Marilyn Guggenheim > Marilyn's Quotes

“Do you realize that all great literature — "Moby Dick," "Huckleberry Finn," "A Farewell to Arms," "The Scarlet Letter," "The Red Badge of Courage," "The Iliad and The Odyssey," "Crime and Punishment," the Bible, and "The Charge of the Light Brigade" — are all about what a bummer it is to be a ...human being?”
― Kurt Vonnegut

“Like the generations of leaves, the lives of mortal men. Now the wind scatters the old leaves across the earth, now the living timber bursts with the new buds and spring comes round again. And so with men: as one generation comes to life, another dies away.”
― Homer, The Iliad

“The white man in the book, Gulliver, roved from peril to peril, each new island a new predicament to solve before he could return home. That was the man’s real trouble, not the savage and uncanny civilizations he encountered—he kept forgetting what he had. That was white people all over: Build a schoolhouse and let it rot, make a home then keep straying.”
― Colson Whitehead, The Underground Railroad

“More than the secret of the cat had drawn [Ned] to the nursing home. It was Mr. Scully himself. He'd known him, his habits, the things he knew how to do, the way he made his bread, the way he could get a fire started so quickly in the stove, the stories he told, the smile he gave Ned when he poured rum into his own tea, his memories of his long life.”
― Paula Fox, One-Eyed Cat

“The evolutionary argument for altruism could draw from [Victor] Frankl to argue that we need meaning and purpose in order to survive, and need them so profoundly we sometimes choose them over survival.”
― Rebecca Solnit, A Paradise Built in Hell: The Extraordinary Communities That Arise in Disaster

“The word ‘crisis’ is of Greek origin, meaning a point of culmination and separation, an instant when change one way or another is impending.” He compares the crisis in an individual life to that of a society in disaster: “Life becomes like molten metal. It enters a state of flux from which it must reset upon a principle, a creed, or purpose. It is shaken perhaps violently out of rut and routine. Old customs crumble, and instability rules.” That is, disasters open up societies to change, accelerate change that was under way, or break the hold of whatever was preventing change.”
― Rebecca Solnit, A Paradise Built in Hell: The Extraordinary Communities That Arise in Disaster

“The two most basic goals of social utopias are to eliminate deprivation—hunger, ignorance, homelessness—and to forge a society in which no one is an outsider, no one is alienated.”
― Rebecca Solnit, A Paradise Built in Hell: The Extraordinary Communities That Arise in Disaster

“The radical economist J K Gibson-Graham (two women writing under one name) portray our society as an iceberg, with competitive capitalist practices visible above the waterline and below all kinds of aid and cooperation by families, friends, neighbors, churches, cooperatives, volunteers, and voluntary organizations from softball leagues, to labor unions, along with activities outside the market, under the table, bartered labor and goods, ad more, a bustling network of uncommercial enterprise. Kropotkin's mutual-aid tribes, clans, and villages never went away entirely, even among us, here and now.”
― Rebecca Solnit, A Paradise Built in Hell: The Extraordinary Communities That Arise in Disaster

“Disaster shocks us out of slumber, but only skillful efforts keeps us awake.”
― Rebecca Solnit, A Paradise Built in Hell: The Extraordinary Communities That Arise in Disaster

“Disaster movies and the media continue to portray ordinary people as hysterical or vicious in the face of calamity. We believe these sources telling us we are victims or brutes more than we trust our own experience”
― Rebecca Solnit, A Paradise Built in Hell: The Extraordinary Communities That Arise in Disaster

“It’s a pragmatic response: a comprehensive Utopia may be out of reach, but the effort to realize it shapes the world for the better all the same. The belief may not be true, but it is useful. Belief makes the world.”
― Rebecca Solnit, A Paradise Built in Hell: The Extraordinary Communities That Arise in Disaster

“The utilitarian argument against fiestas, parades, carnivals, and general public merriment is that they produce nothing. But they do: they produce society.”
― Rebecca Solnit, A Paradise Built in Hell: The Extraordinary Communities That Arise in Disaster

“The positive emotions that arise in those unpromising circumstances demonstrate that social ties and meaningful work are deeply desired, readily improvised, and intensely rewarding. The very structure of our economy and society prevents these goals from being achieved.”
― Rebecca Solnit, A Paradise Built in Hell: The Extraordinary Communities That Arise in Disaster

“[T]hat all seekers of knowledge should use the identical language to think and to read and write is not a development to which humanity can remain indifferent. Reality is constructed by languages, and the existence of a variety of languages means the existence of a variety of realities, a variety of truths. Understanding the multifaceted nature of truth does not necessarily make people happy, but it makes them humble, and mature, and wise. It makes them worthy of the name Homo sapiens.”
― Minae Mizumura, The Fall of Language in the Age of English