“When we mistake what we can know for all there is to know, a healthy appreciation of one's ignorance in the face of a mystery like soil fertility gives way to the hubris that we can treat nature as a machine. Once that leap has been made, one input follows another, so that when the synthetic nitrogen fed to plants makes them more attractive to insects and vulnerable to disease, as we have discovered, the farmer turns to chemical pesticides to fix his broken machine.” KnowsWayGivingHas BeensMadeFacesTurnsMistakeMysteryLandIgnoranceBrokenHealthyDiseaseMachinesTreatsPlantAppreciationVulnerableAttractiveSoilFedsLeapChemicalsFarmersInsectsInputHubrisFertilitySyntheticPesticidesNitrogen Author:Michael Pollan
“The writer is often faced with two choices--turn away from the reality of life's intimidating complexity or conquer its mystery by battling with it. The writer who chooses the former soon runs out of energy and produces elegantly tired fiction.” WritingTwoRealityRunningTurnsChoicesEnergyFictionMysteryProduceTiredFormerConquerReality Of LifeComplexityIntimidatingTwo Choices Book:There Was a Country: A Memoir Source: There Was a Country: A Memoir
“Tormented by conflicting feelings, I appealed to reason ; and it is reason which, amid so many dogmatic contradictions, now forces the hypothesis upon me. A priori dogmatism, applying itself to God, has proved fruitless: who knows whither the hypothesis, in its turn, will lead us? I will explain therefore how, studying in the silence of my heart, and far from every human consideration, the mystery of social revolutions, God, the great unknown, has become for me an hypothesis, I mean a necessary dialectical tool.” KnowsHumansHeartMeanReasonFeelingsTurnsForceSocialSilenceStudyMysteryRevolutionMy HeartToolsContradictionConsiderationHypothesisDogmaticDogmatismSocial RevolutionGreat Unknown Book:System of Economical Contradictions: Or, The Philosophy of Misery Source: System of Economical Contradictions: Or, The Philosophy of Misery
“Is there any mystery like who you finally turn out to be.” TurnsMysteryMaturity Author:Joyce Carol Oates