#ma

Look, no matter where you live, the biggest defect we human beings have is our short sightedness. We don't see what we could be. We should be at our potential, stretching ourselves into everything we can become. But if you're surrounded by people who say "I want mine now," you end up with a few people with everything and a military to keep the poor ones from rising up and stealing it. ↗

— Mitch Albom

#human-nature #potential-for-greatness #nature

Hell didn't make me a monster. It just confirmed all my worst fears about myself. ↗

— Richard Kadrey

#human-nature #insight #nature

Q: Where and when do you do your writing? A: Any small room with no natural light will do. As for when, I have no particular schedules... afternoons are best, but I'm too lethargic for any real regime. When I'm in the flow of something I can do a regular 9 to 5; when I don't know where I'm going with an idea, I'm lucky if I do two hours of productive work. There is nothing more off-putting to a would-be novelist to hear about how so-and-so wakes up at four in the a.m, walks the dog, drinks three liters of black coffee and then writes 3,000 words a day, or that some other asshole only works half an hour every two weeks, does fifty press-ups and stands on his head before and after the "creative moment." I remember reading that kind of stuff in profiles like this and becoming convinced everything I was doing was wrong. What's the American phrase? If it ain't broke... ↗

— Zadie Smith

#interview #writing #writing-life #life

Today we know more about Jupiter than the guy who lives next door to us. We can predict where an election will go, we can turn a gene on or off, and we can even send a robot to Mars, but we are lost if asked to explain or predict the phenomena we might expect to know the most about, the actions of our fellow humans. ↗

— Albert-László Barabási

#nature

It is human nature to try hardest to accomplish the very thing we are told is impossible.  Why?  Because innately we know that nothing's impossible. ↗

— Richelle E. Goodrich

#human-nature #impossibility #impossible #innate #richelle

They dared not peer down into their own natures, down into the feverish confusion that filled their minds with a kind of dense, acrid mist. ↗

— Émile Zola

#nature

Everybody gets so much information all day long that they lose their common sense. They listen so much that they forget to be natural. This is a nice story. ↗

— Gertrude Stein

#gertrude-stein #information #natural #nature

But then, anyone was capable of any manner of atrocities if they wanted something bad enough. People could justify anything to themselves if they wanted it bad enough. No one was immune to that. ↗

— Stacia Kane

#people #nature

The only animal capable of giving man a fair fight is man. Actually, among ourselves, we fight unfairest of all, and the more we practice, the nastier we get. ↗

— Robert Buettner

#fighting #human-nature #human-superiority #humanity #unfairness

My biggest objection to Marxism has been the presumption that industry should exist at all. I think the unstoppable juggernaut which is global warming demonstrates that processing natural materials on an industrial scale is a suicidal practice. ↗

— David David Katzman

#industry #marx #marxism #nature