#failed

I never failed to convince an audience that the best thing they could do was to go away. ↗

— Thomas Love Peacock

#away #best #convince #could #failed

Arizona did not make illegal, illegal. It is a crime to enter or remain in the U.S. in violation of federal law. States have had inherent authority to enforce immigration laws when the federal government has failed or refused to do so. ↗

— Russell Pearce

#authority #crime #did #enforce #enter

Social Security has never failed to pay promised benefits, and Democrats will fight to make sure that Republicans do not turn a guaranteed benefit into a guaranteed gamble. ↗

— Nancy Pelosi

#benefits #democrats #failed #fight #gamble

I figured, if I failed, I'd tried something that I hadn't tried before and if one movie was going to destroy my career than I didn't have much of a career to start with. I just went for it. God willing I wasn't over the top and didn't embarrass myself. ↗

— Elizabeth Pena

#career #destroy #embarrass #failed #figured

The last four years under President Obama have been trying and troubling for this entire country. The tired big government policies of the past have failed us. We can't afford more disappointments. We need a new direction. We need a new president. ↗

— Reince Priebus

#been #big #big government #country #direction

Al Qaeda is on the run, partly because the United States is in Afghanistan, pushing on al Qaeda, and working internationally to cut off the flow of funds to al Qaeda. They are having a difficult time. They failed in this endeavor. ↗

— Ed Royce

#al #because #cut #difficult #difficult time

Brian was the oldest, I was in the middle and Carl was the baby. I was the troublemaker. Brian got great grades and Carl got the kind of grades I did. I failed everything. I was too busy fighting and running wild. ↗

— Dennis Wilson

#brian #busy #carl #did #everything

Our economy is based on spending billions to persuade people that happiness is buying things, and then insisting that the only way to have a viable economy is to make things for people to buy so they’ll have jobs and get enough money to buy things. ↗

— Philip Slater

#commercialism #economy #endless-circles #failed-systems #greed

I was astonished, bewildered. This was America, a country where, whatever its faults, people could speak, write, assemble, demonstrate without fear. It was in the Constitution, the Bill of Rights. We were a democracy... But I knew it wasn't a dream; there was a painful lump on the side of my head... The state and its police were not neutral referees in a society of contending interests. They were on the side of the rich and powerful. Free speech? Try it and the police will be there with their horses, their clubs, their guns, to stop you. From that moment on, I was no longer a liberal, a believer in the self-correcting character of American democracy. I was a radical, believing that something fundamental was wrong in this country--not just the existence of poverty amidst great wealth, not just the horrible treatment of black people, but something rotten at the root. The situation required not just a new president or new laws, but an uprooting of the old order, the introduction of a new kind of society--cooperative, peaceful, egalitarian. ↗

— Howard Zinn

#authoritarianism #bill-of-rights #constitution #democracy #egalitarianism

Why did she do it? Nobody dared to ask. Because - what courage! Who had the courage to burn herself? Twenty aspirin, a little slit alongside the veins of the arm, maybe even a bad half hour standing on a roof: We've all had those. And somewhat more dangerous things, like putting a gun in your mouth. But you put it there, you taste it, it's cold and greasy, your finger is on the trigger, and you find that a whole world lies between this moment and the moment you've been planning, when you'll pull the trigger. That world defeats you. You put the gun back in the drawer. You'll have to find another way. What was that moment like for her? The moment she lit the match. Had she already tried roofs and guns and aspirins? Or was it just an inspiration? I had an inspiration once. I woke up one morning and I knew that today I had to swallow fifty aspirin. It was my task: my job for the day. I lined them up on my desk and took them one by one, counting. But it's not the same as what she did. I could have stopped, at ten, or at thirty. And I could have done what I did do, which was go onto the street and faint. Fifty aspirin is a lot of aspirin, but going onto the street and fainting is like putting the gun back in the drawer. She lit the match. ↗

— Susanna Kaysen

#failed-attempt #gun #match #suicide #courage