#venti

I've always found the thousand dollar dinners more unsettling than the twenty-five-thousand dollar ones --- if someone pays the Republican National Committee twenty-five thousand dollars (or, more likely, fifty per couple) to breathe the same air as Charlie for an hour or two, then it's clear the person has money to spare. What breaks my heart is when it's apparent through their accent or attire that a person isn't well off but has scrimped to attend an event with us. We're not worth it! I want to say. You should have paid off your credit-card bill, invested in your grandchild's college fund, taken a vacation to the Ozarks. Instead, in a few weeks, they receive in the mail a photo with one or both of us, signed by an autopen, which they can frame so that we might grin out into their living room for years to come. ↗

— Curtis Sittenfeld

#elections #politician-s-wife #politics #money

There’s a hurricane coming to Florida, and there will be high winds. I should probably turn off my ceiling fans, to try to mitigate the billions of dollars in damages the storm will incur. 
 ↗

— Jarod Kintz

#florida #funny #humor #hurricane #loss

People today have forgotten they're really just a part of nature. Yet, they destroy the nature on which our lives depend. They always think they can make something better. Especially scientists. They may be smart, but most don't understand the heart of nature. They only invent things that, in the end, make people unhappy. Yet they're so proud of their inventions. What's worse, most people are, too. They view them as if they were miracles. They worship them. They don't know it, but they're losing nature. They don't see that they're going to perish. The most important things for human beings are clean air and clean water. ↗

— Akira Kurosawa

#humanity #humankind #invention #nature #science

Invention is by its very nature disruptive. If you want to be understood at all times, then don't do anything new. ↗

— Jeff Bezos

#nature

Mormons invented themselves just as other religious and ethnic groups invented themselves. But Mormons did so in such a singularly impressive way that we will probably always remain baffled as to how exactly it happened. ↗

— Laurence Moore

#ethnic-group #how-it-happened #lds #mormon #mormonism

My religious beliefs also defied convention, leaning towards agnosticism and pandeism. ↗

— Alfred Tennyson

#deism #pandeism #pantheism #religion #spirituality

The day science begins to study non-physical phenomena, it will make more progress in one decade than in all the previous centuries of its existence. ↗

— Nikola Tesla

#non-physical-phenomena #progress #science #science

Some peaceniks clear their throats by saying that, of course, they oppose Saddam Hussein as much as anybody, though not enough to support doing anything about him. ↗

— Christopher Hitchens

#interventionism #iraq #iraq-war #saddam-hussein #iraq

A lonely day is God's way of saying that he wants to spend some quality time with you. ↗

— Criss Jami

#divine #divine-intervention #emotions #energizer #god

Despotic governments can stand 'moral force' till the cows come home; what they fear is physical force. ↗

— George Orwell

#dictatorship #interventionism #pacifism #totalitarianism #war