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When I choose to live in a world in which other people do not matter, I choose to live in a world in which I will not matter, either.

— Very Fine People by A. R. Moxon (Page 78)

What is the price to be paid for an uneducated population?

What is the price to be paid for a nation that won’t care for those in need?

What is the price to be paid for potential ungrasped?

What is the price to be paid for a nation of desperate people?

What bill will come eventually due because a country has been destabilized by invasion and occupation and warfare, what bill will come due if a population is made desperate by need?

— Very Fine People by A. R. Moxon (Page 73)

I submit that a casual observer can tell a lot about a society by observing how, when, and why it prioritizes justice over order, or order over justice. If a society is unjust, an insistence on a more perfect justice is not going to view the natural disruption to order that restoring justice will bring as a bad thing. Not because the society hates order, but because it has determined that order must first demand justice—otherwise it is going to be an ordered injustice, a terrible order not worth the cost it will levy upon the soul and conscience. But if a society prefers order above justice, it’s going to focus on the particulars of the existing rules that support that order, with little consideration as to whether or not those rules establish justice; and those who prioritize order are going to ignore and suppress and dismantle any rules that do not support that unjust order. Not necessarily because they hate justice (though some clearly do), but because they recognize that establishing a more perfect justice will necessarily require a great disruption to their desired order, a terrible price they deem to not be worth the cost to stability and prosperity.

— Very Fine People by A. R. Moxon (Page 56 - 57)

It’s worth pondering why every call for civility is issued for the benefit of those who have dedicated their lives to incivility. It’s worth pondering why every call for healing centers on those who have done the harming. It’s worth pondering why the people who cry the loudest about our divisiveness and political incivility never direct their laments at the people who elected a corrupt and mean racist bully.

— Very Fine People by A. R. Moxon (Page 54)

I read that it represented the end of “identity politics,” and I learned that “identity politics” is a term which seems to mean “voting for somebody who is not a white man,” while “voting for a white man” is apparently an act that has nothing to do with identity.

— Very Fine People by A. R. Moxon (Page 51)

History has a word for Germans who joined the Nazi party, not because they hated Jews, but out of a hope for restored patriotism, or a sense of economic anxiety, or a hope to preserve their religious values, or dislike of their opponents, or raw political opportunism, or convenience, or ignorance, or greed. That word is “Nazi.”

— Very Fine People by A. R. Moxon (Page 32)

I’ve heard the same line again and again since the election: “America isn’t a different country today than it was before the election.” Jon Stewart trotted it out. I think I heard it from President Obama. I fear I agree with the statement. I’m puzzled, though, because I think it is meant to be reassuring, to think we’ve always been the country capable of such a choice.

To me, this statement doesn’t imply that we’re still great.

It implies that we were never good.

— Very Fine People by A. R. Moxon (Page 31)

Some people thought he would be less likely to make them pay more in taxes, I suppose. So perhaps at last now we know the answer to the old hypothetical about whether we’d be willing to travel through time and sacrifice our lives to prevent the rise of a self-professing tyrant. Answer: We wouldn’t even suffer a hypothetical increase in our income taxes.

— Very Fine People by A. R. Moxon (Page 30)

At last the Government at Washington admitted its mistake—which governments seldom do.

— Death Comes for the Archbishop by Willa Cather (Vintage Books) (98%)

The old man smiled. “I shall not die of a cold, my son. I shall die of having lived.”

— Death Comes for the Archbishop by Willa Cather (Vintage Books) (88%)

“I am not deprecating your individual talent, Joseph,” the Bishop continued, “but, when one thinks of it, a soup like this is not the work of one man. It is the result of a constantly refined tradition. There are nearly a thousand years of history in this soup.”

— Death Comes for the Archbishop by Willa Cather (Vintage Books) (14%)

As the churchmen walked up and down the promenade watching the stars come out, their talk touched upon many matters, but they avoided politics, as men are apt to do in dangerous times.

— Death Comes for the Archbishop by Willa Cather (Vintage Books) (6%)