#nation

Nearly all men have weak hearts, in one way or another. ↗

— Steven J. Carroll

#bravery #courage #determination #inspirational #justice

We do not need magic to change the world, we carry all the power we need inside ourselves already: we have the power to imagine better. ↗

— J.K. Rowling

#harvard-commencement-speech #imagination #magic #change

Every actual democracy rests on the principle that not only are equals equal but unequals will not be treated equally.Democracy requires, therefore, first homogeneity and second—if the need arises elimination or eradication of heterogeneity. ↗

— Carl Schmitt

#democracy #equality #nationalism #politics #racism

We are stripped of all that gave value and substance to our existence: power and love; in this naked final state, our last lover, our mate, death, comes. Bereft, without cover, we face the elements that will undo us. The winter breakers crash over and through us, flaunting their vigor and our nullity, as if the entire cosmos were now taking its ultimate revenge on the human creature who has lived too long: the dying sun mocks us from the west, for it will return tomorrow to die again, but we go down only once; the rising sun mocks us from the east, for we will not share in the rebirth of light and life; the noonday taunts us with its heat and vitality, for we are detritus; the north finally cloaks us in our last vestments: eternal night. That is how it ends. ↗

— Arnold Weinstein

#death #imagination #reading #death

I don’t know why the publishers in New York don’t take a tip from Hollywood and just publish the outlines of novels rather than the completed books. Let the audience use their imaginations, as my Maw always says about radio. I would much prefer to read an outline of War and Peace than slog through eight hundred thousand words. Why do I need Tolstoy to describe snow? I can imagine snow, whether Russian snow or just regular snow. But book publishers seem to think that the authors should do all the work, and the readers should be waited on hand-and-foot like a buncha goddamn prima donnas. ↗

— Gary Reilly

#imagination

Long ago, before I had ever seen a diamond, I read about them and I tried to imagine what they would be like ... When I saw a real diamond in a lady's ring one day I was so disappointed I cried. Of course, it was very lovely but it wasn't my idea of a diamond. ↗

— L.M. Montgomery

#imagination

To imagine the world without gods and religion is reasonable enough; to imagine mankind without them is an entirely different matter. ↗

— Anthony Marais

#imagination

Giese was an unemotional man, but then in the study of Solaris emotion is a hindrance to the explorer. Imagination and premature theorizing are positive disadvantages in approaching a planet where—as has become clear—anything is possible... The fact is that in spite of his cautious nature the scrupulous Giese more than once jumped to premature conclusions. Even when on their guard, human beings inevitably theorize. ↗

— Stanisław Lem

#the-other #imagination

This love of theirs, with its reassuring domesticity and its easy silences, its permanence, has yoked Sally directly to the machinery of mortality itself. Now there is a loss beyond imagining. ↗

— Michael Cunningham

#mortality #imagination

The embrace of present and past time, in which English antiquarianism becomes a form of alchemy, engenders a strange timelessness. It is as if the little bird which flew through the Anglo-Saxon banqueting hall, in Bede's Historia Ecclesiastica Gentis Anglorum, gained the outer air and became the lark ascending in Vaughan Williams's orchestral setting. The unbroken chain is that of English music itself. ↗

— Peter Ackroyd

#literature #music #imagination