Not my circus, not my monkeys

 --- Polish proverb "Nie mój cyrk, nie moje małpy," according to the Polish and Proud blog, April 2019

From the blog:

In short, it could be translated as having the same meaning of "I mind my own business" or "it’s none of my business", but in a broader sense, it’s usually used to enhance the fact that you are not the one to judge someone else’s actions, even when you don’t necessarily agree with them. As if the mess someone else has found himself in, is not your mess to worry about, and the people taking part in that mess are not the ones you can control. 

The research shows that this proverb is not actually an old one. This is interesting because most used usually have a long history and a meaning behind them. It is noted by Henryk Markiewicz and Andrzej Romanowski in Skrzydlate słowa: wielki słownik cytatów polskich i obcych from 2005, that the proverb has been first used in 1993, when Ireneusz Sekula commented the governing of Hanna Suchocka.

They could fight, or they could gamble

 --- Canadian Museum of History archaeologist Gabriel Yanicki, about game pieces found at a Native American archaeological site, in "Walking Into New Worlds," Archaeology, Sep/Oct 2020

In context:

In addition to the moccasins, the team unearthed more bison bones, hide scrapers, sewing awls, small beads, and fragments of woven mats and baskets. Perhaps the most significant group of artifacts they excavated is a large collection of gaming pieces. This evidence of gambling is particularly telling, says Canadian Museum of History archaeologist Gabriel Yanicki. “These games weren’t just recreational pastimes,” he says. They were a proxy for communication, indicating that contact between groups was taking place. Native elders have explained that when two groups speaking different languages and from different cultures encountered each other, they had a choice: “They could fight,” Yanicki says, “or they could gamble.”

Magic without magic

 --- John Wheeler, via a Nautilus animation of comments by Robbert Dijkgraaf

From an obituary, "Magic without Magic: John Archibald Wheeler (1911-2008)" by @curiouswavefn

Only Wheeler could have introduced paradoxical and yet meaningful phrases like "mass without mass". In celebration of his sixtieth birthday, physicists produced a volume dedicated to him with a title that appropriately captured the essence of his thinking- "magic without magic". 

The 1972 festschrift: Magic without magic: John Archibald Wheeler;: A collection of essays in honor of his sixtieth birthday (amazon).

although grace is ineffable, grace travels through material things

 --- Miri Rubin, on the BBC In Our Time episode Medieval Pilgrimage, at timecode 11:00

In context - responding to a question from Melvyn Bragg about the role of relics, and the power associated with them

From very early on, the very idea of a sacrament means that deep in Christianity is the belief that although grace is ineffable, grace travels through material things.

the costs and risks of the coming phases of the industrial economy were to be socialized, with eventual profits privatized

 --- Noam Chomsky, Failed States: The Abuse of Power and the Assault on Democracy (2007), p. 126

In context: 

With the Cold War no longer available, it was necessary to reframe pretexts not only for intervention but also for militarized state capitalism at home. The Pentagon budget presented to Congress a few months after the fall Of the Berlin Wall remained largely unchanged, but was packaged in a new rhetorical framework, presented in the National Security Strategy of March 1990. One priority was to sup- port advanced industry in traditional ways, in sharp violation of the free market doctrines proclaimed and imposed on others. The National Security Strategy called for strengthening "the defense industrial base" (essentially, high-tech industry) with incentives "to invest in new facilities and equipment as well as in research and development." As in the past, the costs and risks of the coming phases of the industrial economy were to be socialized, with eventual profits privatized, a form of state socialism for the rich on which much of the advanced US economy relies, particularly since World War Il, but with precedents in the advanced economies back to the early days of the industrial revolution." In the past several decades, Pentagon funding for research and development has declined, while support through the National Institutes of Health and other "health-related" components of the state sector has increased, as the cutting edge of the economy of the future shifts from electronics- to biology-based industry. The longtime chairman of the Federal Reserve Alan Greenspan and other ideologues may hail the wonders of "entrepreneurial initiative," "consumer choice," and "free trade," but those who channel public funds to development of the economy and those who profit from these decisions know better.