As business became the dominant motif in American life and as a vast material empire rose in the New World, business increasingly looked for legitimation in a purely material and internal criterion—the wealth it produced. American business, once defended on the ground that it produced a high standard of culture, was now defended mainly on the ground that it produced a high standard of living. … [ Read more ]
Author: Richard Hofstadter | Subjects: America, Business, History
In the main, America took its stand with utility, with improvement and invention, money and comfort. It was clearly understood that the advance of the machine was destroying old inertias, discomforts, and brutalities, but it was not so commonly understood that the machine was creating new discomforts and brutalities, undermining traditions and ideals, sentiments and loyalties, esthetic sensitivities.
Author: Richard Hofstadter | Subjects: America, International, Life & Society
Once great men created fortunes; today a great system creates fortunate men.
Author: Richard Hofstadter | Subjects: Life & Society, Politics & Public Policy
There is deep consolation in the knowledge that the cherished friend will always return, long though the stretches of absence may be; there is singular solace in the understanding that leaving need not be abandonment, that time and space avail not in any true bond, which nothing but indifference can break.
Author: Maria Popova | Source: The Marginalian (Brain Pickings) | Subjects: Life & Society, Psychology | Behavior, Relationships
Meeting and separation are two forms of friendship that contain the same good. Let us love this distance which is wholly woven of friendship, for those who do not love each other are not separated.
Author: Simone Weil | Source: The Marginalian (Brain Pickings) | Subjects: Life & Society, Psychology | Behavior, Relationships
The ultimate touchstone of friendship is not improvement, neither of the other nor of the self, the ultimate touchstone is witness, the privilege of having been seen by someone and the equal privilege of being granted the sight of the essence of another, to have walked with them and to have believed in them, and sometimes just to have accompanied them for however brief a … [ Read more ]
Author: David Whyte | Source: The Marginalian (Brain Pickings) | Subjects: Psychology | Behavior, Relationships
Modern medicine is about killing bad species. We are really good at thinking about medicine in that context. You know, something bad makes us sick, we kill it, we get better. But the idea that something good is missing and that that makes us sick, we don’t have much of a framework for that. The medicine that would be required to think about this in … [ Read more ]
Author: Rob Dunn | Source: Life on Us: A Microscopic Journey | Subject: Health & Medicine
All creative work is at bottom a means of self-liberation and a coping mechanism — for the loneliness, the despair, the chaos and contradiction within. It is the best means we have of transmuting that which gnaws at us into something that nourishes, and yet how little of that private ferment is visible in the finished work.
Author: Maria Popova | Source: The Marginalian (Brain Pickings) | Subjects: Art, Concepts, Creativity and Innovation, Psychology | Behavior
Before I was six years old, my grandparents and my mother had taught me that if all the green things that grow were taken from the earth, there could be no life. If all the four-legged creatures were taken from the earth, there could be no life. If all the winged creatures were taken from the earth, there could be no life. If all our … [ Read more ]
Author: Russell Means | Subjects: Environment | Sustainability, Life & Society
We tend to respond to what’s presented to us. It takes extra effort to stop and ask, “What’s missing?” Our energy-conscious brains like to be efficient. The problem is that not having all of the information we need can lead us to make a poor decision.
Author: Eric J. McNulty | Source: strategy+business | Subjects: Decision Making, Personal Improvement
[Albert] Schweitzer observed that there are two types of artists: the subjective, who use their personality as the wellspring of their art and live as “a law unto themselves,” and the objective, whose “artistic personality exists independently of the human” and whose art is “not impersonal, but superpersonal,” channeling the universal and the eternal through the vessel of their being.
Author: Maria Popova | Source: The Marginalian (Brain Pickings) | Subject: Art
What people often confuse with risk is lack of control.
Author: Sheldon H. Jacobson | Source: AllSides | Subjects: Personal Improvement, Risk
Some inventions result from theorizing how something should work and then building it. Others result from building something that works before understanding it.
Author: George Dyson | Source: The Marginalian (Brain Pickings) | Subjects: Concepts, Creativity and Innovation, Math & Science
We went on making equations and theories and bombs in an attempt to control life; we went on making poems and paintings and songs in an attempt to live with the fact that we cannot.
Author: Maria Popova | Source: The Marginalian (Brain Pickings) | Subjects: Art, Life & Society, Music, Psychology | Behavior
Political parties no longer serve the function they used to. In days gone by, parties were political organizations designed to win elections and gain power. Party leaders would expand their coalitions toward that end. Today, on the other hand, in an increasingly secular age, political parties are better seen as religious organizations that exist to provide believers with meaning, membership and moral sanctification. If that’s … [ Read more ]
Author: David Brooks | Source: The New York Times | Subject: Politics & Public Policy
I have this phrase going through my head a lot: each of us, in some sense, is the hero of our own life. We all have a narrative that puts us in a better light than others might see us in. So I try to remember this when I see others act in ways that I wish they hadn’t.
Author: Cass Sunstein | Source: McKinsey Quarterly | Subjects: Personal Improvement, Psychology | Behavior
It seems clear that the more we exercise our sensitivity, the stronger it becomes… When it is not exercised, sensitivity tends to weaken… How important it must be, therefore, to exercise children’s sensitivity to the point where it will continue to develop as much as it is capable of — so that it can no longer be dulled by those things in life that tend … [ Read more ]
Author: Sophie de Grouchy | Source: The Marginalian (Brain Pickings) | Subjects: Education | Scholarship, Life & Society, Personal Improvement
Unfortunately, we’re just not good at nuance.
Author: Christopher Bader | Source: The New York Times | Subjects: Education | Scholarship, Psychology | Behavior, Thought | Inquiry
The media gives us what we want: something to fear, the scary thing, the dark thing. That’s what’s going to attract our attention. Also, we have a huge confirmation bias. If you’re afraid of…[something], you’ll be attracted to information that reinforces the fear.
[…]
I guess it would be an open question: If the media is playing to our inherent natures, is that our fault or … [ Read more ]
Author: Christopher Bader | Source: The New York Times | Subjects: Education | Scholarship, Life & Society, News | Media | Publishing
A healthy dose of skepticism is/can be a good thing… as long as we are also applying it to those things we wish/think to be true, and not just those things we choose to be skeptical towards, or in denial of.
Author: Linda Gamble Spadaro | Subjects: Education | Scholarship, Personal Improvement, Thought | Inquiry