Quotes from Jonathan Rauch

the compactor scene from the 1977 Star Wars movie.

I have begun looking for sources of joy elsewhere, and dialing back my career's presence in my mind.

the enemies of intellectual pluralism and free inquiry seem to be ten feet tall. Which is just how they want to seem.

I am trying to be more attentive to the moment and appreciative of where I am at. That's part of wisdom, right?

I'm finding I don't have to fill things up," said Alice, immediately to my left. "You can have empty space around you. You can have free time. I'm finding that the less I do, the better I like it.

Tomorrow morning," said Socrates, "let us meet here again." The conversation he and his young protégé began 2,500 years ago continues, now spanning the world instead of just Athens, despite countless efforts to squelch it.

You all sound like you think sixty-five is old because the world tells you sixty-five is old," she admonished. "As a few years go by, you'll realize sixty-five is pretty young.

You're still trying to be the kid your parents wanted.

images of middle-aged men surrounded by young women. And images of middle-aged men posing atop motorcycles while surrounded by young women.

People who like authoritarianism always picture themselves running the show. But no one stays on top for long.

No] social principle in the world is more foolish and dangerous than the rapidly rising notion that hurtful words and ideas are a form of violence or torture (e.g., "harassment") and that their perpetrators should be treated accordingly. That notion leads to the criminalization of criticism and the empowerment of authorities to regulate it. The new sensitivity is the old authoritarianism in disguise, and it is just as noxious.

It's easy to lose sight of your own goals when the universe's goals can be so demanding.

I think there must be more to life than answering emails at midnight and five in the morning.

practically every political reformer in the country—and, for that matter, practically every schoolchild—will tell you that machines are rotten, that careerists are slimy, and that what politics needs is more popular participation, more attention to issues, more transparency, more disinterest, more fresh faces.

That is why intelligence is no defense against false belief.

But it might not be good enough. It felt like the bar was extremely high and the possible loss was large. I felt under pressure constantly to prove something. I felt that people constantly look at you and decide whether you're good enough.

Show me a political system without machine politics, and I'll show you confusion, fragmentation, and a drift toward ungovernable extremism.

In my forties, I felt the attenuation of my ambition." Meaning what? "It means that the worldly ambitions that I might have had, I increasingly see as distractions from the life I really want to live.

away from ambition and toward connection.

For many of the same reasons, machines tend to be a force for moderation. They must engage in transactional politics to survive, and that often requires them to put ideology aside, or at least to dial it back, in the interests of holding power.

Instinctively, machine culture is skeptical of or hostile to freelancers and insurgents, though it may pay them lip service, and it is most friendly to loyalists and repeat players—the people who have skin in the game and will most reliably respond to incentives, people otherwise known as hacks.

The skeptical rule is, No one gets the final say: you may claim that a statement is established as knowledge only if it can be debunked, in principle, and only insofar as it withstands attempts to debunk it.

Intergroup animosity need not be about anything,

Maybe Socrates would rather be right than popular, but most of us prefer to maintain our good standing with our tribe, a reasonable call when one considers that Socrates was executed by his fellow citizens.