Category: Activists

Today’s One-Liner (#69)

“People ignore reality in favor of their bright ideas.” –Hannah Arendt to Karl Jaspers, 1965, quoted in Susie Linfield, The Lions’ Den: Zionism and the Left from Hannah Arendt to Noam Chomsky

The Teachings

However little education a man may have, he cannot but know that Christ did not sanction murder, but taught kindness, meekness, forgiveness of injuries, love of one’s enemies—and therefore he cannot help seeing that on…

Thus Spoke a Chinese Dissident

There is no revolution like the Communist revolution. You simply burn all the books, kill all of the thinking people and use the poor proletariat to create a very simple benchmark to gauge social change….

“Words Words Words”

Indeed, the very use of the word “revolution” is suspect because every historical event that people want to invest with drama and importance is given the honorific title “revolution.”  –Avishai Margalit, Views in Review: Politics…

Kindred Spirits

Sometimes I feel overwhelmed. But I try to work one day at a time. If we just worry about the big picture, we are powerless. So my secret is to start right away doing whatever…

Moving toward Perfection

When Turgenev pleaded with him to return to the literary art that had first won him fame, he did not understand that for Tolstoy the measure of true greatness was not what we were but…