Quotes about today
page 48

“We have become increasingly more and more isolated. When we used to live in tribe and then community, and then even with extended family, we had multiple people to go to for help regarding how to deal with stressors. If we couldn't get connection from one person, we could find someone else to connect with. That is not the case today.”

Teal Swan (1984) American spiritual teacher

People, Family, Communication, Help

“Technology is nothing. What's important is that you have a faith in people, that they're basically good and smart, and if you give them tools, they'll do wonderful things with them. It's not the tools that you have faith in — tools are just tools. They work, or they don't work. It's people you have faith in or not. Yeah, sure, I'm still optimistic I mean, I get pessimistic sometimes but not for long. … The world's clearly a better place. Individuals can now do things that only large groups of people with lots of money could do before. What that means is, we have much more opportunity for people to get to the marketplace — not just the marketplace of commerce but the marketplace of ideas. The marketplace of publications, the marketplace of public policy. You name it. We've given individuals and small groups equally powerful tools to what the largest, most heavily funded organizations in the world have. And that trend is going to continue. You can buy for under $10,000 today a computer that is just as powerful, basically, as one anyone in the world can get their hands on.”

Steve Jobs (1955–2011) American entrepreneur and co-founder of Apple Inc.

1990s, Rolling Stone interview (1994)

Money, People, World, Faith

“The biggest oxymoron in our world today is the term ‘controlled substances.’ Why? Because as soon as you prohibit a substance, you give up control to the bad guys. That’s a huge problem we’ve inflicted upon ourselves.”

James P. Gray (1945) American judge

As quoted in Kindland, Aimee Kuvadia, “Police and Weed: Do Ex-Cops Hold the Key to Sane Pot Policy?” (April 12, 2016)

Bad luck, World, Guy, Problem

“School is a place that adds to emotional pain for most children alive today. It is even more so the case for the two most isolated kids in school: 1. The social outcasts who are isolated in every way. 2. The social actors who are surrounded by other kids, but no one sees them because they are in a relationship not with them, but with the role they play.”

Teal Swan (1984) American spiritual teacher

Pain, Children, School, Way

“I was lucky to enter economics in 1932. Analytical economics was poised for its take-off. I faced a lovely vacuum that young economists today can hardly imagine. So much remained to be done. Everything was still in an imperfect state. It was like fishing in a virgin lake: a whopper at every cast, but so many lovely new specimens that the palate never cloyed.”

Paul A. Samuelson (1915–2009) American economist

Introduction to the Enlarged Edition
1940s, Foundations of Economic Analysis (1947; 1983)

Love, Making love, Imagination, Fish

“…Teenagers today are so fluid and non-binary; they’re fantastically unafraid. My house [growing up] was a bit like that. I’ve loved men and I’ve loved women and I was raised to feel like I could love who I wanted. We could talk about everything in the world.”

Saffron Burrows (1972) English actress, model and writer

On her upbringing and the next generation in “Saffron Burrows: ‘I was raised to feel like I could love who I wanted’” https://www.theguardian.com/culture/2020/feb/19/saffron-burrows-i-was-raised-to-feel-like-i-could-love-who-i-wanted in The Guardian (2020 Feb 19)

Love, Women, Men, World

“Bhutan is a nation full of promise and potential. We have the security and confidence of our own culture and traditions, an unspoiled environment and most importantly, a young population full of dynamism and promise. My message to you, the young leaders of Bhutan is - we have everything it takes to build a strong economy and safeguard everything we cherish - but on one condition – that we start today - with big ambitions, and we work hard.”

Jigme Khesar Namgyel Wangchuck (1980) King of Bhutan

Addressing the graduates of Sherubtse college in Kanglung, His Majesty speaks on Bhutan’s future, Kuensel Online http://kuenselonline.com/modules.php?name=News&file=article&sid=8317, (11 April 2007)

Confidence, Strong, Self-confidence

“Throughout the social sciences today, the dominant form of modeling is based upon the rational-choice paradigm. Game theory, in particular, is typically based upon the assumption of rational choice. In my view, the reason for the dominance of the rational-choice approach is not that scholars think it is realistic. Nor is game theory used solely because it offers good advice to a decision maker, because its unrealistic assumptions undermine much of its value as a basis for advice.”

Robert Axelrod book The Complexity of Cooperation

Introduction
The Complexity of Cooperation (1997)

Game, Thinking, Decision, Science

“This is preeminently the time to speak the truth, the whole truth, frankly and boldly. Nor need we shrink from honestly facing conditions in our country today. This great Nation will endure as it has endured, will revive and will prosper. So, first of all, let me assert my firm belief that the only thing we have to fear is fear itself — nameless, unreasoning, unjustified terror which paralyzes needed efforts to convert retreat into advance. In every dark hour of our national life a leadership of frankness and vigor has met with that understanding and support of the people themselves which is essential to victory.”

Franklin D. Roosevelt (1882–1945) 32nd President of the United States

Part of this is often misquoted as "We have nothing to fear but fear itself," most notably by Martin Luther King, Jr. in his I've Been To The Mountaintop https://www.americanrhetoric.com/speeches/mlkivebeentothemountaintop.htm speech. Similar expressions were used in ancient times, for example by Seneca the Younger (Ep. Mor. 3.24.12 http://www.thelatinlibrary.com/sen/seneca.ep3.shtml): scies nihil esse in istis terribile nisi ipsum timorem ("You will understand that there is nothing dreadful in this except fear itself"), and by Michel de Montaigne: "The thing I fear most is fear", in Essays (1580), Book I, Ch. 17. 1930s, First Inaugural Address (1933)

Life, People, Truth, Fear

“Funnily enough, today there is one area of sex that when discussed, still makes people’s posteriors pucker with discomfort… abstinence.”

Steven Crowder (1987) American actor

People, Making love, Sex

“Syntax highlighting is juvenile. When I was a child, I was taught arithmetic using [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cuisenaire_rods colored rods]. I grew up and today I use monochromatic numerals.”

Rob Pike (1956) software engineer

Rob Pike (2012) in golang-nuts https://groups.google.com/forum/#!msg/golang-nuts/hJHCAaiL0so/kG3BHV6QFfIJ group at groups.google.com, Oct 28 2012

Color

“So Sweden. Good place not bad people. But a successful model for a viable economy in today's global market. Incorrect!”

