Sublime
An inspiration engine for ideas
Thucydides wouldn’t have put it in that way, but I suspect this is what he meant when he encouraged his readers to seek “knowledge of the past as an aid to the understanding of the future, which in the course of human things must resemble if it does not reflect it.” For without some sense of the past the future can be only loneliness: amnesia is a
... See moreJohn Lewis Gaddis • On Grand Strategy
Deborah Treisman • The Underground Worlds of Haruki Murakami
But the technocrats draw a sharp distinction between themselves (predominantly white) who are at least engaged in a struggle to transcend oppression in thought and speech and those whites who continue to practice it.
George Friedman • The Storm Before the Calm: America's Discord, the Coming Crisis of the 2020s, and the Triumph Beyond
Libby Marrs • I Would Very Much Like To Be Excluded From This Lore
figure 1. Freytag’s Triangle
George Saunders • A Swim in a Pond in the Rain: In Which Four Russians Give a Master Class on Writing, Reading, and Life
The biographer must interpret facts as if they were fiction, find the meaning of the subject’s life, and then cast him as the protagonist of his life’s genre:
Robert McKee • Story: Style, Structure, Substance, and the Principles of Screenwriting
rhetor doing the work of a philosopher.” It might be more accurate to say that he was a critic doing the work of a prophet.
Richard M. Weaver • Ideas Have Consequences: Expanded Edition
viewing certainty with suspicion and acknowledging, with both regret and resolve, the imperfectibility of man, the fallibility of institutions and the tragic—rather than redemptive—nature of history.