In the early days of the pandemic, it became harder for us to see one another. The human face, the ultimate marker of individuality, what the philosopher Emmanuel Levinas called “the first disclosure,” was suddenly sheathed in fabric. Strangers encountered on the street were even stranger—and the masks that covered their visage became a screen on which to project anxious thoughts.
~ Franklin Foer via The Atlantic
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Resitance is by nature reactive; it is not forward-looking.
~ Mark Lilla
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The people is a political term, not to be confused with the public. From the people comes political support or opposition; from the public comes artistic appreciation or commercial patronage.
~ William Strunk, Jr.
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Every genuine work of art has as much reason for being as the earth and the sun.
~ Ralph Waldo Emerson
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Can the decision to be less selfish ever be anything other than a selfish decision?
~ David Foster Wallace
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We have to remember that what we observe is not nature herself, but nature exposed to our method of questioning.
~ Werner Heisenberg
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The prince must consider, as has been in part said before, how to avoid those things which will make him hated or contemptible; and as often as he shall have succeeded he will have fulfilled his part, and he need not fear any danger in other reproaches.
~ Niccolò Machiavelli
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There are moments which are made up of too much stuff for them to be lived at the time they occur.
~ John le Carré
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No society can function as a society, unless it gives the individual member social status and function, and unless the decisive social power is legitimate.
~ Peter Drucker
There is never vulgarity in a whole truth, however commonplace. It may be unimportant or painful. It cannot be vulgar. Vulgarity is only in concealment of truth, or in affectation.
~ John Ruskin