Freedom cannot be selfish.

To declare oneself free is to promise to act such that others can be free.

We must imagine a society of free people and try to build it.

Morally, logically, and politically, there is no freedom without solidarity.

It is logically incoherent, morally obtuse, and politically ineffective to claim freedom only for oneself. That is choosing the isolation that tyrants would have chosen for us.

Without solidarity, we will be fooled.

And we will fool ourselves.

In catastrophic times, oligarchs divert resources from the human struggle to live free and direct them toward the dumb delusion that a chosen few can flee.

If freedom is about the future, we must work together to keep it open.

Timothy Snyder, On Freedom

The way in which biological and social evolution has traditionally been interpreted represents a particularly unfortunate use of concepts and methods borrowed from physics.

Unfortunate because the area of physics where these concepts and methods are valid was very restricted, thus the analogies between them and social or economic phenomena are completely unjustified.

The foremost example of this is the paradigm of optimization.

Optimization models ignore both the possibility of radical transformations — that is, transformations that change the definition of a problem and thus the kind of solution sought — and the inertial constraints that may eventually force a system into a disastrous way of functioning.

Like doctrines such as Adam Smith’s invisible hand or other definitions of progress in terms of maximization or minimization criteria, this gives a reassuring representation of Nature as an all-powerful and rational calculator, and of a coherent history characterized by global progress.

To restore both inertia and the possibility of unanticipated events — that is, to restore the open character of history — we must accept its fundamental uncertainty.

Today we know that we live in a world where different interlocked times and the fossils of many pasts coexist.

What possible link can there be between dynamics, the science of force and trajectories, and the science of complexity and becoming, the science of living processes and of the natural evolution of which they are a part?

The forces of interaction described by dynamics cannot explain the complex and irreversible behavior of matter.

Ignis mutat res. Fire changes things. According to this ancient saying, chemical structures are the creatures of fire, the results of irreversible processes.

How can we bridge the gap between being and becoming — two concepts in conflict, yet both necessary to reach a coherent description of this strange world in which we live?

Ilya Prigogine & Isabelle Stengers,
Order Out Of Chaos

The flames sawed in the wind and the embers paled and deepened and paled and deepened like the bloodbeat of some living thing eviscerate upon the ground before them.

And they watched the fire which does contain within it something of men themselves inasmuch as they are less without it and are divided from their origins and are exiles.

For each fire is all fires,
the first fire and the last ever to be.

Cormac McCarthy, Blood Meridian

Eric Temple Bell, who was a teacher in 1906 San Francisco but would later become known as a mathematician and science-fiction writer, recalled:

“The best thing about the earthquake and fire was the way the people took them. There was no running around the streets, or shrieking, or anything of that sort. Any garbled accounts to the contrary are simply lies.

They walked calmly from place to place and watched the fire with almost indifference, and then with jokes that were not forced either, but wholly spontaneous.

In the whole of these two awful days and nights I did not see a single woman crying, and did not hear a whine or a whimper from anybody.

The rich and poor alike just watched and waited, it being useless to try to save anything but a few immediate necessities. And when the intense heat made it necessary to move, they get up with a laugh.”

And that is the sweetness and the gladness of the earthquake and the fire.

Not of bravery, nor of strength, nor of a new city, but of a new inclusiveness.

“The joy in the other fellow.”

Rebecca Solnit, Paradise Built In Hell

According to Lao-tse, the more man interferes with the natural balance produced and governed by universal laws, the further away harmony retreats into the distance.

The more forcing, the more trouble.

Whether hot or cold, wet or dry, fast or slow, everything has its own nature already within it, which cannot be violated without causing difficulties.

When abstract and arbitrary rules are imposed from the outside, struggle is inevitable. Only then does life become sour.

The world is not a setter of traps but a teacher of valuable lessons.

Its lessons need to be learned, just as its laws need to be followed. Then all would go well.

Rather than turn away from “the world of dust,” Lao-tse advises to “join the dust of the world.”

A basic principle of Lao-tse’s teaching is that this Way of the Universe cannot be adequately described in words, and that it would be insulting both to its unlimited power and to the intelligent human mind to attempt to do so.

Still, its nature can be understood.

And those who care the most about it, and the life from which it is inseparable, understand it best.

Benjamin Hoff, Tao Of Pooh

The opposite of esprit d’escalier is the way that life’s embarrassments come back to haunt us even after they’re long past.

I could remember every stupid thing I’d ever said or done, recall them with picture-perfect clarity.

Any time I was feeling low, I’d naturally start to remember other times I felt that way, a hit parade of humiliations coming one after another to my mind.

There’s an alternative to dwelling on your mistakes.

You can learn from them.

It’s a good theory, anyway.

Maybe the reason your subconscious dredges up all these miserable ghosts is that they need to get closure before they can rest peacefully in humiliation afterlife.

Cory Doctorow, Little Brother

If I am walking up the flank of a mountain, I might first see a lake, and then, after a few steps, a forest.

I have to choose between the lake and the forest.

If I want to see both the lake and the forest, I have to climb higher.

Simone Weil

Isn’t the knowledge that comes from experience more valuable than the knowledge that doesn’t?

It seems fairly obvious to some of us that a lot of scholars need to go outside and sniff around.

Walk through the grass, talk to the animals.

“Lots of people talk to animals,” said Pooh.

“Maybe, but . . .”

“Not very many listen, though,” he said.

“That’s the problem,” he added.

Pooh Te Tao