I have compiled the quotes from the 20 books that I read in July and August of 2019 that I most enjoyed, were most thought-provoking, or most troublesome. I hope you enjoy them. If you have any other questions or comments about these books, feel free to leave a comment!

1. Think & Grow Rich by Napoleon Hill (3) – 7/16/19       
   • “[A]ll achievement, all earned riches, have their beginning in an idea!”         
   • “What a different story men would have to tell if only they would adopt a definite purpose, and stand by that purpose until it had time to become an all-consuming obsession!”
   • “Henry Ford was a success, because he understood and applied the principles of success. One of these is desire: knowing what one wants.”       
   • “Every human being who reaches the age of understanding of the purpose of money wishes for it. Wishing will not bring riches. But desiring riches with a state of mind that becomes an obsession, then planning definite ways and means to acquire riches, and backing those plans with persistence which does not recognize failure, will bring riches.”       
   • “Knowledge will not attract money, unless it is organized, and intelligently directed, through practical plans of action, to the definite end of accumulation of money.”         
   • “Truly great leaders are willing, when occasion demands, to perform any sort of labor which they would ask another to perform.”     
   • “The majority of people who fail to accumulate money sufficient for their needs are, generally, easily influenced by the opinions of others. They permit the newspapers and the gossiping neighbors to do their thinking for them. Opinions are the cheapest commodities on earth.“
   • “Riches do not respond to wishes. They respond only to definite plans, backed by definite desires, through constant persistence.”
2. Keith Douglas: The Complete Poems by Keith Douglas (4) – 7/7/19             
   • “Yes, I too have a particular monster/ a toad or worm curled in my belly/stirring, eating at times I cannot foretell, he/ is the thing I can admit only once to/ anyone, never to those who have not their own./ Never to those who are happy, whose easy language/ I speak well, though with a stranger’s accent.”               
   • “This is my particular monster. I know him;/ he walks about inside me: I’m his house/ and his landlord. He’s my evacuee/ taking a respite from hell in me/ he decorates his room of course/ to remind him of home. He often talks of going -“
   • “Bullshit…symbolizes what I think must be got rid of – the mass of irrelevancies, of ‘attitudes’, ‘approaches’, propaganda, ivory towers, etc., that stands between us and our problems and what we have to do about them.”   
   • “To trust anyone or to admit any hope of a better world is criminally foolish, as foolish as it is to stop working for it.”
3. Made in America by Bill Bryson (5) – 7/15/19          
   • “Nor, it should be noted, was the much-vaunted right of the people to keep and bear arms ever intended as a carte blanche, semidivine injunction to invest in a private arsenal for purposes of sport and personal defense, as the full sentence makes clear: ‘A well regulated militia being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms shall not be infringed.’ The framers had in mind only the idea of raising a defense force at short notice. If they did favor the idea of keeping guns for shooting animals and household intruders, they never said so.”
   • “We do know, however, the derivation of Missouri’s current slogan, the Show Me State. The expression was coined as an insult by outsiders and was meant to suggest that Missourians were so stupid that they had to be shown how to do everything. The state’s inhabitants, however, contrarily took it as a compliment, persuading themselves that it implied a certain shrewd caution on their part.”
   • “Altogether, as Howard Zinn notes, the United States made four hundred treaties with the Indians and broke every one of them.”             
   • “If one attitude can be said to characterize America’s regard for immigration over the past two hundred years it is the belief that while immigration was unquestionably a wise and prescient thing in the case of one’s parents or grandparents, it really ought to stop now.”                   
   • “[Thomas] Jefferson, in his first year in the White House, spent $2,800 – more money than many people saw in a lifetime – on wine alone.”             
   • “Thanks to all that hard work, the United States produces twice the goods and services per person that it produced in 1948. Everyone in the country could, in principle at least, work a four-hour day or a six-month year and still maintain a standard of living equivalent to that enjoyed by our parents. Almost uniquely among the developed nations, America took none of its productivity gains in additional leisure. It bought consumer items instead.”
   • “All too often overlooked in discussions of the matter is that at the root of the bias-free language movement lies a commendable sentiment: to make language less wounding or demeaning to those whose sex, race, physical condition, or circumstances leave them vulnerable to the raw power of words.”               
   • “Just because a word or expression has an antiquity or was once widely used does not confer on it some special immunity.”               
   • “With respect, I would suggest that consideration, reasonableness, and a sense of fairness are qualities that apply to all members of a speech community, not just to those who hold the reins.”
4. In Defense of a Liberal Education by Fareed Zakaria (3) – 7/17/19           
   • “Overall, America’s test scores are disappointing, particularly given the United States spends more per capita than almost any other country on education.”
