People rescue each other. They build shelters and community kitchens and ways to deal with lost children and eventually rebuild one way or another. Rebecca Solnit Read Quote
The world you live in is not a given; much of what is best in it has been built through the struggles of passionate activists over the last centuries. They won us many freedoms and protected many beauties. Count those gifts among your growing heap. Rebecca Solnit Read Quote
Violence always seems to me the worst form of tyranny. It deprives people of their rights, including the right to live. Rebecca Solnit Read Quote
Thinking is generally thought of as doing nothing in a production-oriented society, and doing nothing is hard to do. It’s best done by disguising it as doing something, and the something closest to doing nothing is walking. Rebecca Solnit Read Quote
Panic is rare, looting is essentially insignificant, people are not terrified and trampling each other to flee from a disaster scene, but in fact are trying to manage a situation. We may in fact revert to some sort of primordial civility. Rebecca Solnit Read Quote
The oil dinosaurs want to win so badly in my home state because what happens here matters everywhere. The nation often follows where California goes. Rebecca Solnit Read Quote
I feel often that we don’t have the right language to talk about emotions in disasters. Everyone is on edge, of course, but it also pulls people away from a lot of trivial anxieties and past and future concerns and gratuitous preoccupations that we have, and refocuses us in a very intense way. Rebecca Solnit Read Quote
The great majority of people are calm, resourceful, altruistic or even beyond altruistic, as they risk themselves for others. We improvise the conditions of survival beautifully. Rebecca Solnit Read Quote
We have a real role in how our own collective lives, our nation, and our world and society turn out. Seizing those opportunities is important, and disasters are sometimes one of those opportunities. Rebecca Solnit Read Quote
