History as an antidote to despair
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History as an antidote to despair
A man's concern, even his despair, over the worthwhileness of life is an existential distress but by no means a mental disease.
Viktor Frankl • Man's Search for Meaning
Walter Isaacson on the link between suffering and greatness and those with happy childhoods:
“We grow up with fewer demons but we grow up with less drive. We end being Boswell and not Johnson. We end up being the observer and not the doer. Respect those who are in the arena…”
A few years ago, I learned that Jobs, Ellison, Musk and Bezos hav... See more
The ambition to establish a reputation worthy of the esteem of his fellows so that his story could be told after his death had carried Lincoln through his bleak childhood, his laborious efforts to educate himself, his string of political failures, and a depression so profound that he declared himself more than willing to die, except that “he had do
... See moreDoris Kearns Goodwin • Team of Rivals: The Political Genius of Abraham Lincoln
“To be hopeful in bad times is not just foolishly romantic. It is based on the fact that human history is a history not only of cruelty, but also of compassion, sacrifice, courage, kindness.
What we choose to emphasize in this complex history will determine our lives. If we see only the worst, it destroys our capacity to do something. If we remember
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