First Quote Added
April 10, 2026
Latest Quote Added
"“As resources committed to benefits decline,” Tainter wrote in 1988, “resources committed to control must increase.”"
"In talking about sustainability I like to use a metaphor of sport, of a game. When you are in a sustainability exercise it is possible to lose. You can be unsustainable. But the converse doesn't hold. There is no point at which you can say that you have won. Sustainability consists of staying in the game; that is, continuing with the ability to solve problems. It is like a dance where you must be constantly in motion. There is no point where you can rest and say "Aha! We are sustainable!" It is something that always requires adjustment."
"Тhey [Romans] were forced to debase the currency. Debasing the currency for them was the same as borrowing is for us. It basically shifts the cost of solving your problems on to the future. Now, you can do that if the future doesn’t have any problems of its own. And we know that never happens, right? So the future has to deal with its own problems plus the cost of the past problems that you’ve deferred the cost of."
"Personally, I feel that when your narrative about the future includes the phrase “and then a miracle happens,” you’re in trouble."
"...Tainter doesn't show good judgement in his choice of information about China, nor does he display a very sound historical instinct of his own. The working historian needs at least one of those virtues."
Young though he was, his radiant energy produced such an impression of absolute reliability that Hedgewar made him the first sarkaryavah, or general secretary, of the RSS.
- Gopal Mukund Huddar
Largely because of the influence of communists in London, Huddar's conversion into an enthusiastic supporter of the fight against fascism was quick and smooth. The ease with which he crossed from one worldview to another betrays the fact that he had not properly understood the world he had grown in.
Huddar would have been 101 now had he been alive. But then centenaries are not celebrated only to register how old so and so would have been and when. They are usually celebrated to explore how much poorer our lives are without them. Maharashtrian public life is poorer without him. It is poorer for not having made the effort to recall an extraordinary life.
I regret I was not there to listen to Balaji Huddar's speech [...] No matter how many times you listen to him, his speeches are so delightful that you feel like listening to them again and again.
By the time he came out of Franco's prison, Huddar had relinquished many of his old ideas. He displayed a worldview completely different from that of the RSS, even though he continued to remain deferential to Hedgewar and maintained a personal relationship with him.