Virginia Woolf

Considering how common illness is, how tremendous the spiritual change it brings, how astonishing, when the lights of health go down, the undiscovered countries that are then disclosed, what wastes and deserts of the soul a slight attack of influenza brings to view, what precipices and lawns sprinkled with bright flowers a little rise of temperature reveals, what ancient and obdurate oaks are uprooted in us by the act of sickness… it is strange indeed that illness has not taken its place with love and battle and jealousy among the prime themes of literature.

A Hacker News comment on Entrepreneurs by notacoward

Entrepreneurship is like one of those carnival games where you throw darts or something.

Middle class kids can afford one throw. Most miss. A few hit the target and get a small prize. A very few hit the center bullseye and get a bigger prize. Rags to riches! The American Dream lives on.

Rich kids can afford many throws. If they want to, they can try over and over and over again until they hit something and feel good about themselves. Some keep going until they hit the center bullseye, then they give speeches or write blog posts about "meritocracy" and the salutary effects of hard work.

Poor kids aren't visiting the carnival. They're the ones working it.

i have thought about this hacker news comment nearly every day since november ninth twenty seventeen pic.twitter.com/mz5auDBkKl

— josh ackerman (@joshuaackerman) June 7, 2022

Oscar Wilde

In America the President reigns for four years, and Journalism governs for ever and ever.

Barry M. Goldwater

Mark my word, if and when these preachers get control of the [Republican] party, and they're sure trying to do so, it's going to be a terrible damn problem. Frankly, these people frighten me. Politics and governing demand compromise. But these Christians believe they are acting in the name of God, so they can't and won't compromise. I know, I've tried to deal with them.

Too late, we're there

Pope Francis (Condemns Russia's War in Ukraine)

Let there be a decision for peace. May there be an end to the flexing of muscles while people are suffering.

John Stuart Mill

Landlords grow rich in their sleep without working, risking or economizing. The increase in the value of land, arising as it does from the efforts of an entire community, should belong to the community and not to the individual who might hold title.

John Green

Public education does not exist for the benefit of students or the benefit of their parents. It exists for the benefit of the social order.

We have discovered as a species that it is useful to have an educated population. You do not need to be a student or have a child who is a student to benefit from public education. Every second of every day of your life, you benefit from public education.

So let me explain why I like to pay taxes for schools, even though I don't personally have a kid in school: It's because I don't like living in a country with a bunch of stupid people.

Dwight D. Eisenhower

Don't join the book burners. Don't think you are going to conceal faults by concealing evidence that they ever existed. Don't be afraid to go in your library and read every book, as long as that document does not offend our own ideas of decency. That should be the only censorship.

Ulysses S. Grant

If we are to have another contest in the near future of our national existence I predict that the dividing line will not be Mason & Dixon … but between patriotism & intelligence on the one side & superstition, ambition & ignorance on the other.

Navajo Proverb

You can't wake a person who is pretending to be asleep.