#erica

…sense of futility that comes from doing anything merely to prove to yourself that you can do it: having a child, climbing a mountain, making some sexual conquest, committing suicide. The marathon is a form of demonstrative suicide, suicide as advertising: it is running to show you are capable of getting every last drop of energy out of yourself, to prove it… to prove what? That you are capable of finishing. Graffiti carry the same message. They simply say: I’m so-and-so and I exist! They are free publicity for existence. Do we continually have to prove to ourselves that we exist? A strange sign of weakness, harbinger of a new fanaticism for a faceless performance, endlessly self-evident. ↗

— Jean Baudrillard

#jean-baudrillard #sociology #advertising

This is the material, by the way, that has kept me virtually anonymous in America for the past 15 years. Gee, I wonder why we're hated the world over? Look at these fat Americans in the front row - 'Why doesn't he just hit fruit with a hammer?' Folks, I could have done that, walked around being a millionaire and franchising myself but no, I had to have this weird thing about trying to illuminate the collective unconscious and help humanity. Fucking moron. ↗

— Bill Hicks

#stand-up-comedy #comedy

My shoes I got to pick. I chose worn-out red flats. I figured I should make it clear from the start that I wasn’t princess material. ↗

— Kiera Cass

#materialism

For it is dangerous to attach one's self to the crowd in front, and so long as each one of us is more willing to trust another than to judge for himself, we never show any judgement in the matter of living, but always a blind trust, and a mistake that has been passed on from hand to hand finally involves us and works our destruction. It is the example of other people that is our undoing; let us merely separate ourselves from the crowd, and we shall be made whole. But as it is, the populace,, defending its own iniquity, pits itself against reason. And so we see the same thing happening that happens at the elections, where, when the fickle breeze of popular favour has shifted, the very same persons who chose the praetors wonder that those praetors were chosen. ↗

— Lucius Annaeus Seneca

#groupthink #milgram #mob #pith #elections

Many years later, in front of the firing squad, colonel Aureliano Buendía would remember that distant afternoon his father took him to see ice. ↗

— Gabriel Garcí­a Márquez

#español #first-lines #latin-america #spanish #spanish

- Just that. Your family must be very different from mine. - I’d say so. - I laughed. - For one, no one wears their tiaras to breakfast. - Maxon smiled. - More of a dinner thing at the Singer house?” - “Of course. ↗

— Kiera Cass

#maxon #family

Isn't allowing people a choice what America is all about? ↗

— John Stossel

#allowing #america #choice #people

I'm not such a big star. I am just a little planet. In Spain, people don't put so much attention on the star system. But here in America, I can feel it. Mostly, people are very, very nice. But there are also a bunch of fanatics behind the stars. ↗

— Antonio Banderas

#am #america #attention #behind #big

Are you in any way qualified? Yes? No? It doesn't matter. In America, "Qualification" is simply an attitude. I've adopted it. So, yes. I am qualified. ↗

— Eugene Mirman

#attitude #humor #attitude

Over time, it is all too common for people to lose touch with their heritage, as the thrill and immediacy of the present crowds out the echoes and lessons of the past. It would be a shame if that were to happen with respect to the fur trade. It is a seminal part of who we are as a nation, and how we came to be. ↗

— Eric Jay Dolin

#astor #beaver #buffalo #fur #fur-trade