#sm

One of the saddest lessons of history is this: If we’ve been bamboozled long enough, we tend to reject any evidence of the bamboozle. We’re no longer interested in finding out the truth. The bamboozle has captured us. It’s simply too painful to acknowledge, even to ourselves, that we’ve been taken. Once you give a charlatan power over you, you almost never get it back. ↗

— Carl Sagan

#capitalism #corruption #government #history #oppression

I don't hate you, Jace." "I don't hate you, either." She looked up at him, relieved. "I'm glad to hear that—" "I wish I could hate you," he said. His voice was light, his mouth curved in an unconcerned half smile, his eyes sick with misery. "I want to hate you. I try to hate you. It would be so much easier if I did hate you. Sometimes I think I do hate you and then I see you and I—" Her hands had grown numb with their grip on the blanket. "And you what?" "What do you think?" Jace shook his head. "Why should I tell you everything about how I feel when you never tell me anything? It's like banging my head on a wall, except at least if I were banging my head on a wall, I'd be able to make myself stop." Clary's lips were trembling so violently that she found it hard to speak. "Do you think it's easy for me?" she demanded. ↗

— Cassandra Clare

#city-of-ashes #smile

Even the most ardent environmentalist doesn't really want to stop pollution. If he thinks about it, and doesn't just talk about it, he wants to have the right amount of pollution. We can't really afford to eliminate it - not without abandoning all the benefits of technology that we not only enjoy but on which we depend. ↗

— Milton Friedman

#technology

Sex is a team sport, sugar. ↗

— Cherise Sinclair

#erotic #erotic-romance #sports

Ours is a world of nuclear giants and ethical infants. We know more about war than we know about peace, more about killing than we know about living. We have grasped the mystery of the atom and rejected the Sermon on the Mount. ↗

— Omar Nelson Bradley

#humanism #humanity #imperialism #nuclear-weapons #peace

Industry, technology, and commerce can thrive only as long as an idealistic national community offers the necessary preconditions. And these do not lie in material egoism, but in a spirit of sacrifice and joyful renunciation. ↗

— Adolf Hitler

#principle #renunciation #sacrifice #spirit #thriving

America's abundance was created not by public sacrifices to the common good, but by the productive genius of free men who pursued their own personal interests and the making of their own private fortunes. They did not starve the people to pay for America's industrialization. They gave the people better jobs, higher wages, and cheaper goods with every new machine they invented, with every scientific discovery or technological advance- and thus the whole country was moving forward and profiting, not suffering, every step of the way. ↗

— Ayn Rand

#capitalism #money #philosophy #profit #men

No one won the last war, and no one will win the next war. ↗

— Eleanor Roosevelt

#war #wisdom

It's taking all my self-control not to fuck you on the hood of this car, just to show you that you're mine, and if I want to buy you a fucking car, I'll buy you a fucking car" Christian Grey ↗

— E.L. James

#domination #sexy #sexy

Even as a junkie I stayed true [to vegetarianism] - 'I shall have heroin, but I shan't have a hamburger.' What a sexy little paradox. ↗

— Russell Brand

#drugs #heroin #vegetarianism #sexy