Alexander McCall Smith

   "Former people," said Isabel. "I was thinking about the people that the Bolsheviks described as 'former people.' They were anybody whom they regarded as enemies of their revolution. It's such a chilling term. They had no rights to anything, really—no right to work, no property, no freedom. The only right they had was the right to be shot."

   "They actually used the term former people?" asked Andy.

   "Yes," said Isabel. "It's chilling, isn't it? And that sort of attitude has had many followers: Nazis, Pol Pot, Jean Kambanda in Rwanda—it's quite a big club. Deny somebody else's humanity and human worth and you're on a very well worn and familiar road."

—The Conditions of Unconditional Love (2024), p. 76. 

Alexander McCall Smith

She looked at her watch. She could always go back into her study and do some work, but the thought did not appeal. She could watch television, which was something she very rarely did and which seemed a particularly unattractive prospect at the moment. Television was noise, and people being confrontational; it was people shooting one another or finding bodies, or dancing about on the stage in glittery costumes. Television was a cleverly packaged anodyne, Huxley's soma in some respects, but it was not what she needed.

— The Conditions of Unconditional Love (2024), p. 177.

Abraham Lincoln

I hold that while man exists, it is his duty to improve not only his own condition, but to assist in ameliorating mankind; and therefore…I am for those means which will give the greatest good to the greatest number.

Ella Emhoff

I think it goes without saying that we are all existing in various levels of constant anxiety starting this year off. It's hard to describe the mixture of emotions I'm feeling right now. Everything in my personal life and the world is changing so fast. Watching so many people I love in so much pain and so many communities getting their basic human rights destroyed is heartbreaking, to say the least. While it feels almost odd to be engaging in fashion week right now, it's been really wonderful getting to connect and unload with my community. I truly believe the best way of processing things like this is to be with people who share those feelings and feel them together. It can become so scary and powerless when you hold all the weight on just yourself. The more I've been open, the more I feel in control of things I can do and ways I can help. 

—In her Substack newsletter, February 10, 2025. 

Hannah Arendt

The death of human empathy is one of the earliest and most telling signs of a culture about to fall into barbarism.

Srđan Cvijić

"I never liked the metaphor of the frog in a slowly boiling water, but it applies very well to our situation," Srđan Cvijić at the Belgrade Centre for Security Policy said. "One decision at a time, our regime has stripped Serbia of its democratic system. It didn't come overnight. First they captured the media, then the judiciary, then other independent institutions, then they started rigging the elections, and finally they are trying to strip us of the right to freedom of assembly.

"So my advice to Americans is never relax, always be on guard, democracy is not given, not even in the land of the free," Cvijić said. "Things can go backwards, you have to fight daily for your rights, otherwise someone will take them away from you.

"The most important thing to defend is solidarity and human decency," Cvijić added. "Do not allow the enemies of democracy to lower your own standards of political behaviour."

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2025/feb/03/europeans-democracy-advice-trump-americans

Joseph Welch to Senator Joseph McCarthy

Until this moment, Senator, I think I never really gauged your cruelty or your recklessness...You have done enough. Have you no sense of decency?

June 9, 1954.

Attica Locke

The guest chairs in his office matched the carpet, which matched the buttered-beige colors of the walls. The décor was attractive and strong, but blander than she would have thought his wealth and position afforded him. Caren couldn't see the point of having that much money if all of it led to beige.

—The Cutting Season (2012), p. 130-31. 

Roxana Robinson

[Photographer Todd] Webb's images from those visits provide a window into the painter's daily life. O'Keeffe wore hats to protect her face, and scarves to protect her long, lustrous hair; she said you should never let your hair get sunburned. She wore crisp white collars, which turned whatever else she wore—black linen, blue denim—chic. She liked to make "Tiger's Milk" for breakfast, a concoction of banana, skim milk, powdered milk, wheat germ, and brewer's yeast, recommended by the nutritionist Adelle Davis. O'Keefe kept a series of Chow dogs, which she loved for their loyalty and dignity, their massive beauty. Their coats were so thick that she had a shawl made from the shedding.

—From "O'Keefe in the Frame," The Atlantic, February 2025, p. 20-25.

