Posted 162 days ago
Politics is when people choose their words and actions based on how they want others to react rather than based on what they really think.
—Patrick Lencioni, The Five Dysfunctions of a Team
Posted 202 days ago
Only Irish coffee provides in a single glass all four essential food groups: alcohol, caffeine, sugar and fat.
—Alex Levine
Posted 342 days ago
Once the realization is accepted that even between the closest human beings infinite distances continue to exist, a wonderful living side by side can grow up, if they succeed in loving the distance between them which makes it possible for each to see each other whole against the sky.
—Rainer Rilke
Posted 468 days ago
What is wanted is not the will to believe, but the will to find out, which is the exact opposite.
—Bertrand Russell, "Skeptical_Essays", 1928
Posted 640 days ago
War is an ugly thing, but not the ugliest of things. The decayed and degraded state of moral and patriotic feeling, which thinks that nothing is worth war, is much worse. The person who has nothing for which he is willing to fight, nothing which is more important than his own personal safety, is a miserable creature and has no chance of being free unless made and kept so by the exertions of better men than himself.
—John Stuart Mill
Posted 640 days ago
How many seconds are there in a year? If I tell you there are 3.155 x 10^7, you won’t even try to remember it. On the other hand, who could forget that, to within half a percent, pi seconds is a nanocentury.
—Tom Duff, Bell Labs
Posted 642 days ago
[It is a] fundamental principle of American law that a government and its agents are under no general duty to provide public services, such as police protection, to any individual citizen.
—Warren v. District of Columbia, 444 A.2d 1 (D.C. Ct. of Ap., 1981)
Posted 652 days ago
It’s tempting to believe that government regulation of the Internet would be more consumer-friendly; history and economics suggest otherwise. The reason is simple: a regulated industry has a far larger stake in regulatory decisions than any other group in society. As a result, regulated companies spend lavishly on lobbyists and lawyers and, over time, turn the regulatory process to their advantage. Economists have dubbed this process “regulatory capture,” and they can point to plenty of examples. The airline industry was a cozy cartel before being deregulated in the 1970’s. Today, government regulation of cable television is the primary obstacle to competition.
—Timothy Lee, in The New York Times
Posted 768 days ago
If you can control your family you’ve gone terribly wrong somewhere.
—Imelda Staunton in My Family and Other Animals
Posted 833 days ago
I had an epiphany a few years ago where I was out at a celebrity party and it suddenly dawned on me that I had yet to meet a celebrity who is as smart and interesting as any of my friends.
—Moby