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Rebecca Solnit

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Famous Rebecca Solnit Quotes

“Globally, as the nation-state becomes increasingly less meaningful - a provider of positive goods and more and more just an army and some domestic enforcement - people are withdrawing to shape and support more localised forms of organisation and power. To the extent that it's part of that civilised and localising world, the same is true of the U.S.”

PeopleWorldStatesFormNationsSupportShapesArmyMeaningfulGoodsEnforcementOrganisationProvidersCivilisedWithdrawing
Author:Rebecca Solnit
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“For millions of years, this world has been a great gift to nearly everything living on it, a planet whose atmosphere, temperature, air, water, seasons, and weather were precisely calibrated to allow us - the big us, including forests and oceans, species large and small - to flourish.”

WorldYearsHas BeensBigsWaterMillionsAirThis WorldPlanetsOceanSeasonsSpeciesIncludingForestsWeatherAtmosphereTemperatureLiving OnGreat GiftsWoods And Forests
Author:Rebecca Solnit
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“At a certain fork in the road of automatization, Europeans chose to have more time, and they work far less than we do and get much longer vacations. We chose to have more stuff, the stuff sold to us through those beckoning adjectives-bigger, better, faster: Jet Skis, extra cars, second homes, motor homes, towering slab TVs, if not the time to enjoy them or to enjoy less commodified pleasures.”

IfsHomeCertainStuffEnjoyPleasureCarTvsBiggerFasterExtrasMore TimeVacationConsumerismMotorJetForksOverconsumptionAdjectivesSkisBeckoningFork In The RoadSlabsBigger Better
Author:Rebecca Solnit
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“How do you calculate upon the unforeseen? 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. To calculate on the unforeseen is perhaps exactly the paradoxical operation that life most requires of us.”

WorldArtSeemsChanceRolesPlansMysteryBalanceLimitsEssentialsSurpriseOperationsRecognizingCalculationsParadoxicalCollaboratingUnforeseen
Author:Rebecca Solnit
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“It had come to me not in a sudden epiphany but with a gradual sureness, a sense of meaning like a sense of place. When you give yourself to places, they give you yourself back; the more one comes to know them, the more one seeds them with the invisible crop of memories and associations that will be waiting for you when you come back, while new places offer up new thoughts, new possibilities. Exploring the world is one of the best ways of exploring the mind, and walking travels both terrains.”

KnowsWorldWayGivingMindWaitingMemoriesPossibilityWalkingOffersSeedsInvisibleBest WayAssociationExploringCropsNew ThoughtEpiphanyWaiting For YouTerrainNew PlacesNew PossibilitiesSense Of PlaceExploring The World
Book:Wanderlust: A History of Walking
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“The battle with Men Who Explain Things has trampled down many women - of my generation, of the up-and-coming generation we need so badly, here and in Pakistan and Bolivia and Java, not to speak of the countless women who came before me and were not allowed into the laboratory, or the library, or the conversation, or the revolution, or even the category called human.”

MenNeedsHumansSpeakGenerationsRevolutionBattleConversationLibraryCategoriesPakistanLaboratoryMy GenerationJavaBolivia
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“Every woman knows what I'm talking about. It’s the presumption that makes it hard, at times, for any woman in any field; that keeps women from speaking up and from being heard when they dare; that crushes young women into silence by indicating, the way harassment on the street does, that this is not their world. It trains us in self-doubt and self-limitation just as it exercises men’s unsupported overconfidence.”

KnowsMenWorldWayDoeSelfHardYoungSilenceTalkingDoubtHeardStreetsFieldsExerciseTrainDareLimitationCrushYoung WomenHarassmentPresumptionSelf-doubtSpeaking UpOverconfidence
Author:Rebecca Solnit
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“Sure, you can say nuclear power is somewhat less carbon-intensive than burning fossil fuels for energy; beating your children to death with a club will prevent them from getting hit by a car. Ravaging the Earth by one irreparable means is not a sensible way to prevent it from being destroyed by another. There are alternatives. We should choose them and use them.”

WayShouldMeanChildrenUseEarthEnergyCarOur ChildrenClubsNuclearDestroyedBurningAlternativesYour ChildrenFuelSensibleCarbonFossilsFossil FuelNuclear PowerIrreparableBurning Fossil Fuels
Author:Rebecca Solnit
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“What gets called 'the sixties' left a mixed legacy and a lot of divides. But it opened everything to question, and what seems the most fundamental and most pervasive in all the ensuing changes is the loss of faith in authority: the authority of government, of science, of patriarchy, of progress, of capitalism, of violence, of whiteness.”

SeemsGovernmentLeftChangeLossProgressViolenceAuthorityCapitalismFundamentalsLegacyDividesSixtyPatriarchyWhitenessLoss Of Faith
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“A restlessness has seized hold of many of us, a sense that we should be doing something else, no matter what we are doing, or doing at least two things at once, or going to check some other medium. It's an anxiety about keeping up, about not being left out or getting behind.”

ShouldTwoMatterLeftBehindsAnxietyNo Matter WhatChecksMediumsTwo ThingsRestlessnessLeft Out
Book:The Encyclopedia of Trouble and Spaciousness
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“Previous technologies have expanded communication. But the last round may be contracting it. The eloquence of letters has turned into the unnuanced spareness of texts; the intimacy of phone conversations has turned into the missed signals of mobile phone chat ... ('you're breaking up' is the cry of our time).”

MayLastsTechnologyCryCommunicationConversationLettersRoundsPhonesIntimacyOur TimeSignalsMobileEloquenceMobile PhonesContracting
Book:The Encyclopedia of Trouble and Spaciousness
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“There is so much information that our ability to focus on any piece of it is interrupted by other information, so that we bathe in information but hardly absorb or analyse it. Data are interrupted by other data before we've thought about the first round, and contemplating three streams of data at once may be a way to think about none of them.”

ThinkingWayFirstsMayThreeAbilityFocusPiecesInformationRoundsDataStreamsContemplatingInterrupted
Author:Rebecca Solnit
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“When I think about, say, 1995, or whever the last moment was before most of us were on the internet and had mobile phones, it seems like a hundred years ago. ... Time passed in fairly large units, or at least not in milliseconds and constant updates. A few hours wasn't such a long time to go between moments of contact with your work, your people or your trivia.”

PeopleThinkingYearsLongMomentsSeemsLastsTimeHoursInternetLong TimeHundredYears AgoConstantPhonesContactUnitsMobileTime PassesMobile PhonesUpdatesTrivia
Author:Rebecca Solnit
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“Perhaps the central question about [Eliot] Porter's work is about the relationship between science, aesthetics, and environmental politics. His brother, the painter and critic Fairfield Porter, wrote in a 1960 review of [Porter's] colour photographs: 'There is no subject and background, every corner is alive,' and this suggests what an ecological aesthetic might look like.”

LooksMightAliveSubjectsBrotherCriticsEnvironmentalPhotographCornersBackgroundsPainterColourReviewsAesthetic1960sAestheticsEcologicalEliot
Author:Rebecca Solnit
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“There are those who receive as birthright an adequate or at least unquestioned sense of self and those who set out to reinvent themselves, for survival or for satisfaction, and travel far. Some people inherit values and practices as a house they inhabit; some of us have to burn down that house, find our own ground, build from scratch, even as a psychological metamorphosis.”

PeopleSelfValuesHousePracticeSurvivalSatisfactionPsychologicalAdequateScratchesSense Of SelfBirthrightMetamorphosis
Book:A Field Guide to Getting Lost
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