#time

We can consciously end our life almost anytime we choose. This ability is an endowment, like laughing and blushing, given to no other animal... in any given moment, by not exercising the option of suicide, we are choosing to live. ↗

— Peter McWilliams

#almost #animal #any #anytime #blushing

I apologize for being obvious, but every time I watch the curtain come down on even a halfway decent production of a Shakespeare play I feel a little sorrowful that I'll never know the man, or any man of such warm intelligence. ↗

— Ian Mcewan

#apologize #being #come #curtain #decent

My father's drinking was sometimes a problem. And a great deal went unspoken. He was not particularly acute or articulate about the emotions. But he was very affectionate towards me. ↗

— Ian Mcewan

#acute #affectionate #articulate #deal #drinking

My parents were keen for me to have the education they themselves never had. They weren't able to guide me towards particular books, but they encouraged me to read, which I did, randomly and compulsively. ↗

— Ian Mcewan

#acute #affectionate #articulate #deal #drinking

I believe that my children, who are young, will look back on the early years of the 21st century in rather the same way I look back on the middle of the 20th: as a time when seemingly respectable people supported discrimination against Americans simply because those Americans were different from themselves. ↗

— Jon Meacham

#against #back #because #believe #century

I've been accused of being old before my time more than once. It's true that I've always felt an affinity for, and been comfortable around, older people. I attribute this to a childhood spent around my grandparents - and even a great-grandparent or two. I wouldn't trade those experiences for anything. ↗

— Jon Meacham

#affinity #always #anything #around #attribute

In the fullness of time, I suspect that bigotry against homosexuals will seem as repugnant as racial prejudice does today. Or so one hopes. ↗

— Jon Meacham

#does #fullness #homosexuals #hopes #i

It would be great if politics were fact-based, but it is not, and it is surely not nuance-based. What works in a classroom or a think tank does not work on Capitol Hill or in the White House. Obama sometimes seems to be running the Brookings Institution, not the country. ↗

— Jon Meacham

#capitol hill #classroom #country #does #great

The bringing-about of order is the first and fundamental task of government. We accept limits on our rights for the sake of a larger social compact all the time. ↗

— Jon Meacham

#compact #first #fundamental #government #larger

Whether one believes or not, religion is as real a force in the life of the world as economics or politics, and it demands fair-minded attention. Even if you think the entire religious enterprise is at best misguided and at worst counterproductive, it remains vital, inspiring great good and, sometimes, great evil. ↗

— Jon Meacham

#believes #best #counterproductive #demands #economics