   • “Despite ranking twenty-seventh and thirtieth in the subject, respectively, American and Israeli students come out right at the top in their belief in their own abilities.”
   • “In other words, Prometheus decided to bring a liberal arts curriculum down from the heavens – and he and all of humankind paid a dreadful price for it.” 
   • “So did Adam and Eve. The story at the heart of biblical history is about the dangers of knowledge.”   
   • “This may not help make a living, but it will help make a life.”   
   • “In 2011, 75 percent [of millennials] made a donation to a charity, 71 percent raised money for one, and 57 percent volunteered, ‘more than any other generation.’”
   • “Because of the times we live in, all of us, young and old, do not spend enough time and effort thinking about the meaning of life. We do not look inside of ourselves enough to understand our strengths and weaknesses, and we do not look around enough – at the world, in history – to ask the deepest and broadest questions.”
5. The Art of the Start 2.0 by Guy Kawasaki (3) – 7/22/19
   • “The genesis of great companies is answering simple questions that change the world, not the desire to become rich.”   
   • “Complete this sentence: If your startup never existed, the world would be worse off because _____.”     
   • “Ideas are easy; implementation is hard.”                 
   • “‘Be driven not by your importance but by the work that you’re trying to do.’ – Sunil Thankamushy”               
   • “Above all, leaders cannot have a bad day. No matter how scared and depressed you are, you cannot show fear, uncertainty, or doubt. You must exude optimism every day.”           
   • “Never ask people to do something that you wouldn’t do.”             
   • “When leaders publicly change their minds, it shows that they’re smart enough to realize they made a mistake, secure enough to admit the mistake, and willing to risk their reputation to do the right thing.”
   • “The better the leader, the more she doesn’t hesitate to use these phrases:
     • ‘I don’t know.’   
     • ‘Thank you.’   
     • ‘Do what you think is right.’   
     • ‘It’s my fault.’”               
   • “The 10/20/30 rule is that you should use ten slides in twenty minutes with a minimum of thirty-point text.”
   • “The large size of the font and the paucity of text is because slides are to lead, not read. They should paraphrase and anchor what’s coming out of your mouth. Because people can read faster than you talk, if you put too much detail on the slide, the audience will read ahead of you and not listen to what you’re saying.”
6. We Need to Talk by Celeste Headlee (4) – 7/24/19             
   • “By some measures, Americans are more polarized now than we have been since the Civil War.”             
   • “‘We are taught you must blame your father, your sisters, your brothers, the school, the teachers – but never blame yourself. It’s never your fault. But it’s always your fault, because if you wanted to change you’re the one who has got to change.’ – Katharine Hepburn”           
   • “This is one of the most important lessons I’ve learned as a journalist: explain what you want and what you expect, and be honest.”             
   • “Taking a moment to think about your own expectations and sharing them with your conversational partner sets the stage for a productive exchange.”             
   • “There are subjects so sensitive and topics so emotionally charged that discussions about them can be tricky and even dangerous. But there is not a human being on this planet with whom you have ‘nothing in common.’ And there is no topic so volatile that it can’t be spoken of.”             
   • “Listening to someone doesn’t mean agreeing with them. The purpose of listening is to understand, not to endorse.”
   • “Not every conversation, or even most, will end with a hug and an epiphany. Sometimes, just learning what someone else thinks, without changing any minds, is more than enough.”
   • “It turns out, the more money you have, the less able you are to correctly identify other people’s emotions.”
   • “But most of the time, refocusing the conversation on you is unlikely to be helpful and can actually be hurtful. What’s more, it’s never wrong to choose not to talk about yourself.” 
   • “Furthermore, our disagreements didn’t prevent us from listening to one another. In order to have important conversations, you will sometimes have to check your opinions at the door. There is no belief so strong that it cannot be set aside temporarily in order to learn from someone who disagrees. Don’t worry; your beliefs will still be there when you’re done.” 
   • “The goal of an honest, respectful dialogue is to open our minds, not to change them.”   
   • “As a nation, as a culture, as a functional society, we are stagnating. We are separating the entire population into groups of us (those who agree with us) and them (those who don’t). If you only speak to people who agree with you, you shut out the possibility of new perspectives, discoveries, and information.”   
   • “One of the best lessons I’ve learned in nearly twenty years as a journalist is that everyone has something to teach me.”   
   • “If you want to become smarter, listen more. If you want a stronger marriage, listen actively. And if you want better friendships, stop talking and listen. ‘The most basic of all human needs,’ said Dr. Ralph Nichols, who pioneered the study of listening, ‘is the need to understand and be understood.’”   
