#dame

After Bush was elected in 2004 - please note that I didn't say 're-elected' - and I was walking around in my befuzzed state of confusion and low-grade depression, I set out more or systematically to read writers who'd grappled with that fundamental question of what America is, why it is the way it is. ↗

— Ben Fountain

#america #around #bush #confusion #depression

I wrote two plotted books, got some of the fundamentals of storytelling down, then... it's sort of like taking the training wheels off, trying to write a book that's fun in the same way without relying on quite such mechanical or external beats. ↗

— Jonathan Franzen

#book #books #down #external #fun

From slavery to segregation, we remember that America did not always live up to its ideals. In fact, we often fell far short of them. But we also learned that fundamental to our national character is the drive to live out the true meaning of our creed. ↗

— Bill Frist

#always #america #character #creed #did

My assumption is that fundamentally the picture of the human animal, as developed by Freud, is largely right. ↗

— Peter Gay

#assumption #developed #freud #fundamentally #human

I think we're not going to preserve Fannie and Freddie in anything like their current form. We're going to have to bring fundamental change to that market. ↗

— Timothy Geithner

#bring #change #current #current form #fannie

Supermarket tabloids and celebrity gossip shows are not just innocently shallow entertainment, but a fundamental part of a much larger movement that involves apathy, greed and hierarchy. ↗

— Joseph Gordon-Levitt

#celebrity #entertainment #fundamental #gossip #greed

The Universal Declaration of Human Rights describes the family as the natural and fundamental unit of society. It follows that any choice and decision with regard to the size of the family must irrevocably rest with the family itself, and cannot be made by anyone else. ↗

— Garrett Hardin

#anyone #cannot #choice #decision #declaration

I don't know what my appeal is. I can see I've got blue eyes and don't look like the Hunchback of Notre Dame but I can't understand the fuss. ↗

— Rutger Hauer

#blue #blue eyes #dame #eyes #fuss

The older view of the nature of heat was that it is a substance, very fine and imponderable indeed, but indestructible, and unchangeable in quantity, which is an essential fundamental property of all matter. ↗

— Hermann von Helmholtz

#fine #fundamental #heat #indeed #indestructible

The Right thinks that the breakdown of the family is the source of crime and poverty, and this they very insightfully blame on the homosexuals, which would be amusing were it not so tragic. Families and 'family values' are crushed by grinding poverty, which also makes violent crime and drugs attractive alternatives to desperate young men and sends young women into prostitution. Family values are no less corrupted by the corrosive effects of individualism, consumerism, and the accumulation of wealth. Instead of shouting this from the mountain tops, the get-me-to-heaven-and-the-rest-be-damned Christianity the Christian Right preaches is itself a version of selfish spiritual capitalism aimed at netting major and eternal dividends, and it fits hand in glove with American materialism and greed. ↗

— John D. Caputo

#christianity #conservatism #fundamentalism #faith