Jacob > Jacob's Quotes

“When it comes to dressing well, American culture is so self-fulfilled that it has not only disregarded this courtesy of self-presentation, but has turned that disregard into a virtue. "We are too superior/busy/cool/not-uptight to bother about how we look to other people, and so we can wear pajamas to school and underwear to the mall.”
― Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, Americanah

“But Kimberly’s unhappiness was inward, unacknowledged, shielded by her desire for things to be as they should, and also by hope: she believed in other people’s happiness because it meant that she, too, might one day have it. Laura’s unhappiness was different, spiky, she wished that everyone around her were unhappy because she had convinced herself that she would always be.”
― Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, Americanah

“Yes, but I’m worried I will leave grad school and no longer be able to speak English. I know this woman in grad school, a friend of a friend, and just listening to her talk is scary. The semiotic dialectics of intertextual modernity. Which makes no sense at all. Sometimes I feel that they live in a parallel universe of academia speaking academese instead of English and they don’t really know what’s happening in the real world.”
― Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, Americanah

“In Oregon, a far larger honey mushroom (Armillaria ostoyae) mycelial mat found on a mountaintop covers more than 2,400 acres and is possibly more than 2,200 years old”
― Paul Stamets, Mycelium Running: How Mushrooms Can Help Save the World

“No one understands a stranger’s tragedy, God willing you might understand your own.”
― Svetlana Alexievich, Secondhand Time: The Last of the Soviets

“As my physics teacher always said, “My dear students! Just remember that money solves all problems, even differential equations.”
― Svetlana Alexievich, Secondhand Time: The Last of the Soviets

“Mass resistance was possible only when people believed they had the collective capacity to change things. For poor people, this required identifying with the oppressed, and counting yourself among them—which was something most trailer park residents were absolutely unwilling to do.”
― Matthew Desmond, Evicted: Poverty and Profit in the American City

“But equal treatment in an unequal society could still foster inequality.”
― Matthew Desmond, Evicted: Poverty and Profit in the American City

“It was once said that the poor are “constantly exposed to evidence of their own irrelevance.”
― Matthew Desmond, Evicted: Poverty and Profit in the American City

“I have never really understood exactly what a ‘liberal’ is, since I have heard ‘liberals’ express every conceivable opinion on every conceivable subject. As far as I can tell, you have the extreme right, who are fascist racist capitalist dogs like Ronald Reagan, who come right out and let you know where they’re coming from. And on the opposite end, you have the left, who are supposed to be committed to justice, equality, and human rights. And somewhere between those two points is the liberal.

As far as I’m concerned, ‘liberal’ is the most meaningless word in the dictionary. History has shown me that as long as some white middle-class people can live high on the hog, take vacations to Europe, send their children to private schools, and reap the benefits of their white skin privilege, then they are ‘liberal’. But when times get hard and money gets tight, they pull off that liberal mask and you think you’re talking to Adolf Hitler. They feel sorry for the so-called underprivileged just as long as they can maintain their own privileges.”
― Assata Shakur

“The fundamental cause of the trouble is that in the modern world the stupid are cocksure while the intelligent are full of doubt.”
― Bertrand Russell

“There are two motives for reading a book; one, that you enjoy it; the other, that you can boast about it.”
― Bertrand Russell

“It's easy to fall in love. The hard part is finding someone to catch you.”
― Bertrand Russell

“It has been said that man is a rational animal. All my life I have been searching for evidence which could support this.”
― Bertrand Russell

“The secret of happiness is to face the fact that the world is horrible, horrible, horrible.”
― Betrand Russell

“I believe in using words, not fists. I believe in my outrage knowing people are living in boxes on the street. I believe in honesty. I believe in a good time. I believe in good food. I believe in sex.”
― Bertrand Russell

“Advocates of capitalism are very apt to appeal to the sacred principles of liberty, which are embodied in one maxim: The fortunate must not be restrained in the exercise of tyranny over the unfortunate.”
― Bertrand Russell

“While there is a lower class, I am in it, while there is a criminal element, I am of it, and while there is a soul in prison, I am not free.”
― Eugene V. Debs