“This human predicament we’re all in doesn’t submit to solutions, and when anybody oversimplifies the scene and comes up with a solution, you can be sure you’re going to feel it like oppression.” — Leonard Cohen, “As a New Generation Discovers Leonard Cohen’s Dark Humour Kris Kirk Ruffles the Great Man’s Back Pages,” Poetry Commotion (1988-06-18)
“Political extremism involves two prime ingredients: an excessively simple diagnosis of the world’s ills, and a conviction that there are identifiable villains back of it all.” — John W. Gardner, “A Nation Is Never Finished”, ABA Journal (November 1967)
“All political movements are like this — we are in the right, everyone else is in the wrong. The people on our own side who disagree with us are heretics, and they start becoming enemies. With it comes an absolute conviction of your own moral superiority. There’s oversimplification in everything, and a terror of flexibility.” — Doris Lessing, A Notorious Life
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