Jon > Jon's Quotes

“Life is a constant struggle between being an individual and being a member of the community.”
― Sherman Alexie, The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian

“It's good versus evil, Dan. You don't want to be a post-person. You want to stay human. The rides are human. We each mediate them through our own experience. We're physically inside of them, and they talk to us through our senses. What Debra's people are building--it's hive-mind [stuff:]. Directly implanting thoughts! Jesus! It's not an experience, it's brainwashing!”
― Cory Doctorow, Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom

“Behind every bad law, a deep fear.”
― Sarah Vowell, The Wordy Shipmates

“To define knowledge as merely empirical is to limit one's ability to know; it enfeebles one's ability to feel and think.”
― Wendell Berry, Life is a Miracle: An Essay Against Modern Superstition

“Beauty . . . cannot be interpreted. It is not an empirically verifiable fact; it is not a quantity.”
― Wendell Berry, Life is a Miracle: An Essay Against Modern Superstition

“Who we are cannot be separated from where we're from.”
― Malcolm Gladwell, Outliers: The Story of Success

“I want to convince you that these kinds of personal explanations of success don't work. People don't rise from nothing....It is only by asking where they are from that we can unravel the logic behind who succeeds and who doesn't.”
― Malcolm Gladwell, Outliers: The Story of Success

“We overlook just how large a role we all play--and by 'we' I mean society--in determining who makes it and who doesn't.”
― Malcolm Gladwell, Outliers: The Story of Success

“It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends on his not understanding it.”
― Upton Sinclair, I, Candidate for Governor: And How I Got Licked

“We are not separate, and I want you to know that. We are all part of one thing, and nothing good has ever passed or ever can pass away. There is no way out, but there is a way in, and when one person feels lonely like a ghost it touches us all.”
― David Rhodes, Driftless

“We are all connected in ways we cannot even begin to fathom. Our lives unfold through each other and within each other. What one suffers, we all feel. What one does changes others forever.”
― David Rhodes, Driftless

“Telling the truth is always wrong if it threatens those for whom being wrong can never be true.”
― David Rhodes, Driftless

“Class is entirely intangible, and the way it affects things isn't subject to scientific analysis, and it's not supposed to be real but it's pervasive and powerful. See; just like magic.”
― Jo Walton, Among Others

“There is no escaping life. It takes what is it's due.”
― Ludmilla Ulitskaya, Daniel Stein, Interpreter

“We can all of us be hurt, and no one is exclusively safe from worry and sadness.”
― Patrick deWitt, The Sisters Brothers