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Adam Gopnik

Adam Gopnik Quotes

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Famous Adam Gopnik Quotes

“If we are willing to act violently in pursuit of a peripheral interest, everyone can be certain that, when a vital interest is at stake, we will be still more violent. 'Credibility' is defined as the willingness to kill a lot of people now for a not very good cause to assure the world that we'll kill a lot more people if we can find a better one.”

PeopleIfsWorldStillsCertainCausesInterestWillingVery GoodPursuitViolentDefinedWillingnessStakesCredibilityGood Causes
Author:Adam Gopnik
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“The past is so often unknowable not because it is befogged now but because it was befogged then, too, back when it was still the present. If we had been there listening, we still might not have been able to determine exactly what Stanton said. All we know for sure is that everyone was weeping, and the room was full.”

IfsKnowsHas BeensSaidStillsMightAblePastRoomsListeningDetermineWeepingBack When
Book:Angels and Ages: A Short Book about Darwin, Lincoln, and Modern Life
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“The relentless note of incipient hysteria, the invitation to panic, the ungrounded scenarios - the overwhelming and underlying desire for something truly terrible to happen so that you could have something really hot to talk about - was still startling. We call disasters unimaginable, but all we do is imagine such things. [...] That, you could conclude mordantly, is the real soundtrack of our time: the amplification of the self-evident toward the creation of paralyzing, preëmptive paranoia.”

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Author:Adam Gopnik
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