Category: Thought

We have effectively entered a period in which we cannot trust our experts. We’ve got two generations of institutional experts that are corrupted, and we cannot wake up from this crazy fever dream that we’re all in, because we can’t figure out who we can still trust. The doctors are compromised; the professors are compromised; the journalists are compromised; the politicians are compromised. About the only thing that isn’t badly compromised are people with an independent source of sustenance.

Eric Weinstein, in interview for the Glitch in the Matrix non-fiction film.

Unfortunately, we live in some weird times these days and common sense is about as rare as an ARP 2500.

Tim Shoebridge, reviewing the Behringer 2500 synthesizer, a modular knock-off of the classic ARP.

Is the majority morally supreme, or are there moral rights and moral laws, independent of both majority and minority, to which, if the world is to be restful and happy, majority and minority must alike bow?

Every man should be considered as having a right to the character which he deserves; that is, to be spoken of according to his actions.

Democratic socialism turns out to be an inherently unstable compound, a contradiction in terms. Every social-democratic party, once in power, soon finds itself choosing, at one point after another, between the socialist society it aspires to and the liberal society that lathered it.

Irving Kristol, as quoted in “Capitalism, Socialism, and Democracy: A Symposium,” edited by William Barrett, Commentary (1978).

There is evil! It’s actual, like cement.

Philip K. Dick, The Man in the High Castle (1962).

Logic and truth are two very different things, but they often look the same to the mind that’s performing the logic.

Theodore Sturgeon, More Than Human (1953).

Dilemma of a civilized man; body mobilized but danger obscure.

Philip K. Dick, The Man in the High Castle (1962).

When we lack the will to see things as they really are, there is nothing so mystifying as the obvious.

Irving Kristol, “‘When virtue loses all her loveliness’ — some reflections on Capitalism and ‘the free society,’” National Affairs, No. 21, Fall 1970.

Reality is that which, when you stop believing in it, doesn’t go away.

Philip K. Dick, speech, “How To Build A Universe That Doesn’t Fall Apart Two Days Later” (1978).