Frugality is one of the most beautiful and joyful words in the English language, and yet one that we are culturally cut off from understanding and enjoying. The consumption society has made us feel that happiness lies in having things, and has failed...
No one should use flattery, it is another way to engage in prostitution; difference is that a sex worker sells her body, but a flatterer his/her conscience. It is not surprising to see such people, because as a sex work, it is one of the ancient jobs...
From time to time, I open a newspaper. Things seem to be proceeding at a dizzying rate. We are dancing not on the edge of a volcano, but on the wooden seat of a latrine, and it seems to me more than a touch rotten. Soon society will go plummeting dow...
I wrote because it reveals deep insight into a topic - cross boarder, cross racial adoption - that rarely gets much attention from any quarter, because it represents such a niche subset of our society, but contains within it nearly all the most deepl...
We grow up to believe that we are supposed to somehow "become" who we are meant to be through the trial-by-fire that is life here on planet Earth. Reality is...there's no "becoming". It's actually all an "un-becoming", only to reunite with who you we...
Libraries are the mainstays of democracy. The first thing dictators do when taking over a country is close all the libraries, because libraries are full of ideas and differences of opinion, all the things we say we want in a free and open society. So...
Father James Lavelle: I've always felt there's something inherently psychopathic about joining the army in peace time, as far as I'm concerned people join the army to find out what its like to kill someone. I hardly think that's an inclination that s...
Todd Anderson: Keating said that everybody took turns reading and I don't wanna do that. Neil: Gosh, you really have a problem with that don't you? Todd Anderson: N-No, I don't have a problem, Neil. I just - I don't wanna do it, okay!
Louis: Lestat killed two, sometimes three a night. A fresh young girl, that was his favorite for the first of the evening. For seconds, he preferred a gilded beautiful youth. But the snob in him loved to hunt in society, and the blood of the aristocr...
Ilena: I'm pregnant. Caine: Well, what the fuck you tellin' me for? Ilena: What? So you just gonna dog me? Caine: It ain't mine. Ilena: Look, you the only one I was with! Caine: Stop lying, alright? Besides, I had the jimmy on extra tight.
Caine: For all the bullshit they try to teach you in high school, I graduated with about half of it. But then, I didn't go to school but half the time. The other half, I was out selling dope. Growing up out here, there was shit that couldn't be learn...
[A-Wax and Ronnie have brought a wounded friend into the emergency room] A-Wax: in an emergency room Give us a motherfuckin' doctor! Nurse #1: You'll have to fill out these forms first. Jackee: Bitch, fuck the forms! We need a doctor! He's bleeding t...
Caine: You going to Kansas with this fool? Sharif: Yeah, Caine. You should come too, man. I mean, you're not doing nothing out here but getting yourself in a lot of trouble. I know your grandmother would be happy. Caine: Shit, I ain't going no place.
Professor Rohl: Societies think they operate by something called morality, but they don't. They operate by something called law. Professor Rohl: 8000 people worked at Auschwitz. Precisely 19 have been convicted, and only 6 of murder. Professor Rohl: ...
Brandon: What are you doing? Rupert Cadell: It's not what I'm going to do, Brandon. It's what society is going to do. I don't know what that will be, but I can guess, and I can help. You're going to die, Brandon. Both of you. You are going to die. [o...
It teaches us how to run our lives individually. How to run our families, how to run our churches. But it teaches us how to run all our public policy and everything in society. And that's the reason, as your congressman, I hold the Holy Bible as bein...
Blacks commit murder eight times more per capita than any other group in our society. If I had put all of my police officers on Park Avenue and none in Harlem, thousands and thousands more blacks would've been killed during the eight years that I was...
I have been a scientist for more than 40 years, having studied at Cambridge and Harvard. I researched and taught at Cambridge University, was a research fellow of the Royal Society, and have more than 80 publications in peer-reviewed journals. I am s...
It's a rare and precious thing to be close to suffering because our society - in many ways - tells us that suffering is wrong. If it's our own suffering, we try to hide it or isolate ourselves. If others are suffering, we're taught to put them away s...
My grandmother is still a woman who worries about what she looks like when she goes outside. She's from that era, and I can remember saying to her, 'Grandmother, we're just going to the grocery store.' And she'd be like, 'I've got to fix my face!' Yo...
I maintain, despite the moment's evidence against the claim, that we are born and grow up with a fondness for each other, and we have genes for that. We can be talked out of it, for the genetic message is like a distant music, and some of us are hard...
