#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

Drugs have a long history of use in magic in various cultures, and usually in the context of either ecstatic communal rituals or in personal vision quests. However compared to people in simple pastoral tribal situations most people in developed countries now live in a perpetual state of mental hyperactivity with overactive imaginations anyway, so throwing drugs in on top of this usually just leads to confusion and a further loss of focus. Plus as the real Shamans say, if you really do succeed in opening a door with a drug it will thereafter open at will and most such substances give all they will ever give on the first attempt. ↗

— Peter J. Carroll

#commentary #magic #imagination

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

— Carroll Bryant

#life

The single best thing about coming out of the closet is that nobody can insult you by telling you what you've just told them. ↗

— Rachel Maddow

#commentary #gay #honesty #lesbian #lgbt

The caricature of what George Osborne is doing on the fiscal side is absurd. If you read some of the commentary, particularly from the left, you would think he was turning the clock back to the 1930s. ↗

— Nick Clegg

#back #caricature #clock #commentary #doing

I started my own magazine with drawings, commentary, news, film reviews and drawings. ↗

— Carlos Fuentes

#drawings #film #i #magazine #my own

I don't like going to football games. I like watching them on television. When you go to a game, it's hard to focus. There's so much going on, and it's cold. I'd rather sit and watch it and get replays and commentary. ↗

— John Legend

#cold #commentary #focus #football #football games

I learn so much from watching films like that with commentary and then when you get to hear another filmmaker talk about their films it's a really great experience. ↗

— Jay Roach

#another #commentary #experience #filmmaker #films