Book I'm Reading: "Twilight of the Elites" by Christopher Hayes

There is no way to extricate ourselves from this web of mediation. What we actually know firsthand is minuscule: the feel of the spring air on our skin, our own private daydreams and phobias.

Observing this phenomenon in a letter to his boss, Queen Elizabeth, Gresham concluded that such a result was unavoidable. Surveying the "unexampled state of badness" of England's coins, he proclaimed "that good and bad coin cannot circulate together."