#ge

We live in oppressive times. We have, as a nation, become our own thought police; but instead of calling the process by which we limit our expression of dissent and wonder ‘censorship,’ we call it ‘concern for commercial viability. ↗

— David Mamet

#genius #mamet #censorship

Furniture or gold can be taken away from you, but knowledge and a new language can easily be taken from one place to the other, and nobody can take them away from you. ↗

— David Schwarzer

#diversity #language #pride #diversity

Distracted from distraction by distraction ↗

— T.S. Eliot

#internet #social-media #internet

Political writing in our time consists almost entirely of prefabricated phrases bolted together like the pieces of a child's Meccano set. It is the unavoidable result of self-censorship. To write in plain, vigorous language one has to think fearlessly, and if one thinks fearlessly one cannot be politically orthodox. ↗

— George Orwell

#orthodoxy #orwell #politics #writing #censorship

The media are desperately afraid of being accused of bias. And that's partly because there's a whole machine out there, an organized attempt to accuse them of bias whenever they say anything that the Right doesn't like. So rather than really try to report things objectively, they settle for being even-handed, which is not the same thing. One of my lines in a column—in which a number of people thought I was insulting them personally—was that if Bush said the Earth was flat, the mainstream media would have stories with the headline: 'Shape of Earth—Views Differ.' Then they'd quote some Democrats saying that it was round. ↗

— Paul Krugman

#conservatism #conservatism-in-the-us #democratic-party-united-states #economics #flat-earth

Revenge is like sex, Mister Dresden. It's best when it comes on slow, quiet, until it all seems inexorable. ↗

— Jim Butcher

#revenge #sex #revenge

Oh, God, Francesca,Now there’s a good one.Why?Why? Why?” He gave each one a different tenor, as if he were testing out the word, asking it to different people. “Why?” he asked again, this time with increased volume as he turned around to face her. “Why? It’s because I love you, damn me to hell. Because I’ve always loved you. Because I loved you when you were with John, and I loved you when I was in India, and God only knows I don’t deserve you, but I love you, anyway.” Francesca sagged against the door. “How’s that for a witty little joke?” he mocked. “I loveyou. I loveyou, my cousin’s wife. I loveyou, the one woman I can never have. I loveyou, Francesca Bridger-ton Stirling. ↗

— Julia Quinn

#julia-quinn #lover #love

What is it?" she asked. "I'm looking for your wings. You are my guardian angel, aren't you?" "I'm afraid not," she replied, her cheeks dimplingwith a wry smile. "There's too much of the devil in me for that." "Just how much devil," I grinned, "are we talking about here? ↗

— Gregory David Roberts

#devils #india #love #love

When the climbers in 1953 planted their flags on the highest mountain, they set them in snow over the skeletons of creatures that had lived in the warm clear ocean that India, moving north, blanked out. Possibly as much as twenty thousand feet below the seafloor, the skeletal remains had turned into rock. This one fact is a treatise in itself on the movements of the surface of the earth. If by some fiat I had to restrict all this writing to one sentence, this is the one I would choose: The summit of Mt. Everest is marine limestone. ↗

— John McPhee

#geology #india

If natural selection can create creationists it can manage a caterpillar with a face on its arse. ↗

— Zane Stumpo

#douglas-adams #humour #multiverse #parallel-universe #quantum