Design
He has that real disadvantage which has arisen out of the modern worship of progress and novelty; and he thinks anything odd and new must be an advance.
from The G. K. Chesterton Collection [50 Books] by G. K. Chesterton
Michael Schaffner added 5mo ago
It is obvious, of course, that a permanent ideal is absolutely necessary to anything like progress or reform. You cannot reform what is eternally formless; and you cannot march towards what is always moving about.
from The G. K. Chesterton Collection [50 Books] by G. K. Chesterton
Michael Schaffner added 2mo ago
We know the meaning of all the myths. We know the last secret revealed to the perfect initiate. And it is not the voice of a priest or a prophet saying ‘These things are.’ It is the voice of a dreamer and an idealist crying, ‘Why cannot these things be?’
from The Everlasting Man (with linked TOC) by G. K. Chesterton
Michael Schaffner added 1mo ago
Modern things are ugly, because modern men are careless, not because they are careful.”
from The G. K. Chesterton Collection [50 Books] by G. K. Chesterton
Michael Schaffner added 5mo ago
Our ability to make the most out of uncertainty is what creates the most potential value. We should be fueled not by a desire for a quick catharsis but by intrigue. Where certainty ends, progress begins. Our obsession with certainty has another side effect. It distorts our vision through a set of funhouse mirrors called unknown knowns.
from Think Like a Rocket Scientist: Simple Strategies You Can Use to Make Giant Leaps in Work and Life by Ozan Varol
Michael Schaffner added 4mo ago
Art is limitation; the essence of every picture is the frame.
from Orthodoxy by G. K. (Gilbert Keith) Chesterton
Michael Schaffner added 4mo ago
We have said we must be fond of this world, even in order to change it. We now add that we must be fond of another world (real or imaginary) in order to have something to change it to. We need not debate about the mere words evolution or progress: personally I prefer to call it reform. For reform implies form. It implies that we are trying to shape
... See morefrom Orthodoxy by G. K. (Gilbert Keith) Chesterton
Michael Schaffner added 5mo ago
- In his 2014 essay, “Rethinking Repair,” professor of information science Steven Jackson argued that contemporary thinking about technology romanticizes moments of invention over the ongoing work of maintenance, though it is equally important to the deployment of functional technology in the world
from The Invisible Seafaring Industry That Keeps the Internet Afloat
Michael Schaffner added 5mo ago
How important is maintenance? Is it profitable to think of it in advance? Or does it just “feel” more “moral”?
the main principle of art, the principle which is in most danger of being forgotten in our time. I mean the fact that art consists of limitation; the fact that art is limitation. Art does not consist in expanding things. Art consists of cutting things down,
from The G. K. Chesterton Collection [50 Books] by G. K. Chesterton
Michael Schaffner added 4mo ago