#wil

People in the West like to shoot things. When they first got to the West they shot buffalo. Once there were 70 million buffalo on the plains and then the people of the West started blasting away at them. Buffalo are just cows with big heads. If you've ever looked a cow in the face and seen the unutterable depths of trust and stupidity that lie within, you will be able to guess how difficult it must have been for people in the West to track down buffalo and shoot them to pieces. By 1895, there were only 800 buffalo left, mostly in zoos and touring Wild West shows. With no buffalo left to kill, Westerners started shooting Indians. Between 1850 and 1890 they reduced the number of Indians in America from two million to 90,000. Nowadays, thank goodness, both have made a recovery. Today there are 30,000 buffalo and 300,000 Indiands, and of course you are not allowed to shoot either, so all the Westerners have left to shoot at are road signs and each other, both of which they do rather a lot. There you have a capsule history of the West. ↗

— Bill Bryson

#buffalo #indians #the-west #wild-west #recovery

We will go forward... we will never go back. ↗

— Michael Bloomberg

#forward #go #never #will

I don't think Hamas will be satisfied simply ruling the Gaza Strip. ↗

— John Bolton

#hamas #i #ruling #satisfied #simply

Goodwill is the one and only asset that competition cannot undersell or destroy. ↗

— Ludwig Borne

#cannot #competition #destroy #goodwill #only

Maybe it will be a great thing when the Baby Boomers finally die out. In real life, it's not a matter of the good guys or the bad guys. Rather, it's big numbers and small numbers that do the counting. ↗

— Jack Bowman

#baby boomers #bad #bad guys #big #boomers

God will not forgive us if we fail. ↗

— Leonid I. Brezhnev

#forgive #god #us #will

But some one will say that this supreme Being, who made all things, and those also who conferred on men particular benefits, are entitled to their respective worship. ↗

— Lactantius

#also #being #benefits #conferred #entitled

If you listen to Louis Armstrong from 1929, you will never hear anything better than that really, and you will never hear anything more free than that. ↗

— Steve Lacy

#armstrong #better #free #hear #listen

This is not a showman's job. I will not step out of character. ↗

— Herbert Hoover

#i #job #out #step #will

Man’s life is a line that nature commands him to describe upon the surface of the earth, without his ever being able to swerve from it, even for an instant. He is born without his own consent; his organization does in nowise depend upon himself; his ideas come to him involuntarily; his habits are in the power of those who cause him to contract them; he is unceasingly modified by causes, whether visible or concealed, over which he has no control, which necessarily regulate his mode of existence, give the hue to his way of thinking, and determine his manner of acting. He is good or bad, happy or miserable, wise or foolish, reasonable or irrational, without his will being for any thing in these various states. ↗

— Paul Henri Thiry d'Holbach

#free-will #life