#chaos

Human history, like all great movements, was cyclical, and returned to the point of beginning. The idea of indefinite progress in a right line was a chimera of the imagination, with no analogue in nature. The parabola of a comet was perhaps a yet better illustration of the career of humanity. Tending upward and sunward from the aphelion of barbarism, the race attained the perihelion of civilization only to plunge downward once more to its nether goal in the regions of chaos. ↗

— Edward Bellamy

#chaos #civilization #imagination

Great leadership isn’t shaped in the absence of opposition but in the presence of it. Great leaders draw us together by our universal humanity; they galvanize the wills of the willing; they draw clarity from the spigot of chaos. ↗

— Charles M. Blow

#clarity #humanity #leadership #opposition #will

At last, somebody in line steps forward. “I can commit,” he says. He’s a tall, lean young man with a rifle slung over his back. “What’s your name?” Chris asks. “Andrew,” he replies. “And I’m in.” Chris nods. A few other guys step forward and, after a few moments, the entire crowd of ex-POWs takes one step, signifying their decision. My chest swells with pride – pride for Chris’s leadership, pride for the people willing to give their lives to take down Omega. It’s a rush. ↗

— Summer Lane

#cassidy-hart #chris-young #romance #state-of-chaos #summer-lane

It’s a lack of clarity that creates chaos and frustration. Those emotions are poison to any living goal. ↗

— Steve Maraboli

#clarity #frustration #goal #life #motivational

The neighbor's flock has taken advantage of the chaos, and I think that's pretty smart. ↗

— Jeanne Marie Laskas

#sheep #love

I once had been in the middle of a mass chaos and terrible riots. There, I witnessed how men were truly such as beasts unleashed. ↗

— Toba Beta

#chaos #human #riots #true-fear #unleashed

THERE IT IS,’ my mother says, and what she means is that the dot we’ve been nearing for weeks, the one that’s been growing into a larger dot with two smaller dots circling it, has now become even larger than that, growing from a dot to a disc, shining back the light from its sun, until you can see the blue of its oceans, the green of its forests, the white of its polar caps, a circle of colour against the black beyond. ↗

— Patrick Ness

#monsters-of-men #planet #space #space-travel #the-ask-and-the-answer

Let the battle for peace commence ↗

— Patrick Ness

#monsters-of-men #patrick-ness #men

Ideology follows the money." "Governments don't protect people, people protect governments." "To accept the legitimacy of the state is to embrace the necessity for war. ↗

— Lawrence Samuels

#complexity-science #economics #human-action #politics #money

Man has one name, and many more than two natures. But the essential two are these: that he shall strive to impose order on chaos, and that he shall strive to take advantage of chaos… A third element of man’s nature is this: that he shall not understand what he is doing. ↗

— John Brunner

#human-nature #order #pattern #understanding #nature