#mer

You sounded like Dolly parton on helium." (After kristy lee cook of season 7 on american idol,sang her country rendition of the Beatles'"Eight Days A Week.) ↗

— Simon Cowell

#criticism #judging #wit #wit

The battle, Sir, is not to the strong alone; it is to the vigilant, the active, the brave. Besides, Sir, we have no election. If we were base enough to desire it, it is now too late to retire from the contest. There is no retreat but in submission and slavery! Our chains are forged! Their clanking may be heard on the plains of Boston! The war is inevitable; and let it come! I repeat, Sir, let it come! ↗

— Patrick Henry

#elections

To be robbed and betrayed by a fiendish underground conspiracy, or by the earthly agents of Satan, is at least a romantic sort of plight - it suggests at least a grand Hollywood-ready confrontation between good and evil - but to be coldly ripped off over and over again by a bunch of bloodless, second-rate schmoes, schmoes you chose, you elected, is not something anyone will take much pleasure in bragging about. ↗

— Matt Taibbi

#elections #politics #religion

10 percent of any population is cruel, no matter what, and 10 percent is merciful, no matter what, and the remaining 80 percent can be moved in either direction. ↗

— Susan Sontag

#humanity #mankind #mercy #mankind

Really good fiction could have as dark a worldview as it wished, but it'd find a way both to depict this world and to illuminate the possibilities for being alive and human in it." [Q&A with Larry McCaffery, Review of Contemporary Fiction, Summer 1993, Vol. 13.2] ↗

— David Foster Wallace

#darkness #fiction #human #humanity #mankind

The Master said, “If your conduct is determined solely by considerations of profit you will arouse great resentment. ↗

— Confucius

#consumerism #greed #materialism #profit #greed

As sure as water's wet and days are long and a friend will always disappoint you in the end. ↗

— Neil Gaiman

#harsh-truth #neil-gaiman #reality #disappointment

The most important thing for everyone in Gringolandia is to have ambition and become 'somebody,' and frankly, I don't have the least ambition to become anybody. ↗

— Frida Kahlo

#america #fame #fame

The King had advertised the old magic tea set, but for some reason, no one wanted sugar teeth that could gouge their eyes out. ↗

— Heather Dixon

#magic #advertising

…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