   • “Even if you only have one conversation a day, it should inspire and enlighten you.”
7. Physics of the Impossible by Michio Kaku (3) – 7/25/19
8. Wherever You Go There You Are by Jon Kabat-Zinn (4) – 7/29/19             
   • “Meditation is simply about being yourself and knowing something about who that is.”   
   • “Be a light unto yourself.” – Buddha                   
   • “Mindfulness means paying attention in a particular way: on purpose, in the present moment, and nonjudgmentally.”
   • “Rather, we are simply inviting ourselves to interface with this moment in full awareness, with the intention to embody as best we can an orientation of calmness, mindfulness, and equanimity right here and right now.”
   • “If we are to grasp the reality of our life while we have it, we will need to wake up to our moments. Otherwise, whole days, even a whole life, could slip part unnoticed.”
   • “If we are unaware of what we are doing a good deal of the time, and we don’t particularly like the way things turn out in our lives, perhaps it’s time to pay closer attention, to be more in touch, to observe the choices we make and their consequences down the road.” 
   • “Give more than you think you can, trusting that you are richer than you think. Celebrate this richness. Give as if you had inexhaustible wealth…I am not talking solely of money or material possessions, although it can be wonderfully growth-enhancing, uplifting, and truly helpful to share material abundance. Rather, what is being suggested here is that you practice sharing the fullness of your being, your best self, your enthusiasm, your vitality, your spirit, your trust, your openness, above all, your presence. Share it with yourself, with your family, with the world.”             
   • “The point here is simply that it is useful at times to admit to yourself that you don’t know your way and to be open to help from unexpected places. Doing this makes available to you inner and outer energies and allies that arise out of your own soulfulness and selflessness.”               
   • “Perhaps we just need little reminders from time to time that we are already dignified, deserving, worthy. Sometimes we don’t feel that way because of the wounds and the scars we carry from the past or because of the uncertainty of the future.”             
   • “Maybe we are overdeveloped outwardly and underdeveloped inwardly. Perhaps it is we who, for all our wealth, are living in poverty.”             
   • “If I can’t do anything useful, at least I would like to do as little harm as possible.”             
   • “This elusive nature of a concrete, permanent, unchanging self is quite a hopeful observation. It means that you can stop taking yourself so damn seriously and get out from under the pressures of having the details of your personal life be central to the operating of the universe.”
9. Emotions Revealed by Paul Ekman (3) – 7/30/19 
   • “But it can cause problems, for when we are gripped by an emotion we discount or ignore knowledge we already have that could disconfirm the emotion we are feeling, just as we ignore or discount new information coming to us from our environment that doesn’t fit our emotion. In other words, the same mechanism that guides and focuses our attention can distort our ability to deal with both new information and knowledge already stored in the brain.” 
   • “Anger motivates us to try to change the world, to bring about social justice, to fight for human rights.”
   • “Emotion is not like an appendix, a vestigial apparatus we don’t need and should remove. Emotions are at the core of our life. They make life livable.”
10. Living Buddha, Living Christ by Thich Nhat Hanh  (3) – 8/4/19
    • “Professor Hans Küng has said, ‘Until there is peace between religions, there can be no peace in the world.’ People kill and are killed because they cling too tightly to their own beliefs and ideologies. When we believe that ours is the only faith that contains the truth, violence and suffering will surely be the result.” 
    • “Do not think the knowledge you presently possess is changeless, absolute truth.” 
    • “As we breathe in, we say to ourselves, ‘Calming,’ and as we breathe out, we say, ‘Smiling.’ As we breathe in again, we say, ‘Present moment,’ and as we breathe out, ‘Wonderful moment.’”     
    • “We do not have to die to arrive at the gates of Heaven. In fact, we have to be truly alive.”   
    • “Nonviolence does not mean non-action. Nonviolence means we act with love and compassion.”           
    • “The best use of our time is being generous and really being present with others.”               
    • “We express our love and care for others by working hard, but if we do not have time for the people we love, if we cannot make ourselves available to them, how can we say that we love them?”           
    • “Whenever we see someone who is loving, compassionate, mindful, caring, and understanding, we know that the Holy Spirit is there.”
11. Adventure Capitalist by Jim Rogers (3) – 8/9/19               
    • “It is when things start to go wrong and people look for someone to blame that one’s religion, culture, and race become noticeable.”             
    • “The steel industry in the United States has been going on this way for fifty years. Every few years the industry persuades the government to protect us from the foreigners. ‘We just need to reorganize.’ But instead of reorganizing, getting more efficient, and figuring out what the foreigners are doing right, politicians just keep upping the protection.”               