Steven Crowder (1987) American actor

Bad luck, People, Success

“I am neither a saint nor a theologian. To me, good works are more important than theology. We all know that religion has been historically, and still is today, a cause of great evil as well as great good in human affairs. We have seen terrible wars and terrible persecutions conducted in the name of religion. We have also seen large numbers of people inspired by religion to lives of heroic virtue, bringing education and medical care to the poor, helping to abolish slavery and spread peace among nations. Religion amplifies the good and evil tendencies of individual souls. Religion will always remain a powerful force in the history of our species. To me, the meaning of progress in religion is simply this, that as we move from the past to the future the good works inspired by religion should more and more prevail over the evil.”

Freeman Dyson (1923) theoretical physicist and mathematician

Progress In Religion (2000)

War, People, Education, Peace

“Undoubtedly, even for enlightened men, however determined they may be, it is very difficult to go against the system. The question posed today is what must we do to prevent ourselves from being taken over by the system? Engaging in political or economic conflict does not seem to be the answer.”

Thich Nhat Hanh (1926) Religious leader and peace activist

Zen Keys (1994), p. 150

Men, Question

“The sin of bourgeois patriotism was to confound a certain economic form with the national. It connected two things that are entirely different. Forms of the economy, however firm they may seem, are changeable. The national is eternal. If I mix the eternal and the temporal, the eternal will necessarily collapse when the temporal collapses. This was the real cause for the collapse of liberal society. It was rooted not in the eternal, but in the temporal, and when the temporal declined it took the eternal down with it. Today it is only an excuse for a system that brings growing economic misery. That is the only reason why international Jewry organizes the battle of the proletarian forces against both powers, the economy and the nation, and defeat them.”

Joseph Goebbels (1897–1945) Nazi politician and Propaganda Minister

1930s, Die verfluchten Hakenkreuzler. Etwas zum Nachdenken (1932)

“If today the Middle Ages are retiring into the thick shadows of convents, it is due to triumphant skepticism; and if the epidemic disease of religion no longer appears with the terrible intensity of former times, it is due to the diminution of the political power of the Church.”

Benito Mussolini (1883–1945) Duce and President of the Council of Ministers of Italy. Leader of the National Fascist Party and subsequen…

1900s, God Does Not Exist (1904)

Age, Disease, Religion, Appearance

“Many people think that dealing with protecting the environment will be so costly and so hard that they just want to ignore the problem. I hope the prize today could help everyone see that humans are capable of amazing accomplishments when we set about trying to do something.”

Paul Romer (1955) American economist

At a news conference following the 2018 Nobel Memorial Prize in Economics announcement, as quoted in "2 Americans win econ Nobel for work on climate and growth" https://www.apnews.com/c3e7552c033748e683d502d890613b8b Associated Press. October 8, 2018.

People, Hope, Problem, Thinking

“In place of a slave colony, we want a restored German national state. The state is not an end in itself for us, but rather a means to an end. The true end is the race, the sum of all the living, creative forces of the people. The structure that today calls itself the German republic is not a way to maintain our racial inheritance. It has become an end in itself with no real connection to the people and their needs.”

Joseph Goebbels (1897–1945) Nazi politician and Propaganda Minister

1930s, Die verfluchten Hakenkreuzler. Etwas zum Nachdenken (1932)

People, Way

“The struggle against the religious absurdity is more than ever a necessity today.”

Benito Mussolini (1883–1945) Duce and President of the Council of Ministers of Italy. Leader of the National Fascist Party and subsequen…

1900s, God Does Not Exist (1904)

“Why wait for Tomorrow when Today is holding out her hand?”

Cometan

Book: Cometan, the Omnidoxy

Waiting

“Although it is necessary to be conscious of variation, the problem of boundaries, political misuse, change, flows and conceptual inaccuracy, it would be tantamount to intellectual suicide for anthropology if it were to discard a concept that tells us that people with different backgrounds, who have been raised in very different environments, live – to a greater or lesser extent – in different life-worlds and see the world in different ways. Thus, it seems necessary to keep the culture concept, but in an ideal world, it would be locked securely in a cupboard and taken out only when it was needed. In most cases where the culture concept is used cursorily today – inside and outside of anthropology – it would prove unnecessary to unlock the cupboard.”

Thomas Hylland Eriksen (1962) Norwegian social anthropologist and professor

Source: What is Anthropology? (2nd ed., 2017), Ch. 2 : Key Concepts

Life, People, World, Way

“Many social scientists, including anthropologists, have been interested in the power inherent in gender relations, often described through the idiom of female oppression. It can be argued that men usually tend to exert more power over women than vice versa. In most societies, men generally hold the most important political and religious positions, and very often men control the formal economy. In some societies, it may even be prescribed for women to cover their body and face when they appear in the public sphere, and, paradoxically, these practices sometimes become more common as their societies become more modern. On the other hand, women are often capable of exerting considerable informal power, not least in the domestic sphere. Anthropologists cannot state unequivocally that women are oppressed before they have investigated all aspects of their society, including how the women (and men) themselves perceive their situation. One cannot dismiss the possibility that certain women in western Asia (the Middle East) see the ‘liberated’ western woman as more oppressed – by professional career pressure, demands to look good and other expectations – than themselves.
When studying societies undergoing change, which perhaps most anthropologists do today, it is important to look at the value conflicts and tensions between different interest groups that are particularly central. Often these conflicts are expressed through gender relations.”

Thomas Hylland Eriksen (1962) Norwegian social anthropologist and professor

Source: What is Anthropology? (2nd ed., 2017), Ch. 2 : Key Concepts

Women, Men, Study, Appearance

“From a religious perspective, loving one another is the highest commandment. From a spiritual perspective, loving one another is the wisdom of the ages. From a political perspective, loving one another is just the smartest thing to do. Plus, today it’s the only survivable option.”

Marianne Williamson (1952) American writer

Twitter https://twitter.com/marwilliamson (26 Nov 2019) Williamson's quotes in social media

Love, Wisdom, Age, Making love

“To try to distinguish between our objectives in World War II and the war we are fighting today- that one war was justified and the other isn't- is a complete fallacy. All wars are wars of choice. The Revolutionary War was a war of choice- we could have stayed British subjects if we had wanted. Equally so, we could have chosen not to fight World War II if we had wanted. But there were compelling reasons to fight both the Revolutionary War and World War II, as there are compelling reasons to fight the war against terror today.”

Lynn Compton (1921–2012) Easy Company soldier turned noted jurist

Source: Call of Duty: My Life Before, During and After the Band of Brothers (2008), p. 250

War, World, Fight

“The word "freedom" is rather generic today, and in my mind, sadly, an ill-defined term. Many people think it simply means saying whatever you want and doing whatever you want whenever you want. But true freedom is easy to overlook today. Too many of our fellow citizens are willing to go to the polls and vote away the freedoms of themselves and others simply because they have been convinced of the supposed worthiness of some social goal.”

