Why You Should Tilt at Windmills (and Other Quixotic Reflections) (excerpt)
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Why You Should Tilt at Windmills (and Other Quixotic Reflections) (excerpt)
Anyone wanting to change the world needs to cultivate a mix of rationality and intuition, as well as a mix of arrogance and humility: the arrogance to believe that they may be able to alter the course of human history, but also the humility to observe and change their views.
Geoff Mulgan • Another World Is Possible: How to Reignite Social and Political Imagination
“The driving cultural force of that form of life we call ‘modern,’” Rosa writes, “is the idea, the hope and the desire, that we can make the modern world controllable.” “Yet,” he quickly adds, “it is only in encountering the uncontrollable that we really experience the world. Only then do we feel touched, moved, alive. A world that is fully known, ... See more
theconvivialsociety.substack.com • The Paradox of Control
“whether to float with the tide, or to swim for a goal”
“Playing and goofing off is a really important aspect of keeping optimism alive.”
Maddy Lauria • Hope is not passive: How activism keeps optimism alive
It seems to be an art of recognizing the role of the unforeseen, of keeping your balance amid surprises, of collaborating with chance, of recognizing that there are some essential mysteries in the world and thereby a limit to calculation, to plan, to control.
Rebecca Solnit • A Field Guide to Getting Lost
If you look into your own mind, which are you, Don Quixote or Sancho Panza? Almost certainly you are both. There is one part Of you that wishes to be a hero or a saint, but another part of you is a little fat man who sees very clearly the advantages of staying alive with a whole skin. He is your unofficial self, the voice of the belly protesting ag
... See moreGeorge Orwell • A Collection of Essays
No ideal will remain long enough to be realized, or even partly realized. The modern young man will never change his environment; for he will always change his mind.