Quote of the Day (Henrik Ibsen, on ‘These Heroes of Finance’)

“It’s such sport with these heroes of finance; they’re like beads on a string—when one slips off, all the rest follow.” —Norwegian playwright Henrik Ibsen (1828-1906), The League of Youth, translated by William Archer (1869)

Quote of the Day (Bill Bishop and Robert Cushing, on Like-Minded Groups’ ‘Giant Feedback Loop’)

“Like-minded, homogeneous groups squelch dissent, grow more extreme in their thinking, and ignore evidence that their positions are wrong. As a result, we now live in a giant feedback loop, hearing our own thoughts about what's right and wrong bounced back to us by the television shows we watch, the newspapers and books we read, the blogs we visit online, the sermons we hear, and the neighborhoods we live in.”— American journalist and social commentator Bill Bishop with sociologist Robert Cushing, The Big Sort: Why the Clustering of Like-Minded America Is Tearing Us Apart  (2008)

(The image of Bill Bishop that accompanies this post was taken at IdeaFestival2015 on May 23, 2014, by Geoff Oliver Bugbee.)

Quote of the Day (Mignon McLaughlin, on What Society Honors)

“Every society honors its live conformists and its dead troublemakers." — American magazine editor and writer Mignon McLaughlin (1913-1983), The Neurotic's Notebook (1963)

Quote of the Day (Thomas Hardy, on ‘A Well-Proportioned Mind’)

“A well-proportioned mind is one which shows no particular bias; one of which we may safely say that it will never cause its owner to be confined as a madman, tortured as a heretic, or crucified as a blasphemer. Also, on the other hand, that it will never cause him to be applauded as a prophet, revered as a priest, or exalted as a king. Its usual blessings are happiness and mediocrity.”—English novelist-poet Thomas Hardy (1840-1928), The Return of the Native (1878)