#rope

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

Soon, nostalgia will be another name for Europe. ↗

— Angela Carter

#europe #name #nostalgia #soon #will

The Abbe de Saint-Pierre suggested an association of all the states of Europe to maintain perpetual peace among themselves. Is this association practicable, and supposing that it were established, would it be likely to last? ↗

— Jean-Jacques Rousseau

#education

As a man is said to have a right to his property, he may be equally said to have a property in his rights. ↗

— James Madison

#his #man #may #property #right

It is hard to imagine that, having downgraded the US, S & P will not follow suit on at least one of the other members of the dwindling club of sovereign AAAs. If this were to materialise and involve a country like France, for example, it could complicate the already fragile efforts by Europe to rescue countries in its periphery. ↗

— Mohamed El-Erian

#amp #club #complicate #could #countries

You're an expatriate. You've lost touch with the soil. You get precious. Fake European standards have ruined you. You drink yourself to death. You become obsessed with sex. You spend all your time talking, not working. You are an expatriate, see? You hang around cafes. ↗

— Ernest Hemingway

#expatriate #sex #death

There's a power struggle going on across Europe these days. A few cities are competing against each other to see who shall emerge as the great 21st century European metropolis. Will it be London? Paris? Berlin? Zurich? Maybe Brussels, center of the young union? They all strive to outdo one another culturally, architecturally, politically, fiscally. But Rome, it should be said, has not bothered to join the race for status. Rome doesn't compete. Rome just watches all the fussing and striving, completely unfazed. I am inspired by the regal self-assurance of this city, so grounded and rounded, so amused and monumental, knowing she is held securely in the palm of history. I would like to be like Rome when I am an old lady. ↗

— Elizabeth Gilbert

#life #old #rome #architecture

Asia is an entertainment, Europe is a dream, America is an imprisonment and Rest is a nightmare. ↗

— Santosh Kalwar

#asia #countries #europe #funny #joke

Life exists in the universe only because the carbon atom possesses certain exceptional properties. ↗

— James Jeans

#because #carbon #certain #exceptional #exists

I know enough about European politics to know you've got a lot of crazy people who make their way onto the ballot. ↗

— Karl Rove

#ballot #crazy #crazy people #enough #european