‘Act in Haste, Repent at Leisure’ would seem to have been almost custom-designed for the case of tattoos.
~ David Foster Wallace
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Category Archives: 0747 – Quote Unquote
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The martyr who longs for the flames can be no right candidate for them.
~ Cormac McCarthy
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Today, we tend to think of economic and racial egalitarianism as closely yoked causes. One hundred years ago, this was far from the case. In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, many of those Americans most skeptical of corporate power were also the most hostile to racial equality, while those Americans who most adamantly rejected economic reform hoped to mobilize racial minorities as allies.
~ David Frum via The Atlantic
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Via Don’t Trust the Rankings That Put China’s Universities on Top published by The New York Times on February 11, 2026
The gap between the rankings and reality can be explained by Goodhart’s law, which says that when a measure becomes a target, it ceases to be a good measure. It’s like trying to cure a fever by icing the thermometer: You’ve cooled the instrument, but the patient is still burning up.
~ Ariel Procaccia
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Only entropy comes easy.
~ Anton Chekhov
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Our waking life’s desire to shape the world to our convenience invites all manner of paradox and difficulty.
~ Cormac McCarthy
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Expending energy trying to motivate people is largely a waste of time.
~ Jim Collins, Good to Great
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Perhaps man has a hundred senses, and when he dies only the five senses that we know perish with him, and the other ninety-five remain alive.
~ Anton Chekhov
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Compared with their European counterparts, both American political parties are strange beasts: no members, open primaries and a seemingly unlimited access to private funds. To inhabitants of the Old World, they seem more corporate brand than mass organization.
~ Anton Jäger via The New York Times
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Some research has cited the Antonine Plague as part of a vicious cycle that hastened Rome’s long fall. Food shortages, internal migrations, and overcrowding had already signaled a slippage in imperial power, and created a fertile environment for disease. The pandemic, in turn, spread panic and left behind mistrust, weakening faith in civic and religious authorities.
~ Vann Newkirk via The Atlantic
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