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Quote by Jeff VanderMeer

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Borne

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Author

Jeff VanderMeer
Jeff VanderMeer

Jeff VanderMeer is an American writer known for his science fiction and fantasy novels. His works often explore themes of ecology, identity, and the relationship between humans and nature. Born on July 7, 1968, VanderMeer's writing career began in the 1990s. more

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“It is economism to allow material gain to obscure the danger that we may forfeit liberty, variety, and justice and that the concentration of power may grow, and it is also economism to forget that people do not live by cheaper vacuum cleaners alone but by other and higher things which may wither in the shadows of giant industries and monopolies.”

“Around the same time that Goldwater lost his bid for the presidency, the TV evangelicals Pat Robertson and Jerry Falwell joined the libertarian, far-right wing of the Republican Party. They called for free markets and cited Hayek and Friedman to protest government bureaucrats, while also issuing daily denunciations of rock music, homosexuals, abortion, civil rights, and pornography. Hard-right evangelicals were among the most influential leaders of the new free-market movement. The Republican Party became an ideological mix of the mainline northeastern establishment, American Baptist puritanism, racism and bigotry, and a Friedmanesque and American Southwest individualist libertarianism and permissiveness—all held together by a near-religious reverence for the multinational conglomerate firm and the sanctity of capital-holding shareholders.”

“Conservatives, on [Friedrich] Hayek’s account, suffered from the following weaknesses. They feared change unduly. They were unreasonably frightened of uncontrolled social forces. They were too fond of authority. They had no grasp of economics. They lacked the feel for “abstraction” needed for engaging with people of different outlooks. They were too cozy with elites and establishments. They gave in to jingoism and chauvinism. They tended to think mystically, much as socialists tended to overrationalize. They were, last, too suspicious of democracy.”

“When we understand the fragility of life, we live consciously. People generally live as if they have all the time in the world. They don’t. They have the time of one lifetime, however long that will be. It’s not a lot. We don’t have enough time to procrastinate and waste large chunks of our lives. It is a valuable offering when we give our attention and love to anything in life. What we spend our time on will determine the course of our life. If we know that we are here for a short time, our choices will become more meaningful and satisfying. We don’t have to be told to be brave and follow our inner leanings when we are aware of our limited time. Who cares what other people think of us when we are busy living a brief life to the best of our ability? We will want to use it every day to better ourselves and the world we live in.”

“In this American culture, I see mass confusion around what priorities should be. I sense that they do not exist or we have two foundational ones, like family and work. Life becomes a mess when we do not have the right priorities or hold them in the incorrect order.”