685 notes

You get your intuition back when you make space for it, when you stop the chattering of the rational mind. The rational mind doesn’t nourish you. You assume that it gives you the truth, because the rational mind is the golden calf that this culture worships, but this is not true. Rationality squeezes out much that is rich and juicy and fascinating.

457 notes

We have more and more ways to communicate, as Thoreau noted, but less and less to say. Partly because we’re so busy communicating. And — as he might also have said — we’re rushing to meet so many deadlines that we hardly register that what we need most are lifelines.

694 notes

Our belief is not a belief. Our principles are not a faith. We do not rely solely upon science and reason, because these are necessary rather than sufficient factors, but we distrust anything that contradicts science or outrages reason. We may differ on many things, but what we respect is free inquiry, open-mindedness, and the pursuit of ideas for their own sake. We do not hold our convictions dogmatically… We are not immune to the lure of wonder and mystery and awe: we have music and art and literature, and find that the serious ethical dilemmas are better handled by Shakespeare and Tolstoy and Schiller and Dostoyevsky and George Eliot than in the mythical morality tales of the holy books. Literature, not scripture, sustains the mind and—since there is no other metaphor—also the soul.

38 notes

I don’t want to say he’s lying — he may believe what he’s saying — but people have to understand that lobbying isn’t just going to meet with members.”

“I think the point is that Newt and others like him — he’s not alone at this, they call themselves strategic advisers — but they want to cash in on their public service.

23 notes

Republicans want someone who can snarl at the president. Newt’s snarl is more genuine than Mitt’s.

136 notes

We can’t afford these special lower rates for the wealthy — rates, by the way, that were meant to be temporary. We can’t afford them when we’re running these big deficits.

37 notes

Your remaining time here on earth will be spent in varying degrees of self-loathing and self-doubt, your sorrows compounded by the ever-growing realization that when the icy fingers of Death tap you on the shoulder, the few underwhelming accomplishments you have managed to realize in your pathetic, deluded tenure on this ground will count for nothing, and soon after you’re gone there will be little of consequence remaining to suggest that you were even here.