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As Far As Love Is Concerned, Possession, Power, Fusion And Disenchantment Are The Four Horsemen Of The Apocalypse.
-Zygmunt Bauman
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As Far As Love

Zygmunt Bauman
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As Far As Love Is Concerned, Possession, Power, Fusion And Disenchantment Are The Four Horsemen Of The Apocalypse.

Understanding the Quote: "as far as love is concerned, possession, power, fusion and disenchantment are..."

This quote by Zygmunt Bauman reflects deeply on the theme of love is. It connects to the universal human journey of purpose, motivation, and reflection. Often categorized under Love Is, Four Horsemen Of The Apocalypse, Fusion, the quote offers insight, emotional clarity, and intellectual inspiration to readers worldwide.

Whether you’re a student exploring new ideas, a leader trying to motivate your team, or someone seeking direction in life — this quote provides value. It resonates because it’s more than words — it’s a bridge between experience and wisdom. It shows how Zygmunt Bauman interprets life's core challenges and triumphs.

Lessons From the Quote

This quote teaches resilience and focus. It reminds readers that no matter where they stand in life, reflection and self-awareness lead to growth. Each word has meaning, and when studied, it becomes clear how impactful thoughtful language can be.

About Zygmunt Bauman

Zygmunt Bauman is celebrated for insightful thoughts on love is and four horsemen of the apocalypse. Their legacy lives on through writings that guide, comfort, and inspire. Discover more on their profile page.

Actionable Takeaways

  • Reflect on how this quote applies to your current life path.
  • Share the message with someone who needs inspiration.
  • Write your thoughts on this quote in a journal or blog post.
  • Use it as a daily affirmation or reminder.

Closing Thoughts

Quotes like this endure because they capture universal truths. They comfort us in solitude and empower us in groups. Carry this quote forward — live by its wisdom, share its message, and keep its essence alive.

