Category: Thought

In reality, dangerous temperatures — which overwhelmingly come from too much cold, not too much heat — are a smaller danger than ever thanks to two forces: fossil-​fueled climate mastery and modestly warming temperatures. Contrary to the portrayal of the unimpacted global climate system as a delicate nurturer that will be ruined by a few degrees of warming, most climates have a dynamic range of often-​dangerous temperatures — which are largely more dangerous at the cold end than at the warm end.

Alex Epstein, Fossil Future: Why Global Human Flourishing Requires More Oil, Coal, and Natural Gas — Not Less (2022).

They must find it hard to take Truth for authority who have so long mistaken Authority for Truth.

Gerald Massey, “A Retort,” from Gerald Massey’s Lectures (c.1900).

A sane being wished for peace and serenity, not to be the mortar in which the ingredients of destiny are finely ground.

David Brin, The Uplift War (1987).

There is only one way to read, which is to browse in libraries and bookshops, picking up books that attract you, reading only those, dropping them when they bore you, skipping the parts that drag — and never, never reading anything because you feel you ought, or because it is part of a trend or a movement. Remember that the book which bores you when you are twenty or thirty will open doors for you when you are forty or fifty — and vice versa. Don’t read a book out of its right time for you.

Doris Lessing, Introduction to The Golden Notebook (1962).

As societies grow decadent, the language grows decadent, too. Words are used to disguise, not to illuminate, action: you liberate a city by destroying it. Words are to confuse, so that at election time people will solemnly vote against their own interests.

Gore Vidal, The Decline and Fall of the American Empire (1992).

Political correctness is the natural continuum from the party line. What we are seeing once again is a self-​appointed group of vigilantes imposing their views on others. It is a heritage of communism, but they don’t seem to see this.

Doris Lessing, The Sunday Times (London, May 10, 1992).