#lit

Americans believe that people should work hard and get ahead on their own, but when disaster strikes and they need help with retirement or disability, Americans as a whole should come to their aid. ↗

— Jacob Hacker

#aid #believe #come #disability #disaster

But are his needs any more shocking than the needs of any other animals and men? Are his deeds more outrageous than the deeds of the parent who drained the spirit from his child? The vampire may foster quickened heartbeats and levitated hair. But is he worse than the parent who gave to society a neurotic child who became a politician? Is he worse than the manufacturer who set up belated foundations with the money he made by handing bombs and guns to suicidal nationalists? Is he worse than the distiller who gave bastardized grain juice to stultify further the brains of those who, sober, were incapable of progressive thought? (Nay, I apologize for this calumny; I nip the brew that feeds me.) Is he worse, then, than the publisher who filled ubiquitous racks with lust and death wishes? Really, no, search your soul, lovie--is the vampire so bad? ↗

— Richard Matheson

#horror #norms #politics #prejudice #society

The more cashless our society becomes, the more our moral compass slips. ↗

— Dan Ariely

#honesty #money #morality #money

Politics are not a science based on logic; they are the capacity of always choosing at each instant, in constantly changing situations, the least harmful, the most useful. ↗

— Otto von Bismarck

#change

If you think Hollywood is depressing and corrupt, politics is really depressing and corrupt -- and fueled even more than Hollywood by money -- if that's possible. ↗

— Ben Affleck

#hollywood #money #politics #money

Fidelity purchased with money, money can destroy. ↗

— Lucius Annaeus Seneca

#loyalty #money #selling-out #money

We didn't actually overspend our budget. The allocation simply fell short of our expenditure. ↗

— Keith Davis

#money #politics #money

Once upon a time there were mass media, and they were wicked, of course, and there was a guilty party. Then there were the virtuous voices that accused the criminals. And Art (ah, what luck!) offered alternatives, for those who were not prisoners to the mass media. Well, it's all over. We have to start again from the beginning, asking one another what's going on. ↗

— Umberto Eco

#culture #mass-media #superficiality #art

The best literature is always a take [in the musical sense]; there is an implicit risk in its execution, a margin of danger that is the pleasure of the flight, of the love, carrying with it a tangible loss but also a total engagement that, on another level, lends the theater its unparalleled imperfection faced with the perfection of film. I don’t want to write anything but takes. ↗

— Julio Cortázar

#creativity #literature #writing #art

The educator has the duty of not being neutral. ↗

— Paulo Freire

#neutrality #students #teachers #change