#commentary

A library is a place where you learn what teachers were afraid to teach you. ↗

— Alan M. Dershowitz

#libraries #political-commentary #education

It's not Americans I find annoying; it's Americanism: a social disease of the postindustrial world that must inevitably infect each of the mercantile nations in turn, and is called 'American' only because your nation is the most advanced case of the malady, much as one speaks of Spanish flu, or Japanese Type-B encephalitis. It's symptoms are a loss of work ethic, a shrinking of inner resources, and a constant need for external stimulation, followed by spiritual decay and moral narcosis. You can recognize the victim by his constant efforts to get in touch with himself, to believe his spiritual feebleness is an interesting psychological warp, to construe his fleeing from responsibility as evidence that he and his life are uniquely open to new experiences. In the later stages, the sufferer is reduced to seeking that most trivial of human activities: fun. ↗

— Trevanian

#satire #social-commentary #experience

Doctor MacKenzie says "Sometimes I think the Victorians had the right idea. When you lost a family member back then you were suppose to be in full mourning, dress in nothing but black, for a whole year. Then you went into something they called 'half mourning' for another full year, adn during those two years, you were pretty much expected to have emotional breakdowns, you could do it whenever you felt you needed to, and everybody would support you. Now?, A month after a tragedy, maybe two, and you're expected to be all better-or down pills so you can pretend you are. ↗

— Mercedes Lackey

#family

If a man tells you that he is fond of the Imitation, view him with sudden suspicion; he is either a dabbler or a Saint. ↗

— Ronald A. Knox

#humor #inspiration #inspirational

Everyone in life has a purpose, even if it's to serve as a bad example ↗

— Carroll Bryant

#life

Jazz is democracy in music. ↗

— Wynton Marsalis

#patriotism #social-commentary #music

To whom can I expose the urgency of my own passion?…There is nobody—here among these grey arches, and moaning pigeons, and cheerful games and tradition and emulation, all so skilfully organised to prevent feeling alone. ↗

— Virginia Woolf

#loneliness #social-commentary #nature

A city's only ever three hot meals away from anarchy. ↗

— Alastair Reynolds

#sf #social-commentary #anarchy

In practice nobody cares if work is useful or useless, productive or parasitic; the sole thing demanded is that it shall be profitable. In all the modern talk about energy, efficiency, social service and the rest of it, what meaning is there except " Get money, get it legally, and get a lot of it"? Money has become the grand test of virtue. By this test beggars fail, and for this they are despised. ↗

— George Orwell

#money

America isn't a country; it's a marketplace. The more you sell, the more at home you'll feel. ↗

— Iimani David

#home