The Marginalian
The Marginalian

Reads tagged with “politics”

An Antidote to Helplessness and Disorientation: The Great Humanistic Philosopher and Psychologist Erich Fromm on Our Human Fragility as the Key to Our Survival and Our Sanity
An Antidote to Helplessness and Disorientation: The Great Humanistic Philosopher and Psychologist Erich Fromm on Our Human Fragility as the Key to Our Survival and Our Sanity

“Only through full awareness of the danger to life can this potential be mobilized for action capable of bringing about drastic changes in our way of organizing society.”

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Life, Death, Chance, and Freeman Dyson
Life, Death, Chance, and Freeman Dyson

“These matters are in the hands of a blind fate whose decrees it is perhaps well that we cannot foresee.”

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The Best of Brain Pickings 2019
The Best of Brain Pickings 2019

Love, poetry, friendship, solitude, and lots of trees.

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Dostoyevsky, Just After His Death Sentence Was Repealed, on the Meaning of Life
Dostoyevsky, Just After His Death Sentence Was Repealed, on the Meaning of Life

“To be a human being among people and to remain one forever, no matter in what circumstances, not to grow despondent and not to lose heart — that’s what life is all about, that’s its task.”

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Abraham Lincoln on Equality, the Slippery Slope of Exclusion, and How Nationalism Betrays the Nation’s Founding Ideals
Abraham Lincoln on Equality, the Slippery Slope of Exclusion, and How Nationalism Betrays the Nation’s Founding Ideals

A prescient admonition against the infinite regress of “except.”

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The Body Politic Electric: Walt Whitman on Women’s Centrality to Democracy
The Body Politic Electric: Walt Whitman on Women’s Centrality to Democracy

“Have I not said that womanhood involves all? Have I not told how the universe has nothing better than the best womanhood?”

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What You Need to Be Warm: Neil Gaiman Reads His Humanistic Poem for Refugees, Composed from a Thousand Definitions of Warmth from Around the World
What You Need to Be Warm: Neil Gaiman Reads His Humanistic Poem for Refugees, Composed from a Thousand Definitions of Warmth from Around the World

“Sometimes it only takes a stranger, in a dark place, to hold out a badly-knitted scarf, to offer a kind word, to say we have the right to be here, to make us warm in the coldest season.”

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Favorite Books of 2019
Favorite Books of 2019

From the hidden universe beneath our feet to delight as a countercultural force of courage and resistance, by way of Patti Smith, Toni Morrison, and the Greek myths.

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Bertrand Russell on How to Heal an Ailing and Divided World
Bertrand Russell on How to Heal an Ailing and Divided World

“What is needed in our very complex modern society is calm consideration, with readiness to call dogmas in question and freedom of mind to do justice to the most diverse points of view.”

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Losing the Birds, Finding the Words: Eve Ensler’s Extraordinary Letter of Apology to Mother Earth
Losing the Birds, Finding the Words: Eve Ensler’s Extraordinary Letter of Apology to Mother Earth

“I am the reason the birds are missing… I am made of dirt and grit and stars and river, skin, bone, leaf, whiskers and claws. I am a part of you, of this, nothing more or less. I am mycelium, petal pistil and stamen… I am energy and I am dust. I am wave and I am wonder. I am an impulse and an order.”

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