Top Ben H. Winters Quotes - Quotesmemo.com

Ben H. Winters Biography

Benjamin Allen H. "Ben" Winters is an American author, journalist, teacher and playwright.

Read about Ben H. Winters in Wikipedia

Random Authors

Ben H. Winters Quotes

Fiction has this special power. It has a power to clarify, to galvanize, to prophesy, and warn.

Clarify, Fiction, Power, Prophesy, Special, Warn

There is no shortage of ways that people profit indirectly from the misery and cruelty in other places. Even now, the shirts we wear and the tomatoes we eat. There are unfortunately unfair and inhumane conditions - including literal slavery - all over the world.

People, World, Slavery, Wear, Unfortunately

We forget the conditions - not only in slavery - but after slavery, when there was this purposeful locking out of African Americans from economic opportunity. Or we forget today's incarceration rates, and educational and housing discrimination; all of these things. We pretend that everything that has happened happened long ago, and then we act as if we all now just treat each other equally, everything will be fine.

Educational, Opportunity, Long, Discrimination, Locking, Rates

It is part of what makes America great. That tradition of the free press, and also the tradition of this highly competitive market for investigative journalism. We're seeing, there's no question, that we're seeing a renaissance of that.

America, Free, Investigative, Journalism, Market, Renaissance

One thing that fiction does is it allows us to take big picture questions, big issues, big moral and socio-political changes and see how they play out on real people's lives, with real individuals.

Big, Issues, Lives, Play, Real, Thing

History is not the linear sort of movement toward better and better things.

Linear, Movement, Sort, Things, Toward

Our political divides have become our personal divides.

Become, Divides, Personal, Political

In terms of optimism, I am optimistic. I do think that, in the long term, that America will right itself. I have to think so.

America, Optimistic, Right, Term, Thinking

I think it's a very stark marker of what kind of president we have that, from all available evidence, Donald Trump has not read a book, as an adult. This is not someone who sits down in the evening to consider the latest bestseller, let alone Tolstoy - but who is very very active on this medium that requires no discipline and no attention and no empathy. It is all about retweeting praise of oneself or very quickly or poorly considered, ill-typed, misspelled diatribes against other people.

Alone, Book, Discipline, Kind, Marker, Thinking

It must be that there is something in the hearts of human beings, some natural fluid perhaps, that insists on happiness, even confronted with the most powerful arguments against it.

Powerful, Heart, Argument, Arguments, Insists, Human

Here in America we have a man [Donald Trump] who is a master of a medium that is all about self-aggrandizement and
or cruelty to others. I have been off Twitter lately because I had this sudden sort of feeling of, this man is the president of this club and it's not a club that I want to be in. Sometimes I feel like, well, perhaps it's not right because as a political activist, this is where politics is happening right now. This is where the conversation is going on, but at the same time, I think there is something corrosive about it.

Men, Thinking, America, President, Corrosive, Twitter

I think it's hard sometimes for people to grapple with the real-life consequences of political change. I think that, we as a culture, feel like politics is one sector of our lives that can feel apart from our personal lives and the cultural things we're interested in and the sports we watch. It feels like this separate, different thing.

Grapple, Real, Sports, Thing, Things, Thinking

It is really something, the extent to which we allow ourselves to live without thinking of things that we know, in the abstract, are bad, and are going on right now, somewhere far away. We think, "Well, what are you gonna do?" In a way, that little instinct, that "What are you gonna do?" is the most dangerous thing in the world.

Thinking, World, Far Away, Gonna, Away

A book is not a tweet. A book is not a half-hour television show. A book requires for both reader and writer sustained discipline attention. It asks you to immerse yourself in something and really deeply feel it.

Asks, Attention, Book, Discipline, Television

We spend so much time, these days, on forms of literature that don't rise to be literature, and I'm speaking about Twitter posts and quick and hot takes on different websites. We sort of zoom from thing to thing like a hummingbird.

Different, Hot, Literature, Speaking, Spend, Zoom

One thing we've learned about Donald Trump - this candidate first, president-elect, and now president - is that he has this sort of reptilian instinct for rooting out supposed enemies and finding people he can whip up distrust into rage.

Enemy, Finding, People, President, Sort