Current Affairs Quotes

“The slow cancellation of the future has been accompanied by a deflation of expectations. There can be few who believe that in the coming year a record as great as, say, the Stooges’ Funhouse or Sly Stone’s There’s A Riot Goin’ On will be released. Still less do we expect the kind of ruptures brought about by The Beatles or disco. The feeling of belatedness, of living after the gold rush, is as omnipresent as it is disavowed. Compare the fallow terrain of the current moment with the fecundity of previous periods and you will quickly be accused of ‘nostalgia’. But the reliance of current artists on styles that were established long ago suggests that the current moment is in the grip of a formal nostalgia, of which more shortly.

It is not that nothing happened in the period when the slow cancellation of the future set in. On the contrary, those thirty years has been a time of massive, traumatic change. In the UK, the election of Margaret Thatcher had brought to an end the uneasy compromises of the so-called postwar social consensus. Thatcher’s neoliberal programme in politics was reinforced by a transnational restructuring of the capitalist economy. The shift into so-called Post-Fordism – with globalization, ubiquitous computerization and the casualisation of labour – resulted in a complete transformation in the way that work and leisure were organised. In the last ten to fifteen years, meanwhile, the internet and mobile telecommunications technology have altered the texture of everyday experience beyond all recognition. Yet, perhaps because of all this, there’s an increasing sense that culture has lost the ability to grasp and articulate the present. Or it could be that, in one very important sense, there is no present to grasp and articulate anymore.”
― Mark Fisher, Ghosts Of My Life

“Bullshit is unavoidable whenever circumstances require someone to talk without knowing what he is talking about. Thus the production of bullshit is stimulated whenever a person’s obligations or opportunities to speak about some topic exceed his knowledge of the facts that are relevant to that topic. This discrepancy is common in public life, where people are frequently impelled – whether by their own propensities or by the demands of others – to speak extensively about matters of which they are to some degree ignorant. Closely related instances arise from the widespread conviction that it is the responsibility of a citizen in a democracy to have opinions about everything, or at least everything that pertains to the conduct of his country’s affairs.”
― Harry G. Frankfurt, On Bullshit

“(O)n a whole range of issues, there has been a massive popular shift in public opinion toward a progressive critique of the current political economic system. It is, of course, largely subliminal, not carefully worked out, and lacks a coherent vision for what needs to be done -- but there can be little doubt that this shift has happened, and is deepening. People are increasingly disenchanted, and they are hungry for alternatives.”
― Dr. Nafeez Mosaddeq Ahmed introduction to Censored 2013

“If you don’t know history,
you don’t know anything.”
Edward Johnston”
― Richard Puz, The Carolinian

“Multi-lateralism's dilemma: that the inclusion of more actors increases the legitimacy of a process or organization at the same time as it decreases its efficiency and utility.”
― Richard N. Haass, Foreign Policy Begins at Home: The Case for Putting America's House in Order

“Until there is a common vocabulary and a shared historical memory, there is no peace in any society, only an absence of war... The search for a common narrative must, at times, be forced upon a society. Few societies seem able to do this willingly.”
― Chris Hedges, War Is a Force That Gives Us Meaning

“It takes a pillage.”
― Nomi Prins, It Takes a Pillage: Behind the bailouts,bonuses, and backroom deals

“There's no evidence from decades of Pew Research surveys that public opinion, in the aggregate, is more extreme now than in the past. But what has changed -- and pretty dramatically -- is the growing tendency of people to sort themselves into political parties based on their ideological differences.”
― Pew Research Center, The Next America: Boomers, Millennials, and the Looming Generational Showdown

“In today's world hunger for sanity seems to be more intense than our hunger for food.”
― Munia Khan

“We are instant spectators of every atrocity; we sit in our living rooms and see the murdered children, the desperate refugees. Perhaps horrific crimes are still committed in dark places, but not many; contemporary horrors are well-lit.”
― Nicolaus Mills, The New Killing Fields: Massacre and the Politics of Intervention

“A man that rich couldn't be stupid. Or, Seema thought now, was that the grand fallacy of twenty-first-century America?”
― Gary Shteyngart, Lake Success

“Reading history is like binge-watching the highlight reels from past seasons of current affairs.”
― Visakan Veerasamy

“Was engaging with world issues a defense mechanism to trivialize personal pain, or was I doing it to be aware and responsible?”
― Ava Homa, Daughters of Smoke and Fire

