“When the politicians claim that the public isn’t interested any longer in environmental conservation, they’re half right. People are actually afraid to be interested, because they suspect—I think rightly—that we’ll find if we dig deep enough that we’ve gone so far beyond the limits of what the planet will tolerate that only a major catastrophe which cuts back both our population and our ability to interfere with the natural biocycle would offer a chance of survival.”

As We May Think (1945)
Context: The difficulty seems to be, not so much that we publish unduly in view of the extent and variety of present-day interests, but rather that publication has been extended far beyond our present ability to make real use of the record. The summation of human experience is being expanded at a prodigious rate, and the means we use for threading through the consequent maze to the momentarily important item is the same as was used in the days of square-rigged ships.

Source: The Number of the Beast (1980), Chapter XXXVIII : “—under his vine and under his fig tree; and none shall make them afraid—”, p. 371

Source: You Learn by Living: Eleven Keys for a More Fulfilling Life

1860s, Allow the humblest man an equal chance (1860)
Context: To us it appears natural to think that slaves are human beings; men, not property; that some of the things, at least, stated about men in the Declaration of Independence apply to them as well as to us. I say, we think, most of us, that this Charter of Freedom applies to the slave as well as to ourselves, that the class of arguments put forward to batter down that idea, are also calculated to break down the very idea of a free government, even for white men, and to undermine the very foundations of free society. We think Slavery a great moral wrong, and while we do not claim the right to touch it where it exists, we wish to treat it as a wrong in the Territories, where our votes will reach it. We think that a respect for ourselves, a regard for future generations and for the God that made us, require that we put down this wrong where our votes will properly reach it. We think that species of labor an injury to free white men — in short, we think Slavery a great moral, social and political evil, tolerable only because, and so far as its actual existence makes it necessary to tolerate it, and that beyond that, it ought to be treated as a wrong.

Source: Blue Mars (1996), Chapter 13, “Experimental Procedures” (p. 692)

Does Trump’s confrontational style help him as president? https://www.pbs.org/newshour/show/trumps-confrontational-style-help-president (February 16, 2017)

Speech to the Headway lunch (3 December 1993) http://www.settelen.com/diana_time_and_space.htm

https://www.complex.com/music/2020/01/grammys-2020-on-the-ground-report?

Interview with Al Jazeera (25 May 2018)