Lynn Compton (1921–2012) Easy Company soldier turned noted jurist

Source: Call of Duty: My Life Before, During and After the Band of Brothers (2008), p. 248

People, Thinking, Freedom

“Today in America—the child of European imperialism—a new revolution is rising. It is the revolution of our time... and offers the only possible escape for mankind today.”

Jean-François Revel (1924–2006) French writer and philosopher

Without Marx or Jesus; the new American Revolution has begun (1971) quoted in The Aquarian Conspiracy, by Marilyn Ferguson, Chapter 5 (1980)
1970s

Time

“Today we are on the brink of a new synthesis. In the past four centuries western science has experienced a continuous shattering and reforming of its basic concepts. Now the scientific community has begun to recognize striking correlations between their findings and those expressed abstrusely by ancient mystics. This is a convocation of visionary men and women pioneering this new synthesis.”

Marilyn Ferguson (1938–2008) American writer

The Aquarian Conspiracy (1980), Chapter Six, Liberating Knowledge: News from the Frontiers of Science

Women, Men, Communication, Science

“The stuff of revolution, and its first success, must be the ability to innovate. In that sense, there is more revolutionary spirit in the United States today, even on the Right, than elsewhere on the Left. The relative freedom in the United States would make it possible for such a revolution to occur bloodlessly, Revel said.”

Marilyn Ferguson (1938–2008) American writer

The Aquarian Conspiracy (1980), Chapter Five, The American Matrix for Transformation

Making love, Sense, Freedom, Success

“We Anglophones tend to use the words nation and state more or less interchangeably, but when one nation is divided into two states, it’s important to stick to the Koreans’ own practice of distinguishing clearly between nationalism (minjokjuŭi) and patriotism / state spirit (aeguksim, kukka chŏngsin, kukkajuŭi, etc). Historians do this even in English when discussing the Weimar Republic, where nationalism undermined support for the state — and for liberal democracy — just as it does in South Korea today.”

Brian Reynolds Myers (1963) American professor of international studies

2010s, On Experts and Exegetes (September 2017)

Democracy, Support

“O people, you were not created in vain, nor will you be left to yourselves. Rather, you will return to a place in which Allah will descend in order to judge among you and distinguish between you. Destitute and lost are those who forsake the all-encompassing Mercy of Allah, and they will be excluded from Paradise, the borders of which are as wide as the heavens and the Earth. Don't you know that protection, tomorrow, will be limited to those who feared Allah [today], and to those who sold something ephemeral for something permanent, something small for something great, and fear for protection? Don't you realize that you are the descendants of those who have perished, that those who remain will take place after you, and that this will continue until you are all returned to Allah? Every day you dispatch to Allah, at all times of the day, someone who has ded, his term having come to an end. You bury him in a crack in the earth and then leave him without a pillow or a bed. He has parted from his loved ones, severed his connections with the living, and taken up residence in the earth, whereupon he comes face to face with the accounting. He is mortgaged to his deeds: He needs his accomplishments, but not the material things he left on earth. Therefore, fear Allah before death descends and its appointed times expire. I swear by Allah that I say those words to you knowing that I myself have committed more sins than any of you; I therefore ask Allah for forgiveness and I repent. Whenever we learn that one of you needs something, I try to satisfy his need to the extent that I am able. Whenever I can provide satisfaction to one of you out of you of my possessions, I seek to treat him as my equal and m relative, so that my life and his life are of equal value. I swear by Allah that had I wanted something else, namely, affluence, then it would have been easy for me to utter the word, aware as I am of the means for obtaining this. But Allah has issued in an eloquent Book (Quran) and a just example Sunnah by means of which He guides us to obedience and proscribes disobedience.”

Umar II (681–720) Umayyad caliph

History of the Prophets and Kings, Vol. 24, p. 98/99, also quoted in Umar Bin Abd Al-Aziz, p. 708-710
Last Sermon delivered to People

Love, Life, Death, People

“Millions living today have experienced transcendent aspects of reality and have incorporated this knowledge into their lives. A mystical experience, however brief, is validating for those attracted to the spiritual search. The mind now knows what the heart had only hoped for. But the same experience can be deeply distressing to one unprepared for it, who must then try to fit it into an inadequate belief system.”

Marilyn Ferguson (1938–2008) American writer

Source: The Aquarian Conspiracy (1980), Chapter Eleven, Spiritual Adventure: Connection to the Source, p. 362

Hope, Search, Knowledge, Reality

“The UN has warned that global food supply needs to increase by 70–100 per cent by 2050. Yet today as much as half the food produced worldwide is squandered – binned, left to rot or fed to farm animals.”

Philip Lymbery book Farmageddon

Farmageddon (2014)

Food, Animals

“Beyond our normal twenty-year outlook period, we recently attempted a forecast of the CO2 [carbon dioxide] build-up. We assumed different growth rates at different times, but with an average growth rate in fossil fuel use of about one percent per year starting today, our estimate is that the doubling of atmospheric CO2 levels might occur sometime late in the 21st century. That includes the impact of a synfuels industry. Assuming the greenhouse effect occurs, rising CO2 concentrations may begin to induce climactic changes around the middle of the 21st century.”

Edward E. David Jr. (1925–2017) American engineer

Keynote address at the Lamont–Doherty Earth Observatory on the Palisades, New York campus of Columbia University (October 26, 1982) ( Inventing the Future: Energy and the CO2 "Greenhouse Effect", October 26, 1982, December 22, 2018, Exxon, w:Edward E. David Jr., Edward E., David Jr. http://www.climatefiles.com/exxonmobil/inventing-future-energy-co2-greenhouse-effect/,)

Change, Time

“For the first time the personality is deliberately cultivated as such; and from that time [the European Renaissance] until today it has not been possible to separate the achievements of a civilization from the achievements of the individuals composing it. I have not the slightest doubt that this form of individuation represents a higher stage in the evolution of mankind. The future unit is the individual, a world in himself, self-contained and self-creative, freely giving and freely receiving, but essentially a free spirit.”

Herbert Read (1893–1968) English anarchist, poet, and critic of literature and art

Source: The Philosophy of Anarchism (1940), P. 11-12

World, Time, Future, Personality

“Today there are millions of residents of that "great country, the whole earth."”