    • “Instead of talking about the new South Africa, we have to build the new South Africa, said Mbeki. We have to stop talking. We have talked enough. We spend all our time going to conferences, and nobody is doing anything.”
    • “Whenever you hear somebody tell you that investing is different this time, grab your money and run. It is never different.”
12. Boiling Point by Ross Gelbspan (4) – 8/13/19               
    • “Another area of the climate issue that has been ignored by the press involves the ferocious battles on a number of fronts in which those in the fossil fuel lobby are deploying huge resources to secure the survival of their industry – even at the expense of their children’s futures.”
    • “But the driving motivation behind this book is to change the way we regard this threat – to make our responses far less fearful and defensive and to recast this moment in human history as an unprecedented opportunity to use the climate crisis as the foundation for a historically unprecedented common global project that would create the basis for a far wealthier, more equitable, and ultimately, much more peaceful world. A real solution to the climate crisis could, if properly structured, provide a liftoff toward a far more promising human future.”
    • “Seen in its full dimensions, the challenge of global climate change seems truly overwhelming. In the absence of a compelling and obvious solution, the most natural human tendency is simply not to want to know about it.”             
    • “The official love of the new Bush presidency was expressed in a November 2002 [memo] from political consultant Frank Luntz to the Republican Party. In a section titled, ‘Winning the Global Warming Debate,’ Luntz wrote that many voters believe there is a lack of consensus about global warming among scientists. ‘Should the public come to believe that the scientific issues are settled, their views about global warming will change accordingly,’ he wrote. ‘Therefore you need to continue to make the lack of scientific certainty a primary issue.’”           
    • “By 2001, ExxonMobil had replaced the coal industry as the major funder of the most prominent and visible ‘greenhouse skeptics.’ By 2003, ExxonMobil was giving more than $1 million a year to an array of ideological, right-wing organizations opposing action on climate change…”
    • “One campaign, which sent three of these ‘skeptics’ around the country to do media interviews, was crafted, according to its strategy papers, ‘to reposition global warming as theory rather than fact’ and, more specifically, was designed to target ‘older, less-educated men…and young low-income women’ in districts that get their electricity from coal and preferably have a member on the House Energy Committee, according to the strategy papers for the campaign.”             
    • “What is especially telling about the industry-funded ‘greenhouse skeptics’ is their lack of standing in the scientific community. In a review of Michael’s work, Tom M.L. Wigley, a preeminent climate modeler at the National Center for Atmospheric Research, concluded it was so flawed that not only would it fail to pass the scrutiny of qualified climate scientists, it would not even be accepted for peer review.”     
    • “One proof of the success of that campaign is reflected by two polls done by Newsweek magazine. Back in 1991, 35 percent of people surveyed by Newsweek said they thought global warming was a serious problem. By 1996 – even though the science had become far more robust and the IPCC had declared that humans are, indeed, changing the climate – that 35 percent had shrunk to 22 percent, largely as a result of the fossil fuel lobby’s deceptive public relations campaign.”                 
    • “In August 2003, the attorneys of Maine and Connecticut made an extraordinary discovery. Through a Freedom of Information request, they unearthed e-mails indicating that the White House had secretly requested the private, right-wing CEI to sue it – the White House – in order to have the national assessment withdrawn.”               
    • “The scientific community is unambiguous in its finding that the first and most visible manifestation of the planet’s warming is an increase in violent weather extremes.” 
    • “The plan involves three interacting strategies:               
      • a change of energy subsidy policies in industrial countries     
      • the creation of a large fund to transfer renewable energy technologies to developing countries       
      • the subordination within a Kyoto-type framework of the mechanism of international emissions trading to a new model, a progressively more stringent Fossil Fuel Efficiency Standard, which rises by 5 percent per year”
13. Doing Good Better by William MacAskill (5) – 8/14/19
    • “Effective altruism is about asking, ‘How can I make the biggest difference I can?’ and using evidence and careful reasoning to try to find an answer. It takes a scientific approach to doing good. Just as science consists of the honest and impartial attempt to work out what’s true, and a commitment to believe the truth whatever that turns out to be, effective altruism consists of the honest and impartial attempt to work out what’s best for the world, and a commitment to do what’s best, whatever that turns out to be.”
    • “The good I do is not a matter of the direct benefits I cause. Rather, it is the difference I make.”           
    • “Earning to give means exactly what it sounds like: rather than trying to maximize the direct impact you have with your job, you instead try to increase your earnings so you can donate more, improving people’s lives through your giving rather than your day-to-day work.” 
