#reed

You know what love is?" Creed asked that and my eyes shot from the hair on his forehead to his. "I..." I swallowed again then, holding his eyes, I whispered, "Yes. I do. I know what love is, Creed." I felt his big hand curl warm on the side of my face before I felt the pad of his thumb sweep across my lips again. He watched it move as he replied, "I do too, baby." His eyes came to mine. "I absolutely do. ↗

— Kristen Ashley

#love

People can love their lies, tell their lies, believe their own lies until hell pays a visit. ↗

— Carol Plum-Ucci

#love

Tyranny anywhere is a threat to freedom everywhere. ↗

— Alex Storozynski

#tyranny #age

It came to him then, permeated his disjointed thoughts. Billie was teaching him—him—how to make love. With a jolt of surprise at the crashing irony, Adrian realized he hadn’t known how until now. He, the consummate lover, so renown for his sexual skill, so proficient and controlled and practiced, had only played at making love, where Billie…God. Clearly, it was all she knew. Pretense just wasn’t in her spectrum of capabilities. ↗

— Shelby Reed

#chris #shelby-reed #the-fifth-favor #love

True freedom only exists in art.The problem is you have to be incredibly good.No,I am putting it wrong:You don't so much have to be outstanding,what you really need are connections,if you don't want to be dependent on all kinds of government foundations who will impose their ideas and restrictions on you in turn.It can be touch and go in the beginning:It takes guts to let go of everything.But you make it,you're free. ↗

— Esther Verhoef

#close-up #esther-verhoef #freedom #life #art

Value your freedom or you will lose it, teaches history. 'Don't bother us with politics', respond those who don't want to learn. ↗

— Richard Stallman

#freedom #history #learn #lose #politics

Nonetheless, many people, and especially intellectuals, passionately loathe capitalism. As they see it, this ghastly mode of society’s economic organization has brought about nothing but mischief and misery. Men were once happy and prosperous in the good old days preceding the Industrial Revolution. Now under capitalism the immense majority are starving paupers ruthlessly exploited by rugged individualists. For these scoundrels nothing counts but their moneyed interests. They do not produce good and really useful things, but only what will yield the highest profits. They poison bodies with alcoholic beverages and tobacco, and souls and minds with tabloids, lascivious books and silly moving pictures. The “ideological superstructure” of capitalism is a literature of decay and degradation, the burlesque show and the art of striptease, the Hollywood pictures and the detective stories. ↗

— Ludwig von Mises

#economics #greed #vice #art

Socialism is a philosophy of failure, the creed of ignorance, and the gospel of envy, its inherent virtue is the equal sharing of misery. ↗

— Winston Churchill

#envy #equal #failure #gospel #ignorance

People use democracy as a free-floating abstraction disconnected from reality. Democracy in and of itself is not necessarily good. Gang rape, after all, is democracy in action. All men have the right to live their own life. Democracy must be rooted in a rational philosophy that first and foremost recognizes the right of an individual. A few million Imperial Order men screaming for the lives of a much smaller number of people in the New World may win a democratic vote, but it does not give them the right to those lives, or make their calls for such killing right. Democracy is not a synonym for justice or for freedom. Democracy is not a sacred right sanctifying mob rule. Democracy is a principle that is subordinate to the inalienable rights of the individual. ↗

— Terry Goodkind

#human-rights #freedom

In a society governed passively by free markets and free elections, organized greed always defeats disorganized democracy. ↗

— Matt Taibbi

#democracy #elections #government #greed #wall-street