“When everyone says the same thing about some complex topic, what should come to your mind is, 'wait a minute, nothing can be that simple, something's wrong.' That's the immediate light that should go off in your brain when you ever hear unanimity on some complex topic." (The Ezra Klein Show 2021/04/23)”
― Noam Chomsky

“IBPS Guide: Guide for bank exams preparations like IBPS Clerk, IBPS PO.”
― ibpsguide

“Afro-Americans accepted Christianity's celebration of the individual soul and turned it into a weapon of personal community survival. But their apparent indifference to sin, not to be confused with an indifference to injustice or wrongdoing, guaranteed retention of the collective, life-affirming quality of the African tradition and thus also became a weapon for personal and community survival. The slaves shaped Christianity they had embraced; they conquered the religion of those who had conquered them. In their formulation, Christianity lacked that terrible inner tension between the sense of guilt and the sense of mission which once provided the ideological dynamism for Western civilization's march to world power. But in return for this loss of revolutionary dynamism, the slaves developed an Afro-American and Christian humanism that affirmed joy in life in the face of every trial.”
― Eugene Genovese

“‪“This is a story about two bloody feet, and how the sight of them changed a young couple’s plans. ... It’s about fine dining, a bicycle, burritos at midnight, and a girl who dreamed of being a dancer. This is a Las Vegas story.”‬”
― Michael Kagan, The Battle to Stay in America: Immigration's Hidden Front Line

“It is the pinnacle of arrogance to assume that whatever it is that “the experts” believe now is in fact the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth. Scientists have believed and public health officials have promoted many wrong things over the years, for both honorable, and not so honorable reasons. Sometimes the public health message is dead wrong.”
― Heather E. Heying

“I am not an expert in anything. I form very few hard and fast judgements about politics, the economy, and international affairs. International news, even dramatic news, leaves me pretty much indifferent, I feel guilty about that.”
― Édouard Levé, Autoportrait

“Today the so called "rich and successful people" don't know about my writings. But one day they will have to read my writings and awaken from their slumber of turpitude.

My poetry is not mainstream. My stories are about struggle. I have never been to any literary meet. I have never been on stage for any event related to literature.
I feel most often these discussions and events do not give voice to the strugglers.

I am the voice of the strugglers and fighters of the world. My words express the anger and frustration against a cruel world.

I stand up for the strugglers and the underprivileged people of our world.

The world will be ruined by the "successful and rich people." Amassing wealth seems to be the prerogative of these "rich and successful people," at the cost of the environment and betterment of our world. The disparity between the haves and the have-nots have grown to gargantuan proportions and this disparity will spark revolutions in the coming days.

It is time the "rich and successful people" make amends.”
― Avijeet Das

“The pace of today's life, so quick, and so constantly pressured, makes people think only according to how somebody wants them to. A person is never alone; even when he is sent to a sanatorium or rest home for a rest, there is always a definite rhythm and program to follow, everything is decided for you. People are fed, informed, and taught what someone else has decided they need. Huge numbers of people are gathered together, but they are separated by the daily battle for life.

All this has affected even believers, brought them closer to the 'norm', made them indifferent. A prescribed way of thinking makes it difficult for a person to become a believer and makes it difficult for the believer to preserve his faith. But do remember, Christ's Church will live eternally even under these circumstances. Preserve your faith, fight for individuality of thought, pray more, read the Scriptures, and God will preserve you. He will not let you lose the clarity of your thoughts. He will not let you think like the faceless mass of indifferent and cold people.”
― Father Arseny

“It was such a relief to think about world affairs! Like coming out of solitary confinement.”
― Elizabeth Harrower, The Watch Tower

“While woke ideology appears as a benevolent fight for justice, it is far from that. It lures us in with an appeal to our better natures, then replaces intelligible principles with distorted ones, resulting in incoherence and chaos. p.5”
― Noelle Mering, Awake, Not Woke: A Christian Response to the Cult of Progressive Ideology

“What more can be said for the sake of our Nation than a simple wish, a humble hope, that the future not forsake this experiment in Democracy at this crucial time of need. Let us lean into these winds of change and finally create a Nation not conceived in mere words but made manifest in deeds, through the rekindled will of a great Nation.”
― George R. Wolfe, Uncommon Sense: Vision for a New America