    • “Economists have studied this issue and worked out how, on average, a consumer affects the number of animal products supplied by declining to buy that product. They estimate that, on average, if you give up one egg, total production ultimately falls by 0.91 eggs; if you give up one gallon of milk, total production falls by 0.56 gallons. Other products are somewhere in between: economists estimate that if you give up one pound of beef, beef production falls by 0.68 pounds; if you give up one pound of pork, production ultimately falls by 0.74 pounds; if you give up one pound of chicken, production ultimately falls by 0.76 pounds.”               
    • “However, this debate is strange for another reason: even if scientists had not already shown that man-made climate change is happening, the mere fact that man-made climate change might be happening is enough to warrant action.”
    • “If we don’t care about financial information when we buy products for ourselves, why would we care about financial information when we buy products for other people?”
    • “Surely, as we discussed in chapter two, what we should ultimately care about is the impact charities have. When you give a hundred dollars to a charity, what does that charity do with it? How are people’s lives improved as a result?”   
    • “Cutting out red meat and dairy for one day a week achieves a greater reduction in your carbon footprint than buying entirely locally based food.”             
    • [In a scientific experiment] “People who had previously purchased a ‘green’ product were significantly more likely to both lie and steal than those who had purchased the conventional product. Their demonstrations of ethical behavior subconsciously gave them license to act unethically when the chance arose.”             
    • “You’ve got to find what you love, and that is as true for work as it is for your lovers. Your work is going to fill a large part of your life, and the only way to be truly satisfied is to do what you believe is great work, and the only way to do great work is to love what you do. If you haven’t found it yet, keep looking, and don’t settle. As with all matters of the heart, you’ll know when you find it, and like any great relationship it just gets better and better as the years roll on. So keep looking. Don’t settle.” – Steve Jobs             
    • “In contrast, identifying a job with what we call good ‘personal fit’ involves finding out as much about a job as you can, because it’s features of the job itself that are much more important in determining how well you succeed and enjoy your work than whether that job corresponds with your preexisting passions.”             
    • “Second, find out where you’re uncertain, then reduce that uncertainty. Before making a decision, don’t merely try to weigh all the pros and cons as you currently see them (though that is a good thing to do). Ask yourself: What is the single most important piece of information that would be most useful for my career decision? Now, what can I do in order to gain that information?”         
    • “Every one of us has the power to save dozens or hundreds of lives, or to significantly improve the welfare of thousands of people.”
14. 1984 by George Orwell (3) – 8/15/19               
    • “Orthodoxy means not thinking – not needing to think. Orthodoxy is unconsciousness.”               
    • “And yet, just for a moment, what almost frightening power had sounded in that cry from only a few hundred throats! Why was it that they could never shout like that about anything that mattered.”           
    • “It struck him that in moments of crisis one is never fighting against an external enemy, but always against one’s own body.”             
    • “She thought it over. ‘They can’t do that,’ she said finally. ‘It’s the one thing they can’t do. They can make you say anything – anything – but they can’t make you believe it. They can’t get inside you.’”             
    • “They could lay bare in the utmost detail everything that you had done or said or thought; but the inner heart, whose workings were mysterious even to yourself, remained impregnable.”             
    • “In the long run, a hierarchical society was only possible on a basis of poverty and ignorance.”             
    • “The aims of these three groups are entirely irreconcilable. The aim of the High is to remain where they are. The aim of the Middle is to change places with the High. The aim of the Low, when they have an aim – for it is an abiding characteristic of the Low that they are too much crushed by drudgery to be more than intermittently conscious of anything outside their daily lives – is to abolish all distinctions and create a society in which all men should be equal.”
15. North by Scott Jurek (4) – 8/16/19             
    • “And I know this: You rarely ask why when you win. It’s a word you can outrun and out-perform. Applause makes it hard to hear yourself. But just because you ignore it doesn’t mean it’s not there. And why doesn’t get old and tire. It catches up, and it gets louder. It churns up thoughts that are best kept down in the dark.”           
    • “After such a beautiful and brutal odyssey, that white trail blaze is branded onto his soul forever.”             
    • “That’s how it should be. Out there in the wild, on a long journey, you hike your own hike, blaze your own trail, and only you can find what you’re looking for.”
16. The Color of Compromise by Jemar Tisby (3) – 8/18/19 
    • “The acts that reinforced racism happened in countless common ways. Morgan explained, ‘The “who” is every little individual who talks about the “niggers” and spreads the seeds of his hate to his neighbor and his son. The jokester, the crude oaf whose racial jokes rock the party with laughter.’”               
