#mm

With our work at Kazaa, we began seeing growing broadband connections and more powerful computers and more streaming multimedia, and we saw that the traditional way of communicating by phone no longer made a lot of sense. ↗

— Niklas Zennstrom

#broadband #communicating #computers #connections #growing

Taxes are what we pay for civilized society, for modernity, and for prosperity. The wealthy pay more because they have benefitted more. Taxes, well laid and well spent, insure domestic tranquility, provide for the common defense, and promote the general welfare. Taxes protect property and the environment; taxes make business possible. Taxes pay for roads and schools and bridges and police and teachers. Taxes pay for doctors and nursing homes and medicine. During an emergency, like an earthquake or a hurricane, taxes pay for rescue workers, shelters, and services. For people whose lives are devastated by other kinds of disaster, like the disaster of poverty, taxes pay, even, for food. ↗

— Jill Lepore

#business #common-defense #disasters #domestic-tranquility #emergencies

Oral communication unites people in groups. Writing and reading are solitary activities that throw the psyche back on itself. ↗

— Walter Ong

#communication

Another unsettling element in modern art is that common symptom of immaturity, the dread of doing what has been done before. ↗

— Edith Wharton

#art #been #before #common #doing

Could be off one of your own boats, Lavette," Whittier said. "The crab I mean." Whittier was hostile, contriving his hostility in witless remarks. Dan said nothing, only thinking that if this small, pompous, foolish man, so uninformed about the essence of his own business, was a measure of the hundred tycoons who ruled the hills of San Francisco, then his own way up would be none too difficult. It came down to money; if you had money, you functioned and you could do without guts or brains; and if you had money, you saw a girl like Jean Sheldon more than once, more than by accident. ↗

— Howard Fast

#the-immigrants #business

A change is brought about because ordinary people do extraordinary things. ↗

— Barack Obama

#commitment #politics #change

The most difficult thing in the world is to know how to do a thing and to watch someone else doing it wrong, without commenting. ↗

— T. H. White

#cult thing #difficult #difficult thing #doing #else

Everything is relative in this world, where change alone endures. ↗

— Leon Trotsky

#democracy #freedom #history #hope #individualism

You've maddened me for you...have changed everything. So, I'm going to f*ck you long and hard, beauty, because if I'm to be enslaved by you-I want to be your master as well. ↗

— Kresley Cole

#lore #paranormal #romance #beauty

Waking up was a daily cruelty, an affront, and she avoided it by not sleeping. ↗

— Gregory Maguire

#death #immortality #insomnia #death