Mark Adams Quotes

I remembered an unpleasant weekend spent struggling to comprehend the philosopher Immanuel Kant's explanation of the difference between calling something beautiful and calling it sublime. Nowadays, we throw around the word "sublime" to describe gooey desserts or overpriced handbags. In Kant's epistemology, it meant something limitless, an aesthetically pleasing entity so huge that it made the perceiver's head hurt. Machu Picchu isn't just beautiful, it's sublime.

I'd found fear of death and failure to be excellent motivators.

If you've ever thought, 'The new Times Square is delightful but would be even better if it were more claustrophobic and nearly impossible to leave', the Aguas Calientes is calling your name

So the Inca Trail isn't just a pretty shortcut that Pachacutec took on his way to his summer home?" "Mark, you can't finish the Inca Trail and not know that this was the end point of a pilgrimage.

That the story of Atlantis - much beloved by psychics, UFO spotters, and conspiracy theorists - should have sprung from one of history's greatest minds struck me, to put it lightly, as a little odd. It was like hearing that

I felt bad for lying to John, who was about as honest as Abe Lincoln on sodium Pentothal.

Wittgenstein had helped fake the moon landings.