An Unenviable Situation: 02/01/2026

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"I like to walk about among the beautiful things that adorn the world; but private wealth I should decline, or any sort of personal possessions, because they would take away my liberty."

George Santayana

Ernst Kantorowicz: “Looking at the stars, I feel my own futility.”

Erwin Panofsky: “All I feel is the futility of the stars.”

“The university belongs, like the church and the military, to the social institutions that are situated at a considerable distance from democracy and adhere to premodern power structures.”

Bernd Hüppauf

"I shall make a poem out of [about] nothing at all: It will not speak of me or others, Of love or youth,

or of anything else, For it was composed while I was asleep

Riding on horseback."

William IX of Aquitaine

"If there had been a good rap group around in those days, I might have chosen a career in music instead of politics."

Richard Nixon

“Fact, value! Value, fact! Fact, value! Value, fact! FACT, VALUE! VALUE, FACT!”

Piero Sraffa

“There's a lot of things in life worth living for. Isn't there?”

George Kuchar

“Cognitive science is the creation science of psychology”

B.F. Skinner

"Mailer was a Left Conservative."

Norman Mailer

"If you say why not bomb them tomorrow, I say why not today? If you say today at 5 o'clock, I say why not one o'clock?"

John von Neumann

"Irony which is the glory of slaves."

Czeslaw Milosz

“Doing these cases, I began to find myself in a dangerous situation as an advocate. I came to believe in the truth of what I was saying."

John Mortimer

"Who believes this?—aside from a few big children in university chairs or editorial offices."

Max Weber

"The American middle class committed two great crimes against American cities. First they left. Then they came back"

Michael Sorkin[?]

“You’re a leftist? What’s your trade”

Ken Graeber

"Behind the chiliasm of modern man, is the megalomania of self-infinitization."

Daniel Bell

"It is painful to note that we find similar errors in two opposed schools: the bourgeois school and the socialist school. 'Moralize! Moralize!' cry both with missionary fervor."

Charles Baudelaire

“Eventually, however, it became clear to me that academics and non-academics have very different approaches to ideas. Academics, though it sounds odd to say it, don’t take ideas seriously.”

Marfrks

"Why be a man when you can be a success?"

Bertolt Brecht

"Everything that constrains a man, strengthens him."

Joseph de Maistre

"...the social sciences, an abominable discipline from every point of view"

Hannah Arendt

"What is the good of philosophy if it does not make me a better human being?”

Ludwig Wittgenstein

"No one in my tradition believes that the words are very important."

Richard Lewontin

"A religion is a form of utopia: when it disappears, alternative utopias appear"

Emmanuel Todd

"Every one knows every one else far too well for business purposes."

Rudyard Kipling

"I'm just here so I won't get fined."

Marshawn Lynch

"Deficiency in judgement is properly that which is called stupidity; and for such a failing we know no remedy."

Immanuel Kant

"The American has got to destroy. It is his destiny."

D.H. Lawrence

"Optimism is cowardice"

Oswald Spengler

"You must overbend the material past the desired bend angle and allow it to return to the desired shape with the springback."

Art Hedrick

"I have come to the end. It is for others to judge."

Desiderius Erasmus

An Unenviable Situation

Tuesday, February 17, 2026