Full in-boxes and endless meetings are not intrinsic parts of office work in a digital world; they’re instead a response to an unexpected crisis that subsequently spiralled out of control. The turmoil in knowledge work following the arrival of the pandemic showed the unsustainability of this state of affairs.
~ Cal Newport via The New Yorker
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Not even one’s own pain weighs so heavy as the pain one feels with someone, for someone, a pain intensified by the imagination and prolonged by a hundred echoes.
~ Milan Kundera
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In a zero-sum world, one with no or very little growth, democracy can become antagonistic as people seek to vote money away from each other. What follows from that antagonism is distrust and polarization. In a high-growth world the dogfights can be far fewer, because it’s much easier for everyone to win.
~ Sam Altman
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How can you face the world if all you can say about yourself is that you’re hungry. If you can’t think of anything else.
~ Herta Müller
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Queen Elizabeth II was formal, interested, uncomplaining, and always respectful. Her warehouse’s worth of matching coats and whimsical hats were an aspect of that respect. It didn’t matter if she had arrived for a tour of your rat-extermination business in Manchester; she was dressed as if attending a new exhibit at the National Gallery.
~ Caitlin Flanagan via The Atlantic
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Government is a true religion: it has its dogmas, its mysteries, and its ministers. To annihilate it or submit it to the discussion of each individual is the same thing; it lives only through national reason, that is to say through political faith, which is a creed.
~ Joseph de Maistre
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Logic may indeed be unshakeable, but it cannot withstand a man who is determined to live.
~ Franz Kafka
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Sexual desire encompasses desires for power, belonging, advantage and disruption that we would not typically think of as erotic.
~ Alexandra Kleeman via The New York Times
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No circumstance is ever so desperate that one cannot nurture some spark of hope.
~ Niccolò Machiavelli
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A culture of discipline is not a principle of business, it is a principle of greatness.
~ Jim Collins
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