Marilyn Ferguson (1938–2008) American writer

In their hearts and minds, war and boundaries and dogma have indeed already died. And they possess that large hope of which Hugo wrote. They know each other as countrymen. The Whole Earth is a borderless country, a paradigm of humanity with room enough for outsiders and traditionalists, for all our ways of human knowing, for all mysteries and all cultures. p. 405
The Aquarian Conspiracy (1980), Chapter Thirteen, The Whole- Earth Conspiracy

Country

“Every day, we are learning more about this virus and the disease it causes. One of the things we are learning is that although older people are the hardest hit, younger people are not spared. Data from many countries clearly show that people under 50 make up a significant proportion of patients requiring hospitalization. Today, I have a message for young people: you are not invincible. This virus could put you in hospital for weeks, or even kill you. Even if you don’t get sick, the choices you make about where you go could be the difference between life and death for someone else. I’m grateful that so many young people are spreading the word and not the virus. As I keep saying, solidarity is the key to defeating COVID-19 - solidarity between countries, but also between age groups. Thank you for heeding our call for solidarity, solidarity, solidarity.”

Tedros Adhanom (1965) Director-General of the World Health Organization, former Minister in Ethiopia

WHO Director-General's opening remarks at the media briefing on COVID-19 - 20 March 2020 https://www.who.int/dg/speeches/detail/who-director-general-s-opening-remarks-at-the-media-briefing-on-covid-19---20-march-2020, World Health Organization.

Life, Death, People, Age

“One way or another, today's debts will not be paid.... As long as savings mainly by the 1% takes the form of debt claims on the rest of society, they will grow exponentially to hold the 99% in deepening debt.... If debts to creditors are paid by forced privatization, the public domain and infrastructure will be turned into rent-extraction tollbooth opportunities and economies will be impoverished by rentier austerity.”

Michael Hudson (economist) (1939) American economist

pp 418-419
Dr. Michael Hudson, KILLING THE HOST: HOW FINANCIAL PARASITES AND DEBT BONDAGE DESTROY THE GLOBAL ECONOMY, Islet 2015

Way

“But today, I look around this auditorium, and there are 50% of you who are significantly overweight, and it’s disgusting!…I’m embarrassed to be around some of you people. I hug you and my hand goes into your sides.”

Kip McKean (1954) minister

During his sermon ' Malachi: God’s Radical Demand for Remaining Radical https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UZ66eagYdUc' at the Manila World Leadership Conference, Aug 94

People

“What characterises anthropological research today more than anything is the recognition of complexity; the world is complex, cultures are complex, communities are complex, and analytical strategies must acknowledge complexity.”

Thomas Hylland Eriksen (1962) Norwegian social anthropologist and professor

Source: What is Anthropology? (2nd ed., 2017), Ch. 4 : Theories

World, Communication

“There is no direct ethnic connection between the identities of different peoples of the Rigvedic period and the identities of actual different peoples living in present-day India, or indeed in the world today.”

Shrikant Talageri (1958) Indian author

TALAGERI 2008:363
The Rigveda and the Avesta (2008)

People, World

“I will stipulate for the purpose of today that, you know, you could characterize this as influence peddling.”

Paul Manafort (1949) American political consultant

Note that this clip from the Housing Contracts Investigation, House Government Operations Subcommittee on Employment and Housing, may also be viewed at C-SPAN Moderate Rehabilitation Housing Program https://www.c-span.org/video/?8094-1/moderate-rehabilitation-housing-program (aired Jun 20, 1989) 3:35:43] Get Me Roger Stone (2017)

“I predict we will abolish suffering throughout the living world. Our descendants will be animated by gradients of genetically pre-programmed well-being that are orders of magnitude richer than today's peak experiences.”

David Pearce (philosopher) (1959) British transhumanist

Quoted in Ethics Matters (2012) by Peter and Charlotte Vardy, p. 114 ISBN 978-0334043911

World, Suffering, Animals

“If we already lived in a cruelty-free world, the notion of re-introducing suffering, exploitation and creatures eating each other would seem not so much frightful as unimaginable – no more seriously conceivable than reverting to surgery without anaesthesia today.”

David Pearce (philosopher) (1959) British transhumanist

" Reprogramming Predators https://www.hedweb.com/abolitionist-project/reprogramming-predators.html", BLTC Research, 2009

World, Suffering

“Before you go to bed, think of three things that went well today. I don’t care if it’s a little crazy thing – it doesn’t matter…Take some music you love and if you can’t dance, go do 10 minutes of jumping jacks. Get yourself all cheered up.”

Goldie Hawn (1945) American actress, film director, and producer.

On remaining centered and positive in “Goldie Hawn: ‘I was born with a high set point for happiness’” https://www.theguardian.com/film/2020/apr/13/goldie-hawn-i-was-born-with-a-high-set-point-for-happiness in The Guardian (2020 Apr 13)

Love, Making love, Music, Thinking

“Bourguiba warning the French:
"it will mean war. ... Today I am the President of the Republic, but I will be the first to join the Maquis. ... Tunisia is always ready to turn the page. ... I have promised the Tunisian people that the French army will go, If I fail, I will be swept away."”

Habib Bourguiba (1903–2000) Tunisian politician

[TUNISIA: The Accused, TIME, Monday, Feb. 24, 1958, 2, http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,862990-2,00.html, September 6, 2011]

War, People

“A worker-coop based economy—where workers democratically run enterprises, deciding what, how and where to produce, and what to do with any profits—could, and likely would, put social needs and goals (like proper preparation for pandemics) ahead of profits. Workers are the majority in all capitalist societies; their interests are those of the majority. Employers are always a small minority; theirs are the "special interests" of that minority. Capitalism gives that minority the position, profits and power to determine how the society as a whole lives or dies. That's why all employees now wonder and worry about how long our jobs, incomes, homes and bank accounts will last—if we still have them. A minority (employers) decides all those questions and excludes the majority (employees) from making those decisions, even though that majority must live with their results. Of course, the top priority now is to put public health and safety first. To that end, employees across the country are now thinking about refusing to obey orders to work in unsafe job conditions. U.S. capitalism has thus placed a general strike on today's social agenda. A close second priority is to learn from capitalism's failure in the face of the pandemic. We must not suffer such a dangerous and unnecessary social breakdown again. Thus system change is now also moving onto today's social agenda.”

Richard D. Wolff (1942) American economist

COVID-19 and the Failures of Capitalism (2020)

Health, Making love, Home, Failure

“The third reason capitalism gets blame here is that alternative systems—those not driven by a profit-first logic—could manage viruses better. While not profitable to produce and stockpile everything needed for a viral pandemic, it is efficient. The wealth already lost in this pandemic far exceeds the cost to have produced and stockpiled the tests and ventilators, the lack of which is contributing so much to today's disaster. Capitalism often pursues profit at the expense of more urgent social needs and values. In this, capitalism is grossly inefficient. This pandemic is now bringing that truth home to people.”