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Topic
Love Is
Four Horsemen Of The Apocalypse
Fusion
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You Cannot Have A Cake And Eat It Too. Either You Eat It, Or You Have It.
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Ideally, Nothing Should Be Embraced By A Consumer Firmly, Nothing Should Command A Commitment Till Death Do Us Part, No Needs Should Be Seen As Fully Satisfied, No Desires Considered Ultimate. There Ought To Be A Proviso 'until Further Notice' Attached To Any Oath Of Loyalty And Any Commitment. It Is But The Volatility, The In-built Temporality Of All Engagements That Truly Counts; It Counts More Than The Commitment Itself, Which Is Anyway Not Allowed To Outlast The Time Necessary For Consuming The Object Of Desire (or, Rather, The Time Sufficient For The Desirability Of That Object To Wane).
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We Belong To Talking, Not What Talking Is About... Stop Talking - And You Are Out. Silence Equals Exclusion.
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As Far As Love Is Concerned, Possession, Power, Fusion And Disenchantment Are The Four Horsemen Of The Apocalypse.
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Everybody Is In Trouble, Including The Up-and-coming Economic Miracles Of China, Brazil Or India.
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The Planet Is Full And We Will Be Rubbing Shoulders Forever. There Is Nowhere Else To Go.
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Some Dozens Of Years Ago, There Was A Debate Conducted Between People Insisting That "this Loaf Of Bread Must Be Redistributed," And The Others Who Said "instead Of Worrying About Redistributing It, Cutting Differently, Let's Make It Bigger." A Third Possibility Was Not Imagined: That The Loaf May Be Shrinking. But It Is Now A Genuine Possibility. It Is Even Acting Upon Already, Like In The Case Of The American Invasion Of Afghanistan And Of Iraq In Order To Secure The Supply Of Petrol For The Americans Addicted To Gas-guzzling Cars.
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Attempts To Tame The Wayward And Domesticate The Riotous, To Make The Unknowable Predictable And Enchain The Free-roaming - All Such Things Sound The Death Knell To Love. Eros Won't Outlast Duality. As Far As Love Is Concerned, Possession, Power, Fusion And Disenchantment Are The Four Horsemen Of The Apocalypse.
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The Risk Of The Holocaust Is Not That It Will Be Forgotten, But That It Will Be Embalmed And Surrounded By Monuments And Used To Absolve All Future Sins.
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The Secret Of Every Durable ... Social System Is The Recasting Of 'functional Prerequisites' Into Behavioral Motives For Actors.
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There Is Less Pressure On Abandoning Native Communities: What For? There Is Nothing To Be Gained By It. On One Hand, There Are Plenty Tempting Opportunities Of Experimenting With Identities - Being One Kind Of Person Today And A Different The Next Day. On The Other Hand, There Is Little Pressure To Include The Ethnic Identity Or Religious Identity Into This Mechanism, Because Now Everybody Is In A Kind Of Diaspora Today.
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Once We Realize That The Strangers Are Here Forever And Won't Go Away, Then, Like Husband And Wife In The Old-style Marriage, We Would Try To Find A Way Of Living Together Peacefully And With Mutual Benefit. The Sooner We Understand That In A Globalized World The Diasporic Nature Of Cohabitation Is Never Likely To End, That It Will Always Be With Us, I Believe Such Modus Vivendi Will Be Found.
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In A Liquid Modern Life There Are No Permanent Bonds, And Any That We Take Up For A Time Must Be Tied Loosely So That They Can Be Untied Again, As Quickly And As Effortlessly As Possible, When Circumstances Change - As They Surely Will In Our Liquid Modern Society, Over And Over Again.
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We Already Have Plenty Of Fundamentalism And Fundamental Sects Like For Instance Rabbi Schneerson And Chabad Lubavitch. They Feel More Secure Because They Are In The Warm, Caring/sharing Community. This Is The Difference Between Community (gemeinschaft) And What Ferdinand Tönnies Called Gesellschaft: A Kind Of Setting In Which You Have No Rights To Do Anything Unless You Pay For It, And No Right To Get Anything Unless You Prove That You Are 'credit Worthy'. In A Gemeinschaft, However, You Have A Place At The Table Guaranteed Whatever Happens.
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The Problem Of Insufficient Security Was, Until Quite Recently, A Matter Of A Minority; Now It Is Becoming Very Quickly A Majority Matter. That Is A Major Change.
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Minorities
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Alas, You Don't Need Monsters For Monstrous Deeds To Be Accomplished.
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Unlike 'real Relationships', 'virtual Relationships' Are Easy To Enter And To Exit. They Look Smart And Clean, Feel Easy To Use, When Compared With The Heavy, Slow-moving, Messy Real Stuff.
