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Ronald Wright Biography

Ronald Wright (born 1948, London, United Kingdom) is a Canadian author who has written books of travel, history and fiction. His nonfiction includes the bestseller Stolen Continents, winner of the Gordon Montador Award and chosen as a book of the year by the Independent and the Sunday Times. His first novel, A Scientific Romance, won the 1997 David Higham Prize for Fiction and was chosen a book of the year by the Globe and Mail, the Sunday Times, and the New York Times.

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Ronald Wright Quotes

Even today, some opt for the comforts of mystification, preferring to believe that the wonders of the ancient world were built by Atlanteans, gods, or space travelers, instead of by thousands toiling in the sun. Such thinking robs our forerunners of their due, and us of their experience. Because then one can believe whatever one likes about the past - without having to confront the bones, potsherds, and inscriptions which tell us that people all over the world, time and again, have made similar advances and mistakes.

Atlanteans, Believe, Mistake, Potsherds, Thinking, Toiling

Like most problems with technology, pollution is a problem of scale. The biosphere might have been able to tolerate our dirty old friends coal and oil if we burned them gradually, but how long can it withstand a blaze of consumption so frenzied that the dark size of this planet glows like a fanned ember in the night of space.

Blaze, Burned, Dark, Dirty, Like, Technology

America seemed a virgin land waiting for civilization. But Europe had made the wilderness it found; America was not a virgin, she was a widow.

Europe, Land, Civilization, Wilderness, Seemed

Societies that do not eat people are fascinated by those that do.

People, History, Society, Fascinated, Eat

If civilization is to survive, it must live on the interest, not the capital, of nature.

Nature, Civilization, Interest, Capital

the most compelling reason for reforming our system is that the system is in no one's interest. It is a suicide machine.

Suicide, Compelling Reason, Machines, System, Reason, Reforming

Like all creatures, humans have made their way in the world by trial and error. Unlike other creatures we have a presence so colossal that error is a luxury we can no longer afford. The world has grown too small to forgive us any big mistakes.

Mistake, Errors, Luxury, Forgive, Afford, Trial

Each time history repeats itself, the price goes up.

Inspirational, History Repeats Itself, Historian, Price, Repeats, History

Capitalism lures us onward like the mechanical hare before the greyhounds, insisting that the economy is infinite and sharing therefore irrelevant. Just enough greyhounds catch a real hare now and then to keep the others running till they drop. In the past it was only the poor who lost this game; now it is the planet.

Catch, Hare, Infinite, Past, Real, Running

Steve Stricker

Steve Stricker

Max Beerbohm

Max Beerbohm

Paul Bley

Paul Bley

Slade Gorton

Slade Gorton

C. K. Williams

C. K. Williams

Cool Papa Bell

Cool Papa Bell

Richard Prince

Richard Prince

Patrick Mouratoglou

Patrick Mouratoglou

Samuel Goldwyn

Samuel Goldwyn

Harry Greb

Harry Greb

Joel Dicker

Joel Dicker

James P. Hoffa

James P. Hoffa