#account

Our constituents did not send us to Washington to shut down the government. They sent us here to make it more accountable. ↗

— Steve Womack

#constituents #did #down #government #here

Language as a Prison The Philippines did have a written language before the Spanish colonists arrived, contrary to what many of those colonists subsequently claimed. However, it was a language that some theorists believe was mainly used as a mnemonic device for epic poems. There was simply no need for a European-style written language in a decentralized land of small seaside fishing villages that were largely self-sufficient. One theory regarding language is that it is primarily a useful tool born out of a need for control. In this theory written language was needed once top-down administration of small towns and villages came into being. Once there were bosses there arose a need for written language. The rise of the great metropolises of Ur and Babylon made a common written language an absolute necessity—but it was only a tool for the administrators. Administrators and rulers needed to keep records and know names— who had rented which plot of land, how many crops did they sell, how many fish did they catch, how many children do they have, how many water buffalo? More important, how much then do they owe me? In this account of the rise of written language, naming and accounting seem to be language's primary "civilizing" function. Language and number are also handy for keeping track of the movement of heavenly bodies, crop yields, and flood cycles. Naturally, a version of local oral languages was eventually translated into symbols as well, and nonadministrative words, the words of epic oral poets, sort of went along for the ride, according to this version. What's amazing to me is that if we accept this idea, then what may have begun as an instrument of social and economic control has now been internalized by us as a mark of being civilized. As if being controlled were, by inference, seen as a good thing, and to proudly wear the badge of this agent of control—to be able to read and write—makes us better, superior, more advanced. We have turned an object of our own oppression into something we now think of as virtuous. Perfect! We accept written language as something so essential to how we live and get along in the world that we feel and recognize its presence as an exclusively positive thing, a sign of enlightenment. We've come to love the chains that bind us, that control us, for we believe that they are us (161-2). ↗

— David Byrne

#history-of-language #language #philosophy-of-language #prison #love

And just remember, every dollar we spend on outsourcing is spent on U.S. goods or invested back in the U.S. market. That's accounting. ↗

— Arthur Laffer

#back #dollar #every #goods #invested

The day cold and fair with a high easterly wind: we were visited by two Indians who gave us an account of the country and people near the Rocky mountains where they had been. ↗

— Meriwether Lewis

#been #cold #country #day #fair

In economic panics throughout history, the wiping out of the savings accounts of lower earners and the middle class has often led to social revolution, sometimes violent upheavals. ↗

— Nick Clooney

#class #earners #economic #history #led

For this purpose I determined to keep an account of the voyage, and to write down punctually every thing we performed or saw from day to day, as will hereafter appear. ↗

— Christopher Columbus

#appear #day #day to day #determined #down

The supreme satisfaction is to be able to despise one's neighbor and this fact goes far to account for religious intolerance. It is evidently consoling to reflect that the people next door are headed for hell. ↗

— Aleister Crowley

#account #consoling #despise #door #evidently

Births to illegal immigrants now account for nearly one out of every ten births in the United States. ↗

— Nathan Deal

#births #every #illegal #illegal immigrants #immigrants

We say that anytime budgets are balanced and an ample savings account has been set aside, government should just stop collecting taxes. Better to leave that money in the pockets of those who earned it, than to let it burn a hole, as it always does, in the pockets of government. ↗

— Mitch Daniels

#always #ample #anytime #aside #balanced

You know there are so many people that have touched your life both on the ice and within your career in the NHL whether it be owners, GM's, coaches, players, trainers, all the way down. And that doesn't even account for all of the people that you encountered outside of the game that you met along this trip, too. ↗

— Ron Francis

#along #both #career #coaches #down