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"community" Came To Be Seen As A Chat-group: You Switch On As Long As Your Pleasure Lasts, Then Push Another Button And Switch Off. Very Easy To Go In And Out, Join And Leave.
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Fully "biodegradable" Structures Are Nowadays The Ideal And The Standards To Which Most, If Not All Structures, Struggle To Measure Up.
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As Long As Being A Stranger And Surrounded By Strangers Was Seen As A Temporary Irritant, A Smallest Departure From The Binding Rules Of Conduct By A Member Of A Minority, Was Taken For A Major Crime Justifying Deportation.
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There Were No "unemployed" In The Impoverished Polish Countryside Before The Second World War. Not A Single Unemployed. Every Child That Was Born In The Peasant Family Had His Room At The Table And His Job In The Field, Stable Or Pigsty... If There Was Not Enough Food, Everybody Got Less. If Food Was Plentiful, Everybody Ate Better. In Such A Setting, We May Say, The Problem Of Security Couldn't Even Arise... One Was Born With Life-long Rights; The Only Thing That One Could Not Do Was To Change Them. A Setting Good On The Side Of Security, Though Bad On The Side Of Freedom.
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Never Paint Epic Canvases During The Revolution, Because The Revolutionaries Will Tear Them Apart.
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Christ Could Not Create A Codified 'christian Ethics'; Such A Thing Would Be A Contradiction In Terms.
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Middle Class People, The Bourgeoisie, They Are Also Feeling Frightened At The Moment. Some Fear Losing Their Fortunes; Some Go Bankrupt; Some Are Thinking About Suicide. They Don't Know If They Will Retain The Beautiful House That They Bought, Or What Will Happen To The Five Family Cars.
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When People Think, Rightly Or Wrongly, That Marriage Is Forever, They Are Stimulated To Seek And Find A Resolution, A Modus Vivendi, Whenever They Quarrel.
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The Visual Does Seem To Me The Most Thoroughly Grasped And Recorded Among My Impressions; Sight Seems To Be My Principal Sense Organ, And "seeing" Supplies The Key Metaphors For Reporting The Perception.
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Man Is In His Short Sojourn On Earth Equal To God In His Eternity.
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For One To Be Free There Must Be At Least Two. Freedom Signifies A Social Relation, An Asymmetry Of Social Conditions: Essentially It Implies Social Difference--it Presumes And Implies The Presence Of Social Division. Some Can Be Free Only In So Far As There Is A Form Of Dependence They Can Aspire To Escape.
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Marcus Aurelius Appoints Personal Character And Conscience The Ultimate Refuge Of Happiness-seekers: The Only Place Where Dreams Of Happiness, Doomed To Die Childless And Intestate Anywhere Else, Are Not Bound To Be Frustrated.
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For The First Time In Living Memory, The Whole Class Of Graduates Faces A Future Of Crushing Debt, And A High Probability, Almost The Certainty, Of Ad Hoc, Temporary, Insecure And Part-time Work And Unpaid 'trainee' Pseudo-jobs Deceitfully Rebranded As 'practices' - All Considerably Below The Skills They Have Acquired And Eons Below The Level Of Their Expectations.
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Two
The Descent Of Israel From The Morally Towering Position Of A 'light For The Nations' To The Lowest Of The Low And One Of The Last Relics Of Bygone Shameful Times Of Merciless Imperialism, Conquest, Exploitation Is On The Cards.
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Once Upon A Time, When I Was Young, People Saw A Wedding As An Event That Determined The Rest Of Their Life. For A Rising Number Of People Today, It Is Quite Normal To "try And Err", Marry, Divorce, Marry Again.
Divorce
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People
When Opting Out From Partnership Is So Easy, Every Minor Disagreement Is Perceived As A Major Catastrophe And Irreparable Disaster.
Partnership
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Disaster
Why Do I Write Books? Why Do I Think? Why Should I Be Passionate? Because Things Could Be Different, They Could Be Made Better.
Book
Writing
Thinking
Security Was The Demand Which Set In Motion Labour Movements In History; Trade Unions, Friendly Societies, Consumer Cooperatives Were All About Compensating For The Impotence Of Individual Resistance.
Labour Movement
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If Only Evil Things Are Done By Evil People... Life Would Be Then Safe, Morally Elevated, Cozy - We Know How To Spot Evil People And What To Do With Them To Pay For Their Crimes.
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Pay
Would Be
With Every Death, A World Is Disappearing.
World
