#rita

Looking back 25 years later, what I may say is that the facts have been far better than the dreams. In the long course of cell life on this earth it remained, for our age for our generation, to receive the full ownership of our inheritance. ↗

— Albert Claude

#back #been #better #cell #course

In Britain, girls seem to be either bright or attractive. In America, that's not the case. They're both. ↗

— John Cleese

#attractive #both #bright #britain #case

Today, bilateral relations with Britain are excellent, with cooperation in many areas and both countries continuing to work on strengthening these ties. ↗

— Hassanal Bolkiah

#bilateral #both #britain #continuing #cooperation

Contemporary Britain seems an endlessly fascinating place to me - but if I knew a little bit more about other places, and other times, maybe it wouldn't. ↗

— Jonathan Coe

#bit #britain #contemporary #endlessly #fascinating

I live a perfectly happy and comfortable life in Blair's Britain, but I can't work up much affection for the culture we've created for ourselves: it's too cynical, too knowing, too ironic, too empty of real value and meaning. ↗

— Jonathan Coe

#blair #britain #comfortable #comfortable life #created

In its conception the literature prize belongs to days when a writer could still be thought of as, by virtue of his or her occupation, a sage, someone with no institutional affiliations who could offer an authoritative word on our times as well as on our moral life. ↗

— J. M. Coetzee

#authoritative #belongs #conception #could #days

Because guys like us, Red, we know there's a third choice. An alternative to staying simon-pure and bathing in the filth and the slime. It's the alternative that grown-ups all over the world pick. You balance off the walk through the hog-wallow against what it gains you. You choose the lesser of the two evils and try to keep your good intentions in front of you. And I guess you judge how well you are doing by how well you sleep at night...and what your dreams are like. ↗

— Stephen King

#inspirational #intention #life #rita-hayworth #shawshank-redemption

Worried about being a dull fellow? You might develop your talent for being irritating. ↗

— Mason Cooley

#being #develop #dull #fellow #irritating

My ultimate vocation in life is to be an irritant. ↗

— Elvis Costello

#life #ultimate #vocation

But a progressive policy needs more than just a bigger break with the economic and moral assumptions of the past 30 years. It needs a return to the conviction that economic growth and the affluence it brings is a means and not an end. The end is what it does to the lives, life-chances and hopes of people. Look at London. Of course it matters to all of us that London's economy flourishes. But the test of the enormous wealth generated in patches of the capital is not that it contributed 20%-30% to Britain's GDP but how it affects the lives of the millions who live and work there. What kind of lives are available to them? Can they afford to live there? If they can't, it is not compensation that London is also a paradise for the ultra-rich. Can they get decently paid jobs or jobs at all? If they can't, don't brag about all those Michelin-starred restaurants and their self-dramatising chefs. Or schooling for children? Inadequate schools are not offset by the fact that London universities could field a football team of Nobel prize winners. ↗

— Eric J. Hobsbawm

#capitalism #economics #education #london #morality