Non Fiction Authors From The United States

"The greatest obstacle that confronted Tolstoy lies rooted deep in the soul of man. It is the fear of poverty and the dread of want which ages of struggle with man and beast and with all the adverse elements of nature has bred in us. Surely history teaches us too well the nature and character of man for us to believe readily that there are many fathers and mothers who would ever consent to become Christians on the conditions set forth by Tolstoy. ...who to day would fail to condemn unreservedly any father who would take his babies from a comfortable home to live hungry and shelterless in the forests and fields. From the dawn of the world the chief duty of a parent has been to keep his family secure from want."

"Tolstoy set for himself the highest ideal that has ever been given to the world, and Tolstoy failed. He has had pointed at him fingers of scorn, and very unworthy fingers they were, but who has the right to judge Tolstoy for failure to live perfectly a life that has for two thousand years been an unattainable ideal to millions of earnest souls?"

"There is a world of difference between the one who would imitate the conduct of the successful merchant, who sits in the front pew of his church, and him who would follow literally the teachings of Jesus Christ. To attain perfectly the one ideal—if it be an ideal—is a comparatively simple task. To attain the other, is perhaps an impossibility."

"Curiously enough, and this is what his family could not understand, the more religious he became the less he could tolerate the churches."

"In many of his biographical writings Tolstoy makes clear that, in pursuit of a virtuous life, he had to struggle hard with his own nature, habits, and animal passions, and had to overcome early training and education; but in this drama he shows that, in attempting to be a Christian, he had to battle constantly, often bitterly, with his own family, with the Church, and with all the social, economic, and political conditions and institutions that surrounded him."

"He [Tolstoy] tried to persuade his wife to permit him to give away every penny of his possessions, to leave their large house, and to live in a peasant's cottage, where together they could share the manual labor of a small farm. The Countess was a most devoted wife but in this she could not follow her husband. ...The Countess had to suffer all the trials which it is said the wife of every artist and genius must suffer and, in addition, some of those that must come to the wife of any man who tries to follow literally in modern society the teachings of Jesus. ...He felt so keenly the opposition of his wife and children that he was led to believe what he said repeatedly—that the institution of the family was one of the greatest obstacles to a truly Christian life."

"St. Paul earned his living most of the time by hard labor and constantly reminded his converts that they must not defraud each other, but love one another and work with their own hands. The same rule of life is applied by the laws governing the early monastic orders."

"Hard manual labor revealed many things to Tolstoy. As soon as he began to do regular physical work the greater part of his luxurious habits and wants, which were so numerous when he had been physically idle, disappeared."

"Tolstoy was occupied by a continuous pilgrimage to all fountains of knowledge, to all systems of religions, and to all manner of men in pursuit of Truth. He could not find it in the Church, nor in Science, nor in Art, nor among the rich, nor among the learned. But he did find it in the lives of the lowly and the suffering—in the Doukhobors, in Soutaieff, in Bóndaref, and in Jesus the carpenter."

"In recent centuries the only near spiritual relative of Tolstoy is the English poet, who in the fourteenth century, in the form of Piers Plowman, preached religious ideas so strikingly like those of Tolstoy. They are both individualists and they seek individual, not social, regeneration. ...Both point to the simple toiling God-fearing peasant as one expressing the ideal of the Christian life and service."

"Contrary to every tendency which, in modern society, leads to the separation of men and classes, Tolstoy beseeches us to go to those in hunger and distress, to share their manual labor and even the greatest extreme of their poverty."

"Another workingman named Bóndaref, was also of immense practical help to Tolstoy, chiefly through his remarkable book "Industry and Idleness." ..Bóndaref insists that the "chief, primary, and most immutable" law for humanity is that every man must earn his own bread with his own hands. "Bread labor," as thus understood, includes all heavy rough work necessary to save man from death by hunger and cold and this bread includes, of course, food, drink, clothes, shelter, and fuel. ...As the world has rarely heard such teachings since the days of the Apostles and the early Christian Fathers, Tolstoy seemed to consider Bóndaref as the discoverer of a new truth which he eagerly accepted as fundamental to a just life. ...he emphasized the point that children must he taught above all things to do hard productive labor. They must be taught to be ashamed from the very beginning to use, and profit by, the labor of others."

