Latest Quotes

“There is nothing quite like ignorance combined with a driving need to succeed to force rapid learning.”

— Ed Catmull, Creativity, Inc

“Most of us walk around thinking that our view is best— probably because it is the only one we really know. You'd think the fact that we all have major misunderstandings with people at times—squabbles over what was said or what was meant— would clue us in to the reality that so incredibly much is hid…”

— Ed Catmull, Creativity, Inc

“More than just shelter for ourselves and for our loved ones, more than just 'the biggest purchase you'll ever make,' a house is a repository for every piece of baggage we've ever carried. Our homes protect us from the outside world, show off our taste, and accommodate our stuff. Perhaps above all, t…”

— Meghan Daum, Life Would Be Perfect If I Lived in That House

“When I think back on the places I've lived, I now wonder this: I wonder if the real measure of 'home' is the degree to which you can leave it alone.”

— Meghan Daum, Life Would Be Perfect If I Lived in That House

“When I was disengaged, I didn't leave any real authority in place. In my absence, the company ticks along nicely; with the challenge of Buzzfeed and Vox, ticking along nicely is no longer enough. Even when I'm here, if I'm obsessed by something, other parts of our common project can spin off in unpr…”

— Nick Denton, Observer.com

“I still believe that writers are the unacknowledged legislators of the world.”

— Nick Denton, Observer.com

“The natural form of online media is the exchange, not the blast. Tommy's ethos gives us the best chance of recapturing the honesty of blogs, before their spirit was sapped by the tastes of the Facebook masses. 'We put truths on the internet.' That's Tommy's motto. I can subscribe to it. Dauntingly,…”

— Nick Denton, Observer.com

“This company was founded by a gay man and two women. I have never been comfortable with the role of a traditional CEO. And for obvious reasons I have never been comfortable in a company dominated by territorial men. I hope I have made space for others who don't fit the mould. And I pray that my info…”

— Nick Denton, Observer.com

“If we understand the matter correctly (something that must be assumed here) we can compel a person, or at least help him, to render an account of the ultimate meaning of his own actions.”

— Max Weber, The Vocation Lectures

“It is entirely true and a fundamental fact of all history (though one we cannot explore further here) that the ultimate product of political activity frequently, indeed, as a matter of course, fails utterly to do justice to its original purpose and may even be a travesty of it.”

— Max Weber, The Vocation Lectures

“Impossible; for how many people did you know that refracted your own light to you?”

— Ray Bradbury, Guy Montag, Fahrenheit 451

“So now do you see why books are hated and feared? They show the pores in the face of life. The comfortable people want only wax moon faces, poreless , hairless, expressionless . We are living in a time when flowers are trying to live on flowers, instead of growing on good rain and black loam. Even f…”

— Ray Bradbury, Professor Faber, Fahrenheit 451

“Books were only one type of receptacle where we stored a lot of things we were afraid we might forget. There is nothing magical in them, at all. The magic is only in what books say, how they stitched the patches of the universe together into one garment for us.”

— Ray Bradbury, Professor Faber, Fahrenheit 451

“Remember, the firemen are rarely necessary. The public itself stopped reading of its own accord. You firemen provide a circus now and then at which buildings are set off and crowds gather for the pretty blaze, but it's a small sideshow indeed, and hardly necessary to keep things in line. So few want…”

— Ray Bradbury, Professor Faber, Fahrenheit 451

“Let you alone! That's all very well, but how can I leave myself alone? We need not to be let alone. We need to be really bothered once in a while. How long is it since you were really bothered? About something important, about something real?”

— Ray Bradbury, Guy Montag, Fahrenheit 451

“My journeys since have often repeated this message: human consciousness, from this perspective, is just a way for plants to move plant and bacterial genes around, but we have apparently forgotten this and take ourselves to be the center of planetary telos.”

— Richard M. Doyle, Darwin's Pharmacy: Sex, Plants, and the Evolution of the Noösphere

“Camcorders and VCRs gave people the ability to make their own media, and demystified the process through which the media they watched was created. Stars lost some of their allure, commercials lost their impact, and newscasters lost their authority.”

— Douglas Rushkoff, Life Inc

“But real people don't engage with the world via big ideas. We engage through activities that are scaled to real life. Big ideas—at least the kind we recognize as big ideas—are for big entities: corporations, countries, continents. If we're going to begin operating on a human scale at least some of t…”

— Douglas Rushkoff, Life Inc

“A major national newspaper could have the highest-paid technology writer in the world. But what happens to that writer when it turns out that the columns read by more, and recommended by most, are written by eighteen-year-old bloggers? The New York Times used to have the power to say who was the mos…”

— Lawrence Lessig, Remix: Making Art and Commerce Thrive in the Hybrid Economy

“For a perspectival realist, the strongest claims a scientist can legitimately make are of a qualified, conditional form: 'According to this highly confirmed theory (or reliable instrument), the world seems to be roughly such and such.' There is no way legitimately to take the further objectivist ste…”

— Ronald N. Giere, Scientific Perspectivism