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| Link | Quote | Stars | Tags | Author |
| 1db89d8 | Doesn't part of the awe that fills us when we confront the unknown come from understanding that, should it at last flood into us and become known, we would be altered? | Nicole Krauss | ||
| 0f111fb | the tender brutality of physical existence...the insoluble contradiction of being animals cursed with self-reflection, and moral beings cursed with animal instincts... | Nicole Krauss | ||
| 9055166 | Childhood is a process of slowly recomposing oneself out of the borrowed materials of the world. | Nicole Krauss | ||
| 2424283 | Some people, like your sister, just get happier and happier everyday. And some people, like Baba Asch, just get sadder and sadder. And some people, like you, get both.' 'What about you? Are you the happiest and the saddest right now than you've ever been?' 'Of course I am.' 'Why?' 'Because nothing makes me happier and nothing makes me sadder than you. | Nicole Krauss | ||
| 7d342a3 | There were books everywhere. There were pens, and a blue glass vase, an ash tray from the Dolder Grand in Zurich, the rusted arrow of a weather vane, a little brass hourglass, sand dollars on the windowsill, a pair of binoculars, and empty wine bottle that served as a candle holder, wax melted down the neck. I touch this thing and that. At the end, all that's left of you are your possessions. | Nicole Krauss | ||
| e2c291a | And yet isn't it true of all of us? That there are things we feel to be at the heart of our nature that are not borne out by the evidence around us, and so, to protect our delicate sense of integrity, we elect, however unconsciously, to see the world other than the way it really is? And sometimes it leads to transcendence, and sometimes it leads to the unconscionable. | Nicole Krauss | ||
| 72b2fd8 | If you don't know what it feels like to have someone you love put a hand below your bottom rib for the first time, what chance is there for love? | Nicole Krauss | ||
| 0b78d1a | Then one day I was looking out the window. Maybe I was contemplating the sky. Put even a fool in front of the window and you'll get a Spinoza. | Nicole Krauss | ||
| ee30748 | the Church, in fact, was the matrix that produced the university, the nest whence it took flight." 31" | Thomas E. Woods Jr. | ||
| 382baaf | Something made me pull sounds out of my silence... | E.L. Konigsburg | ||
| c54c55e | Marx set forth a classic statement of inherent class antagonism on the market | Thomas E. Woods Jr. | ||
| 04f441f | This is in response to Thatcher's statement that "there's no such thing as society." So these progressives are going to show her! Naturally, they interpret her perfectly defensible statement in the most inane and uncharitable way possible. Why, we'll show her there really is society, by helping our fellow man! But that was exactly her point. There is no such thing as an abstract, disembodied blob called "society." All that exists are indivi.. | Thomas E. Woods Jr. | ||
| 133bddf | The whole system is overseen by the government-created Federal Reserve System, which presides over a system-wide cartel. | Thomas E. Woods Jr. | ||
| 2208c58 | Why does she [Borowski] rail against other women's choices? Surely a core libertarian value is neutrality between different conceptions of the good?" Actually, no. I replied: "The core libertarian value is nonaggression. 'Neutrality between different conceptions of the good' has nothing to do with libertarianism. If you were truly neutral between different conceptions of the good, you wouldn't be arguing against Julie's conception of the go.. | Thomas E. Woods Jr. | ||
| bb726a8 | Less extreme leftists have been no less enthusiastic for war's potential to transform the home front, Nisbet added. Leftist intellectuals were practically unanimous in favoring U.S. entry into World War I since they understood the opportunity it presented for institutional change at home. Wartime economic planning, they were convinced, would help to erode Americans' conservative beliefs in the limits of government and the inviolability of p.. | Thomas E. Woods Jr. | ||
| b29459b | stock market as measured by the Dow did decrease 25% between 1969 and 1971 | Thomas E. Woods Jr. | ||
| 1e96c20 | The biggest anachronism, usually, in a historical movie is, again, the author doesn't want to be thought to in any way share the social conventions or whatever of the time, so there's always this auctorial alter ego. So you have a movie set in the 1830s where you'll have a female character who has the attitudes of a twenty-first-century screenwriter. And that to me is a true anachronism. | Thomas E. Woods Jr. | ||
| a06780b | To be attacked by a Gore Vidal, or an H.L. Mencken, one of the great wordsmiths of American criticism, while surely unpleasant, must have been oddly exhilarating for the poor souls on the receiving end. I, on the other hand, have the more dubious and prosaic distinction of being a regular target of Ian Millhiser. | Thomas E. Woods Jr. | ||
| 2ff600f | About fifteen years ago a conservative columnist wrote that Americans are faced with a choice between the Stupid Party and the Evil Party. And that once in a while the two parties get together and do something that's both stupid and evil, and that's called bipartisanship. | Thomas E. Woods Jr. | ||
| 614c02b | Caplan writes: My study of personality psychology makes me one of the doubters. On the popular Myers-Briggs personality test, there is a huge Thinking-Feeling gap between men and women. For men, the breakdown is roughly 60% Thinking, 40% Feeling. For women, the breakdown is roughly 30% Thinking, 70% Feeling. | Thomas E. Woods Jr. | ||
| 01b572c | in all of the world of Islam, the masses now regard the United States as their arrogant adversary; | Thomas E. Woods Jr. | ||
| 539785d | imperialism has always been something of a losing proposition, especially in the modern international system, and our ruling class's attempt to nation-build the world in their own image is doomed to failure and to creating one disaster after another.... | Thomas E. Woods Jr. | ||
