No machines will ever truly fully figure the brain out, because the brain's performance is constantly altered or else constrained by this inanimate, rogue artifact you can't control, namely, speech.
Tom WolfeRead
American government is like a train on a track. You have the people on the left shouting; you have the people on the right. But the train's on track. They just keep ploughing ahead.
Interpretation
What this quote means
The quote illustrates the persistence of government machinery amidst political dissent.
Tom Wolfe's quote uses the metaphor of a train on a track to convey how the government continues to advance regardless of opposing political voices. The train represents the government's course of action, while the people shouting from the sides symbolize the polarized debates and opinions that often arise but do not halt the progress of governance.
Themes
GovernmentPoliticsProgressDebateDivision
In practice
Example use cases
In a political speech highlighting perseverance in governance despite challenges, one could quote Wolfe to illustrate resilience.
More from Tom Wolfe
All quotes →And - of course! - the Non-people. The whole freaking world was full of people who were bound to tell you they weren't qualified to do this or that but they were determined to go ahead and do just that thing anyway.
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The whole conviction of my life now rests upon the belief that loneliness, far from being a rare and curious phenomenon, peculiar to myself and to a few other solitary men, is the central and inevitable fact of human existence.
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Driving a stock car does not require much handling ability, at least not as compared to Grand Prix racing, because the tracks are simple banked ovals and there is almost no shifting of gears. So, qualifying becomes a test of raw nerve - of how fast a man is willing to take a curve.
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I have discovered that for me - now, maybe it doesn't work for everybody - for me, it is much more effective to arrive at any situation as a man from Mars than to try to fit in.
Tom WolfeRead
There has been a time on earth when poets had been young and dead and famous - and were men. But now the poet as the tragic child of grandeur and destiny had changed. The child of genius was a woman, now, and the man was gone.
Tom WolfeRead
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