#exceptionalism

Here beyond men's judgments all covenants were brittle. ↗

— Cormac McCarthy

#freedom #frontier #individualism #justice #liberalism

We live, I suppose, in the unconfessed hope that the rules will at some point be broken, along with the normal course of things and custom and history, and that this will happen to us, that we will experience it, that we — that is, I alone — will be the ones to see it. We always aspire, I suppose, to being the chosen ones, and it is unlikely otherwise that we would be prepared to live out the entire course of an entire life, which, however short or long, gradually gets the better of us. ↗

— Javier Marías

#exceptionalism #optimism #experience

Exceptional men do not hold their experiences to be out of the ordinary or of interest to anyone else. Unlike the trodden fungus-men, they are not so ignorantly and presumptuously self-absorbed. They are nobody and they know it. They shun notice. They are exceedingly rare. ↗

— Nick Tosches

#humility #men #experience

The Open Road goes to the used-car lot. ↗

— Louis Simpson

#capitalism #freedom #frontier #individualism #liberalism

So much American science fiction is parochial -- not as true now as it was years ago, but the assumption is one culture in the future, more or less like ours, and with the same ideals, the same notions of how to do things, just bigger and flashier technology. Well, you know darn well it doesn't work that way... ↗

— Poul Anderson

#future #science-fiction #science