#venti

I don't believe medical discoveries are doing much to advance human life. As fast as we create ways to extend it we are inventing ways to shorten it. ↗

— Christiaan Barnard

#believe #create #discoveries #doing #extend

Contraceptives have a proven track record of enhancing the health of women and children, preventing unintended pregnancy, and reducing the need for abortion. ↗

— Louise Slaughter

#children #enhancing #health #need #pregnancy

[Americans] were, for one thing, so smitten with the idea of progress that they invented things without having any idea whether those things would be of any use. ↗

— Bill Bryson

#invention #progress #home

Applying different standards to al Qaeda does not abandon Geneva, but only recognizes that the U.S. faces a stateless enemy never contemplated by the Conventions. ↗

— John Yoo

#al #applying #contemplated #conventions #different

It was strange to us that none of these three victims made any attempt to resist the attack. Indeed, not one inhabitant in any of these worlds considered for a moment the possibility of resistance. In every case the attitude to disaster seemed to express itself in such terms as these: "To retaliate would be to wound our communal spirit beyond cure. We choose rather to die. The theme of spirit that we have created must inevitably be broken short, whether by the ruthlessness of the invader or by our own resort to arms. It is better to be destroyed than to triumph in slaying the spirit. Such as it is, the spirit that we have achieved is fair; and it is indestructibly woven into the tissue of the cosmos. We die praising the universe in which at least such an achievement as ours can be. We die knowing that the promise of further glory outlives us in other galaxies. We die praising the Star Maker, the Star Destroyer. ↗

— Olaf Stapledon

#pacifism #scifi #war #attitude

Sometimes time spent reinventing the wheel results in a revolutionary new rolling device. But sometimes it just amounts to time spent reinventing the wheel. ↗

— Steve Krug

#design #invention #work #design

He who cures a disease may be the skillfullest, but he that prevents it is the safest physician. ↗

— Thomas Fuller

#disease #disease-prevention #dr-campbell #healthy #nutrition

We sensible often resist intrusive love and its chaos practically, employing measures to prevent the former for fear of the latter. But for all our wit and work, that desperation for control also prevents the pure, transcendental freedom more often delivered by both. ↗

— Tiffany Madison

#control #desperation #freedom #love #lover

In no time we roll into Sedona proper and find a Cirlce K. The place is full of men with silver ponytails and ratty sandals, old hippie women in loose flowing pants grinning vacantly as they molest the produce, and I am reminded of my old neighborhood in San Francisco. We buy enough fruit and bread and jerked meat for three days, as well as a couple spare handlers of SoCo and a big bottle of cheap Chianti for me. As I'm paying I wonder at how we cling so relentlessly to the little conventions like commerce, as though they can save us. ↗

— Ron Currie Jr.

#conventions #men

All the mega corporations on the planet make their obscene profits off the labor and suffering of others, with complete disregard for the effects on the workers, environment, and future generations. As with the banking sector, they play games with the lives of millions, hysterically reject any kind of government intervention when the profits are rolling in, but are quick to pass the bill for the cleanup and the far-reaching consequences of these avoidable tragedies to the public when things go wrong. We have a straightforward proposal: if they want public money, we want public control. It's that simple. ↗

— Michael Hureaux-Perez

#capitalism #corporations #deepwater #economic-interventionism #environment