#america

What prompts alarm in me is how you and your government want to ruin not only the potential of this of this country, but also the path of those who are going to transition into more advanced beings in search of immortality and omnipotence, and maybe even participate in a great singularity. These advances are going to pass, one way or another. And your current second-rate moral system—your weak, pretend-God-will-take-care-of-us bullshit—is a waste for our species' possibilities. You people want to pretend that democracy, religious inspiration, and unbridled consumerism are going to last forever and carry us all to bliss; that the American Dream is right around the next corner for everyone. you spend hundreds of billions of dollars on lazy welfare recipients, on mentally challenged people, on uneducated repeat criminals, on obese second-rate citizens bankrupting our medical system, on murderous war machines fighting for oil and your oligarchy's pet projects in far off places. All so you maintain your puny forms of power and sleep better at night. ↗

— Zoltan Istvan

#inspirational #religion #science #dreams

Dozens of America's wealthiest taxpayers - including hedge fund legend Michael Steinhardt, super trial lawyer Guy Saperstein, and Ben Cohen of Ben & Jerry's fame - have appealed to President Obama not to renew the Bush tax cuts for anyone earning more than $1 million a year. ↗

— Joe Conason

#amp #anyone #appealed #ben #bush

According to the Gallup Poll, 24 percent of American adults exercised regularly in 1961, and 50 percent after 1968. The peak was 59 percent in 1984, dropping off to 51 percent last September. ↗

— Kenneth H. Cooper

#after #american #dropping #exercised #gallup

When the target audience is American teenage kids, you can have problems. My generation prized really fine acting and writing. Sometimes you have to go back to the basic principles which underpin great visual comedy. ↗

— John Cleese

#american #audience #back #basic #basic principles

I think it's because in America you always get the sense that if you fail, you can just pack up your things and go somewhere else and try again. But in England, it's so geographically small that if somebody succeeds here, it reduces your chances of succeeding. ↗

— John Cleese

#always #america #because #chances #else

In Britain, girls seem to be either bright or attractive. In America, that's not the case. They're both. ↗

— John Cleese

#attractive #both #bright #britain #case

Thirteen years after the end of the Soviet Union, the American press establishment seemed eager to turn Ukraine's protested presidential election on November 21 into a new cold war with Russia. ↗

— Stephen Cohen

#american #cold #cold war #eager #election

I say, I can not identify that thing which is called happiness, that thing whose token is a laugh, or a smile, or a silent serenity on the lip. I may have been happy, but it is not in my conscious memory now. Nor do I feel a longing for it, as though I had never had it; my spirit seeks different food from happiness, for I think I have a suspicion of what it is. I have suffered wretchedness, but not because of the absence of happiness, and without praying for happiness. I pray for peace -- for motionlessness -- for the feeling of myself, as of some plant, absorbing life without seeking it, and existing without individual sensation. I feel that there can be no perfect peace in individualness. Therefore, I hope one day to feel myself drank up into the pervading spirit animating all things. I feel I am an exile here. I still go straying. ↗

— Herman Melville

#dreams

I'm proud of our court. It knocks back a lot of the propaganda the Communists put out about the way America treats her Negroes. ↗

— Nat King Cole

#america #back #communists #court #her

I started drumming around the same time I came across this part of American history. But there seemed to be a way forward playing drums. There didn't seem to be a way forward being fascinated by a piece of history. ↗

— Phil Collins

#american #american history #around #being #came