Disappear
As The Run-by-capital Society Of Producers Turned Since Into The Run-by-capital Society Of Consumers, I Would Say That The Main, Indeed "meta", Function Of The Governments Has Become Now To Assure That It Is The Meetings Between Commodities And The Consumers, And Credit Issuers And The Borrowers, That Regularly Take Place.
Running
Government
Credit
Jews And Gypsies Were Well-nigh The Only Diasporas In 19th Century Europe. Now Go To London, It Is A Collection Of Diasporas.
Europe
Diaspora
London
Jews Are No Longer Pressed And Obliged To Fight, Hide Or Deny Their Jewishness. What For? No One Actually Requires Today To Abandon The Idiosyncrasy Of Some Other Culture Or Ethnic Tradition. The Great Achievement Of This Last Period Is That We Have Been Slowly, Sometimes Reluctantly, Yet Steadily, Learning The Art Of Living With Differences.
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Fighting
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Most Young People Today Prefer Just To Move In Together And Stay Together As Long, But No Longer, As Satisfaction Lasts.
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Long
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With Globalization And With A Lot Of Power Evaporating From The Nation-states, The Late-19th Century Established Hierarchies Of Importance, Or 'pecking Orders' Of Cultures, Presenting Assimilation As An Advancement Or Promotion, Dissolved.
Order
Advancement
Culture
Our Bad Luck Is That Our Writing Is Linear, While We Think Circularly.
Writing
Thinking
Luck
As To Describing Me As An Outsider Throughout, And An Outsider Through And Through - I Have No Reason To Disagree.
Outsiders
Reason
Describe Me
While A Few Poor Countries Are Catching Up With The Rich World, The Differences Between The Richest And Poorest Individuals Around The Globe Are Huge And Likely Growing.
Country
Differences
World
The Woe Of Mortality Makes Humans God-like. It Is Because We Know That We Must Die That We Are So Busy Making Life. It Is Because We Are Aware Of Mortality That We Preserve The Past And Create The Future. Mortality Is Ours Without Asking--but Immortality Is Something We Must Build Ourselves. Immortality Is Not A Mere Absence Of Death; It Is Defiance And Denial Of Death. It Is 'meaningful' Only Because There Is Death, That Implacable Reality Which Is To Be Defied.
Meaningful
Past
Reality
Freedom Is The Slogan Which Speaks To The Ears Of People Who Feel Strong Enough To Manage On Their Own Using Their Own Resources, Who Can Do Without Dependency Because They Can Do Without Others Caring For Them.
Strong
Caring
People
Community Is Like A Big Family.
Community
Big Families
Bigs
Freedom Without Security Portends Chaos, Perpetual Anxiety And Fear.
Anxiety
Chaos
Perpetual
I Guess My Claustrophobia Is Incurable - Feeling, As I Tend To, Ill At Ease In Any Closed Room, And Always Tempted To Find Out What Is On The Other Side Of The Door.
Doors
Feelings
Ease
The Task Is To Keep The Lost Opportunities Of The Past Alive.
Past
Opportunity
Tasks
In Our World Of Rampant Individualisation, Relationships Are Mixed Blessings. They Vacillate Between A Sweet Dream And A Nightmare, And There Is No Telling When One Turns Into The Other.
Dream
Sweet
Blessing
There Are Other Ways Of Finding Satisfaction, Recipes For Human Happiness, Enjoyment, Dignified And Meaningful, Gratifying Life, Than Increased Consumption That Increases Production.
Meaningful
Recipes
Way
I Suspect That One Of Capitalism's Crucial Assets Derives From The Fact That The Imagination Of Economists, Including Its Critics, Lags Well Behind Its Own Inventiveness, The Arbitrariness Of Its Undertaking And The Ruthlessness Of The Way In Which It Proceeds.
Imagination
Lag
Ruthlessness
Questioning The Ostensibly Unquestionable Premises Of Our Way Of Life Is Arguably The Most Urgent Of Services We Owe Our Fellow Humans And Ourselves.
Way
Life Is
Questioning
"once There, Always There", Would Give You Less Freedom Than You Recently Enjoyed, But More Security. Security Not In The Sense Of Safety From Terrorists, Burglars, Or Pickpockets... But Security In The Sense Of Knowing Where You Are, Who You Are, On What Kind Of Future You Can Count, What Will Happen, Whether You Will Preserve Your Position In Society Or Whether You Will Be Degraded And Humiliated - This Sort Of Security. This Sort Of Security For Many, Many People - A Rising Number Of People - Looks At The Moment More Attractive Than More Freedom.
Numbers
Knowing
People
You Are A Stranger, I Am A Stranger, We All Remain Strangers, And Nevertheless We Can Like Or Even Love Each Other.
Stranger
Love Each Other
Nevertheless
We Are Always Confronted With Choice.
Choices
What Has Been Cut Apart Cannot Be Glued Back Together. Abandon All Hope Of Totality, Future As Well As Past, You Who Enter The World Of Fluid Modernity.
Cutting
Past
Together
Partnerships Are Increasingly Seen Through The Prism Of Promises And Expectations, And As A Kind Of Product For Consumers: Satisfaction On The Spot, And If Not Fully Satisfied, Return The Product To The Shop Or Replace It With A New And Improved One! You Don't, After All, Stick To Your Car, Or Computer, Or Ipod, When Better Ones Appear.
Ipods
Car
Expectations
