Even Gandhi, with all his charisma, did not melt the hearts of his oppressors, as he had hoped. After softening, hearts harden again. Asoka too was wrong to think that he was changing the course of history, and that his righteousness would last as long as the sun and the moon.
Theodore Zeldin
Conversation is a meeting of minds with different memories and habits. When minds meet, they don't just exchange facts: they transform them, reshape them, draw different implications from them, engage in new trains of thought. Conversation doesn't just reshuffle the cards: it creates new cards.
meeting habits thought memories conversation facts minds trains
The great attraction of fashion is that it diverted attention from the insoluble problems of beauty and provided an easy way -- which money could buy.. To a simply stated, easily reproduced ideal of beauty, however temporary that ideal.
money beauty problems attention fashion attraction easy great
Work-life balance is not a solution, because it does not prevent work from continuing to be oppressive.
work balance solution
The brain is full of lonely ideas, begging you to make some sense of them, to recognize them as interesting. The lazy brain just files them away in old pigeonholes, like a bureaucrat who wants an easy life. The lively brain picks and chooses and creates new works of art out of ideas.
ideas
I particularly value conversations which are meetings on the borderline of what I understand and what I don't, with people who are different from myself.
conversation
It takes a long time for people to recognize their soul-mates when they have too limited an idea of who they are themselves.
people thetimes time
The violent have been victorious for most of history because they kindled the fear with which everyone is born.
history
wrongs righteousness history
No history of the world can be complete which does not mention Mary Helen Keller.. Whose overcoming of her blindness and deafness were arguably victories more important than those of Alexander the Great, because they have implications still for every living person.
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