Michael Conniff

“the question that Karp wanted to explore—what turns ordinary citizens into perpetrators of genocide and accessories to mass murder? And Karp’s timing was fortuitous”
― Michael Steinberger, The Philosopher in the Valley: Alex Karp, Palantir, and the Rise of the Surveillance State

“Nothing is held to be lawful or right among the Persians unless it is first ratified by a priest.”34 Without such discipline”
― Tom Holland, In the Shadow of the Sword: The Birth of Islam and the Rise of the Global Arab Empire

“It’s extremely confusing to think about trying not to think, but I will say this: if Tolstoy really did pass the entrance exam for the White Polar Bear Club, he was in the wrong profession writing novels. He should have been a golfer.”
― John Paul Newport, The Fine Green Line: My Year of Golf Adventure on the Pro-Golf Mini-Tours

“If people had true knowledge of the world perhaps they would not take up arms and so perhaps he could be an aggregator of information from distant places and then the world would be a more peaceful place. He had been perfectly serious. That illusion had lasted from age forty-nine to age sixty-five.”
― Paulette Jiles, News of the World