| 07ae9b9 | Unchecked power is an invitation to tyranny. | Thomas E. Woods Jr. | ||
| 9fda608 | Vulgar language," Chan said..."Always the first and last refuge of the man with nothing to say." | Michael Chabon | ||
| 7ea94fc | Quickly, bring me a beaker of wine, so that I may wet my mind and say something clever. | Tom Standage | ||
| 19369ce | One common abbreviation used in Roman letters was SPD, which was short for salutem plurimam dicit, or "sends many greetings." This served as a greeting at the beginning of a letter, to indicate the sender and the receiver, as in "Marcus Sexto SPD" ("Marcus sends many greetings to Sextus"). Another popular acronym was SVBEEV, which was short for si vales, bene est, ego valeo ("if you are well, that is good, I am well"). Such abbreviations sa.. | Tom Standage | ||
| 82835be | Television's appeal is apparent from the steady increase in the average amount of time spent watching television in America, from four and a half hours a day in 1950 to five hours in 1960, six hours in 1970, and seven hours in 1990. As the number of homes with multiple screens increased, and cable and satellite television provided dozens and then hundreds of channels to choose from, the number of hours watched increased still further, excee.. | Tom Standage | ||
| d9a33ed | All this will come as a surprise to modern Internet users who may assume that today's social-media environment is unprecedented. But many of the ways in which we share, consume, and manipulate information, even in the Internet era, build upon habits and conventions that date back centuries. | Tom Standage | ||
| ec1fff8 | Food has a unique political power, for several reasons: food links the world's richest consumers with its poorest farmers; food choices have always been a potent means of social signaling; modern shoppers must make dozens of food choices every week, providing far more opportunities for political expression than electoral politics; and food is a product you consume, so eating something implies a deeply personal endorsement of it. But | Tom Standage | ||
| b3e70a0 | A particularly important use of codes a was by banks. Worries about the security of telegraphic money transfers | Tom Standage | ||
| bbfb82f | In 1872, Western Union (by then the dominant telegraph company in the United States) decided to implement a new, secure scheme to enable sums of up to $100 to be transferred between several hundred towns by telegraph. The system worked by dividing the company's network into twenty districts, each of which had its own superintendent. A telegram from the sender's office to the district superintendent confirmed that the money had been deposite.. | Tom Standage | ||
| 17f8a67 | The exchange of consent being given by the electric flash, they were thus married by telegraph. | Tom Standage | ||
| 49240a9 | But an oft-heard complaint, as companies spread their tentacles around the world and compete on a global playing field, is that globalization is merely a new form of imperialism. | corporations globalization imperialism | Tom Standage | |
| 7076583 | In the United States radio was centralized to maximize advertising revenue; in Britain to preserve and promote the values of the elite; and in Germany to advance Nazi propaganda. Whatever the reason, the result was the most centralized medium in history. In the United States radio listeners were gathered up by networks that saw them as consumers to be sold to; in Britain they were the masses to be instructed and improved; in Germany they we.. | Tom Standage | ||
| ad4bc92 | Literacy was power. | Tom Standage | ||
| 7aac8b4 | Paul used social media to ensure that his view prevailed, cementing the establishment of the Christian church as a religion open to all, and not just to Jews. Such is his influence that his letters are still read out in Christian churches all over the world today-- a striking testament to the power of documents copied and distributed along social networks. | Tom Standage | ||
| 0b6767a | No doubt there was some time-wasting in coffee houses, as their critics claimed. But coffee houses also provided a lively intellectual and social environment in which people could meet and ideas could collide in unexpected ways, producing a stream of innovations that shaped the modern world. On balance, the introduction of coffee houses did far more good than harm, which should give those concerned about the time-wasting potential of Intern.. | Tom Standage | ||
| 1171c36 | One writer, Gardiner Hubbard, described the American telegraph system as "peculiarly a business system; eighty per cent of the messages are on business matters... . the managers of the telegraph know that their business customers want the quickest and best service, and care more for dispatch than low tariffs. Thus the great difference between the telegraph systems of Europe and America is that [in Europe], the telegraph is used principally .. | Tom Standage | ||
| bdb6ea2 | in Britain, for example, it meant that a centralized "nickname" system could be introduced. Under this scheme, companies and individuals could reserve a special word as their "telegraphic address" to make life easier for anyone who wanted to send them a telegram." | Tom Standage | ||
| 0205be9 | Yet the history of media shows that this is just the modern incarnation of the timeless complaint of the intellectual elite, every time technology makes publishing easier, that the wrong sort of people will use it to publish the wrong sorts of things. | Tom Standage | ||
| b7cce32 | Stronger! stronger! grow they all, Who for Coca-Cola call. Brighter! brighter! thinkers think, When they Coca-Cola drink. --Coca-Cola advertising slogan, 1896 | Tom Standage | ||
| ddde3ae | most of the stories in the Boston News-Letter were simply copied from the London papers. | Tom Standage | ||
| 03dbd06 | the Coca-Cola Company is the biggest single supplier of such drinks. Globally, the company supplies 3 percent of humanity's total liquid intake. | Tom Standage | ||
| f80073c | According to an account in Anecdotes of the Telegraph, when his request was questioned, the man ran off, "grinning a horrible, ghastly smile"." | Tom Standage |