    • “It is all the Christians and all their ministers who spoke too late in anguished cries against violence.”               
    • “The failure of many Christians in the South and across the nation to decisively oppose the racism in their families, communities, and even in their own churches provided fertile soil for the seeds of hatred to grow. The refusal to act in the midst of injustice is itself an act of injustice. Indifference to oppression perpetuates oppression.”
    • “Further, in the mind of Columbus and others, indigenous people did not have the sophistication to develop their own religious beliefs. Europeans failed to acknowledge the longstanding, well-developed religious beliefs and practices of the people they met. Instead, they viewed indigenous men and women as blank slates on which Christian missionaries could write the gospel. This paternalistic view of evangelism permeates American church history.”               
    • “Over time, Europeans compromised the message of Christianity to accommodate slavery while also, in their minds, satisfying the requirement to make disciples.”
    • “Instead, white Christians believed that the Bible merely regulated slavery in order to mitigate its most brutal abuses.”               
    • “After considering the matter, the committee made its determination. They stated that ‘neither St. Philip’s, nor any other colored congregation [will] be admitted into union with this Convention, so as to entitle them to representation therein.’ The committee explained its reasoning: ‘They are socially degraded, and are not regarded as proper associates for the class of person who attend our Convention.’ The committee members assured the convention that their objections had nothing to do with race. ‘We object not to the color of the skin, but we question their possession of those qualities which would render their intercourse with the members of a Church Convention useful.’”             
    • “The second fact, that many Christians supported slavery to the extent that they were willing to risk their lives to protect it, has not been fully considered in the American church, even though 150 years have passed since the war.”
    • “But abolitionist claims were mostly met with skepticism because they advanced arguments based on the ‘spirit’ rather than the ‘letter’ of the law. Even when abolitionists made their case from the Bible, they were criticized because they were not able to cite a specific passage that explicitly condemned slavery. Instead, they had to argue from broader principles such as ‘love of neighbor’ and the unity of humankind.”                   
    • “Pastors and other church leaders actively urged their members not to sell their homes to black people. ‘”If everyone simply refuses to sell to coloreds,” the pastors assured residents, “then everything will be fine.”‘ They pleaded with church members: ‘Please help us “Keep Kirkwood White” and preserve our Churches and homes.’ When these efforts failed, and one or two black families moved into the neighborhood, many of the white residents moved out. Churches shut their doors or fled to the all-white suburbs.”               
    • “‘This new Jesus had smooth white skin, long flowing brown hair, a full beard, and blue eyes.’ Sallman painted the image in 1940, but it has enjoyed a decades-long international influence. This image of a white Jesus even became ubiquitous among black Christians. In fact, the bombing at Sixteenth Street Baptist Church, the one that killed those four girls and blew out the face of Jesus, destroyed a stained-glass window picturing a white Jesus. This picture, and hundreds of others like it, subtly reinforced the idea that Jesus Christ was a European-looking white man, and many added to that assumption that he was a free-market, capitalist-supporting American as well.”               
    • “During his lifetime and at the height of the civil rights movement, a large segment of the American church derided [Martin Luther] King [Jr.] and other activists and even resisted the efforts of the civil rights movement. Certainly, changing attitudes can be viewed as a form of progress, but it is also helpful to remember that such positive perspectives on the movement have not always been popular.”               
    • “One of Nixon’s closest advisers, H. R. Haldeman, said, ‘[Nixon] emphasized that you have to face the fact that the whole problem is really the black. The key is to devise a system that recognizes this while not appearing to.’”
    • “In 1971, the Southern Baptist Convention, the nation’s largest Protestant denomination, passed a resolution on abortion that called upon Southern Baptists ‘to work for legislation that will allow the possibility of abortion under such conditions as rape, incest, clear evidence of severe fetal deformity, and carefully ascertained evidence of the likelihood of damage to the emotional, mental, and physical health of the mother.’ No less than W. A. Criswell, pastor of the largest SBC congregation, stated after the Roe v. Wade decision that ‘I have always felt that it was only after a child was born and had life separate from its mother…that it became an individual person.’ He further explained, ‘It has always, therefore, seemed to me that what is best for the mother and for the future should be allowed.’ A poll in 1970 discovered that 70 percent of Southern Baptist pastors ‘supported abortion to protect the mental or physical health of the mother, 64 percent supported abortion in cases of fetal deformity and 71 percent in cases of rape.’”           
    • “Black lives matter does not mean that only black lives matter; it means that black lives matter too. Given the racist patterns of devaluing black lives in America’s past, it is not obvious to many black people that everyone values black life.”           
