Mara

“That’s because language doesn’t work to manipulate people into believing things they don’t want to believe; instead, it gives them license to believe ideas they’re already open to. Language—both literal and figurative, well-intentioned and ill-intentioned, politically correct and politically incorrect—reshapes a person’s reality only if they are in an ideological place where that reshaping is welcome.”
― Amanda Montell, Cultish: The Language of Fanaticism—Understanding the Social Science of Cult Influence

“Racist” is not—as Richard Spencer argues—a pejorative. It is not the worst word in the English language; it is not the equivalent of a slur. It is descriptive, and the only way to undo racism is to consistently identify and describe it—and then dismantle it. The attempt to turn this usefully descriptive term into an almost unusable slur is, of course, designed to do the opposite: to freeze us into inaction.”
― Ibram X. Kendi, How to Be an Antiracist

“Whether we’re communicating with a human or a machine, the goal is to create a shared understanding of the world. That’s the point behind both the rules governing polite conversation and how a user-friendly machine should work.”
― Cliff Kuang, User Friendly: How the Hidden Rules of Design Are Changing the Way We Live, Work, and Play

“[O]ffenses like disorderly conduct, obstruction, and resisting arrest are easily alleged, they effectively give police the power to arrest based on violations of their own sense of authority.”
― Alexandra Natapoff, Punishment Without Crime: How Our Massive Misdemeanor System Traps the Innocent and Makes America More Unequal