"In seeking what to do, Tolstoy was materially helped by a remarkable workingman, Basil Soutaieff, who was actually following as perfectly as he knew how, the example of Jesus. ...When asked, "What is truth?" he answered with conviction, "Truth is love in a common life." When his devotion to the unfortunate, the hungry, and the needy became known to Tolstoy, it had a profound influence upon his thought and eventually worked an entire transformation in his manner of living."

"It is especially easy in our time to forget others, largely because of the conditions in modern society."

"While seeking his true relation to the infinite, Tolstoy was also seeking his true relation to mankind."

"Whatever in the gospel will not interfere with what we like to do, or feel we must do, we gladly believe; and to the rest we close our eyes. Most of us do this half-unconsciously, perhaps, but in our innermost selves we can hardly help knowing that we are not Christians, and that there is in the gospel something fundamental—a vital message, an essence—which we do not wish to understand."

"No one who reads the gospels thoughtfully and sympathetically will maintain that Jesus—whether God or man—was incapable of making himself completely understood. We must therefore seek for a better explanation of the confusion that exists among the avowed believers in the divinity of Christ, as well as among those who deny the divinity of Christ."

"As we look into a clear pool and discern every detail of its sandy bottom, so may we often look into the minds of really great men."

"One of the signs that enable us to recognize the few great men who have lived in the world is this: they are nearly always able to state in clear, simple and concise language what they want to convey to the world."

"We seek to terrorize them, as they seek to terrorize us. As the anarchist believes that oppression may be ended by the murder of the oppressor, so society cherishes the thought that anarchism may be ended by the murder of the anarchist. Are not our methods in truth the same, and can any man doubt that both are equally futile and senseless? Both the anarchy of the powerful and the anarchy of the weak are stupid and abortive, in that they lead to results diametrically opposed to the ends sought."

"Shall we admit that there is a duel between society and these souls deranged by the wrongs of society?"

"About the kindest criticism that the socialist makes of the anarchist is that he is a child, while the anarchist is convinced that the socialist is a Philistine and an inbred conservative who, should he ever get power, would immediately hang the anarchists. They are traditional enemies, who seem utterly incapable of understanding each other. Intellectually, they fail to grasp the meaning of each other's philosophy. It is but rare that a socialist, no matter how conscientious a student, will confess he fully understands anarchism. On the other hand, no one understands the doctrines of socialism so little as the anarchist."

"Unquestionably socialism and anarchism attract distinctly different types, who are in many ways alien to each other. Their mental processes differ."

"Both socialists and anarchists preach their gospel to the weary and heavy-laden, to the despondent and the outraged, who may readily be led to commit acts of despair. They have, after all, little to lose, and their life, at present unbearable, can be made little worse by punishment. Yet millions of the miserable have come into the socialist movement to hear the fiercest of indictments against capitalism, and it is but rare that one becomes a terrorist. What else than the teachings of anarchism and of socialism can explain this difference?"

"Throughout Bakounin's writings there appears again and again the plea for "terrible, total, inexorable, and universal destruction."

"I’ve learned that power is not bad, but the abuse of power or using power over others is the opposite of courage; it’s a desperate attempt to maintain a very fragile ego."

"The near enemy of love is attachment...True love allows, honors, and appreciates; attachment grasps, demands, needs, and aims to possess."

"Avoidance will make you feel less vulnerable in the short run, but it will never make you less afraid."

"Science is not the truth. Science is finding the truth. When science changes its opinion, it didn’t lie to you. It learned more."

"Shame hates to have words wrapped around it. If we talk about it, it loses its grip on us."

"‘Crazy-busy’ is a great armor, it’s a great way for numbing. What a lot of us do is that we stay so busy, and so out in front of our life, that the truth of how we’re feeling and what we really need can’t catch up with us."