Richard D. Wolff (1942) American economist

COVID-19 and the Failures of Capitalism (2020)

People, Truth, Home, Wealth

“The second reason I focus on capitalism is that the responses to today's economic collapse by Trump, the GOP and most Democrats carefully avoid any criticism of capitalism. They all debate the virus, China, foreigners, other politicians, but never the system they all serve. When Trump and others press people to return to churches and jobs—despite risking their and others' lives—they place reviving a collapsed capitalism ahead of public health.”

Richard D. Wolff (1942) American economist

COVID-19 and the Failures of Capitalism (2020)

People, Health

“I want them to try it. It may work, and it may not work. But if it doesn’t work, it’s nothing lost by doing it. Nothing. Because we know long-term what I want. I want to save lives, and I don’t want it to be in a lab for the next year-and-a-half as people are dying all over the place. In France, they had a very good test. They’re continuing. But we don’t have time to go and say, gee, let’s take a couple of years and test it out, and let’s go and test with the test tubes and the laboratories. We don’t have time. I’d love to do that, but we have people dying today. As we speak, there are people dying. If it works, that’d be great. If it doesn’t work, we know for many years malaria, it’s incredible what it’s done for malaria. It’s incredible what it’s done for lupus, but it doesn’t kill people.”

Donald J. Trump (1946) 45th President of the United States of America

On using the drug as treatment for coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19). Coronavirus Task Force Briefing (April 5, 2020). Transcript https://www.rev.com/blog/transcripts/donald-trump-coronavirus-task-force-briefing-transcript-april-5 at Rev. 2020s, 2020, April

Love, People, Making love, Time

“The competitive advantage of an organization lies not so much in the solutions themselves—whether lean techniques, today’s profitable product, or any other—but in the ability of the organization to understand conditions and create fitting, smart solutions.”

Mike Rother (1958) American business academic

Understanding

“The most extensive deletions are ordered in regard to the chapter on ‘Aurangzeb’s policy on religion’. Every allusion to what he actually did to the Hindus, to their temples, to the very leitmotif of his rule – to spread the sway of Islam – are directed to be excised from the book. He is to be presented as one who had an aversion – an ordinary sort of aversion, almost a secular one – to music and dancing, to the presence of prostitutes in the court, and that it is these things he banished... In a word, no forcible conversions, no massacres, no destruction of temples. Just that Hinduism had created an exploitative, casteist society. Islam was egalitarian. Hence the oppressed Hindus embraced Islam!
Muslim historians of those times are in raptures at the heap of kafirs who have been dispatched to hell. Muslim historians are forever lavishing praise on the ruler for the temples he has destroyed, for the hundreds of thousands he has got to see the light of Islam. Law books like The Hedaya prescribe exactly the options to which these little textbooks alluded. All whitewashed away.
Objective whitewash for objective history. And today if anyone seeks to restore truth to these textbooks, the shout, ‘Communal rewriting of history’.”

Arun Shourie (1941) Indian journalist and politician

Eminent Historians: Their Technology, Their Line, Their Fraud (1998)

Truth, Books, Religion, Law

“The crisis of production today is the crisis of the antagonism between manual and intellectual labor. The problem of modern philosophy from Descartes in the sixteenth century to Stalinism in 1950 is the problem of the division of labor between the intellectuals and the workers.”

C. L. R. James (1901–1989) Trinidadian writer

State Capitalism and World Revolution (1950)

Problem

“Millions of humanity believe, ignorantly, that speculation and competition are the best things in life. They bring out the best in a person. From Maitreya’s point of view they bring out the worst in anyone. They bring out all the separation, the malice, the greed, the need to win. They separate humanity because they put brakes on the aspiration of humanity for a better life, and lead us into a super-commercialization which is destroying all life today. Commercialization reduces people to being pawns on a chessboard: they are useless unless they can bring more profits to the company that employs them.”

Benjamin Creme (1922–2016) artist, author, esotericist

Quoted in Questions & Answers, Share International https://www.share-international.org/magazine/old_issues/2018/2018-10.htm#q-n-a (October 2018) Share International Magazine

Life, People, Personality

“There is a resemblance between Nazism and political Islam. The same fears that existed in the 30s exist today. When people criticize Islamism, there is a screed of lead that imposes on them without forgetting to emphasize the key role of the collaborators.”

Waleed Al-Husseini (1989) Palestinian essayist and writer

People, Fear, Forgetting

“Today, for many in the profession, praise from the government for "responsible" reporting—for taking its direction about what should and should not be published—is a badge of honor. That this is the case is the true measure of how far adversarial journalism in the United States has fallen.”

Glenn Greenwald book No Place to Hide

Picador 2015 edition, p. 247
No Place to Hide (2014)

“[M]any scholars of today in Europe and the United States still cherish the existence of a "Germanic world" long antedating medieval and modern Germany.”

Walter Goffart (1934) American historian

Source: Quotaes, Barbarian Tides (2010), p. 40

World

“My central concern in the present book is... to liberate barbarian history from the German nationalism that has suffused it ever since the sixteenth century and, in whatever disguises, continues to do so today.”

Walter Goffart (1934) American historian

Source: Quotaes, Barbarian Tides (2010), p. ix

Books, History

“Many women are asking: why do some women choose to cover their heads? We have to understand this and other questions. This is one of the biggest challenges for feminism today. What is worrying is that when women are divided into categories it is the status quo – the patriarchy – that benefits.…”

Elif Shafak (1971) Turkish writer

On having a female character wear a veil out of protest in “Elif Shafak: ‘When women are divided it is the male status quo that benefits’” https://www.theguardian.com/books/2017/feb/05/elif-shafak-turkey-three-daughters-of-eve-interview in The Guardian (2017 Feb 5)

Women, Understanding, Question

“The real evil, the fundamental cause of all the problems of the world today — the fact that two-thirds of the world live in absolute poverty, on less than a dollar a day, while others have not even that, and are dying in the millions — the root of all of that is our complacency. If we were not complacent we could not bear to live in a world in which these events were happening, these people were dying in the midst of plenty. We would not allow it to happen if we were not complacent. This is something which we need to remember... because this is the root of all the troubles in the world. It is a sign of our separateness.”

Benjamin Creme (1922–2016) artist, author, esotericist

The World Teacher for All Humanity (2007)

People, World, Problem, Evil

“That was a life lesson to me. Because, yes it's important to take back those choices and be who we are un-apologetically, but we should always think of it in the modern context and what makes sense for our lives today, and to not be fundamentalist about anything.”

