Latest Quotes

“Why is this so hard for so many of us? It's not because we need the email for our productivity, but because we are addicted to the possibility that there's a great tidbit in there somewhere. Like compulsive gamblers at a slot machine rewarded with a few quarters every dozen tries, we are trained to…”

— , amazon.com

“It is manifestly clear that mainstream media outlets will increasingly find themselves a step behind in the reporting of news worldwide. These organizations simply cannot move quickly enough in a connected age, no matter how talented their reporters and stringers are, and how many sources they have.…”

— Eric Schmidt, The New Digital Age: Reshaping the Future of People, Nations and Business

“The individual doesn’t matter. You, Dad, in the large scheme of things, don’t matter. I, Dad, don’t matter. We’re vectors on the grids of cellular life. We carry 10 to 12 genes with mutations that are potentially lethal. These mutations are passed on to our children—you to me, me to Natalie. Aging f…”

— David Shields, The Thing About Life is That One Day You'll Be Dead

“If we discover that not everything can be cloned, simulated, programmed, genetically and neurologically managed, then whatever survives could truly be called 'human': some inalienable and indestructible human quality could finally be identified. Of course, there is always the risk, in this experimen…”

— Jean Baudrillard, The Vital Illusion

“Everyone knows that the light of the stars needs a very long time to reach us; sometimes we perceive it after the star itself has disappeared. This gap between the star as a virtual source and its perception by us, this non-simultaneity, is an inescapable part of the illusion of the world, the absen…”

— Jean Baudrillard, The Vital Illusion

“If in the evolution of consciousness we include the growth of consciousness out of the unconscious, it is evidently impossible completely, or even significantly, to plan what the next stage of consciousness will be. Consciously developed plans may affect the next stage of consciousness but they them…”

— Walter Ong, Fighting for Life: Contest, Sexuality, and Consciousness

“Critical consciousness, thought in general, perhaps, always comes after the fact, a day too late, like Kafka’s Messiah—or it comes at the close of the day, like Hegel’s owl. It is nothing but retrospective prophecy, or some platonic shadow dancing on the wall of events, in the cavern of history. 'If…”

— Jean Baudrillard, The Vital Illusion

“When the first market towns emerged in Italy, they didn’t magically create some higher-level group consciousness. They simply widened the pool of minds that could come up with and share good ideas. This is not the wisdom of the crowd, but the wisdom of someone in the crowd. It’s not that the network…”

— Steven Johnson, Where Good Ideas Come From: The Natural History of Innovation

“The trick to having good ideas is not to sit around in glorious isolation and try to think big thoughts. The trick is to get more parts on the table.”

— Steven Johnson, Where Good Ideas Come From

“Indeed, when liberal arts education is doing its job properly, it is just like poetry because, like poetry, it makes no claims to efficacy beyond the confines of its performance. A good liberal arts course is not good because it tells you what to do when you next step into the ballot box or negotiat…”

— Stanley Fish, Save the World on Your Own Time

“Her words were ended. But Aeneas, warned by Jove, held still his eyes; he struggled, pressed care back within his breast. With halting words he answers her at last: “I never shall deny what you deserve, the kindnesses that you could tell; I never shall regret remembering Elissa for as long as I reme…”

— Virgil, The Aeneid

“The queen stopped but he, warned by Jupiter now, his gaze held steady, fought to master the torment in his heart. At last he ventured a few words: “I… you have done me so many kindnesses, and you could count them all. I shall never deny what you deserve, my queen, never regret my memories of Dido, n…”

— Virgil, The Aeneid

“The perfect criminal is the one who lays claim to the crime he has not committed. Who conceals his innocence behind the mask of crime. He is much harder to unmask.”

— Jean Baudrillard, Cool Memories IV: 1995 - 2000

“As for freedom, it will soon cease to exist in any shape or form. Living will depend upon absolute obedience to a strict set of arrangements, which it will no longer be possible to transgress. The air traveller is not free. In the future, life's passengers will be even less so: they will travel thro…”

— Jean Baudrillard, Cool Memories

“It is exciting to hear one of your fondest ideas formulated in one fell swoop, better than you could have done it yourself. You feel no intellectual jealously at seeing yourself outstripped in this way.”

— Jean Baudrillard, Cool Memories

“The corporate book industry can’t grow at the rate required by publicly held companies, anyway. This is why it is failing. Publishing is a sustainable business, not a growth industry. So it needs to be run by people looking for sustainable projects and careers—not runaway profits.”

— Douglas Rushkoff, Arthurmag.com

“For models come and go. Not that the old ones turn out necessarily to be untrue. They may remain entirely true while they become quite unfruitful. Models provide analogies which are of their very nature limited, and, as this dialogue which makes human society what it is moves on, the models once fou…”

— Walter Ong, American Catholic Crossroads

“Like generals in the safety of a situation room using toy tanks on a miniature battlefield to re-create a noisy and violent war, government and corporate leaders strategized in isolation from the cacophony of feedback. They sought to engage with their challenges from far above and to make moves as i…”

— Douglas Rushkoff, Present Shock: When Everything Happens Now

“In a networked ideascape, the ownership of an idea becomes as quaint and indefensible a notion as copyright or patents. Since ideas are built on the logic of others, there is no way to trace their independent origins. It’s all just access to the shared consciousness. Everything is everything. Accept…”

— Douglas Rushkoff, Present Shock: When Everything Happens Now

“How many generations before our own asked people to earn and save enough money while young in order to accumulate a nest egg big enough to live off for the last third of one’s life? It’s a bit like asking an animal to get fat enough not to have to eat again for the rest of its natural life.”

— Douglas Rushkoff, Present Shock: When Everything Happens Now