    • “Although opinions about the organization [Black Lives Matter] vary widely, the phrase itself resonated at a deep level with numbers of Americans across the nation, and in particular it spoke to black people who sensed those words addressing a deep and painful longing – the longing for others to recognize their full, unqualified humanity. Sadly, many white Christians did not realize this, and they responded with opposition.” 
    • “Christian complicity with racism in the twenty-first century looks different than complicity with racism in the past. It looks like Christians responding to black lives matter with the phrase all lives matter. It looks like Christians consistently supporting a president whose racism has been on display for decades. It looks like Christians telling black people and their allies that their attempts to bring up racial concerns are ‘divisive.’ It looks like conversations on race that focus on individual relationships and are unwilling to discuss systemic solutions.”               
    • “It is vital to pass legislation that prohibits funding of political campaigns by special-interest groups and corporations, because by the time most politicians are elected in the United States, they have prostituted themselves to the organizations that financed their extremely expensive campaigns. According to the Federal Election Commission (FEC), candidates who spent the most money in the 2006 elections won 92 percent of the time.”           
    • “I urge a return to old-style campaigning in the United States – one in which politicians actually enter into dialogue with their electorate, in which political issues are debated, and in which subjects affecting the fate of the Earth are seriously discussed.”           
    • “In the center of Reykjavik, the capital city, the prime minister and politicians congregate at lunchtime in the public saunas that are heated by underground hot springs. These eminent people sit in the baths alongside people from the general public, old and young, and conduct daily political conversations and dialogues. All issues are discussed, and the politicians return to work after lunch having been briefed by their public.”
17. If You Love This Planet by Helen Caldicott (3) – 8/21/19            
    • “A small amount of UV light has always penetrated the normal ozone layer, producing a certain number of skin cancers, but the incidence of skin cancer and malignant melanoma is now increasing rapidly. Some part of this increase is almost certainly due to ozone depletion. Melanoma, a dark mole that becomes malignant and is usually lethal, doubled in frequency worldwide in the two decades between 1970 and 1990.”           
    • “To put global warming into perspective, however, carbon dioxide accounts for only half of the greenhouse effect. Other gases, the so-called trace gases, which are present in minute concentrations, are much more efficient at trapping heat.”           
    • “Methane is also a very efficient heat trapper (twenty times more effective than carbon dioxide) and is released at the rate of about 25 gallons (100 liters) per day from the intestine of a single grain-fed cow.”           
    • “In fact, in the United States, cattle-produced methane and manure has a global-warming effect equivalent to that of thirty-three million automobiles.”           
    • “Agriculture, as it has been constructed over the past century – the production of fertilizers and pesticides, and the planting and harvesting of food – is also based almost entirely on oil. In fact, about 10 calories of fossil fuel is used to produce each single calorie of food. The global transportation system and the trading of food are totally dependent on oil. Amazingly, the average distance traversed by food in the United States is over 1,500 miles (about 2,400 kilometers). Obviously, the shortage of oil will translate into ever-higher food prices and inevitable shortages.”               
    • “In fact, there is enough area on the roofs of all parking lots in the United States to power the country’s entire fleet of cars by solar energy and then to add this electricity to the grid to power homes at night.”   
    • “The grain [in ethanol] that is used to fill a single SUV tank just one time could feed one person for a whole year.”           
    • “It has been calculated that if an area the size of Australia or the United States were planted with trees, the air could be cleared of carbon dioxide released from fossil fuels.”
    • “Brazil owes a huge debt to US banks. The World Bank and the International Monetary Fund, which represent the interests of these banks, have advised the Brazilian government to chop down the Amazon forest to pay back the debt.”           
    • “Ranching occupies 72 percent of the cleared forest areas, and most of the beef is used to supply fast-food burger chains in the United States, Central America, and Europe. Between 2000 and 2005, 60-70 percent of Brazil’s forest area was cleared for cattle ranching, making cattle ranching the leading cause of deforestation in the Brazilian Amazon.”             
    • “Christopher Uhl, of Pennsylvania State University, estimates that a quarter-pound hamburger derived from steers raised in Central America represents the loss of 55 square feet (5 square meters) of immeasurably valuable tropical rain forest containing one giant tree, about fifty smaller trees, twenty to thirty different tree species, about a hundred species of insects, and many other bird, mammalian, and reptilian species, as well as a huge diversity of fungi, lichens, mosses, and bacteria – in short, millions of living organisms and thousands of species are sacrificed for one quarter-pound hamburger.”             