"When we’re faced with information that challenges what we believe, our first instinct is to make the discomfort, irritation, and vulnerability go away by resolving the dissonance. We might do this by rejecting the new information, decreasing its importance, or avoiding it altogether. “The greater the magnitude of the dissonance, the greater is the pressure to reduce dissonance.” In these challenging moments of dissonance, we need to stay curious and resist choosing comfort over courage. It’s brave to invite new information to the table, to sit with it and hear it out."

"Worrying and anxiety go together, but worry is not an emotion; it’s the thinking part of anxiety."

"Vulnerability is not weakness; it's our greatest measure of courage."

"People will do almost anything to not feel pain, including causing pain and abusing power"

"The thing that I have learned is that vulnerability is at the center of fear and shame, but it is also at the center of joy and gratitude and love and belonging...If we continue to wake up every day and put our game faces on and think that invulnerability is the way to be … then we pay the price, because I don't know that we would ever fully experience joy and love and belonging."

"Belonging is not fitting in...Belonging starts with self-acceptance. Your level of belonging, in fact, can never be greater than your level of self-acceptance, because believing that you're enough is what gives you the courage to be authentic, vulnerable and imperfect. When we don't have that, we shape-shift and turn into chameleons; we hustle for the worthiness we already possess."

"Healthy striving is about striving for internal goals, and wanting to be our best selves. Perfectionism is not motivated internally. Perfectionism is about what people will think. And you do not see effective leaders in corporations sitting on an email for three hours to make sure it’s worded just perfectly. You don’t. They have work to get done..You don’t see elite athletes letting themselves be discouraged by a bad workout or a single bad performance. It happens all the time. They’re accustomed to winning, they’re accustomed to losing. Once perfectionism becomes the goal, they’re out of the sport."

"...the biggest mistake people make is not acknowledging fear and uncertainty."

"(What’s the last great book you read?) TA: “Daring Greatly,” by Brené Brown! I was really moved by her Netflix special, and listening to her audiobook came at the perfect time in my life. She has a way of perfectly describing some of the most intimate human emotions and experiences, and she provides concrete, actionable solutions. She gave me a new level of self-awareness that’s helped me navigate my life in a meaningful way, so I’m a big fan."

"We have to belong to ourselves as much as we need to belong to others. Any belonging that asks us to betray ourselves is not true belonging."

"just as healing physical pain requires describing it, talking about it, and sometimes getting professional help, we need to do the same thing with emotional pain."

"The exhilarating voice of a new, nonmystical consciousness ... FM dares us to step outside our encaged historical selves and leap to a new stage of evolution."

"FM's vision stretches beyond infinity. He continues to inspire even the most complacent of minds by revving-up the volume on imagination. His unique way of putting together ideas about the future has been a catalytic force."

"People will belong to no specific families or factions, classes or sects, races or nationalities. We will free flow across the planet and beyond. Highly universal, yet individual."

"I am a 21st Century person who was accidentally launched in the 20th. I have a deep nostalgia for the future."

"Most animals experience fear only when faced with an imminent threat. However, because humans are born helpless and dependent with the ability to be self-aware and think about the future, from early childhood on, humans have a unique proneness to anxiety in the absence of an imminent threat. Becker saw this anxiety as ultimately existential and deriving from the conflict between survival desires and the reality of being a little kid that can be crushed in an instant without the protection of adult caregivers. Stephen Jay Gould notes that this knowledge of vulnerability and mortality may be the most important human spandrel, an inadvertent by-product of the evolution of the frontal lobes of the brain. This by-product creates the problem of the ever-present potential for anxiety. And anxiety often interferes with effective thought and action."

"TMT https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Terror_management_theory Terror Management Theory starts with the proposition that the juxtaposition of a biologically rooted desire for life with the awareness of the inevitability of death (which resulted from the evolution of sophisticated cognitive abilities unique to humankind) gives rise to the potential for paralyzing terror. Our species “solved” the problem posed by the prospect of existential terror by using the same sophisticated cognitive capacities that gave rise to the awareness of death to create cultural worldviews: humanly constructed shared symbolic conceptions of reality that give meaning, order, and permanence to existence; provide a set of standards for what is valuable; and promise some form of either literal or symbolic immortality to those who believe in the cultural worldview and live up to its standards of value. Literal immortality is bestowed by the explicitly religious aspects of cultural worldviews that directly address the problem of death and promise heaven, reincarnation, or other forms of afterlife to the faithful who live by the standards and teachings of the culture. Symbolic immortality is conferred by cultural institutions that enable people to feel part of something larger, more significant, and more eternal than their own individual lives through connections and contributions to their families, nations, professions, and ideologies."

