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Fascism was triumphantly anti-liberal. It also provided the proof that man can, without difficulty, combine crack-brained beliefs about the world with a confident mastery of contemporary high technology. ... Nevertheless, the combination of conservative values, the techniques of mass democracy, and an innovative ideology of irrationalist savagery, essentially centered in nationalism, must be explained..

Age of Extremes

The old is dying and the new cannot be born. In this interregnum there arises a great diversity of morbid symptoms.
Letters from Prison (1946)

Barry Eichengreen and Kevin O'Rourke provide an interesting economic historical comparison in this blog article, "A Tale of Two Depressions". Yes, things still look serious. Now time will tell whether the stimulus was sufficient or just postponed a day of reckoning. I don't think that the core issues (bad assets on the books, too big to fail institutions, have been resolved and that optimism is unwarranted.

"To summarise: the world is currently undergoing an economic shock every bit as big as the Great Depression shock of 1929-30. Looking just at the US leads one to overlook how alarming the current situation is even in comparison with 1929-30."

For a man to pride himself on this kind of wealth, as if it enriched him, is as ridiculous as if one struggling in the ocean with a bag of gold on his back should gasp out, "I am worth a hundred thousand dollars!" I see his ineffectual struggles just as plainly, and what it is that sinks him.
Journal November 5, 1857

And we should call every truth false which was not accompanied by at least one laugh.

I cannot seem to feel alive unless I am alert and I cannot feel alert unless I push past the point where I have control.

-from Some of the Dead Are Still Breathing

One must believe in the reality of time. Otherwise one is just dreaming.

God is usually on the side of the big squadrons against the small.

The future is just going to be a vast, conforming suburb of the soul.

The whole of the day should not be daytime, nor of the night night-time, but some portion be rescued from time to oversee time in. All our hours must not be current; all our time must not lapse. There must be one hour at least which the day did not bring forth,—of ancient parentage and long-established nobility,—which will be a serene and lofty platform overlooking the rest. We should make our notch every day on our characters, as Robinson Crusoe on his stick. We must be at the helm at least once a day; we must feel the tiller-rope in our hands, and know that if we sail, we steer.