War prosperity is like the prosperity that an earthquake or a plague brings.
~ Ludwig von Mises
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War prosperity is like the prosperity that an earthquake or a plague brings.
~ Ludwig von Mises
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Roundly insulting one’s superiors behind their backs was one of the perks of being inferior.
~ Iain Banks
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Democracies owe their existence to national loyalties — the loyalties that are supposedly shared by government and opposition, by all political parties, and by the electorate as a whole. Wherever the experience of nationality is weak or non-existent, democracy has failed to take root. For without national loyalty, opposition is a threat to government, and political disagreements create no common ground.
~ Roger Scruton
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The 90s were better. They just were. I’m sorry, but it’s science. It was the past, but there were vaccines and Jim Crow was over and there was a modern sensibility without all of the pathologies of the internet.
~ Freddie deBoer
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As we learn to bear the intimacy of scrutiny and to flourish within it, as we learn to use the products of that scrutiny for power within our living, those fears which rule our lives and form our silences begin to lose their control over us.
~ Audre Lorde
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Michel Houellebecq doesn’t just forecast current events; he satirizes them, dryly, with perfect pitch. His mimicry of the inflated language of marketing, bureaucratic euphemism, and hypertechnical mumbo jumbo finds the exact midpoint between amusing and appalling.
~ Judith Shulevitz via The Atlantic
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Everything great in the world comes from neurotics. They alone have founded our religions and composed our masterpieces.
~ Marcel Proust
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When it was born, it was a paper atlas in living form, with no pages to turn. Instead of online mapping leader MapQuest’s printable list of directions, navigation routes were overlaid on top of the map itself. And Google Maps loaded map tiles in a Web browser without any special software so you could explore the world without refreshing, a technical feat that had never been seen before.
~ Liz Gannes
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If I have said nothing new tonight, it may well be because, in a family of nations as in families of individuals we should expect nothing more sensational than growth.
~ Dean Acheson
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Most people define learning too narrowly as mere “problem-solving”, so they focus on identifying and correcting errors in the external environment. Solving problems is important. But if learning is to persist, managers and employees must also look inward. The need to reflect critically on their own behaviour, identify the ways they often inadvertently contribute to the organisation’s problems, and then change how they act.
~ Chris Argyris
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