#pol

Then we'll all go to the movies or go bowling. Something normal people do." "Because we're so normal, right?" He raised his hand high and let the first crack of his palm rain down on her ass. "This is our normal. It's the only normal that matters. ↗

— Alyssa Turner

#polyamory #movies

Under the United States Constitution, the federal government has no authority to hold states "accountable" for their education performance...In the free society envisioned by the founders, schools are held accountable to parents, not federal bureaucrats. ↗

— Ron Paul

#politics #education

Mitt Romney's first interview with Zombie Reagan: Mitt Romney came in with cheerful assurance, because he wasn’t capable of anything else. “Let me first welcome you back to this side of the veil, Mr. President.” “Yeah, Mitt, it’s good to see you looking so well. Your father says hello, and he wanted me to add specially that whatever unfortunate negative things you might remember him saying to you when you were a kid, he always tried to tell you the truth and he hopes you’ve used it to improve, and he understands that even with the help of those comments, it might just not have been in you to improve. He wants you to remember he still loves you no matter what you’ve become, or even if you haven’t chosen to become any one thing in particular.” “That’s very kind. I miss my dad even now.” “Oh, so do I. I remember George as always that kind of guy, he had your back, whenever you’d think to watch your back, you’d find him somewhere around there, ready for action with that knife already drawn. ↗

— John Barnes

#political-satire #ronald-reagan #satire #zombie-reagan #love

Se întoarse şi îl zări pe Alex Corbu. Covorul pufos trebuie să-i fi amortizat zgomotul paşilor. Era chiar lângă ele, adresându-le ceea ce părea unul dintre cele mai cuceritoare zâmbete ale sale. Costumul negru, simplu dar din stofă de cea mai bună calitate, cădea pe corpul lui ca turnat, faţa smeadă îi era ciudat de familiară, iar Cristina îşi zise că, probabil, nu avea un aer prea inteligent cum se holba la el, într-o stare de confuzie moderată. ↗

— Stefana Cristina Czeller

#love #prima-intalnire #roman-politist #romanian-novell #urban-fantasy

Десятилетиями советские люди обучались тому, что для того, чтобы чего-нибудь достичь, необходимо всячески уклоняться и обходить правила. Россия стала страной, в которой ложь и мошенничество превратилось в норму, в которой все знали о коррумпированности системы и несправедливости законов - а для того чтобы выжить, надо было победить систему.Если все будут считать, что правила надо нарушать или обходить, то социальные институты не смогут работать. Я не уверен, что простые перестановки в правительстве могут быстро привести к изменению подобной политики. Сейчас никто не верит ничему из того, что говорит нынешнее правительство о чем бы то ни было... (Пол Экман, "Психология Лжи") ↗

— Paul Ekman

#marriage

...never [enter] into dispute or argument with another. I never saw an instance of one of two disputants convincing the other by argument. I have seen many, on their getting warm, becoming rude, & shooting one another. ... When I hear another express an opinion which is not mine, I say to myself, he has a right to his opinion, as I to mine; why should I question it? His error does me no injury, and shall I become a Don Quixote, to bring all men by force of argument to one opinion? ... There are two classes of disputants most frequently to be met with among us. The first is of young students, just entered the threshold of science, with a first view of its outlines, not yet filled up with the details & modifications which a further progress would bring to their knoledge. The other consists of the ill-tempered & rude men in society, who have taken up a passion for politics. ... Consider yourself, when with them, as among the patients of Bedlam, needing medical more than moral counsel. Be a listener only, keep within yourself, and endeavor to establish with yourself the habit of silence, especially on politics. In the fevered state of our country, no good can ever result from any attempt to set one of these fiery zealots to rights, either in fact or principle. They are determined as to the facts they will believe, and the opinions on which they will act. Get by them, therefore, as you would by an angry bull; it is not for a man of sense to dispute the road with such an animal. ↗

— Thomas Jefferson

#politics-of-the-united-states #men

Please do not think that I am accusing socialists of insincerity or that I wish to hold them up to scorn either as bad democrats or as unprincipled schemers and opportunists. I fully believe, in spite of the childish Machiavellism in which some of their prophets indulge, that fundamentally most of them always have been as sincere in their professions as any other men. Besides, I do not believe in insincerity in social strife, for people always come to think what they want to think and what they incessantly profess. As regards democracy, socialist parties are presumably no more opportunists than are any others; they simply espouse democracy if, as, and when it serves their ideals and interests and not otherwise. Lest readers should be shocked and think so immoral a view worthy only of the most callous of political practitioners, ... ↗

— Joseph A. Schumpeter

#mockery #politics #sarcasm #men

The two men were greedily hunched over the table, like two wolves disputing a carcass, but their muttered speech in the echoing hall resembled more the grunting of pigs. One was less than a wolf: he was a public prosecutor. The other was more than a pig, he was a chief commissioner of police. ↗

— Jan Neruda

#police #men

that man is a reality, mankind an abstraction; that men cannot be treated as units in operations of political arithmetic because they behave like the symbols for zero and the infinite, which dislocate all mathematical operations; that the end justifies the means only within very narrow limits; that ethics is not a function of social utility, and charity not a petty bourgeois sentiment but the gravitational force which keeps civilization in its orbit. ↗

— Arthur Koestler

#men

What these men represented was not 'The West' but what was for this century a relatively new kind of monied class in America, a group devoid of social responsibilities because their ties to any one place had been so attenuated. ↗

— Joan Didion

#politics #men