Top stories published by Up to a Point in 2020

The efficiency movement began when Bethlehem Steel Works, in Pennsylvania, hired a mechanical engineer from Philadelphia named Frederick Winslow Taylor to speed production, which Taylor proposed to do with a system he called “task management” or, later, “The Gospel of…

Paulo Henrique Lemos in Up to a Point

Sep 9, 2020

On the drive to create

Our drive to create originates in — and compensates for — a primal feeling of alienation, of lostness in the universe and confusion about our identity. Frequently aligned with that sense of our original inadequacy is, somewhat paradoxically, a perception of our subsequent decline. The…

Paulo Henrique Lemos in Up to a Point

Oct 9, 2020

On soccer and life

Soccer was not meant to be enjoyed. It was meant to be experienced. The World Cup is a festival of fate: man accepting his hard circumstances, the near certainty of his failure. There is, after all, something familiar about a contest in which nobody wins and nobody pots a goal. Nil-nil is the…

Paulo Henrique Lemos in Up to a Point

Sep 21, 2020

On raising aspirations

At critical moments in time, you can raise the aspirations of other people significantly, especially when they are relatively young, simply by suggesting they do something better or more ambitious than what they might have in mind. It costs you relatively little to do this, but the…

Paulo Henrique Lemos in Up to a Point

Dec 1, 2020

On middle-class anxieties

As sociologist George Homans observed, “Middle-status conservatism reflects the anxiety experienced by one who aspires to a social station but fears disenfranchisement.” The fall from low to lower hardly hurts; the fall from middle to low is devastating.

— Adam Grant, in “Originals”.

Paulo Henrique Lemos in Up to a Point

Sep 9, 2020

On the difference between the library and the classroom

The pursuit of knowing was freedom to me, the right to declare your own curiosities and follow them through all manner of books. I was made for the library, not the classroom. The classroom was a jail of other people’s interests. The…

Paulo Henrique Lemos in Up to a Point

Sep 17, 2020

On the relationship between the artist and the critic

Artists are angry supplicants, angered by having to ask for support. Writers on art are more often mystified by the artists’ anger, thinking that it is the subtlety of their discernment that artists admire, not their capacity as…

Paulo Henrique Lemos in Up to a Point

Sep 18, 2020

On leadership and communication

Klopp had a great knack for hitting the right note with supporters, he spoke their language, says Dickel. ‘We had plenty of coaches who would say: “Today, our game between the lines, between defence and midfield, and between midfield and attack, hasn’t quite worked out.”…

Paulo Henrique Lemos in Up to a Point

Oct 6, 2020

On hopes and desires

The last few years have taught me to suspend my desire for a conclusion, to assume that nothing is static and that renegotiation will be perpetual, to hope primarily that little truths will keep emerging in time.

— Jia Tolentino, in "Trick Mirror".

Paulo Henrique Lemos in Up to a Point

Dec 2, 2020

On movies versus life

The problem, he said, is that people insist on getting everything straight. On having movies make sense, and on being provided with a key for unlocking complex movies. “It’s the weirdest thing. We’re willing to accept anything, absolutely anything, in real life. But we demand order from…

2018

2021

These were the top 10 stories published by Up to a Point in 2020. You can also dive into monthly archives for 2020 by using the calendar at the top of this page.

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Up to a Point

An appreciation of quotes in the English language.

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