    • “Over 1.5 million barrels of oil each year is required to produce these billions of plastic [water] bottles – enough oil to fuel a hundred thousand cars. More than 85 percent of the plastic bottles are not recycled, and it takes more than a thousand years for the plastic to biodegrade, if it ever does.”           
    • “Because of our own addictive consumption, people in the developed world cause a hundred to a thousand times as much pollution per capita as do people in the developing world. (The US population, a mere 4 percent of the world total, creates half of the world’s toxic waste. The average US citizen affects the world ecology twenty to a hundred times more negatively than does the average person in a developing country.) Of the 350 million-500 million metric tons of hazardous waste manufactured on the planet each year, the United States produces 245 million-260 million metric tons – almost one ton per person, or about 4.5 pounds of waste per person per day.”             
    • “About one billion trees’ worth of paper is thrown out every year in the United States alone.”             
    • “Amazingly, less than 0.1 percent of all pesticides ever reach the target insects. The other 99.9 percent are dispersed in groundwater, lakes, weirs, soil, and the air. Groundwater has been contaminated with more than fifty varieties of pesticides and water conducted in 1998, the US Geological Survey found that 95 percent of streams and 50 percent of wells close to agricultural and urban areas were contaminated with pesticides.”             
    • “Over thousands of years, the human race had utilized about seven thousand different plant species for food, but the present generation tends to rely on only about twenty species to provide 80 percent of the world’s food.”         
    • “Many people probably do not realize that 90 percent of the most valuable US crops, worth a total of $4 billion, are fertilized by insects, and the catch-22 is obvious. As described already, pesticides and herbicides used to protect the crops from predatory insects and weeds kill the very organisms upon which the crops depend, including, of course, the bees.”           
    • “Fifty-two percent of the human population is composed of women. According to the United Nations, women do 66 percent of the world’s work, including much of the work of producing food, and for this labor they receive 5 percent of the global income and own only 1 percent of the property.”
    • “It is time for men in religion, in politics, in corporations, and in global agriculture to stand aside and attest to the intelligence and wisdom of women.”             
    • “The Feinstein World Hunger Program at Brown University estimates that if the world population is fed primarily with grains and vegetables, there is, at present, enough food to ensure the USDA recommended daily per capita intake of 2,200 calories for the global population.”                 
    • “In 2006, when US foreign aid expenditure totaled over $22 billion, Americans spent $9.5 billion on movies and theaters, $86.6 billion on tobacco (in 2003), and $155 billion on alcohol, plus $35 billion on weight loss items that don’t usually work.”         
    • “In 2005, the United States ranked first in military spending, arms exports, military technology, naval fleets, global military bases, and number of nuclear bombs; while at the same time it was eighth in adult literacy rate, ranked fifty-first in per capita spending on secondary-level public education, and had the highest newborn mortality rate in the developed world. These data, though not strictly financial, indicate present priorities in American society.”
    • “Or as Dwight D  Eisenhower put it, ‘Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired, signifies in the final sense a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and not clothed.’”
18. Genghis Khan by Leo de Hartog (2) – 8/22/19        
19. Justice by Michael J. Sandel (2) – 8/27/19          
    • “The way things are does not determine the way they ought to be.”           
    • “Our Gross National Product now is over 800 billion dollars a year. But that Gross National Product counts air pollution and cigarette advertising, and ambulances to clear our highways of carnage. It counts special locks for our doors and the jails for the people who break them. It counts the destruction of the redwood and the loss of our natural wonder in chaotic sprawl. It counts napalm and counts nuclear warheads and armored cars for the police to fight the riots in our cities. It counts…the television programs which glorify violence in order to sell toys to our children. Yet the Gross National Product does not allow for the health of our children, the quality of their education or the joy of their play. It does not include the beauty of our poetry or the strength of our marriages, the intelligence of our public debate or the integrity of our public officials. It measures neither our wit nor our courage, neither our wisdom nor our learning, neither our compassion nor our devotion to our country. It measures everything, in short, except that which makes life worthwhile. And it can tell us everything about America except why we are proud to be Americans.”       
    • “This generation could commit itself to an equally consequential investment in an infrastructure for civic renewal: public schools to which rich and poor alike would want to send their children; public transportation systems reliable enough to attract upscale commuters; and public health clinics, playgrounds, parks, recreation centers, libraries, and museums that would, ideally at least, draw people out of their gated communities and into the common spaces of a shared democratic citizenship.”
20. Reckless Endangerment by Gretchen Morgenson and Joshua Rosner (4) – 8/30/19             
    • This book was a look at the ‘08 financial crisis and the key perpetrators and reasons why things have not really improved.