#mac

I learned about machinery, I learned how men behaved under pressure, and I learned about Americans. ↗

— Herman Wouk

#behaved #how #i #learned #machinery

A free America... means just this: individual freedom for all, rich or poor, or else this system of government we call democracy is only an expedient to enslave man to the machine and make him like it. ↗

— Frank Lloyd Wright

#america #call #democracy #else #enslave

I am an enthusiast, but not a crank in the sense that I have some pet theories as to the proper construction of a flying machine. I wish to avail myself of all that is already known and then, if possible, add my mite to help on the future worker who will attain final success. ↗

— Wilbur Wright

#already #am #attain #avail #construction

I was always afraid of dying. Always. It was my fear that made me learn everything I could about my airplane and my emergency equipment, and kept me flying respectful of my machine and always alert in the cockpit. ↗

— Chuck Yeager

#afraid #airplane #alert #always #cockpit

In the Lord's Prayer, the first petition is for daily bread. No one can worship God or love his neighbor on an empty stomach. ↗

— Woodrow Wilson

#daily #daily bread #empty #empty stomach #first

The only way to speak is diplomatically, and British is the imperial English tongue. I have expelled all claims to American independence from my pronunciation, and I have never felt more liberated. ↗

— Bauvard

#british #diplomacy #english #freedom #funny

You can't expect to hit the jackpot if you don't put a few nickels in the machine. ↗

— Flip Wilson

#expect #few #hit #machine #put

Karma has been a pop culture term for ages. But really, what the heck is it? Karma is not an inviolate engine of cosmic punishment. Rather, it is a neutral sequence of acts, results, and consequences. Receiving misfortune does not necessarily indicate that one has committed evil. But it is a sufficient indicator of something else. And that something else can be anything, as long as it is a logical consequence of what has come before. Consider: if you fall into a well, you are not a bad person who deserves to suffer—you are merely someone who took a wrong step. Or someone who had one drink too many. Or got a head rush due to poor circulation. Or forgot to wear your glasses. Or— The reasons are plentiful, and all plausible. But the chain of cause and effect goes way, way back into the deepest hoariest recesses of your personal past. So never rule out retribution. But never expect it. ↗

— Vera Nazarian

#cause-and-effect #consequences #debt #effect #justice

Real arms races are run by highly intelligent, bespectacled engineers in glass offices thoughtfully designing shiny weapons on modern computers. But there's no thinking in the mud and cold of nature's trenches. At best, weapons thrown together amidst the explosions and confusion of smoky battlefields are tiny variations on old ones, held together by chewing gum. If they don't work, then something else is thrown at the enemy, including the kitchen sink - there's nothing "progressive" about that. At its usual worst, trench warfare is fought by attrition. If the enemy can be stopped or slowed by burning your own bridges and bombing your own radio towers and oil refineries, then away they go. Darwinian trench warfare does not lead to progress - it leads back to the Stone Age. ↗

— Michael J. Behe

#biology #darwinism #evolution #macro-evolution #macroevolution

She [Mary Maclane] is almost always referred to as “confessional.” She has been referred to, several times, as the first blogger. Whereas her writing does not confess much - it is much more spiritual memoir than anything, or perhaps something akin to a mystic’s courtly love, directed at the self. I am wondering what distinguishes writing as confessional… I keep on feeling I prefer the latter-day MacLane, the diary she wrote while convalescing from scarlet fever back home in Butte, Montana, I, Mary MacLane, that Melville House is only publishing as an ebook. Mary MacLane melancholy, totally isolated. Feeling intense disquiet. Now in her early thirties, meditating on her whirlwind celebrity, in cities, feeling distanced from all that, but longing for it too. Obsessed with the Mary MacLane who stopped writing, or stopped publishing books, who was involved with the anarchist/bohemian crowd in Chicago, with the Dill Pickle, who died in poverty and obscurity on the South Side at the age of 48. I want to write about her, but I don’t know how or why yet. ↗

— Kate Zambreno

#mary-maclane #memoir #writing #age