Alethea Arnaquq-Baril (1978) director

as an answer to using a modern tattoo technique on herself, as opposed to a more traditional technique Q & A with Alethea Arnaquq-Baril - TUNNIIT: RETRACING THE LINES OF INUIT TATTOOS, Cinema Politica - 12 Jan 2017, at 10 Min 54 Sec https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W1cXIe4IR7w

Life, Making love, Thinking, Sense

“These days, the American dream is more apt to be realized in South America, in places such as Ecuador, Venezuela and Argentina, where incomes are actually more equal today than they are in the land of Horatio Alger. Who's the banana republic now?”

Bernie Sanders (1941) American politician, senator for Vermont

Close The Gaps: Disparities That Threaten America https://www.sanders.senate.gov/newsroom/must-read/close-the-gaps-disparities-that-threaten-america, Valley News, 5 August 2011 2010s

Dreams

“In India, being a Hindu and wearing the orange colour has become a sin. I ask that if a maulvi had been killed, would people be silent? Would Sonia Gandhi, who hails from Italy, be quiet? Today, she is silent...”

Arnab Goswami (1973) Indian news anchor

Arnab Goswami, quoted in ‘Attacked by Cong Workers’: Arnab Alleges After Comments on Sonia https://www.thequint.com/news/india/attacked-by-congress-workers-arnab-goswami-alleges-post-comments-on-sonia-gandhi-palghar-lynchings

People

“..the art-reviews on my work in the French and English magazines.. ..[are] enough to claim that I already have reached a prominent position among today's marine painters. I would also like to take this fact into consideration when determining my prices.”

Hendrik Willem Mesdag (1831–1915) painter from the Northern Netherlands

translation from original Dutch: Fons Heijnsbroek

(original Dutch: citaat van Hendrik Willem Mesdag's brief, in het Nederlands:) ..de critieken op mijn werk in de Fransche, Engelsche bladen [zijn].. ..voldoende om te kunen beweren dat ik reeds nu onder de tegenwoordige marine schilders een voorname plaats inneem. Dit wil ik ook bij het stellen [bepalen] mijner prijzen in aanmerking genomen hebben.

In a letter to art-sellers Goupil in The Hague, 1870's; as cited in De Copieboeken of De Wording van de Haagsche School, Johan Poort; Mesdag Documentatie Centrum, Wassenaar, 1996, pp. 89-90
before 1880

Art

“How unreliable is the woman caught being faithful! Today she is faithful to you, tomorrow to another.”

Karl Kraus (1874–1936) Czech playwright and publicist

Half-Truths and One-And-A-Half Truths (1976)

Faith

“What a contrast with the lives of ordinary people at the start of twenty-first century! Today, everyday life is constantly monitored.”

David Lyon (1948) British sociologist

Part III, p. 105
Surveillance society

Life, People

“Today, empathetic intelligence entails sharing the sorrows of other sentient beings. In our posthuman future, will empathy consist entirely in sharing each other’s joys?”

David Pearce (philosopher) (1959) British transhumanist

"What Is Empathetic Superintelligence?" https://www.abolitionist.com/transhumanism/index.htm presentation, 29 Jan. 2011

Intelligence, Future, Joy

“Today, most education, for what it is worth, is education for jobs. People are simply fitted to make their living in the outer commercial world under the whip of competition.”

Benjamin Creme (1922–2016) artist, author, esotericist

Source: Maitreya's Mission Vol. III (1997), p. 252

People, World, Education, Making love

“O heart, Ramadan has come to an end,
and the happy Eid knocks at the door for all,
Come, today give yourself away wholeheartedly,
heed the divine call.”

Kazi Nazrul Islam (1899–1976) Bengali poet

"Eid, At The End Of Fasting Of Ramadan", as translated by Mohammad Omar Farooq

Happiness, Heart

“Crying is bullshit. In a certain way, everything fits. When you’re alive, you fit. You may not fit within certain particulars, but that’s when you self-publish. That’s the good thing about today…”

Tatiana de la tierra (1961–2012) Latina writer and activist

On her advice to writers who might feel they do not fit a particular mold in the interview “She Does It Her Way: tatiana de la tierra” https://labloga.blogspot.com/2010/08/she-does-it-her-way-tatiana-de-la.html in La Bloga (2010 Aug 1)

Way, Self-confidence, Cry

“In 1980, Chinese-Americans were certainly considered perpetual foreigners to America, even more so than today. In addition, Asians, in general, were regarded as poor, uneducated, and manual laborers—cooks, waiters, laundrymen—an image which has turned 180 degrees in my lifetime.”

David Henry Hwang (1957) Playwright

On how Chinese-Americans were viewed when Hwang’s debuted in the theater world in “DAVID HENRY HWANG ON THEATRE, TRUMP, AND ASIAN-AMERICAN IDENTITY” https://thetheatretimes.com/david-henry-hwang-on-theatre-trump-and-asian-american-identity/ in Theatre World (2019 Mar 15)

Cooking

“I have been looking for spontaneous generation for twenty years without discovering it. No, I do not judge it impossible. But what allows you to make it the origin of life? You place matter before life and you decide that matter has existed for all eternity. How do you know that the incessant progress of science will not compel scientists to consider that life has existed during eternity, and not matter? You pass from matter to life because your intelligence of today cannot conceive things otherwise. How do you know that in ten thousand years, one will not consider it more likely that matter has emerged from life? You move from matter to life because your current intelligence, so limited compared to what will be the future intelligence of the naturalist, tells you that things cannot be understood otherwise. If you want to be among the scientific minds, what only counts is that you will have to get rid of a priori reasoning and ideas, and you will have to do necessary deductions not giving more confidence than we should to deductions from wild speculation.”

Louis Pasteur (1822–1895) French chemist and microbiologist

Original: (fr) La génération spontanée, je la cherche sans la découvrir depuis vingt ans. Non, je ne la juge pas impossible. Mais quoi donc vous autorise à vouloir qu'elle ait été l'origine de la vie? Vous placez la matière avant la vie et vous faites la matière existante de toute éternité. Qui vous dit que, le progrès incessant de la science n'obligera pas les savants, qui vivront dans un siècle, dans mille ans, dans dix mille ans... à affirmer que la vie a été de toute éternité et non la matière.? Vous passez de la matière à la vie parce que votre intelligence actuelle, si bornée par rapport à ce que sera l'intelligence des naturalistes futurs, vous dit qu'elle ne peut comprendre autrement les choses. Qui m'assure que dans dix mille ans on ne considérera pas que c'est de la vie qu'on croira impossible de ne pas passer à la matière? Si vous voulez être au nombre des esprits scientifiques, s, qui seuls comptent, il faut vous débarrasser des idées et des raisonnements a priori et vous en tenir aux déductions nécessaires des faits établis et ne pas accorder plus de confiance qu'il ne faut aux déductions de pures hypothèses."

