, and the Good Life

“Instead, the emerging story from cognitive neuroscience is that aging can be successful, associated with gains and losses. It is not necessarily a unidirectional process but rather a complex phenomenon characterized by reorganization, optimization and enduring functional plasticity that can enable the maintenance of a productive—and happy—life.”
― Chris Farrell, Unretirement: How Baby Boomers are Changing the Way We Think About Work, Community, and the Good Life

“The era of young adults graduating from high school, joining a union, and making a good living at a factory—working class on the job and middle class at home—has largely disappeared.”
― Chris Farrell, Unretirement: How Baby Boomers are Changing the Way We Think About Work, Community, and the Good Life

“It is notorious that the insatiable factory wears out its workers with great rapidity. As it scraps machinery so it scraps human beings. The young, the vigorous, the adaptable, the supple of limb, the alert of mind, are in demand,” wrote economist Edward Devine in 1909. “Middle age is old age, and the wornout worker, if he has no children and if he has no savings, becomes an item in the aggregate of the unemployed.”
― Chris Farrell, Unretirement: How Baby Boomers are Changing the Way We Think About Work, Community, and the Good Life

“People are naturally curious, but we are not naturally good thinkers; unless the cognitive conditions are right, we will avoid thinking.”
― Daniel T. Willingham, Why Don't Students Like School?: A Cognitive Scientist Answers Questions About How the Mind Works and What It Means for the Classroom

“Memory is the residue of thought.”
― Daniel T. Willingham, Why Don't Students Like School?: A Cognitive Scientist Answers Questions About How the Mind Works and What It Means for the Classroom

“They were dying slowly—it was very clear. They were not enemies, they were not criminals, they were nothing earthly now,—nothing but black shadows of disease and starvation, lying confusedly in the greenish gloom.”
― Joseph Conrad, Heart of Darkness

“Miltiades was a Greek general who, flush with victory against the Persians at Marathon in 490 BC, led a punitive mission against an ally of Persia, a small island nation that was supposed to be a pushover. The mission was a fiasco and Miltiades was defeated and disgraced; he died of his wounds in prison.”
― Evan Thomas, The War Lovers: Roosevelt, Lodge, Hearst, and the Rush to Empire, 1898

“I don’t want to change. Why bother? We’ll get old. I see us sitting in easy chairs waiting for the kids to call.”
― Rudolph E. Tanzi, Super Brain

“Of all the weapons the Europeans brought to the Pacific, guns included, none was more powerful and more capable of effecting lasting change than written language.”
― Laurence Bergreen, Over the Edge of the World: Magellan's Terrifying Circumnavigation of the Globe

“Using blacks as strikebreakers had an added benefit for employers—it fomented racism, which fostered deeply entrenched divisions among the working classes and further weakened the labor movement.”
― David Williams, A People's History of the Civil War: Struggles for the Meaning of Freedom

“There should be some way to settle political differences without slaughtering human beings and wearing out the bodies and sapping the strength of those who may be fortunate enough to escape the death penalty.”
― David Williams, A People's History of the Civil War: Struggles for the Meaning of Freedom

“The crucial challenge is to learn how to read critically, analyze data, and formulate ideas—and”
― Fareed Zakaria, In Defense of a Liberal Education

“The education system is an increasingly powerful mechanism for the intergenerational reproduction of privilege.”
― Fareed Zakaria, In Defense of a Liberal Education

“The basic problem for American workers of all ages has been that their hours and productivity keep rising but their wages do not.”
― Fareed Zakaria, In Defense of a Liberal Education

“By seeing to it that McAdoo would satisfy his final foreign-language requirement through the composition of an English-language paper submitted for a fake class that never met, the ASPSA and its friends in the AFRI/AFAM Department made an open mockery of the university’s graduation requirements.”
― Jay M Smith, Cheated: The UNC Scandal, the Education of Athletes, and the Future of Big-Time College Sports

“The Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act of 1974, which was designed to ensure privacy and properly regulated access to student records, has become “the shield behind which higher education hides the academic corruption in college athletics.”
― Jay M Smith, Cheated: The UNC Scandal, the Education of Athletes, and the Future of Big-Time College Sports

“If a business borrows to buy a machine, it’s a good thing, not a bad thing. During the past six years, America—its government, its families, the country as a whole—has been borrowing to sustain its consumption. Meanwhile, investment in fixed assets—the plants and equipment that help increase our wealth—has been declining.”
― Joseph E. Stiglitz, The Great Divide: Unequal Societies and What We Can Do About Them

“Parents who view themselves as educational coaches tend to read to their children every day when they are small; when their children get older, they talk with them about their days and about the news around the world. They let their children make mistakes and then get right back to work. They teach them good habits and give them autonomy. They are teachers, too, in other words, and they believe in rigor. They want their children to fail while they are still children. They know that those lessons—about hard work, persistence, integrity, and consequences—will serve a child for decades to come.”
― Amanda Ripley, The Smartest Kids in the World: And How They Got That Way

“Why do national reform priorities keep getting misinterpreted on the ground? The federal Department of Education has no power over state legislatures or education departments. There are no federal inspectors of local schools to make sure principals, superintendents, and school boards understand how to use complex new tools like value-added measurement of teachers. Unique among Western nations, our national government does not produce or select high-quality tests, textbooks, or reading lists for teachers to use. Lastly—and perhaps most importantly—we consistently expect teachers and schools to close achievement gaps and panic when they fail to do so. But we do not provide families with the full range of social supports children need to thrive academically, including living-wage employment and stable and affordable child care, housing, higher education, and vocational training, in addition to decent nutrition and health care.”
― Dana Goldstein, The Teacher Wars: A History of America's Most Embattled Profession

“Georgia Populist Tom Watson was the party’s most vocal advocate of black-white cooperation in facing their common economic problems. Time and again, he pointed out “the accident of color can make no difference in the interests of farmers, croppers, and laborers.”105 Watson often spoke to mixed groups of black and white farmers, always hammering home the message of their shared plight. In 1892 Watson told an audience: “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.”
― David Williams, A People's History of the Civil War: Struggles for the Meaning of Freedom