“The square is a treasure precisely because it doesn't masquerade as an outdoor museum. It's a living place, jammed with people, changeable, democratic, urbane. [Michael Kimmelman, "Culture: Power of the Place"].”
Source: City Squares: Eighteen Writers on the Spirit and Significance of Squares Around the World
“Squares have defined urban living since the dawn of democracy, from which they are inseparable. From the start, the public square has been synonymous with a society that acknowledges public life and a life in public, which is to say a society distinguishing the individual from the state [Michael Kimmelman, "Culture: Power of the Place"].”
Source: City Squares: Eighteen Writers on the Spirit and Significance of Squares Around the World
“a square is not just about light, air, proportion, and people. It must also give form to some shared notion of civic identity. [Michael Kimmelman, "Culture: Power of the Place"].”
Source: City Squares: Eighteen Writers on the Spirit and Significance of Squares Around the World
“L'inégale répartition de l'espace se poursuit plus tard, encouragée par un sexisme structurel dans la société française. Quand on dit que l'espace public est neutre, ça signifie en réalité qu'il est masculin.”
Source: Libérées : Le combat féministe se gagne devant le panier de linge sale
“I had a day when I was busy in the world, where the activity created a turmoil on the surface of my consciousness like waves on the surface of the ocean, which made it difficult to see through the waves to the inner silence.
It reminded me that we need to develop both the capacity to use the mind when engaged in activity and social relations, and to be able to let go of the activity and to come in contact with the deep inner silence.
The relationship between being active in the world and in social relations and the inner silence is like the relationship between the waves on the surface of the ocean and the deep inner silence on the bottom of the ocean.”
Source: Presence - Working from Within. The Psychology of Being
“The slogan for contemporary capitalism--fear and disorder are the catalysts for each new leap forward”
“Much of U.S. foreign policy...is an exercise in projection, in which a tiny self-interested elite conflates its needs and desires with those of the entire world.”
Source: The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism
“Memory, both individual and collective, turns out to be the greatest shock absorber of all.”
Source: The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism
“Corruption has been as much a fixture on these contemporary frontiers as it was during the colonial gold rushes. Since the most significant privatization deals are always signed amid the tumult of an economic or political crisis, clear laws and effective regulations are never in place - the atmosphere is chaotic, the prices are flexible and so are the politicians. What we have been living for three decades is frontier capitalism, with the frontier constantly shifting locations from crisis to crisis, moving on as soon as the law catches up.”
Source: The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism
“That is the untold story of what the IMF calls "stabilization programs," as if countries were ships being tossed around on the market's high seas. They do, eventually, stabilize, but that new equilibrium is achieved by throwing millions of people overboard: public sector workers, small-business owners, subsistence farmers, trade unionists. The ugly secret of "stabilization" is the vast majority never climb back aboard. They end up in slums, now home to 1 billion people; they end up in brothels or cargo ship containers. They are the disinherited, those described by the German poet Rainer Maria Rilke as "ones to whom neither the past nor the future belongs.”
Source: The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism