Our country doesn’t depend on the heroism of every citizen. But all of us should be worthy of the sacrifices made on our behalf. We have to love our freedom, not just for the private opportunities it provides, but for the goodness it makes possible. We have to love it as much, even if not as heroically, as the brave Americans who defend us at the risk and often the cost of their lives. We must love it enough to argue about it, and to serve it, in whatever way our abilities permit and our conscience requires, whether it calls us to arms or to altruism or to politics.
Category: Quotations
Will the truth not be lost in a contrived and deceptive climate? Again, if the truth is allowed to be lost, how can that be reconciled with the earlier mentioned [Christian] values? Is the truth known to the Almighty lost as well?
It’s as though Microsoft invented a car with an opaque windshield — and then devised camera and periscope attachments so you can see where you’re going.
The fact of the matter is that the people who struggle most with writing are drunks. They get hammered at night and in the morning their heads are full of pain and adverbs. Writing is hard for them, but so would golf be, or planting alfalfa, or assembling parts in a factory.
When, seventeen years ago, I designed the Web, I did not have to ask anyone’s permission… Anyone can build a new application on the Web, without asking me, or Vint Cerf, or their ISP, or their cable company, or their operating system provider, or their government, or their hardware vendor.
If Goodin wanted to be reasonable or accurate, he could have written a story titled “Some Guy Double‐Clicked a Trojan Horse Virus for Mac OS X but It Didn’t Actually Spread to Anyone Else”, but what kind of story would that be? OK, it’d be a true story, but it wouldn’t be a good story.
[T]he Texans have nonetheless convinced themselves that they will be better off selecting Mario Williams, the tall, speed‐rushing defensive end from North Carolina State. I suspect Williams is potentially stellar. In time, he could be a Pro Bowl‐caliber player … The only problem is that Gary Kubiak has failed to weigh these points against the opposing argument, which is that REGGIE BUSH IS IMPOSSIBLE TO TACKLE. HE IS WAY, WAY BETTER THAN ALL OF THE OTHER DUDES WHO ARE ELIGIBLE TO BE DRAFTED. WHEN REGGIE BUSH IS RUNNING WITH THE FOOTBALL, THOSE ATTEMPTING TO KNOCK HIM TO THE GROUND CANNOT SEEM TO DO SO. THIS QUALITY IS ADVANTAGEOUS WITHIN THE GAME OF FOOTBALL, AS THAT IS PRETTY MUCH THE TOTALITY OF THE SPORT.
The only way to have power at twenty‐five, particularly in the music business, was to appear to be hip and groovy; then it would be assumed that you were a young visionary leading the way to the future. Being neither powerful nor particularly hip, I relied on my personal strengths. I was articulate, and I had a good sense of humor. I therefore styled myself as what can best be described as a young smart‐ass. It served me reasonably well for a number of years.
Before it was even finished imploding, before the first survivor was rescued, people were drawing battle lines and issuing talking points. Here’s a tip: God doesn’t care about your talking points. Your brothers were hungry; you either fed them or you didn’t. You can’t talk your way out of it later.
The buried message of the film, perhaps, is that our political system resembles “American Idol.” … The winner is not necessarily the deserving contestant from an objective point of view, but is the one with the best poll numbers. A candidate from either party will be defeated if he is not entertaining. His intelligence and matters of right or wrong don’t have much to do with it. In this scenario, satire plays the role in politics that Simon Cowell plays on TV.