The responsibility of the world

The responsibility of the world should be to provide options and opportunity, to leave no one hopeless and helpless and lost unless they choose to be.

Justice

The problem with justice is that it is retroactive.

How simple

For all of our complexity,
how simple we can be.

How much

How much control we have over our reactions to happenstance defines us.

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Wealth

Wealth may permit, but it doesn't entitle.

What is known

What is known is dangerous.
What is not known, even more so.

The number of people

The number of people one would condemn is a lot smaller than the number of people one would not choose to save.

Miracles

Miracles seem more plausible in chaos.

Nothing else

When there's nothing else we can do, we do what we know won't work.

Desire

Desire is an experiment that we perform again and again, forever, whatever the result.

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Understand

We must learn to understand that we must learn to understand.

On punishment

Punishment is wasted on children.
Save it for those old enough
to know what they're doing.

Everything

Everything has been tampered with.

A neuronal fantasy (Seth)

The entirety of perceptual experience is a neuronal fantasy that remains yoked to the world through a continuous making and remaking of perceptual best guesses, of controlled hallucinations.  You could even say that we’re all hallucinating all the time.  It’s just that when we agree about our hallucinations, that’s what we call reality.

Anil Seth

Hope

Hope is so absurd, and yet we seem to have evolved to depend upon it.

On death

Death is the removal of borders.

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As well as

It's not whether others have done better than I have.

It's whether I have done as well as I should have.

Trust not

Trust not those who sigh and say
"It cannot be helped."

The law

The law is necessary but not sufficient.

Superpower

The ability to cope with ambiguity is a superpower.

The lost

We get lost looking for the reinstatement of the lost.

Consequence

Consequence is conscience.

Hell

Hell is when nothing happens.

Most of the time

The lesson of history is that people will fail most of the time.

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Order in chaos

There is order in chaos, too.
It's just hard to find, and unstable.

The exact degree

The legal code is immoral to the exact degree that it deviates from justice.

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On hope

Where there's hope, there's hope.

Better

Better a true torment than a false comfort.

Life

Life is wasted in suffering and loss.

The answer

Most don't value the answer if they haven't asked the question.

Remember

Every memory is a dream.

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Of all desire

Of all desire, the desire to desire
is the most difficult to relinquish.

Look not

Look not for the banality in bliss
lest you find it.

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Always

The biological is always logical.

Why did we not

Why did we not make the world
something we could love and be proud of?

Maybe I will

If I insist the world is as I want it to be,
it won't be, but maybe I will.

You'd think

If I am to be so alone,
you'd think people would pester me
less frequently.

I don't understand people

I don't understand people
who aren't looking for a better way.

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Without death

Without death, what would ever cure us of disappointment?

An immunization (Mishima)

But as a man grows older the memory of his youth begins to act as nothing less than an immunization against further experience.

Yukio Mishima, Runaway Horses

Imagine

Imagine entering paradise
to destroy it.

Knowing everything (Egan)

Knowing everything is too much like knowing nothing:   without a story, it's all just information.

Jennifer Egan, The Candy House

Understanding

We crave the kind of understanding that follows an investigation.