#cal

Writers often have the cleanest windows, floors, fridges and toilets, the most up-to-date filing system or the best record for returning calls or e-mails because, in the moment, just about any task seems more palatable than sitting down to write.” (p.136) ↗

— Mark David Gerson

#filing #floors #fridges #returning-calls #toilets

A democracy cannot exist as a permanent form of government. It can only exist until the voters discover that they can vote themselves largesse from the public treasury. From that moment on, the majority always votes for the candidates promising the most benefits from the public treasury with the result that a democracy always collapses over loose fiscal policy, always followed by a dictatorship. The average age of the world's greatest civilizations has been 200 years. These nations have progressed through this sequence: From bondage to spiritual faith; From spiritual faith to great courage; From courage to liberty; From liberty to abundance; From abundance to selfishness; From selfishness to apathy; From apathy to dependence; From dependence back into bondage. ↗

— Alexander Fraser Tytler

#federal-spending #fiscal-policy #age

My analysis was directed toward purely physical conditions, such as defective wiring, presence of lack of air spaces between metal flues and woodwork, etc., and the results were presented in these terms. ↗

— Benjamin Whorf

#analysis #between #conditions #defective #directed

Don't wake me for the end of the world unless it has very good special effects. ↗

— Roger Zelazny

#armageddon #cinema #death #end-of-the-world #life

No matter how many plans you make or how much in control you are, life is always winging it. ↗

— Carroll Bryant

#life-and-living #philosophical #philosophy-of-life #spontaneity #death

It is often said that before you die your life passes before your eyes. It is in fact true. It's called living. ↗

— Terry Pratchett

#called #die #eyes #fact #in fact

Wherever men and women are persecuted because of their race, religion, or political views, that place must - at that moment - become the center of the universe. ↗

— Elie Wiesel

#become #center #men #men and women #moment

people seem to be getting dumber and dumber. You know, I mean we have all this amazing technology and yet computers have turned into basically four figure wank machines. The internet was supposed to set us free, democratize us, but all it's really given us is Howard Dean's aborted candidacy and 24 hour a day access to kiddie porn. People... they don't write anymore, they blog. Instead of talking, they text, no punctuation, no grammar: LOL this and LMFAO that. You know, it just seems to me it's just a bunch of stupid people pseudo-communicating with a bunch of other stupid people at a proto-language that resembles more what cavemen used to speak than the King's English. ↗

— Hank Moody

#hank-moody #communication

We fell silent again. The thing we had shared was nothing more than a fragment of time that had died longe ago.Even so, a faint glimmer of that warm memory still claimed a part of my heart. And when death claim me, no doubt I would walk along by that faint light in the brief instant before being flung once again into the abyss of nothingness ↗

— Haruki Murakami

#dath #nothingness #death

The strongest continuous thread in America's political tradition is skepticism about government. ↗

— George Will

#america #continuous #government #political #skepticism