Jack Pelham

Perhaps we should recognize the foolishness
Of expecting someone to behave better
Than he has yet been taught.

There are places yet in this country
Where the black man had better not
Show his face after sundown,
Just as there are places
Where the white man had
Better not show his face, either.

And this is the way they want it.

As necessary as it is,
The marketplace wearies me so.

Who loves excellence the most
Is not the consumer
Who spends only money,
But the artisan who spends himself
To make things just so.

Few are truly free to wonder about a thing—
To explore and test the truth of a matter
For the wonder of truth itself.

She noticed a bunch of stuff other people don’t notice
And then wrote a bunch of stuff about it that other people don’t read.

And that pretty much sums it up.

People used to think that humans could generally be counted on to act rationally in their own best interests. This idea is generally called something like the Standard Economic Model, but the cognitive science of the past few decades has blown this idea out of the water, beyond any hope of return. We now know better—that people frequently think, decide, believe, and act in ways that are irrational, and that end up being against their own best interests.

Funny, how the government
Can break all the rules,
And then claim that the citizens
Would be the rebellious ones
If they were to demand
That the government cut it out.

He asked them whether he had
Become their enemy by telling them the truth,
And I don’t know if I’ve ever heard
A bombshell of a question packed
With more implications than that.

To his dying breath
He will curse the wickedness of the tyrants—
His veins bulging, and beet-red in the face—
Thundering away at their transgressions
And calling down the fires of perdition
On their damnable heads.