#lit

Is everyone with one face called a Milo?" "Oh no," Milo replied; "some are called Henry or George or Robert or John or lots of other things." "How terribly confusing," he cried. "Everything here is called exactly what it is. The triangles are called triangles, the circles are called circles, and even the same numbers have the same name. Why, can you imagine what would happen if we named all the twos Henry or George or Robert or John or lots of other things? You'd have to say Robert plus John equals four, and if the four's name were Albert, things would be hopeless." "I never thought of it that way," Milo admitted. "Then I suggest you begin at once," admonished the Dodecahedron from his admonishing face, "for here in Digitopolis everything is quite precise. ↗

— Norton Juster

#mathematics #names #equality

There are more ideas on earth than intellectuals imagine. And these ideas are more active, stronger, more resistant, more passionate than "politicians" think. We have to be there at the birth of ideas, the bursting outward of their force: not in books expressing them, but in events manifesting this force, in struggles carried on around ideas, for or against them. Ideas do not rule the world. But it is because the world has ideas (and because it constantly produces them) that it is not passively ruled by those who are its leaders or those who would like to teach it, once and for all, what it must think. ↗

— Michel Foucault

#elitism #intellectualism #politics #populism #imagination

The Fly Little Fly Thy summers play, My thoughtless hand Has brush'd away. Am not I A fly like thee? Or art not thou A man like me? For I dance And drink & sing: Till some blind hand Shall brush my wing. If thought is life And strength & breath: And the want Of thought is death; Then am I A happy fly, If I live, Or if I die ↗

— William Blake

#fragility-of-life #art

I have a habit of letting my imagination run away from me. It always comes back though . . . drenched with possibilities. ↗

— Valaida Fullwood

#imagination #imagine #possibilities #imagination

If we want to truly regain the public's trust, we can provide greater accountability and transparency with a simple step. Let's start by communicating to our constituents about the votes we take. ↗

— Melissa Bean

#accountability #communicating #constituents #greater #our

It seems to me that Canadian sensibility has been profoundly disturbed, not so much by our famous problem of identity, important as that is, as by a series of paradoxes in what confronts that identity. It is less perplexed by the question "Who am I?" than by some such riddle as "Where is here? ↗

— Northrop Frye

#imagination

His imagination was always more real than the reality of daily life. ↗

— Dan Simmons

#reality #imagination

The ambition of much of today's literary theory seems to be to find ways to read literature without imagination. ↗

— Charles Simic

#literary-theory #literature #imagination

If you need a reason to get involved in world politics, all you need to do is watch a playground of children for awhile. Imagine a world that happy and free all the time, that vision is the future worth fighting for. ↗

— Laurance Kitts

#freedom #politics #vision #freedom

He may be incensed, said Dizzy. I've never doubted the old parson's faith, but it has no place in politics. Good God, just imagine if each man allowed himself to be swayed by moral compunctions; we'd never get a damned thing accomplished in Parliament. ↗

— Carol K. Carr

#mystery #politics #faith