Casey Johnston

[About Ilona Maher's run on season 33 of "Dancing with the Stars"]

The world of dance can be gatekeepy and preoccupied with aesthetics and gender norms—not all of it, but like most of the world, a lot of it. Ilona has always taken great delight in spitting in the face of these kinds of expectations in general, and she was not about to be cowed by any institution.

I'm always fascinated when dance intersects with strength and muscularity in women, precisely because the vast majority of people presume someone who is strong and muscular can't and won't be graceful at all. They think of being "muscle-bound," with the muscles preventing swift or fluid movement or having a good sense of rhythm or timing. Ilona is an extremely talented athlete in addition to being strong, but her physicality defies even the conventions of most team sports—stereotypically, the bigger you are, the slower you are, the more "likely" you are to play the role of defensive brick wall than nimble striker.

This is why I love to see the Ilonas of the world come through and defy conventional thinking about what bodies can do based on the stereotypes we assign to certain aesthetics. She's a beautiful dancer, which is especially saying something for someone whose job is not dancing. More to the point, she embraces all of her gifts wholeheartedly, flipping her partner bodily through the air and balancing him on her shoulders.

This is not to say that someone like Ilona only matters because they can dance, or whatever. But to the extent we are not often treated by very-very-mainstream media to the art of a woman like Ilona asserting her physicality, it's a reminder of how narrow that lane can sometimes be, and what we miss by allowing mainstream media to be the arbiters of visibility. In conclusion: She fucking rocks, what a gift to humanity.

-from Casey's newsletter, She's a Beast, 12/5/2024.

Tommy Vietor

It's gonna fucking suck for four years.

—"Pod Save America," November 6, 2024.

WONKETTE

Wait, What? What The Fuck? Is This Happening? MY GOD.

Eight years ago, about this time of night, I screamed and caterwauled and God DAMNED America. How could people look at that stupid, grunting rapist and say fuck yeah, sign me up? And then those years were so horrible, so much worse than we could imagine, so many years shaved off all our lives by our skyrocketing stress and blood pressure, and that’s before he killed a million Americans by letting his son-in-law pit states against each other for ventilators in the pandemic.

 

You do not subscribe to Wonkette for our political prognostications, because as I have explained — until quite recently, when I apparently lied to my own face and brain and shushed your worries and told you NO, WE HAD THIS — I am quite terrible at it. Our job is watching, and cataloging, and calling bullshit, and having long memories and institutional knowledge, not predicting the future.

But I watched this FUCKING MORON babble and shit himself, while the supermodel badass tough smart lady ran a flawless, magnificent campaign, and I knew you were worrying about nothing. Oh you, so silly, your dumb little fears! I knew we had this. I knew it was a BLOWOUT. Maybe with TEXAS.

And never for a moment did I think that after we’d lived through this, we’d affirmatively sign up to do it again. 

 https://www.wonkette.com/p/wait-what-what-the-fuck-is-this-happening?hide_intro_popup=true

Pajiba (Dustin Rowles)

There are a few things we need in life: food, shelter, love, and, occasionally, the satisfying spectacle of seeing bad people get what's coming to them.

https://www.pajiba.com/news/aaron-rodgers-career-is-unraveling-and-watching-it-is-pure-satisfaction.php?utm_source=mostviewed&utm_medium=mostviewed&utm_campaign=Most%20Viewed&utm_content=in

Gerrard Winstanley

Was the earth made to preserve a few covetous, proud men, to live at ease, and for them to bag and barn up the treasures of the earth from others, that they might beg or starve in a fruitful Land, or was it made to preserve all her children?

(The New Law of Righteousness, 1649)

Marlene Cimons

After a long struggle with infertility and miscarriage, Katie Tonkiss chose to have two small hearts tattooed on the inside of her right wrist. The hearts are more than decorative — they symbolize her bond with the two children she and her husband ultimately adopted. They also represent a way of reclaiming control over her body.

"I felt that this was something I could choose to do after such a long time of having no real choice," says Tonkiss, 40, a senior lecturer in sociology at Aston University in England. "It was an expression of celebrating after a lot of self-blame and frustration."

Tattoos' popularity among women reflects changing attitudes about a practice that once was male-dominated. Today, many women are choosing tattoos as important signifiers of empowerment, identity and personal values, experts say. Frequently, they use body art to honor something or someone or to cope with trauma.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/wellness/2024/10/16/women-tattoos-body-art-autonomy/