#check

The superior power of population cannot be checked without producing misery or vice. ↗

— Thomas Malthus

#checked #misery #population #power #producing

Check-ups are, in my experience, a grave mistake; all they do is allow the quack of your choice to tell you that you have some sort of complaint that you were far happier not knowing about. ↗

— John Mortimer

#humour #experience

Reality is far more vicious than Russian roulette. First, it delivers the fatal bullet rather infrequently, like a revolver that would have hundreds, even thousands of chambers instead of six. After a few dozen tries, one forgets about the existence of a bullet, under a numbing false sense of security. Second, unlike a well-defined precise game like Russian roulette, where the risks are visible to anyone capable of multiplying and dividing by six, one does not observe the barrel of reality. One is capable of unwittingly playing Russian roulette - and calling it by some alternative “low risk” game. ↗

— Nassim Nicholas Taleb

#truth #life

Nothing so ageing as giving into preconceived perceptions; the youth within one would not have given in to such stodginess. ↗

— allison malm

#age

Presque tous les malheurs de la vie viennent des fausses idées que nous avons sur ce qui nous arrive. Connaître à fond les hommes, juger sainement des événements, est donc un grand pas vers le bonheur." ("Almost all our misfortunes in life come from the wrong notions we have about the things that happen to us. To know men thoroughly, to judge events sanely, is, therefore, a great step towards happiness.") [Journal entry, 10 December 1801] ↗

— Stendhal

#reality #reality-check #self-knowledge #self-perception #unhappiness

I'm the biggest fighter in the history of the sport. If you don't believe it, check the cash register. ↗

— Mike Tyson

#biggest #cash #cash register #check #fighter

I mean, Chris is, I'm sure, a wonderful guy. But in those days he also very, very late. For all appointments and departures and arrivals and sound checks and anything. ↗

— Bill Bruford

#anything #appointments #arrivals #checks #chris

I should be very willing to redress men wrongs, and rather check than punish crimes, had not Cervantes, in that all too true tale of Quixote, shown how all such efforts fail. ↗

— Lord Byron

#check #crimes #efforts #fail #had

In our system of democracy, our government works on a system of checks and balances. Instead of stripping power from the courts, I believe we should follow the process prescribed in our Constitution - consideration of a Constitutional amendment. ↗

— Dennis Cardoza

#balances #believe #checks #consideration #constitution

Classical stuff takes a lot of rehearsal time and preparation, but with stuff that involves improvisation, you can over-rehearse it and it gets stale. You don't want it to be too comfortable. In fact, a good sound check, a good rehearsal usually means a bad performance. ↗

— John Zorn

#bad performance #check #classical #comfortable #fact