#soc

For anyone inclined to caricature environmental history as 'environmental determinism,' the contrasting histories of the Dominican Republic and Haiti provide a useful antidote. Yes, environmental problems do constrain human societies, but the societies' responses also make a difference. ↗

— Jared Diamond

#environment #environmental-determinism #history #societies #environmentalism

Because I want to have sex with him--and because that's sinful--I'm blushing and flushing furiously under his scrutinizing scrutiny. ↗

— Jess C. Scott

#crime-fiction #drama #e-l-james #fifty-shades #fifty-shades-of-grey

There was a thing called Heaven; but all the same they used to drink enormous quantities of alcohol." ... "There was a thing called the soul and a thing called immortality." ... "But they used to take morphia and cocaine." ... "Two thousand pharmacologists and biochemists were subsidized in A.F. 178." ... "Six years later it was being produced commercially. The perfect drug." ... "Euphoric, narcotic, pleasantly hallucinant." ... "All the advantages of Christianity and alcohol; none of their defects." ... "Take a holiday from reality whenever you like, and come back without so much as a headache or a mythology." ... "Stability was practically assured. ↗

— Aldous Huxley

#happiness #huxley #society #stability #immortality

The essential American soul is hard, isolate, stoic, and a killer. It has never yet melted. ↗

— D.H. Lawrence

#social-isolation #sociopathy #united-states #united-states

We're living in a funny world kid, a peculiar civilization. The police are playing crooks in it, and the crooks are doing police duty. The politicians are preachers, and the preachers are politicians. The tax collectors collect for themselves. The Bad People want us to have more dough, and the good people are fighting to keep it from us. It's not good for us, know what I mean? If we had all we wanted to eat, we'd eat too much. We'd have inflation in the toilet paper industry. That's the way I understand it. That's about the size of some of the arguments I've heard. ↗

— Jim Thompson

#social-commentary #funny

It is a known fact that pain and pleasure are the two most basic elements of life. But the secret is to simplify that fact. ↗

— Bauvard

#humor #life #pain #pleasure #sadomasochism

Have you noticed how dogs sniff at one another when they meet? It seems to be their nature. - Yes; it's a funny habit. - No, it's not funny; you are wrong there. There's nothing funny in nature, however funny it may seem to man. If dogs could reason and criticize us they'd be sure to find just as much that would be funny to them, if not far more, in the social relations of men, their masters -far more, I think. I am more convinced that there is far more foolishness among us. ↗

— Fyodor Dostoyevsky

#nature #society #funny

... a man doesn't like to have his ego popped, especially when he prides himself on his sagacity, and then to be proved wrong by a man who claims he doesn't know anything. ↗

— E.A. Bucchianeri

#dark-humor #ego #egotism #egotist #funny

I've heard there’s a lot of bagpiping in that house. I'd love to go check it out." "So...you want to join the secret society of revolutionary plumbers. ↗

— Benson Bruno

#humor #plumbing #secret-society #funny

Pantheism and Utopia meet in the camping trailer, where they are offered hot herbal tea and asked after the names on their birth certificates. ↗

— Benson Bruno

#humor #random #society #funny