It is desperately hard these days for an average child to grow up to be a man, for our present organized system does not want men. They are not safe.
Paul Goodman, Growing Up Absurd (1956), p. 14.
When time and labor had developed riches, cupidity restrained by the laws, became more artful, but not less active. Under the mask of union and civil peace, it fomented in the bosom of every state an intestine war, in which the citizens, divided into contending corps of orders, classes, families, unremittingly struggled to appropriate to themselves, under the name of supreme power, the ability to plunder every thing, and render every thing subservient to the dictates of their passions; and this spirit of encroachment, disguised under all possible forms, but always the same in its object and motives, has never ceased to torment the nations.
Constantin François de Chassebœuf, comte de Volney, The Ruins, or, Meditation on the Revolutions of Empires (1793; second English-language edition translated by Thomas Jefferson & Joel Barlow, Philadelphia, 1802).
Never have the young taken themselves so seriously, and the calamity is that they are listened to and deferred to by so many adults. A society that takes its solemn adolescents seriously is headed for serious trouble. How humorless and laughable the solemn young! One realizes that one of the chief differences between an adult and a juvenile is that the adult knows when he is an ass while the juvenile never does.
Paul Goodman, Growing Up Absurd (1960).
The whole art of government consists in the art of being honest.
Thomas Jefferson, A Summary View of the Rights of British America (1774).
When I read Wired, the book written by (what’s his name?) Woodward, about Belushi — I read like five pages of Wired — and I went, “Oh, my God: they framed Nixon.” . . . If this is what he writes about my friend that I’ve known for half of my adult life, which is completely inaccurate — talking to people of the outer, outer circle, getting the story — what the hell could they have done to Nixon?
Bill Murray in conversation with Joe Rogan on the Joe Rogan Experience (March 1, 2025), #2282.
Books constitute capital. A library book lasts as long as a house, for hundreds of years. It is not, then, an article of mere consumption but fairly of capital, and often in the case of professional men, setting out in life, it is their only capital.
Thomas Jefferson to James Madison, letter (September 16, 1821).
The thing about a lie is that if you’ve been gullible, if you’ve fallen for the lie, you need to stay within the lie or otherwise you feel like you’re stupid, you feel like you’ve been made a fool of. It’s how lockdowns worked, and how vaccines worked — even now, with what we know, what’s coming out every single day, those who fell for the lie don’t want to leave the lie because to leave the lie means they have to face the reality that they were idiots.
Katie Hopkins, “Zelensky just got kicked out the WHITE HOUSE” (March 1, 2025).
Nothing can bring you peace but yourself. Nothing can bring you peace but the triumph of principles.
Ralph Waldo Emerson, “Self-Reliance,” second essay from Essays (1847 edition).
Truth will do well enough if left to shift for herself. She seldom has received much aid from the power of great men to whom she is rarely known & seldom welcome. She has no need of force to procure entrance into the minds of men. Error indeed has often prevailed by the assistance of power or force. Truth is the proper & sufficient antagonist to error.
Thomas Jefferson, Notes on Religion (October 1776), published in The Writings of Thomas Jefferson : 1816–1826(1899) edited by Paul Leicester Ford, v. 2, p. 102.
I think that email was best interpreted as a performance review — but actually it was a pulse check review. “Do you have a pulse? Do you have a pulse and two neurons?” So if you have a pulse and two neurons you can reply to an email. This is, I think, not a high bar, is what I’m saying.
Anyone could accomplish this.
But what we are trying to get to the bottom of is: we think there are a number of people on the government payroll who are dead, which is probably why the can’t respond. And some people who are not real people. Like they’re literally fictional individuals.
Elon Musk, about his DOGE request of all federal government employees to respond to the email with five things they accomplished during the week. Accessed on The Rubin Report, February 27, 2025.