The first effect of poverty is that it kills thought. He grasped, as though it were a new discovery› that you do not escape from money merely by being moneyless. On the contrary, you are the hopeless slave of money until you have enough of it to live on—a “competence,” as the beastly middle-class phrase goes.

— George Orwell, Keep the Aspidistra Flying

Language does for intelligence what the wheel does for the feet and the body. It enables them to move from thing to thing with greater ease and speed and ever less involvement.

— Marshall McLuhan, Understanding Media

…we did not need books to confirm what we thought we knew about the world; we needed “books that work like an axe” to chop away at the “frozen sea” inside us.

— Franz Kafka, The Metamorphosis

To abandon facts is to abandon freedom. If nothing is true, then no one can criticize power, because there is no basis upon which to do so. If nothing is true, then all is spectacle. The biggest wallet pays for the most blinding lights.

— Timothy Snyder, On Tyranny

Eduard von Hartmann, combined optimism and pessimism in an unusual way. Humanity has truly advanced, he said. Knowledge has expanded. Everyone will one day gain a complete understanding of the essence of existence. Then they’ll realize its emptiness and commit massive collective suicide.

— Anja Publications, Philosophy Now