Bandwidth Quotes

“Shankar Vedantam wrote that those who travel with the current will always feel they are good swimmers, while those who swim against the current may never realize they are better swimmers than they imagine,”
― Eliot Peper, Bandwidth

“How we treat people defines humanity.”
― Eliot Peper, Bandwidth

“There were sharks before there were dinosaurs, and the reason sharks are still in the ocean is that nothing is better at being a shark than a shark.”
― Eliot Peper, Bandwidth

“Like memory, history was synthetic. Humans thought of both as factual records, but study after study confirmed that they were more like dreams, narratives constructed and reconstructed by the mind to fit the demands of the present, not the reality of the past.”
― Eliot Peper, Bandwidth

“Critical thinking without hope was cynicism, while hope without critical thinking was naïveté.”
― Eliot Peper, Bandwidth

“Politics is the gap between what is and what should be.”
― Eliot Peper, Bandwidth

“Choosing not to care might mitigate the risk of pain, but in doing so it destroyed the capacity for joy, for finding meaning.”
― Eliot Peper, Bandwidth

“there’s one truism that’s worsened the impact of every human misstep, it’s that there’s profit in tragedy.”
― Eliot Peper, Bandwidth

“My statistician friend says they’re harnessing the power of social validation to reinforce a certain worldview. It’s like gardening, only they’re cultivating ideology.”
― Eliot Peper, Bandwidth

“He was nothing. A short-lived speck on a meaningless rock orbiting an insignificant star in a forgotten galaxy in a universe bound by the unflinching laws of thermodynamics to descend into ultimate heat death.”
― Eliot Peper, Bandwidth

“Ends and means didn’t justify one another—they were two sides of the same coin.”
― Eliot Peper, Bandwidth

“If we are the stories we tell ourselves, what happens when someone else controls the narrative? What does it take for a cynic to rediscover authenticity? How is technology changing the structure and exercise of power?”
― Eliot Peper, Bandwidth

“It was far easier to stop something from getting done in Washington than it was to get anything done at all.”
― Eliot Peper, Bandwidth

“But like so much else, the prize was diminished by possession.”
― Eliot Peper, Bandwidth

“building something meaningful requires you to let go of the obsession with perfection. It requires empowering others and trusting them to do their part, even if they do it differently than you might have. But trust is a two-way street. Autonomy means you’re held accountable.”
― Eliot Peper, Bandwidth

“History was badly plotted and written by committee.”
― Eliot Peper, Bandwidth

“It was Dag’s favorite symbol of America, a country that always fumbled but never quit trying to outdo the rest of the world.”
― Eliot Peper, Bandwidth

“Have you ever heard of Château de Chambord?” asked Dag. “Nope.” “It’s a palace in the Loire Valley. King François the First built it in the early sixteenth century.”
― Eliot Peper, Bandwidth

“Dr. King was right. ‘Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.”
― Eliot Peper, Bandwidth

“You know, Ursula K. Le Guin wrote that knowing a person’s true name gives you power over them.”
― Eliot Peper, Bandwidth

“optimism compounds better than cynicism. You can either complain about how some French noble predetermined your desire for a lawn, or laugh at how ridiculous life is and build yourself a rock garden. It all depends on your point of view. And at the end of the day, your point of view makes all the difference in the world.”
― Eliot Peper, Bandwidth

“that building something meaningful requires you to let go of the obsession with perfection. It requires empowering others and trusting them to do their part, even if they do it differently than you might have. But trust is a two-way street. Autonomy means you’re held accountable.”
― Eliot Peper, Bandwidth

“But even something as inconsequential as wanting a lawn in front of our homes isn’t a true choice. It’s the product of a never-ending series of historical accidents. We take the world we’re born into for granted.”
― Eliot Peper, Bandwidth

“Lawns were invented in the late Middle Ages by nobles who wanted to flaunt their wealth. Lawns are pure luxury. The bigger your lawn, the more land and peasants you needed to cultivate it. Lawns became a primary symbol of political power, so much so that upwardly mobile merchants and other nouveau riche couldn’t wait to grow their own.”
― Eliot Peper, Bandwidth

“Sexual predilection is a window into the soul.”
― Eliot Peper, Bandwidth

“actually hosting two hundred laughing, mischievous children on-site was extravagant prestidigitation.”
― Eliot Peper, Bandwidth

“But to answer your question, if we worked in order to acquire this stuff and then failed to enjoy it, yeah, that’d be sad. But that misses the point. I don’t work in order to buy a house like this. I work because it’s the best game on the planet, and I’m fucking good at it. This stuff is just a side effect. So, in conclusion, don’t overthink your empty fridge. You’ve got better things to do than shop for groceries.”
― Eliot Peper, Bandwidth