#venti

If the counsel of the peaceniks had been followed, Kuwait would today be the nineteenth province of Iraq. Bosnia would be a trampled and cleansed province of Greater Serbia, Kosovo would have been emptied of most of its inhabitants, and the Taliban would still be in power in Afghanistan. Yet nothing seems to disturb the contented air of moral superiority of those that intone the "peace movement". ↗

— Christopher Hitchens

#leftism #noninterventionism #pacifism #peace-movement #iraq

Destiny is the invention of the cowardly, and the resigned. ↗

— Ignazio Silone

#destiny #invention #resigned

He needed the people and the clamour around him. There was no questions and no doubts when he stood on a platform over a sea of faces; the air was heavy, compact, saturated with a single solvent-admiration; there was no room for anything else. He was great; great as the number of people who told him so. He was right; right as the number of people who believed it. He looked at the faces, at the eyes, he saw himself born in them, he saw himself granted the gift of life. That was Peter Keating, that, the reflection in those staring pupils, and his body was only it's reflection. ↗

— Ayn Rand

#convention #society #life

I want a trophy wife. I’ll keep her on the shelf next to my future Nobel peace prize. (I plan on inventing a gun that shoots love, not bullets.)
 ↗

— Jarod Kintz

#bullets #gun #invention #love #nobel-peace-prize

The Summer of Love had already given way to the the winter of Who the f--k are you? ↗

— Jaffe Cohen

#seventies #love

I do not think you can name many great inventions that have been made by married men. ↗

— Nikola Tesla

#marriage #nikola-tesla #passion #marriage

One's duty is to feel what is great, cherish the beautiful, and not accept all the conventions of society with the ignominy that it imposes upon us. ↗

— Gustave Flaubert

#conventions #duty #gustave-flaubert #life #madame-bovary

I respect those who say that the United States should simply withdraw from the Middle East, but I don't respect them for anything but their honesty. ↗

— Christopher Hitchens

#isolationism #middle-east #noninterventionism #respect

And [Asimov]'ll sign anything, hardbacks, softbacks, other people's books, scraps of paper. Inevitably someone handed him a blank check on the occasion when I was there, and he signed that without as much as a waver to his smile — except that he signed: 'Harlan Ellison. ↗

— Isaac Asimov

#convention #fame #science-fiction #self-referential #science

No. I believe in free will. I think we make our own decisions and carry out our own actions. And our actions have consequences. The world is what we make it. But I think sometime we can ask God to help us and He will. Sometime I think He looks down and say, 'Wow, look what those idiots are up to now. I guess I better help them along a little'. ↗

— Michael Grant

#gone-series #the-fayz #action