'The first step in building our dwelling is to recognize that we have already built one.

Society remains as mysterious to us as we are to ourselves, or as God is. That we are the slave-drivers of ourselves has not come about "for private reasons, as [we] must believe" (I, 10). It is an open realization of what we have made of the prophecy of democracy. It is what we have done with the success of Locke and the others in removing the divine right of kings and placing political authority in our consent to be governed together. That this has made life a little easier for some, in some respects, is a less important consequence than the fact that we now consent to social evil. What was to be a blessing we have made a curse. We do not see our hand in what happens, so we call certain events melancholy accidents when they are the inevitabilities of our projects (I, 75), and we call other events necessities because we will not change our minds. The essential meaning of the idea of a social contract is that political institutions require justification, that they are absolutely without sanctity, that power over us is held on trust from us, that institutions have no authority other than the authority we lend them, that we are their architects, that they are therefore artifacts, that there are laws or ends, of nature or justice, in terms of which they are to be tested. They are experiments.

To learn that we have forgotten this is part of our education which is sadly neglected.'

'When we encounter the unmarked nonprogressive present tense with occurrences, we can guess that we are dealing with a foreigner or a poem.'

Drumming on Lexington, just around the corner from the governor's mansion: No justice, no peace.

An Amtrak passenger line from above, passing beneath a bridge across Ayd Mill Road, illuminated from within in anticipation of its Saint Paul stop: cars for sitting, dining, viewing are so visibly distinct in function that the whole train—with almost no passengers to be seen—seems transparent.

'… that false and senseless Way of Speaking…'

'Writing and failing to write are the most constant activities…'

'THAT SHIT AIN'T EVEN HEAVY.'

'One wou’d think, there was nothing easier for us, than to know our own Minds, and understand what our main Scope was; what we plainly drove at, and what we propos’d to our-selves, as our End, in every Occurrence of our Lives. But our Thoughts have generally such an obscure implicit Language, that ’tis the hardest thing in the world to make ’em speak out distinctly. For this reason, the right Method is to give ’em Voice and Accent. And this, in our default, is what the Moralists or Philosophers endeavour to do, to our hand; when, as is usual, they hold us out a kind of vocal Looking-Glass, draw Sound out of our Breast, and instruct us to personate our-selves, in the plainest manner.'

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