Bunch of Amateurs Quotes

“..the universe is not plagued by intentions and purpose.”
― Jack Hitt, Bunch of Amateurs: A Search for the American Character

“Evolution has one big rule: If there's no pressure on the system to change, then it doesn't bother.”
― Jack Hitt, Bunch of Amateurs: A Search for the American Character

“...most gentlemen of breeding considered themselves amateurs at all kinds of disciplines. Go all the way back to Jefferson, who collected fossils and wrote about botany and invented household tools and studied animals. He was an amateur anthropologist and even an amateur theologian who famously cut all the miracles out of the New Testament because he thought Jesus made a whole lot more sense without the supernatural material mucking up the good moral philosophy.”
― Jack Hitt, Bunch of Amateurs: A Search for the American Character

“The main idea of personal happiness at that [Colonial] time was not some hedonistic notion of pleasure but the other, more philosophical, kind. The Greek philosophers believed that discovering one's own talents and then taking the pleasure of exploiting them (finding out that you had a singing voice, could write well, start a company, or invent new things), that was the deeper pleasure the founders had in mind and the freedom they sought.”
― Jack Hitt, Bunch of Amateurs: A Search for the American Character

“What I want to argue here is that the cult of the amateur, once you step back, is the soul of America.”
― Jack Hitt, Bunch of Amateurs: A Search for the American Character

“At its most fundamental, an amateur is simply someone operating outside professional assumptions. The word derives ultimately from the Latin but comes into English via the French word amateur, meaning “lover” and, specifically, passionate love. Or obsessive love. This powerful emotion usually indicates someone’s embrace of a notion (invention, theory, way of life) as a compulsive passion for the thing—not the money, fame, or career that could come of it. But there are differences. In”
― Jack Hitt, Bunch of Amateurs: A Search for the American Character