university-of-virginia-alumni

"When one appeals solely to the truth of a discourse to authorize it intellectually and socially, one represses reflection on its practical-moral meaning and its social consequences. A discourse that justifies itself solely by epistemic appeals will not be compelled to defend its conceptual decisions on moral and political grounds."

"Where a discourse is redeemed ultimately by metatheoretical appeals, experts step forward as the authorities. This situation contributes to the enfeeblement of a vital public realm of moral and political debate because social questions are deemed the domain of experts. By contrast, when a discourse is judged by its practical consequences or its moral implications, more citizens are qualified to assess it by considering its social and moral implications. A pragmatic move, in principle, implies an active, politically engaged citizenry participating in a democratic public realm."

"On the other hand, ... a pragmatic turn ... expands the number of parties who may participate more or less as equals in a debate about society."

"Capitalism is not necessarily more immoral than previous social systems with regard to cruelty to humans and the gratuitous destruction of nature. As a mode of production and a social system, however, capitalism requires people to be destructive of the environment. Three destructive aspects of the capitalist system stand out when we view this system in relation to the extinction crisis: 1) capitalism tends to degrade the conditions of its own production; 2) it must expand ceaselessly in order to survive; 3) it generates a chaotic world system, which in turn intensifies the extinction crisis."

"Humor is so important! Life is absurd. It truly is. And in The Perfect Find, the characters find themselves in some dramatic situations that call for some levity – a quip, a witticism, a bit of banter. It’s very much a Black thing to use humor to cope with outrageous circumstances!"

"I’ve seen beautiful things and terrible things. Until you, I didn’t know that they’re two sides of the same feeling. I want you, Ricki. Actually, it’s not a want. It’s an uncompromising, inconvenient need. But it’ll ruin us both."

"To me, love is like listening to an album. Some people skip to their favorite songs and ignore the rest. Other people listen to the entire album over and over until it's familiar and cherished and they know every note by heart."

"I believe in love at first sight, all of that. I’m a very romantic person. I romanticize life. How grim and sad is your life if you can’t mythologize it? Because life is hard. So I’ve always just tried to make a story out of everything. I don’t want things to be run of the mill. I want everything to be high stakes, more vivid than average: The most interesting people you’ve ever met, the funniest dialogue, the best sex, like ever. Because ultimately, this is a gift from me, to Black women."

"Why did I ever pick up a pen?! It’s hard! It’s hard because you’re not doing it for anyone else. You’re doing it for yourself and you have to be the boss and the taskmaster and if you’re tired or struggling or have writer’s block, it’s very hard to stay on top of your schedule to meet your goals."

"I think the thing that I’ve learned the most is that I don’t always have to write exactly about what I know."

"Most generally, it’s the idea that we should live in a fair, equal society that doesn’t oppress, degrade, silence, ignore, or disempower women. Nobody is free until everybody is free. Most importantly, any true feminism theory must be intersectional."

"This “deal” provides de facto amnesty for anyone claiming to be even in the household of a potential sponsor of an unaccompanied alien minor AND is thus the “Child Trafficking Promotion Act” cc: @realDonaldTrump"

"I’m tired of ignorance held up as inspiration, where vicious anti-intellectualism is considered a positive trait, and where uninformed opinion is displayed as fact."

"What I have discovered in 20 years of studying the universe, from here to there to everywhere, is that the universe is complicated, and when things happen, it is almost never like ‘A happened and therefore B’. No, A happened and therefore B, C, D and E, but then there is this thing F, and that had a 10% effect, and that prompted G to go back and tip over A, and it is always like this – everything is interconnected. And so a lot of these far-right fundamentalist religion people, and a lot of these people who are anti-global warming, anti-evolution, anti-science, what they do is they take advantage of the fact that things are complicated, and their lives are based on things being simple – if we do this, then this will happen – if we invade Iraq, we will be treated as liberators, if we pray, then good things will happen, and this stuff is wrong. But we have a culture where people are brought up to believe in simplicity, and if A then B. And so when you point out that scientists say the earth is warming, but we had a really devastating winter this year, then these people will say “oh, obviously global warming is wrong”. No, global warming can cause worse winters locally. It’s complicated. But people don’t want to hear “it’s complicated”, and boy, the conspiracy theorists and anti-scientists take full advantage of that."

"They say that even the brightest star won't shine forever. But in fact, the brightest star would live the shortest amount of time. Feel free to extract whatever life lesson you want from that."

"Other job markets may lay claim to the title, but astronomy is actually the world's oldest profession."

"Just like people, stars can be important without being terribly bright."

"If a little kid ever asks you just why the sky is blue, you look him or her right in the eye and say, "It's because of quantum effects involving Rayleigh scattering combined with a lack of violet photon receptors in our retinae.""

"However, science isn't just about showing when you're right; it's also about showing when you're wrong."

"It’s amazing to me that not only can we put a probe around Saturn and get images of its moons, but our math and physics are so freaking accurate we can say, "Hey, you know what? On this date at this time if we turn Cassini that way we’ll see a moon over 2 million kilometers away pass in front of another one nearly 3 million kilometers away."Every morning, I have a 50/50 chance of finding my keys. That kinda puts things in perspective."

"In his famous and highly regarded book “Life After Life.” With regard to interviews he had conducted with people who had had a Near Death Experience as a result of a suicide attempt from which they either survived or were medically resuscitated, Moody writes: “These experiences were uniformly characterized as being unpleasant. As one woman said, ‘If you leave here a tormented soul, you will be a tormented soul over there, too.’ In short, they report that the conflicts they had attempted suicide to escape were still present when they died, but with added complications. In their disembodied state they were unable to do anything about their problems, and they also had to view the unfortunate consequences which resulted from their acts. A man who was despondent about the death of his wife shot himself, ‘died’ as a result, and was resuscitated. He states: ‘I didn’t go where [my wife] was, I went to an awful place. … I immediately saw the mistake I had made. … I thought, ‘I wish I hadn’t done it.’ Others who experienced this unpleasant ‘limbo’ state have remarked that they had the feeling they would be there for a long time. This was their penalty for ‘breaking the rules’ by trying to release themselves prematurely from what was, in effect, an ‘assignment’ – to fulfill a certain purpose in life.”"

"In his subsequent book “Reflections on Life After Life,” Moody says:“All of these people agree on one point: they felt their suicidal attempts solved nothing. They found that they were involved [in the other world] in exactly the same problems from which they had been trying to extricate themselves by suicide. Whatever difficulty they had been trying to get away from was still there on the other side, unresolved. One person mentioned being “trapped” in the situation which had provoked her suicide attempt. [It was] repeated again and again, as if in a cycle.”"

"Atheism may be, in some cases, just verbal behavior masking personal feelings that may be very different, perhaps even deeply religious."