Jeff Newberry > Jeff's Quotes

“. . . All artists’ work is autobiographical. Any writer’s work is a map of their psyche. You can really see what their concerns are, what their obsessions are, and what interests them.”
― Kim Addonizio

“There is time, and then there is timelessness. And if you're lucky, and if you can be still enough, observant enough, you may be able to know and speak about that intersection of time and timelessness, or time and eternity.”
― Wendell Berry, Standing by Words

“Just because you're paranoid doesn't mean they aren't after you.”
― Joseph Heller, Catch-22

“Hell is the absence of the people you long for.”
― Emily St. John Mandel, Station Eleven

“Don't you see that the whole aim of Newspeak is to narrow the range of thought?... Has it ever occurred to you, Winston, that by the year 2050, at the very latest, not a single human being will be alive who could understand such a conversation as we are having now?... The whole climate of thought will be different. In fact, there will be no thought, as we understand it now. Orthodoxy means not thinking-not needing to think. Orthodoxy is unconsciousness.”
― George Orwell, 1984

“If the human race has ever invented an institution more effective in the propagation of intellectual and ethical cripples than the nobility, I have yet to stumble across it. Take the progeny of a half millennium of inbred idiots, first cousins, and hemophiliacs. Raise them via a series of bloated wet nurses, drink-addled confessors, and failed academics, because Śakra knows Mommy and Daddy are too busy diddling themselves at court to take a hand in the upbringing of a child. Ensure any youthful training they receive extends to nothing more practical than swordsmanship and the study of languages no longer spoken, grant them a fortune upon the attainment of their majority, place them outside the bounds of any legal system more developed than the code duello, add the general human instinct toward sloth, avarice, and bigotry, stir thoroughly and, voilà—you have the aristocracy.”
― Daniel Polansky, Low Town

“this must be the crux of life: everybody blundering around in the full glare of ruination.”
― Téa Obreht, Inland

“Distracting people from what really does matter—and steering them into thinking meaningless conflict is what matters—is the point. Meanwhile, democracy is in tatters.”
― Sarah Posner, Unholy: Why White Evangelicals Worship at the Altar of Donald Trump

“An algorithm’s only as perfect as the person designing it.”
― Arkady Martine, A Memory Called Empire

“Those who believe that they believe in God, but without passion in their hearts, without anguish in mind, without uncertainty, without doubt, without an element of despair even in their consolation, believe only in the God idea, not God Himself.”
― Miguel de Unamuno

“Mankind didn’t make messes; mankind was the mess.”
― Victor LaValle, The Ballad of Black Tom

“You’re one-third bad intentions, one-third pure avarice, and one-eighth sawdust. What’s left, I’ll credit, must be brains.”
― Scott Lynch, The Lies of Locke Lamora

“We’re all disgusting, every single one of us. Making messes and then wandering away.”
― Andrea Bartz, We Were Never Here

“People are social animals, but we have a fatal flaw: we feel more affinity for those who are most like us.”
― Rutger Bregman, Humankind: A Hopeful History

“Contrary to our stereotype of the caveman as a chest-beating gorilla with a club and a short fuse, our male ancestors were probably not machos. More like proto-feminists.”
― Rutger Bregman, Humankind: A Hopeful History

“Or think about the earliest written texts: these weren’t books of romantic poetry, but long lists of outstanding debts.”
― Rutger Bregman, Humankind: A Hopeful History

“In the very same years that Rousseau was writing his books, Franklin admitted that ‘No European who has tasted Savage Life can afterwards bear to live in our societies.’47”
― Rutger Bregman, Humankind: A Hopeful History

“Civilisation has become synonymous with peace and progress, and wilderness with war and decline. In reality, for most of human existence, it was the other way around.”
― Rutger Bregman, Humankind: A Hopeful History – from the presenter of the 2025 BBC ‘Moral Revolution’ Reith lectures

“Vaccines now save more lives each year than would have been spared if we’d had world peace for the entire twentieth century.”
― Rutger Bregman, Humankind: A Hopeful History – from the presenter of the 2025 BBC ‘Moral Revolution’ Reith lectures

“I’m no sceptic when it comes to climate change. There’s no doubt in my mind that this is the greatest challenge of our time–and that time is running out. What I am sceptical about, however, is the fatalistic rhetoric of collapse. Of the notion that we humans are inherently selfish, or worse, a plague upon the earth. I’m sceptical when this notion is peddled as ‘realistic’, and I’m sceptical when we’re told there’s no way out.”
― Rutger Bregman, Humankind: A Hopeful History

“In point of fact, Hannah Arendt was one of those rare philosophers who believe that most people, deep down, are decent.37 She argued that our need for love and friendship is more human than any inclination towards hate and violence.”
― Rutger Bregman, Humankind: A Hopeful History

“Belief in humankind’s sinful nature also provides a tidy explanation for the existence of evil. When confronted with hatred or selfishness, you can tell yourself, ‘Oh, well, that’s just human nature.’ But if you believe that people are essentially good, you have to question why evil exists at all. It implies that engagement and resistance are worthwhile, and it imposes an obligation to act.”
― Rutger Bregman, Humankind: A Hopeful History

“One thing is certain: a better world doesn’t start with more empathy. If anything, empathy makes us less forgiving, because the more we identify with victims, the more we generalise about our enemies.37 The bright spotlight we shine on our chosen few makes us blind to the perspective of our adversaries, because everybody else falls outside our view.”
― Rutger Bregman, Humankind: A Hopeful History

“The better the story you spin about yourself, the bigger your piece of the pie.”
― Rutger Bregman, Humankind: A Hopeful History

“The names change, but the mechanism stays the same: inspired by fellowship and incited by cynical strongmen, people will do the most horrific things to each other.”
― Rutger Bregman, Humankind: A Hopeful History

“Historians point out that if the Enlightenment gave us equality, it also invented racism.”
― Rutger Bregman, Humankind: A Hopeful History

“A major study among 230,000 people across 142 countries revealed that a mere 13 per cent actually feel ‘engaged’ at work.17 Thirteen per cent. When you wrap your brain around these kinds of figures, you realise how much ambition and energy are going to waste.”
― Rutger Bregman, Humankind: A Hopeful History

“Researchers at the University of Michigan found the time kids spent at school increased by 18 per cent from 1981 to 1997. Time spent on homework went up 145 per cent.”
― Rutger Bregman, Humankind: A Hopeful History

“Play is not subject to fixed rules and regulations, but is open-ended and unfettered. It’s not an Astroturfed field with parents shouting at the sidelines; it’s kids frolicking outside without parental supervision, making up their own games as they go along.”
― Rutger Bregman, Humankind: A Hopeful History

“Play gives meaning to life, wrote the Dutch historian Johan Huizinga back in 1938. He christened us Homo ludens–‘playing man’. Everything we call ‘culture,’ said Huizinga, originates in play.”
― Rutger Bregman, Humankind: A Hopeful History