January > January's Quotes

“There is no confusion like the confusion of a simple mind…”
― F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby

“There are only the pursued, the pursuing, the busy and the tired.”
― F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby

“She’s got an indiscreet voice,” I remarked. “It’s full of–” I hesitated.

“Her voice is full of money,” he said suddenly.

That was it. I’d never understood before. It was full of money–that was the inexhaustible charm that rose and fell in it, the jingle of it, the cymbals’ song of it.”
― F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby

“What'll we do with ourselves this afternoon?” cried Daisy, “and the day after that, and the next thirty years?”
― F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby

“The desire to start something at the “right” time is usually just a justification for delay. In almost every case, the best time to start is now.”
― Gretchen Rubin, Better Than Before: What I Learned About Making and Breaking Habits--to Sleep More, Quit Sugar, Procrastinate Less, and Generally Build a Happier Life

“Nothing ever begins when you think it does. You think you can trace something back to its roots but roots by definition never end. There’s always something that came before: soil and water and seeds that were born of trees that were born of yet more seeds.”
― Meghan Daum, The Unspeakable: And Other Subjects of Discussion

“For a country that is famous for exporting democracy across the globe and has branded itself as the shining city on the hill, the United States has a shameful history when it comes to embracing one of its most basic rights at home. In 1787, when the founders ratified the Constitution, only white male property owners could vote in the eleven states of the Union. In 1865, at the end of the Civil War, black men could cast a ballot freely in only five states. Women couldn’t vote until 1920. The remarkably brief Reconstruction period of 1865–1877, when there were twenty-two black members of Congress from the South and six hundred black state legislators, was followed by ninety years of Jim Crow rule. The United States is the only advanced democracy that has ever enfranchised, disenfranchised, and then reenfranchised an entire segment of the population. Despite our many distinctions as a democracy, the enduring debate over who can and cannot participate in it remains a key feature of our national character.”
― Ari Berman, Give Us the Ballot: The Modern Struggle for Voting Rights in America

“Selma became a major slave-trading port. The city passed twenty-seven ordinances regulating the behavior of slaves, stipulating, for example, that “any Negro found upon the streets of the city smoking a cigar or pipe or carrying a walking cane must be on conviction punished with 39 lashes.” During the Civil War, Selma manufactured weapons for the Confederacy and was commanded by Gen. Nathan Bedford Forrest, the first Grand Dragon of the Ku Klux Klan.”
― Ari Berman, Give Us the Ballot: The Modern Struggle for Voting Rights in America

“When his colleagues protested that one of Jobs’s ideas or proposals would be impossible to implement, he would use a trick he learned from a guru in India: he would stare at them without blinking and say, “Don’t be afraid. You can do it.” It usually worked. He drove people mad, he drove them to distraction, but he also drove them to do things they didn’t believe they could do.”
― Jeff Bezos, Invent and Wander: The Collected Writings of Jeff Bezos