#u

It is a rule in paleontology that ornamentation and complication precede extinction. And our mutation, of which the assembly line, the collective farm, the mechanized army, and the mass production of food are evidences or even symptoms, might well correspond to the thickening armor of the great reptiles—a tendency that can end only in extinction. If this should happen to be true, nothing stemming from thought can interfere with it or bend it. Conscious thought seems to have little effect on the action or direction of our species. ↗

— John Steinbeck

#farming #human-development #production #thought #war

The bourbon goes into the recipe, Miss Connor, not into you,” he’d said from directly behind me. He had a way of doing that, catching me in the act. I suppose the number of times I screwed up made me an easy mark. My spine straightened at the scolding, but my mouth did what it knew best. “Well, that’s just a waste of perfectly good bourbon if you ask me. ↗

— Jenny Lyn

#food-and-sex #humor #jenny-lyn #sarcasm #food

If someone else takes a bite of my food, I have to cut off the part that his/her saliva has touched before I can eat any more of it. ↗

— Jodi Picoult

#food

China is an old nation with a colourful history. Its booming economy has triggered an appetite and a curiosity around the world for its art and culture, one that continues to grow. I can, however, tell people that it is a show with no actor. ↗

— Ai Weiwei

#appetite #around #art #booming #china

Human history becomes more and more a race between education and catastrophe. ↗

— H. G. Wells

#becomes #between #catastrophe #education #human

The New Deal is plainly an attempt to achieve a working socialism and avert a social collapse in America; it is extraordinarily parallel to the successive 'policies' and 'Plans' of the Russian experiment. Americans shirk the word 'socialism', but what else can one call it? ↗

— H. G. Wells

#america #attempt #avert #call #collapse

You have learned something. That always feels at first as if you had lost something. ↗

— H. G. Wells

#feels #first #had #learned #lost

The only true measure of success is the ratio between what we might have done and what we might have been on the one hand, and the thing we have made and the things we have made of ourselves on the other. ↗

— H. G. Wells

#between #done #hand #made #measure

While there is a chance of the world getting through its troubles, I hold that a reasonable man has to behave as though he were sure of it. If at the end your cheerfulness in not justified, at any rate you will have been cheerful. ↗

— H. G. Wells

#any #been #behave #chance #cheerful

Biologically the species is the accumulation of the experiments of all its successful individuals since the beginning. ↗

— H. G. Wells

#biologically #experiments #individuals #since #species