"The crux of the terror management answer to the question, "Why do people need self-esteem?" is that self-esteem functions to shelter people from deeply rooted anxiety inherent in the human condition. Self-esteem is a protective shield designed to control the potential for terror that results from awareness of the horrifying possibility that we humans are merely transient animals groping to survive in a meaningless universe, destined only to die and decay. From this perspective, then, each individual human’s name and identity, family and social identifications, goals and aspirations, occupation and title, are humanly created adornments draped over an animal that, in the cosmic scheme of things, may be no more significant or enduring than any individual potato, pineapple, or porcupine. But it is this elaborate drapery that provides us with the fortitude to carry on despite the uniquely human awareness of our mortal fate."

"For Becker, the psychological purpose of self-esteem is to serve as an anxiety buffer. In other words, self-esteem serves the psychological function of helping us function on a day-today basis with our anxieties under control. Because self-esteem is based on meeting internalized standards of goodness or value ultimately learned from the culture, Becker defines self-esteem as: the culturally derived sense that one is an object of primary value in a world of meaning. For example, as a little kid, the standard of value is to please one’s parents. As the child gets older, standards of value prescribe “being cool”, “athletic”, “smart”, etc. Once we reach adulthood, the standards in our culture call for the fulfilling of culturally valued social and occupational roles, and acquiring possessions and money. A number of factors can affect these standards and our perceptions of how well we are meeting them. Other people play a large part in this: Our self-esteem is often affected by how we compare to others around us. This is known as social comparison. Usually we compare ourselves to those who are around us and similar to us. For example we are most likely to compare to same sex siblings close in age to us. If we play tennis, we are most likely to compare to others at about our level of experience and ability. When we compare favorably, we feel good about ourselves but when we suffer by comparison, our self-esteem is damaged. To protect self-esteem, we try to compare to others a little bit worse than ourselves—this is known as downward social comparison. One of the most potent examples of self-esteem-relevant social comparison is sibling rivalry. In childhood, siblings will measure to the millimeter to see who got the bigger lollipop. Each child wants to be of primary (or minimally, equal) value in the eyes of the parents. We can also derive or lose self-esteem based on our identifications with different types of groups. For example, when we identify with an individual or group that achieves success (e.g., Edmonton Oilers hockey team), this increases self-esteem (often referred to as “basking in reflected glory”). We often adjust our identifications to maximize self-esteem: we increase association with successful groups (e.g., by wearing Oiler’s T-shirts after a championship run) and decrease it with unsuccessful ones. Because our sense of self-worth comes from socially derived and shared standards of value, we are always in need of social validation of our worth. Luckily friends, family, coworkers etc. provide most of us with continual evidence of our value. However, others can very easily threaten our self-esteem. For example, if we see someone we know on campus and the person simply walks by us without some kind of greeting to at least acknowledge our existence, the snub may bother us for days. Sociologist Erving Goffman referred to our socially exposed self-esteem as face and explored the elaborate ways in which we try to protect our own face but also use tact to try to protect other people’s face as well. This analysis suggests that to understand people, we need to realize that what each person wants to know is: Where do I stand as hero? We all want to feel heroic (not necessarily in a Bruce Willis way (thankfully), but in the sense of fulfilling culturally prescribed standards of value and the culture provides different ways to do this. When a mom plays the martyr role, what she is really doing is making her claim of heroism (minimally at least, for not strangling you after one of your childhood fits or fights with a sibling). We can seek that sense of heroism in school or in the courtroom, on playing fields or the dance floor, in an obscure laboratory or on a theatrical stage."