"I expressed skepticism, in the first chapter, about the utility of time machines in historical research. I especially advised against graduate students relying on them, because of the limited perspective you tend to get from being plunked down in some particular part of the past, and the danger of not getting back in time for your orals."

--

Source : John Lewis Gaddis (2004). “The Landscape of History: How Historians Map the Past”, p.22, Oxford University Press, USA

John Lewis Gaddis

#Past Quotes #Perspective Quotes #Historical Quotes

“Free inquiry entails recognition of civil liberties as integral to its pursuit, that is, a free press, freedom of communication, the right to organize opposition parties and to join voluntary associations, and freedom to cultivate and publish the fruits of scientific, philosophical, artistic, literary, moral and religious freedom.”

Source : Paul Kurtz (1983). “In defense of secular humanism”, Prometheus Books
“Girls face two major sexual issues in America in the 1990s: One is an old issue of coming to terms with their own sexuality, defining a sexual self, making sexual choices and learning to enjoy sex. The other issue concerns the dangers girls face of being sexually assaulted. By late adolescence, most girls today either have been traumatized or know girls who have. They are fearful of males even as they are trying to develop intimate relations with them.”
“We have wasted our spirit in the regions of the abstract and general just as the monks let it wither in the world of prayer and contemplation.”
“As it turns out, we don't "all" have to pay our debts. Only some of us do.”

Source : David Graeber (2014). “Debt - Updated and Expanded: The First 5,000 Years”, p.505, Melville House
“So the controversy over Duck Dynasty sends a clear signal to anyone who has anything to risk in public life: Say nothing about the sinfulness of homosexual acts or risk sure and certain destruction by the revolutionaries of the new morality. You have been warned.”
“If there is a perfect book to start the year with it has to be Rebecca Mead's My Life in Middlemarch.”
“The threat today is not passivity, but pseudo-activity, the urge to "be active", to "participate", to mask the Nothingness of what goes on.”

Source : Slavoj Žižek (2014). “Trouble in Paradise: From the End of History to the End of Capitalism”, p.170, Penguin UK
“Love rarely overtakes; it mostly comes to meet us.”

Source : Wilhelm Stekel (1931). “Marriage at the Crossroads”

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