#sca

Life is for the living. I was a little scared before surgery 'cause of the release you sign that says there's always a very small percent chance that you'll die during the operation. ↗

— Billy West

#before #cause #chance #die #during

Every day things get better because politicians are addressing the fiscal challenges more aggressively. ↗

— Meredith Whitney

#aggressively #because #better #challenges #day

The more we can do to address fiscal austerity, the better our markets will do, and there is a real political shift to doing that. ↗

— Meredith Whitney

#austerity #better #doing #fiscal #markets

The idea that information can be stored in a changing world without an overwhelming depreciation of its value is false. It is scarcely less false than the more plausible claim that after a war we may take our existing weapons, fill their barrels with information. ↗

— Norbert Wiener

#barrels #changing #claim #depreciation #existing

I find something repulsive about the idea of vicarious redemption. I would not throw my numberless sins onto a scapegoat and expect them to pass from me; we rightly sneer at the barbaric societies that practice this unpleasantness in its literal form. There's no moral value in the vicarious gesture anyway. As Thomas Paine pointed out, you may if you wish take on a another man's debt, or even to take his place in prison. That would be self-sacrificing. But you may not assume his actual crimes as if they were your own; for one thing you did not commit them and might have died rather than do so; for another this impossible action would rob him of individual responsibility. So the whole apparatus of absolution and forgiveness strikes me as positively immoral, while the concept of revealed truth degrades the concept of free intelligence by purportedly relieving us of the hard task of working out the ethical principles for ourselves. ↗

— Christopher Hitchens

#forgiveness #immorality #redemption #religion #responsibility

Nixon's grand mistake was his failure to understand that Americans are forgiving, and if he had admitted error early and apologized to the country, he would have escaped. ↗

— Bob Woodward

#apologized #country #early #error #escaped

Fiction is like a spider's web, attached ever so slightly perhaps, but still attached to life at all four corners. Often the attachment is scarcely perceptible. ↗

— Virginia Woolf

#attachment #corners #ever #fiction #four

The things people say of a man do not alter a man. He is what he is. Public opinion is of no value whatsoever. Even if people employ actual violence, they are not to be violent in turn. That would be to fall to the same low level. After all, even in prison, a man can be quite free. His soul can be free. His personality can be untroubled. He can be at peace. And, above all things, they are not to interfere with other people or judge them in any way. Personality is a very mysterious thing. A man cannot always be estimated by what he does. He may keep the law, and yet be worthless. He may break the law, and yet be fine. He may be bad, without ever doing anything bad. He may commit a sin against society, and yet realise through that sin his true perfection. ↗

— Oscar Wilde

#freedom #oscar #personality #prison #soul

And it's one reason why I don't go to a lot of movies - they're more and more dominated by corporate values and fiscal concerns as opposed to cinematic concerns. ↗

— Jeffrey Wright

#concerns #corporate #dominated #fiscal #go

As a kid I quite fancied the romantic, Bohemian idea of being an artist. I expect I thought I could escape from the difficulties of maths and spelling. Maybe I thought I would avoid the judgement of the establishment. ↗

— Peter Wright

#avoid #being #bohemian #could #difficulties