Respecting the rights (Sakharov)

A country that does not respect the rights of its own people will not respect the rights of its neighbors.

Andrei Sakharov

Not just novels

Has any ever finished a novel without despairing of humanity?

The grief (Eliot)

Only those who know the supremacy of the intellectual life—the life which has a seed of ennobling thought and purpose within it—can understand the grief of one who falls from that serene activity into the absorbing soul-wasting struggle with worldly annoyances.

George Eliot, Middlemarch

New poems

+15

New poems

+15

A little (Eliot)

We have all got to exert ourselves a little to keep sane.

George Eliot, Middlemarch

On trivia

Trivia brilliantly expressed or expounded remains trivia. Better the slowest intelligence stumbling toward significance.

Irrationality

Irrationality has a strong confirmation bias.

New poems

+15

A sign

A sign of intellectual maturity is the ability to hear and accept things you don't want to be true.

First (Smock)

Poets and intellectuals—who are paid little, and who are usually ignored by the general population—have this consolation, at least: they are the ones the tyrants go after first.

Frederick Smock

In the name of rebellion (Snow)

When you think of the long and gloomy history of man, you will find more hideous crimes have been committed in the name of obedience than have ever been committed in the name of rebellion.

C. P. Snow

Complexity

To simple minds complexity is invisible.

Do you care?

Those who don't care
care that those who do care
care.

New poems

+15

Anything better than politics (Thoreau)

If you aspire to anything better than politics, expect no cooperation from men. They will not further anything good. You must prevail of your own force, as a plant springs and grows by its own vitality.

Henry David Thoreau

On lust

Lust is just greed
pretending to be need.

Also on poetry

Poetry is not made of things
but of words.

New poems

+15

On poetry

Poetry, like so much of value, doesn't have to be distinctive; it has to be impactful.

We think

We think we crave control
when we hunger for facility.