#ma

For me, the most ironic token of [the first human moon landing] is the plaque signed by President Richard M. Nixon that Apollo 11 took to the moon. It reads, ‘We came in peace for all Mankind.’ As the United States was dropping seven and a half megatons of conventional explosives on small nations in Southeast Asia, we congratulated ourselves on our humanity. We would harm no one on a lifeless rock. ↗

— Carl Sagan

#human #human-nature #moon #war #nature

The loss of quality that is so evident at every level of spectacular language, from the objects it glorifies to the behavior it regulates, stems from the basic nature of a production system that shuns reality. The commodity form reduces everything to quantitative equivalence. The quantitative is what it develops, and it can develop only within the quantitative. ↗

— Guy Debord

#commodity-production #culture #modernity #the-last-man #nature

In the nonstop tsunami of global information, librarians provide us with floaties and teach us to swim. ↗

— Linton Weeks

#libraries #washington-post #information

The human soul is heavy, clumsy, held in the mud of the flesh. Its perceptions are still coarse and brutish. It can divine nothing clearly, nothing with certainty. ↗

— Nikos Kazantzakis

#human-nature #soul #uncertainty #nature

...you’d be amazed at the grand tales the human brain will throw up to make sense of something nonsensical. ↗

— Dianna Hardy

#human-behaviour #human-nature #logic #making-sense-of-the-world #nonsense

The moon had spread over everything a thin layer of silver - over the rank grass, over the mud, upon the wall of matted vegetation standing higher than the wall of a temple, over the great river I could see through a sombre gap glittering, glittering, as it flowed broadly by without a murmur. All this was great, expectant, mute, while the man jabbered about himself. ↗

— Joseph Conrad

#nature #nature

The fact is that nothing is more difficult to believe than the truth; conversely, nothing seduces like the power of lies, the greater the better. It's only natural, and you will have to find the right balance. Having said that, let me add that this particular old woman hasn't been collecting only years; she has also collected stories, and none sadder or more terrible than the one she's about to tell you. You have been at the heart of this story without knowing it until today ... ↗

— Carlos Ruiz Zafón

#balance #collecting #lies #more-terrible #old-woman

Ambition interests me because it’s such a surefire indicator of damage. ↗

— Peter Morgan

#nature

A first premonition of the rich variety of life had come to him; for the first time he thought he had understood the nature of human beings - they needed each other even when they appeared hostile, and it was very sweet to be loved by them. ↗

— Stefan Zweig

#life #love #need #life

Sometimes,’ he starts, ‘the hardest part about letting someone go is realizing you were never meant to have them. ↗

— Rebecca Serle

#ya #young-adult #young-adult-romance #relationship