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Rebecca Solnit

Rebecca Solnit Quotes

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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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“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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“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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“Anarchists believe that we can govern ourselves in the absence of coercive and centralized authority; the underlying premise about human nature (to use an infinitely problematized but necessary term here) is fundamentally positive. And the evidence that in disasters people are really pretty kind, generous, brave, resourceful and creative fed that.”

PeopleBelieveHumansKindUseTermCreativeHuman NatureAuthorityEvidenceBraveAbsenceDisasterGenerousFedsPremisesAnarchistResourcefulReally Pretty
Author:Rebecca Solnit
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“What is kind of beautiful about Katrina is that even though the media and officials are working hard at telling us everyone in New Orleans was a monster, in the immediate aftermath more than 200,000 people invite displaced strangers into their homes through hurricanehousing.org and an uncounted horde go to New Orleans and the Gulf Coast to give, to love, to be in solidarity, and to rebuild.”

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Author:Rebecca Solnit
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“The oil corporations spend a lot of money to get, say, the tar sands pipeline through, but nobody's - you know, there are definitely environmentalists being paid - but a lot of people are acting for something other than financial compensation. So if the tar sands pipeline doesn't get made, it's because a huge amount of people are doing something that doesn't involve remuneration, money, etc., because we're not actually the self-interested financial instruments that economists like to imagine we are.”

PeopleIfsKnowsMadeSelfActingImagineHugeAmountPaidInstrumentsFinancialOilMade ItCorporationsSandEtcLots Of MoneyEconomistCompensationEnvironmentalistPipelineRemuneration
Author:Rebecca Solnit
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“There was an assumption that aerial bombing of civilians in World War II would cause fragile, working-class people to basically have nervous breakdowns and it would paralyze the state. That was the logic of aerial bombing. In fact, it doesn't happen at all, but the logic behind aerial bombing has never stopped, even though it never demoralizes, terrorizes, or paralyzes a population.”

PeopleWorldWarStatesFactsHappensCausesBehindsClassLogicPopulationNervousWar Of The WorldsAssumptionFragileWorld War IiWorld War IWorking ClassCiviliansBreakdownBombingNervous Breakdown
Author:Rebecca Solnit
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“When someone doesn't show up, the people who wait sometimes tell stories about what might have happened and come to half believe the desertion, the abduction, the accident. Worry is a way to pretend that you have knowledge or control over what you don't--and it surprises me, even in myself, how much we prefer ugly scenarios to the pure unknown. Perhaps fantasy is what you fill up maps with rather than saying that they too contain the unknown.”

PeopleWayBelieveSometimesStoriesShowsMightWaitingHalfWorryFantasyHappenedPureSurpriseUglyAccidentsMapsScenariosSurprise MeAbductionDesertion
Book:A Field Guide to Getting Lost
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“Solitude in the city is about the lack of other people or rather their distance beyond a door or wall, but in remote places it isn’t an absence but the presence of something else, a kind of humming silence in which solitude seems as natural to your species as to any other, words strange rocks you may or may not turn over.”

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Book:A Field Guide to Getting Lost
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“Las Vegas suggests that the thirst for places, for cities and gardens and wilderness, is unslaked, that people will still seek out the experience of wandering about in the open air to examine the architecture, the spectacles, and the stuff for sale, will still hanker after surprises and strangers. That the city as a whole is one of the most pedestrian-unfriendly places in the world suggests something of the problems to be faced, but that its attraction is a pedestrian oasis suggests the possibility of recovering the spaces in which walking is viable.”

PeopleWorldStillsWholeProblemStuffSpaceCitiesAirPossibilityWalkingGardenSurpriseStrangerAttractionArchitectureWanderWildernessThirstVegasLas VegasPlaces In The WorldRecoveringOasisSpectaclesPedestriansUnfriendly
Author:Rebecca Solnit
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