Jake Halpern famous quotes

Most of us, myself included, have forgotten what real darkness is like. We live in a world where light is inescapable. It comes from street lamps, headlights, security floodlights, and even the faint glow of our alarm clocks. We take it for granted that we can see at all times of day and night.
-- Jake Halpern

#Real #Night #Light

My mother was being hounded by a debt collector over a debt that she didn't owe, and she eventually just paid it because she wanted the calls to stop. I was very surprised. It sounded so strange. I started poking around on the internet and found this was extremely common. There was this world where these debts were sold off by the banks for pennies on the dollar and bought and sold.
-- Jake Halpern

#Mother #World #Pennies

That was my concept from the beginning - a crazy caper that's a parable for what happens in the absence of regulation.
-- Jake Halpern

#Crazy #Regulation #Absence

I was interested in this relationship between the armed robber and the banker who were from different worlds but had similar goals. It was kind of a metaphor for this larger marriage of the banks selling off their debt and these street guys scrapping over it.
-- Jake Halpern

#Goal #Guy #Bankers

Imagine having "no chain of titles for cars, no VIN numbers, and no DMV. There'd be total chaos! But that's basically the system for debt.
-- Jake Halpern

#Numbers #Car #Titles

The moment that any life, however good, stifles you, you may be sure it isn't your real life.

A loud noise will get your fight-or-flight response going. This, over the years, can cause real cardiovascular damage.

There's something to be said in favor of working in isolation in the real world.

Socrates famously said that the unconsidered life is not worth living. He meant that a life lived without forethought or principle is a life so vulnerable to chance, and so dependent on the choices and actions of others, that it is of little real value to the person living it. He further meant that a life well lived is one which has goals, and integrity, which is chosen and directed by the one who lives it, to the fullest extent possible to a human agent caught in the webs of society and history.

Harriet, Hi! Light of my eye! Come to the pictures and have a good cry, For it's jolly old Saturday, Mad-as-a-hatter-day, Nothing-much-matter-day-night!

You can look at the words on this paper and, because they are the ones I am used to choosing, they will show you the shape of me. I am here to be read in the way you might read the impression of my weight in a bed after a still night, a restless night, a night not alone.

I'm nothing you can catch now. I am black powder, I am singe, I am the bomb that bursts the night.

Music is what mathematics does on a Saturday night.

You work here [on the farm] simply without philosophizing; sometimes the work is hard and crowded with pettiness. But at times you feel a surge of cosmic exaltation, like the clear light of the heavens... . And you, too, seem to be taking root in the soil which you are digging, to be nourished by the rays of the sun, to share life with the tiniest blade of grass, with each flower; living in nature's depths, you seem then to rise and grow into the vast expanse of the universe.

We can see the light at the end of the tunnel. We just need to keep battling. We're a team that has stuck together through the good times and the bad times. Our reward is near.