I Was Leftwing, I Am Leftwing, And I Will Die Leftwing.
Dies
All The Skills Which I Have Acquired During My Sociological Life Allow Me To Diagnose And Explain What Is Going On, But Not To Predict What Will Happen.
Skills
Sociological
Happens
The So Called "progress," "time Marching On," Is Not A Straight Line, But A Pendulum.
Marching On
Progress
Lines
Ingeniously, Capitalism Discovered That The Economy May Be Moved Not By Satisfying Existing Needs, But By Creating New Ones.
Creating
Needs
May
The Tragedy Is What - Given The 'right Circumstances,' - Normal Decent Folks, Like You And Me, Will Do. This Is What Makes Me Worry Whenever Looking On The Road That Israel Entered And Shows No Intention Of Leaving.
Israel
Worry
Leaving
The Art Of Walking On Quicksand Is Still Beyond Me. What I Learned Is Only How Difficult This Art Is To Master And How Hard People Need To Struggle To Learn It.
Art
Struggle
People
'i Am Insecure' Means: I Can't Cope On My Own. The Odds Are Overwhelming. I Can't Resist Them On My Own. I Need Us To Join Forces, Stand Shoulder To Shoulder, March Hand In Hand.
Mean
Insecure
Odds
With My Tongue In One Cheek Only, I'd Suggest That Were Our Palaeolithic Ancestors To Discover The Peer-review Dredger, We Would Be Still Sitting In Caves.
Would Be
Peers
Sitting
Avoid The Crowd, Avoid Mass Audiences, Keep Your Own Counsel, Which Is The Counsel Of Philosophy Of Wisdom You Can Acquire And Make Your Own.
Philosophy
Crowds
Mass
Relationships, Like Cars, Should Undergo Regular Services To Make Sure They Are Still Roadworthy.
Car
Should
Stills
The Consumerist Culture Insists That Swearing Eternal Loyalty To Anything And Anybody Is Imprudent, Since In This World New Glittering Opportunities Crop Up Daily.
Loyalty
Opportunity
Culture
Security Without Freedom Means Slavery.
Mean
Slavery
Security
In A Consumer Society, People Wallow In Things, Fascinating, Enjoyable Things. If You Define Your Value By The Things You Acquire And Surround Yourself With, Being Excluded Is Humiliating.
People
Surround Yourself
Consumers
I Guess I Am Doomed To Remain An Outsider To The End, Lacking As I Am The Indispensable Qualities Of An Academic Insider: School Loyalty, Conformity To The Procedure, And Readiness To Obey By The School-endorsed Criteria Of Cohesion And Consistency.
Loyalty
School
Consistency
Being Condemned By Fate To Perpetual Togetherness, We Better Make That Shared Fate Into Our Shared, Consciously And Gladly Embraced, Destiny.
Fate
Destiny
Togetherness
I Am Not A Prophet; I Cannot Predict What Will Happen.
Prophet
Happens
We Live In A Globalising World. That Means That All Of Us, Consciously Or Not, Depend On Each Other. Whatever We Do Or Refrain From Doing Affects The Lives Of People Who Live In Places We'll Never Visit.
Mean
People
World
The Question Of Identity Has Separated From The Issue Of 'assimilation', Having Lost Much Of Its Drama And Become, So To Speak, A Secular Problem.
Drama
Issues
Identity
Where We Hope To Land (and Where We Do Land, Though Only For A Fleeting Moment, Enough For Tired Wings To Catch The Wind Anew) Is A 'there' Which We Thought Of Little And Knew Of Even Less.
Tired
Wind
Land
State Governments Seek Local Remedies For The Globally Fabricated Deprivations And Miseries In Vain - Just As The Individuals-by-the-decree-of-fate (read: By The Impact Of Deregulation) Seek In Vain The Individual Solutions To The Socially Fabricated Life Problems.
Fate
Impact
Government
The Carrying Power Of A Bridge Is Not The Average Strength Of The Pillars, But The Strength Of The Weakest Pillar. I Have Always Believed That You Do Not Measure The Health Of A Society By Gnp But By The Condition Of Its Worst Off.
Average
Bridges
Pillars
A Reliable Assurance Of The Right And Ability To Dismantle The Constructed Structure Must Be Offered, Before The Job Of Construction Starts In Earnest.
Jobs
Construction
Structure
Life Purpose May Be Shifted From Achieving A 'steady State' (an Equilibrium Between Desires And Plausibilities) To The Excitement Of Running After Novelties. In Other Words, Be Guided By New Desires, Not By Extant Needs.
Running
Desire
Needs
Freedom Is The Slogan Of The Strong, Who Feel Self Confident, Self Sufficient To Do It Alone.
Strong
Self
Feels
It Is Easy Now To Break The Vows. It Is Even Easier To Part Your Ways If Vows Haven't Been Taken.
Taken
Way
Easy
Human Attention Tends To Be Focused On The Satisfactions Relationships Are Hoped To Bring, Precisely Because Somehow They Have Not Been Truly Satisfactory. And If They Do Satisfy, The Price Of This Satisfaction Has Often Been Found To Be Unacceptable.
Attention
Satisfaction
Found
This Awful Concept Of Underclass Is Really Horrifying. You're Not Lower Class, You Are Excluded - Outside.
Class
Awful
Excluded
Madness Is No Madness When Shared.
Insanity
Madness
Happiness Needs One-upmanship.
Needs
I Suspect That The Peer-review System Carries A Good Part Of Blame For The Fact That Something Like Sixty Percent Or More Of Journal Articles Are Never Quoted (which Means Leaving No Trace On Our Joint Scholarly Pursuits), And (in My Reception At Any Rate) The "learned Journals" (with A Few Miraculous Exceptions That Entail, Prominently, Tcs) Ooze Monumental Boredom.
Mean
Boredom
Leaving
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