Feel Free: Essays

Zadie Smith

“Progress is never permanent, will always be threatened, must be redoubled, restated and reimagined if it is to survive.”

Zadie Smith on optimism and despair, superb read:

Human Values and Science, Art and Mathematics

Lillian Lieber

Mathematician Lillian Lieber, of whom Einstein was a fan, on how the greatest creative revolution in mathematics illuminates the core ideals of social justice and democracy:

The Dyer’s Hand and Other Essays

W. H. Auden

“In our age, the mere making of a work of art is itself a political act.”

Auden on the political power of art and the crucial difference between party issue and revolutionary issues — astoundingly timely read from half a century ago:

The Price of the Ticket: Collected Nonfiction, 1948-1985

James Baldwin

“It has always been much easier (because it has always seemed much safer) to give a name to the evil without than to locate the terror within.”

James Baldwin on our capacity for transformation as individuals and nations:

John Quincy Adams: Diaries 1779-1821

John Quincy Adams

John Quincy Adams on efficiency vs. effectiveness, the proper aim of ambition, and his daily routine:

Democracy and Poetry

Robert Penn Warren

“[Art] is the process by which, in imagining itself and the relation of individuals to one another and to it, a society comes to understand itself, and by understanding, discover its possibilities of growth.”

Terrific, timely read on power, tenderness, and art’s role in a thriving democracy:

Ideas and Opinions

Albert Einstein

“There is [a] human right which is infrequently mentioned but which seems to be destined to become very important: this is the right, or the duty, of the individual to abstain from cooperating in activities which he considers wrong or pernicious.”

Einstein on the interconnectedness of our fates and our mightiest counterforce against injustice – timely wisdom from a man who lived through two World Wars and never relinquished his faith in the human spirit:

The Human Condition, 2nd Edition

Hannah Arendt

“The smallest act in the most limited circumstances bears the seed of… boundlessness, because one deed, and sometimes one word, suffices to change every constellation.”

The ever-brilliant Hannah Arendt on speech, action, and how we reinvent the world:

Advice for a Young Investigator

Santiago Ramón y Cajal

“Oh comforting solitude, how favorable thou art to original thought!”

The founding father of neuroscience on solitude, the importance of science in a nation’s greatness, and the ideal social environment for intellectual achievement:

Survival In Auschwitz

Primo Levi

“A country is considered the more civilized the more the wisdom and efficiency of its laws hinder a weak man from becoming too weak or a powerful one too powerful.”

The great humanitarian and Holocaust survivor Primo Levi on happiness, unhappiness, and the interconnectedness of our fates:

Between Past and Future: Eight Exercises in Political Thought

Hannah Arendt

Hannah Arendt on science, the value of space exploration, and how our cosmic ambitions illuminate the human condition:

Emerson: Essays and Lectures: Nature: Addresses and Lectures / Essays

Ralph Waldo Emerson

“Masses are rude, lame, unmade, pernicious in their demands and influence… I wish not to concede anything to them, but to tame, drill, divide, and break them up, and draw individuals out of them.”

Emerson, writing 170 years ago and timely as ever, on defending our individual integrity against the tyranny of the mindless masses:

The Mother of All Questions: Further Reports from the Feminist Revolutions

Rebecca Solnit

“We are our stories, stories that can be both prison and the crowbar to break open the door of that prison.”

Rebecca Solnit on breaking silence as our mightiest weapon against oppression:

The Sane Society

Erich Fromm

“The whole life of the individual is nothing but the process of giving birth to himself; indeed, we should be fully born, when we die.”

The great humanistic philosopher and psychologist Erich Fromm on how to save us from ourselves:

Lost Woods: The Discovered Writing of Rachel Carson

Rachel Carson

“The real wealth of the Nation lies in the resources of the earth — soil, water, forests, minerals, and wildlife… Their administration is not properly, and cannot be, a matter of politics.”

Rachel Carson’s courageous and prescient 1953 letter against the government’s assault on science and nature: