“Until we understand the assumptions in which we are drenched, we cannot know ourselves.”
Adrienne Rich, On Lies, Secretes, and Silence: Selected Prose 1966-1978.
“The serious revolutionary, like the serious artist, can’t afford to lead a sentimental or self-decieving life.”
Adrienne Rich, A Human Eye: Essays on Art in Society, 1996-2008.
“We labour at our daily work more ardently and thoughtlessly than is necessary to sustain our life because it is even more necessary not to have leisure to stop and think. Haste is universal because everyone is in flight from themselves.”
Freidrich Nietzsche, Untimely Meditations, 1876
“The greatest thing in the world is to know how to belong to oneself.”
Michel de Montaigne, The Complete Works, Book 1, Chapter 39, 1572-74.
“Where all think alike, no one thinks very much.”
Walter Lippman, The Stakes of Diplomacy, 1915
“Live or die. But don’t poison everything.”
Saul Bellow, Herzog, 1969.
“To banish imperfection is to destroy expression, to check exertion, to paralyse vitality.”
John Ruskin, 1851.
“Following straight lines shortens distances, and also life.”
Antonio Porchia, Voces, 1943. Translated by W.S. Merwin, 1969.
Curator of Ideas 