Quote of the Day

I sometimes ask myself whether I would be studying galaxies if they were ugly. I really do, and I’m not sure. I see ugly bugs. My garden is full of slugs. I sometimes think, well, maybe if I started studying them, they wouldn’t appear to be so ugly… I put that at the other extreme. I think it may not be irrelevant that galaxies are really very attractive.

-Vera Rubin

Quote of the Day

Ideally, if political equality exists, citizens become co-creators of their shared world. Freedom from domination and the opportunity for co-creation maximize the space available for individual and collective flourishing.

-Danielle Allen, Our Declaration

Quote of the Day

A deep longing swelled in all his heart to rise with that clear music out of the dirt and dust of that low life that held him prisoned and befouled. If he could only live up in the free air where birds sang and setting suns had no touch of blood.

–The Souls of Black Folk, W.E.B. Du Bois

Quote of the Day

I believe in roots, in associations, in backgrounds, in personal relationships. I want my music to be of use to people, to please them… I do not write for posterity.

– Benjamin Britten

Quote of the Day

Clearness is so eminently one of the characteristics of truth, that often it even passes for truth itself.

-Joseph Joubert

Quote of the Day

Gradually the lights went out in the cedar, the colors died, the cells unflamed and disappeared. I was still ringing. I had been my whole life a bell, and never knew it until at that moment I was lifted and struck.

-Annie Dillard, Pilgrim at Tinkers Creek

Quote of the Day

Heaven, such as it is, is right here on earth. Behold, my revelation: I stand at the door in the morning, and lo, there is a newspaper, in sight like unto an emerald. And holy, holy, holy is the coffee, which was, and is, and is to come. And hark, I hear the voice of an angel round about the radio, saying ‘since my baby left me I found a new place to dwell.’ And lo, after this I beheld a great multitude, which no man could number, of shoes. And after these things I will hasten unto a taxicab and to a theater, where a ticket will be given unto me, and lo, it will be a matinee, and a film that doeth great wonders. And when it is finished, the heavens will open, and out will cometh a rain fragrant as myrrh, and yea, I have an umbrella. -Sarah Vowell, Take the Cannoli

Quote of the Day

The Declaration also conveys another lesson of paramount importance. It is this: language is one of the most potent resources each of us has for achieving our own political empowerment.

-Danielle Allen, Our Declaration

[Thus ends my week of exclusively politicking! Of course it’s important to stay politically aware year round, but sometimes it’s good to take a moment away from the normal hustle and reflect on the contract that binds us as members of a democracy. We’ll be back to the normal eclectic assortment of quotes next week.]

Quote of the Day

Why would the Framers, who disagreed even about the necessity of including a Bill of Rights in the Constitution, who disagreed about the content of that Bill of Rights, nonetheless have agreed about what school of interpretive thought should prove dominant in interpreting that Bill of Rights in centuries to come?

-Stephen Breyer, Active Liberty

Quote of the Day

Political philosophers have generated the view that equality and freedom are necessarily in tension with each other. … Such a choice is dangerous. If we abandon equality, we lose the single bond that makes us a community, that makes us a people with the capacity to be free collectively and individually in the first place. -Danielle Allen, Our Declaration