Quotes
Authors
David Graeber

"We are usually told that democracy originated in ancient Athensâ€”like science, or philosophy, it was a Greek invention. Itâ€™s never entirely clear what this is supposed to mean. Are we supposed to believe that before the Athenians, it never really occurred to anyone, anywhere, to gather all the members of their community in order to make joint decisions in a way that gave everyone equal say?"

Source : "Fragments of an Anarchist Anthropology". Book by David Graeber, 2004.

David Graeber

#Philosophy Quotes #Believe Quotes #Mean Quotes

“For those who do not make the transition to a matured, more spiritual self-will reason will indeed be no more than rationalization. Here is a prodigious parallel: just as in antiquity the dysdaimonic personality could not appreciate how his mentality was bound in by his characterological (banausic, doulic) biases, so in modernity the facile or abstractivist rationalist cannot comprehend how his "rationality" merely slavishly subserves his appetites, delusions, preconceptions, ideologies, etc.”
“It took more than three thousand years to make some of the trees in these western woods ... Through all the wonderful, eventful centuries since Christ's time-and long before that-God has cared for these trees, saved them from drought, disease, avalanches, and a thousand straining, leveling tempests and floods; but he cannot save them from fools.”
“Some people serve with pride - because they 'want to' do and be their best; other people serve with disdain because they 'have to' do their job. Which person do you think will end up running the show?”
“Paranoia is an illness I contracted in institutions. It is not the reason for my sentences to reform school and prison. It is the effect, not the cause.”

Source : Jack Henry Abbott (1982). “In the belly of the beast: letters from prison”, Vintage
“When I see hipsters wearing Mao hats or Lenin T-shirts, I'm grateful. It's like truth-in-labeling. For now I know you are: Woefully ignorant, morally stunted, purposively asinine, or all three.”
“In France, I have lots of opportunities. Maybe now I'll be offered films in America. It's the encounter, with the director and the story that counts.”
“The truth that many people never understand until it is too late is that the more you try to avoid suffering, the more you suffer.”
“I adored you,â€ North said. â€œI just didnâ€™t tell you. You were the most amazing thing that had ever happened to me. Nothing else like you in my world before or since. I was crazy about you. I still am. Ten years later you walk into my office and I see you and itâ€™s like the first time, I canâ€™t think, I canâ€™t talk, I just need you with me. It makes me crazy, but now that Iâ€™ve got you back . . . Youâ€™re everything, Andie. I should have told you that before.”

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