As quoted in Pasteur et la philosophie (2004), by Patrice Pinet, p. 63

Partially quoted in Louis Pasteur : Free Lance of Science (1950) by René Dubos, p 396

Life, Making love, Confidence, Intelligence

“Like the rest of them,
will you also examine the white, crystal today
in the haze and mist of slimy yesterday?
Do what you will
but keep it in mind:
the sun has also been accused
of having necked and cuddled the night.”

Parveen Shakir (1952–1994) Pakistani writer and poet

Sessions of Sweet, Silent Thought: translated by Mirza Nehal Ahmad Baig, p. 20
Poetry, Keep it in Mind

Sun, Night

“Study of history has a value at all times. But it is of the utmost importance today when the world is shrinking and we are coming closer to one another. We can be nearer to one another better if we understand one another well.”

K. S. Lal (1920–2002) Indian historian

Meaning and Purpose of History in Volume I
Historical essays (2001)

World, History, Understanding, Study

“Today the Church must face other challenges and push forward to new frontiers, both in the initial mission ad gentes and in the new evangelization of those peoples who have already heard Christ proclaimed.”

Pope John Paul II Redemptoris Missio

Redemptoris Missio §30
Redemptoris Missio (1990)

People, Christ

“I was not only born and bred as a Muslim but also fought grimly for the glory of Islam. Even today, my loved ones are Muslim. There is no way I can be anti-Muslim.”

Anwar Shaikh (1928–2006) British Pakistani writer

Quoted from Elst, Koenraad. The Problem with Secularism (2007)

Love, Making love, Way

“All our struggles have been validated. Comrades, finally it has been realized: Initiate the armed struggle today. Everything that we have accomplished, including errors that have served as experience, are validated here. This is the essence of this School.”

Abimael Guzmán (1934–2021) Peruvian communist

"We Are the Initiators" (1980)

School, Error

“The natural resource curse is not fate; it is choice. The exploitation of natural resources is an important part of globalization today, and in some ways the failures of the resource-rich developing countries are emblematic of globalization's failures.”

Joseph E. Stiglitz book Making Globalization Work

§5, p. 149
Making globalization work (2006)

Fate, Way, Failure, Nature

“When you look at Russia today, you have to try to imagine to yourself "What would a country look like if it was run by a former KGB agent?"”

Fiona Hill (presidential advisor) (1965) American policy adviser

and I think what we're seeing today, with all kinds of clandestine activity, all kinds of mysterious men … taking over Crimea, the peninsula attached to Ukraine, and affecting the situation on the ground so that later Russia can annex it — and then the kind of speeches that we've heard coming out of President Vladimir Putin about the justification of Russia's takeover or Crimea, going back into the long history of grievances against the west, dating back to the collapse of the Soviet Union, and even going back many centuries before, really, a long perspective on Russian history, this is the kind of thing you would have imagined from someone who has seen themself as a servant of the state, and as someone from an institution that sees themselves as the defender of that state. The KGB used to think of itself as the sword and the shield of the system of the state, the Soviet State — and then the Russian state after it collapsed. That is the emblem of the KGB. Global Perspectives Episode 168 (27 April 2014) https://www.pbs.org/video/global-perspectives-global-perspectives-fiona-hill/

Imagination, Country

“Baby, I've never been drunk in public and I never run around with men half my age. The dames I started out with are all batty today. They had their looks and nothing more and now they think they're finished.”

Yvonne De Carlo (1922–2007) Canadian-American actress, dancer, and singer

Source: As quoted in "A girl no longer, but . . . De Carlo's a beauty still" (1975)

Men, Age, Thinking, Baby

“There is an invaluable treasure trove of useful historical data that has only just begun to be used to inform our actions. The lessons of 1918 (Spanish flu), if well heeded, might help us to avoid repeating the same history today (COVID-19).”

Stephen S. Morse (1951) American virologist and epidemiologist

Source: Stephen S. Morse (2020) cited in " How some cities ‘flattened the curve’ during the 1918 flu pandemic https://www.nationalgeographic.com/history/2020/03/how-cities-flattened-curve-1918-spanish-flu-pandemic-coronavirus/" on National Geographic, 27 March 2020.

History, Help

“Knowing what I do about Judaism, I was naturally distressed to see that you have erroneously featured me as a Jew
.. I am not today, nor have I ever been a Jew, and as a matter of fact, I am uncircumcised.”

Bobby Fischer (1943–2008) American chess prodigy, chess player, and chess writer

1980s, 1984 letter to Encyclopedia Judaica Source: from 1st paragraph, verified page 137 of "White King and Red Queen: How the Cold War was Fought on the Chessboard" by Daniel Johnson, published 2008 https://books.google.ca/books?id=7Lzd7SaQA_YC&pg=PA137

Nature

“No, we didn’t do horror in the sense of haunted houses or people with masks the way you might see them today; something lurking in an anteroom. Our stories were more like peasants sitting around a fire. We had the “Strange World of Your Dreams.””

Jack Kirby (1917–1994) American comic book artist, writer and editor

Ours didn’t run to bloody horror. Ours ran to weirdness. We began to interpret dreams. Remember, Joe and I were wholesome characters. We weren’t guys that were bent on the weird and the bizarre. We were the kind of guys who wouldn’t offend our mother, who wouldn’t offend anyone in your family, and certainly not the reader. So we knew that we had to depart from adventure and that there were other ways to go and we came up with the “Strange World of Your Dreams”. Context: page 4 http://www.tcj.com/jack-kirby-interview/4/ 1990, Gary Groth interview

People, World, Dreams, Way

“It's been an incredible honor to run a principled campaign for the White House
Today, I will end where I began, ready and willing to fight for the cause of liberty.”

Rand Paul (1963) American politician, ophthalmologist, and United States Senator from Kentucky

3 February 2016 https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/rand-paul-suspends-2016-presidential-campaign/story?id=36674666 2016

Fight, Housing

“(en) "I have always held the religion of Muhammad in high estimation because of its wonderful vitality. It is the only religion which appears to me to possess that assimilating capacity to the changing phase of existence which can make itself appeal to every age. I have studied him - the wonderful man and in my opinion far from being an anti-Christ, he must be called the Saviour of Humanity. I believe that if a man like him were to assume the dictatorship of the modern world, he would succeed in solving its problems in a way that would bring it the much needed peace and happiness: I have prophesied about the faith of Muhammad that it would be acceptable to the Europe of tomorrow. as it is beginning to be acceptable to the Europe of today."”

