Insubstantial Or Unsubstantial Quotes & Sayings

The paving of the Kinshasa Highway affected every person on earth, and turned out to be one of the most important events of the twentieth century. It has already cost at least ten million lives, with the likelihood that the ultimate number of human casualties will vastly exceed the deaths in the Second World War — Richard Preston

The past is never where you think you left it. — Katherine Anne Porter

Apple is a wonderful company for its customers and investors. So, too, Pixar. (NeXT, not so much ... ) But Apple is also an engine of misery for its subcontracted Chinese workers. — Eric Alterman

Yet what is more awesome: to believe that God created everything in six days, or to believe that the biosphere came into being on its own, with no creator, and partially lawlessly? I find the latter proposition so stunning, so worthy of awe and respect, that I am happy to accept this natural creativity in the universe as a reinvention of 'God.' — Stuart Kauffman

He's retired, he's just turned sixty, you know. And on the actual day of his retirement it turned out he wasn't a radiologist at heart at all, he didn't want to spend another day of his life on medicine. He'd always wanted to be a beekeeper, and now bees are the only thing he'll take an interest in. How do these things happen, do you think? If you're really a beekeeper, how is it that you waste the best years of your life doing something else? — Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

With prurient absorption and only minimal risk, we can pretend to be the subject of the lead article on the front page of the Style section of our local newspaper for as long as it takes to finish our morning coffee. — Joanna Scott

The Japanese tend to communicate via nuance and euphemism, often leaving important things unsaid; whereas Americans tend to think they're being subtle when they refrain from grabbing the listener by the shirt. — Dave Barry

My husband and I have always incorporated things into our life that reduce stress. We're very careful with our health. We go to bed early. In this job, fatigue would be very detrimental! We've always eaten very healthily; now it's really particularly easy because we have a chef. — Laura Bush

Negotiating with Disney isn't like good cop/bad cop; it's like bad cop/Antichrist. — Bill Plympton

I'm impressed with the people from Chicago. Hollywood is hype, New York is talk, Chicago is work. — Michael Douglas

Our democratic values also include - and our national security demands - open and transparent government. Some information obviously needs to be protected. And since his first days in office, President Obama has worked to strike the proper balance between the security the American people deserve and the openness our democratic society expects. — John O. Brennan

Riches do not delight us so much with their possession, as torment us with their loss. — Dick Gregory

The boys just wanted to light the oven, but they ended up burning down the whole business and the family home. The children were saved, but the Ole Kirk Kristiansen's future looked bleak.

Ole Kirk was a religious man; his optimism and sense of humour were well-known far beyond the local boundaries. Where others would have folded their hands in their laps and accepted their fate, he did not give up. With the courage born of desperation, he rebuilt his business on a larger and more expensive scale than it had been previously - and more so than he could afford: Many rooms had to be sublet, and the Kristiansens themselves only used a small part of the building. Apprentices were no longer paid, but received board and lodging instead. Life continued, somehow. — Christian Humberg