Mike

“I suppose it was in the eighteenth century of our era that the notion became solidly fixed in the Western mind that all this narrative was an attempt at explaining what science would one day explain truly and finally… But the beauty of the myths is not accounted for by this theory… Over time these narratives had at least as profound an effect on architecture and the visual arts as they did on literature… This kind of imaginative engagement bears no resemblance whatever to an assimilation of explanatory models by these civilizations… The notion that religion is intrinsically a crude explanatory strategy that should be dispelled and supplanted by science is based on a highly selective or tendentious reading of the literatures of religion. In some cases it is certainly fair to conclude that it is based on no reading of them at all.”
― Marilynne Robinson

“Everywhere the crisis of the private financial system has been transformed into a tale of slovenly and overweening government that perpetuates and is perpetuated by a dependent and demanding population... For about ten days the crisis was interpreted as a consequence of the ineptitude of the highly paid, and then it transmogrified into a grudge against the populace at large.”
― Marilynne Robinson, When I Was a Child I Read Books

“The ability of Wall Street traders to see themselves in their success and their management in their failure would later be echoed, when their firms, which disdained the need for government regulation in good times, insisted on being rescued by government in bad times. Success was individual achievement; failure was a social problem.”
― Michael Lewis

“It is true for everyone that the experience that society gives to us, or denies us, is profoundly formative.”
― Marilynne Robinson