George Bernard Shaw (1856–1950) Irish playwright

о религии

Happiness, Age, World, Making love

“Today’s tyranny is achieved by flooding people with so much diversion, so much bullshit information and frivolous distraction, that they are unable to make smart commitments.”

Mark Manson book Everything Is Fucked

People, Making love

“I don't know which way human psychology will go wrong. We have a world in which there is uncertainty. There are new technologies. And one of the problems is that we do things today with a thought to the future. Any purchase is one for the future. If you buy a refrigerator you are making a commitment to the future, so that you have food to eat for the next ten years. That's a simple theory, one of many simple theories -- theories that people agree on and that don't, in a fundamental way, change. But every once in a while there is unemployment, and wages will drop, and there will be several different interpretations.”

Kenneth Arrow (1921–2017) American economist

quoted in Conor Clarke, An Interview with Kenneth Arrow, Part One https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2009/07/an-interview-with-kenneth-arrow-part-one/22213/ (2009) New millennium

People, World, Making love, Food

“Problems or successes, they all are the results of our own actions. Karma. The philosophy of action is that no one else is the giver of peace or happiness. One's own karma, one's own actions are responsible to come to bring either happiness or success or whatever... As you sow, so shall you reap. It's a very old proverb of mankind. As you sow, so shall you reap. Sometime you may have killed that man, and then sometime now he comes to kill you... What we have done, the result of that comes to us whenever it comes, either today, tomorrow, hundred years later, hundred lives later, whatever, whatever. And so, it's our own karma.
That is why that philosophy in every religion: Killing is sin. Killing is sin in every religion. Whosoever sins, whoever is killed, it doesn't matter. It's a sin. And sin.. is a punishable offense. Because when you sin, when you've killed some man, what you are killing? You are killing the cosmic potential within the individual. Individual is cosmic. Individual potential of life is cosmic potential. Individual is divine deep inside. Transcendental experience awakens that divinity in man...When you kill a man like that you deprive him from getting to his human right.”

Maharishi Mahesh Yogi (1917–2008) Inventor of Transcendental Meditation, musician

Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, in CNN Larry King Weekend:Interview With Maharishi Mahesh Yogi http://transcripts.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/0205/12/lklw.00.html, (2002)

Life, Happiness, Peace, Religion

“My dear young friends … I believe in you. I have grown increasingly convinced that your generation has the capacity to transform the dawning century into an era of peace and dialogue. You have the means of reconciling our fractured humanity with itself and with the natural world.… You are the first generation of truly global citizens. The problems that you face today were not created by you. My generation and that of your parents … are the problem generations. You must be the solution finding generation! Make good use of collective intelligence, based on sharing. And above all be the generation that acts. You have the capacity to lead humanity towards a renewed form of fraternity, justice and solidarity….”

Tenzin Gyatso (1935) spiritual leader of Tibet

A Call for Revolution (2017-2018)

World, Making love, Peace, Justice

“What I fear is a new direction for the president and his administration and what could very likely be a catastrophe for the working men and women, small business and entrepreneurs, our middle class, the American family, the very people this president has represented from the moment he announced he would run for the presidency.
That Mr. Trump would advance the interest of the globalist elites ahead of our citizens would be a tragic reversal on any day,
But today, on the same day the Commerce Department reported the United States had the largest trade deficit in our history ... it all means the White House has simply lost its way.
The nation’s heart will be, after all, broken by the very same people who brought 50 years of consecutive trade deficit and the export of millions of middle-class jobs and who have fed the swamp for decades”

Lou Dobbs (1945) American Television Host

6 March 2019 episode of Donahue Tonight on Fox Business Network https://twitter.com/LouDobbs/status/1103453101036658688, reported on 7 March 2019 by The Hill https://thehill.com/homenews/media/432993-lou-dobbs-trump-white-house-has-lost-its-way

Women, Men, People, Fear

“I stand before you today not as your hypothetical descendant but as the ambassador of my kind. The statistics, as you may know, are appalling: two of us sloughed off for every six who make it into the world. In all of history, there was never a more prolific abortionist than God Almighty. Make sure the tribunal learns that fact.”

James K. Morrow (1947) (1947-) science fiction author

Source: Blameless in Abaddon (1996), Chapter 10 (p. 234)

God, World, Making love, History

“What is at stake today is not only protecting the West against the terrorists, home-grown and foreign, but — perhaps above all — protecting the West from itself. The reproduction of any one of its most monstrous events would be enough to lose everything that has been attained to date with respect to Human Rights. Beginning with respect for diversity. And it is highly probable that such a thing could occur in the next ten years, if we do not react in time.”

Jorge Majfud (1969) Uruguayan-American writer

"The Slow Suicide of the West" Monthly Review (2006) https://mronline.org/2006/11/14/majfud141106-html/ La Republica newspaper, Uruguay, (February 2003)

Home, Time

“Preservation, renewal, and reform of the Union was my main political and, if you will, moral task in my position as president of the USSR. I consider it my greatest sorrow and misfortune that I did not succeed in preserving the country as a single whole. All my efforts were focused on trying to preserve that unity. Incidentally, more and more statements are heard today, including some by participants in the Belovezh accord, that the "soft form of Union Gorbachev proposed" might have protected our nations and nationalities from painful experiences. But, as the saying goes, the train has already left the station.”

Mikhail Gorbachev (1931) General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union

1990s, On My Country and the World (1999)

Pain, Effort, Training, Country

“The dissolution of the Union radically changed the situation in Europe and the world, disrupted the geopolitical balance, and undermined the possibility of carrying further many positive processes that were under way in world politics by the end of 1991. I am convinced that the world today would be living more peacefully if the Soviet Union - of course in a renewed and reformed version - had continued to exist.”

Mikhail Gorbachev (1931) General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union

1990s, On My Country and the World (1999)

World, Way, Change

“What is new today is not globalization as such—we are too late for that. Rather, what is unique to our times is the widespread awareness of global processes among increasingly fragmented populations. That awareness grows everywhere, largely because of the increase in both the size and the velocity of global flows. Capital, populations, and information move in much greater mass and at increasing speed. At the same time, most human beings continue to act locally.

Thus, we are witnessing the rise of what I call "a fragmented globality."”

Michel-Rolph Trouillot (1949–2012) Haitian academic and anthropologist

World histories and local histories are at once becoming both increasingly intertwined and increasingly contradictory. The twenty-first century is likely to be marked by the speed and brutality of these contradictions.
Theorizing a Global Perspective (1996)

Time, Speed