QUOTIN'

• 2009-11-23

  “The best argument against democracy is a five minute conversation with the average voter.”

  -Winston Churchill

• 2009-10-19

  To live content with small means; to seek elegance rather than luxury, and refinement rather than fashion; to be worthy, not respectable, and wealthy, not, rich; to listen to stars and birds, babes and sages, with open heart; to study hard; to think quietly, act frankly, talk gently, await occasions, hurry never; in a word, to let the spiritual, unbidden and unconscious, grow up through the common.

  This is my symphony.

  — William Henry Channing

• 2009-08-12

  McNulty: Let me understand. Every Friday night, you and your boys are shootin’ craps, right? And every Friday night, your pal Snot Boogie… he’d wait til there’s cash on the ground and he’d grab it and run away? You let him do that?

  Suspect: We’d catch him and beat his ass but ain’t nobody ever go past that.

  McNulty: I’ve gotta ask you: if every time Snot Boogie would grab the money and run away… why’d you even let him in the game?

  Suspect: Got to. This America, man.

  — The Wire - Season One, Episode One

• 2009-08-11

  The trouble with the world is that the stupid are cocksure and the intelligent are full of doubt.

  — Bertrand Russell

• →

  “You have no idea what it’s like to be called into a sterile conference room with a hospital administrator you’ve never met before and be told that your mother’s insurance policy will only pay for 30 days in ICU. You can’t imagine what it’s like to be advised that you need to “make some decisions,” like whether your mother should be released “HTD” which is hospital parlance for “home to die,” or if you want to pay out of pocket to keep her in the ICU another week.”

  And when you ask how much that would cost you are given a number so impossibly large that you realize there really are no decisions to make. The decision has been made for you. “Living will” or no, it doesn’t matter. The bank account and the insurance policy have trumped any legal document.

  — Southern Beale

• 2009-08-10

  Madness is rare in individuals - but in groups, parties, nations, and ages it is the rule.

  — Friedrich Nietzsche

• 2009-08-07

  When life’s knocked us around. And our childhood myths reveal themselves to be just that. The truth feels like the biggest sucker-punch of them all: it’s not a spouse or land or a job or money that brings us happiness. Those achievements, those relationships, can enhance our happiness, yes, but happiness has to start from within. Relying on any other equation can be lethal.

  — Laura A. Munson

• 2008-09-07

  There are two Americas - separate, unequal, and no longer even acknowledging each other except on the barest cultural terms. In the one nation, new millionaires are minted every day. In the other, human beings no longer necessary to our economy, to our society, are being devalued and destroyed.

  — David Simon

• 2008-06-25

  

  Might be late to the party with it, but this pic is a whole lot of awesome.

• 2008-03-30

  I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, to discover that I had not lived.

  — Henry David Thoreau, Walden