Possessed 1947 Quotes & Sayings

If zero percent of the elites support something, very low chance it's going to pass, if 100% support something, very high chance it's going to pass. Same thing for organized interest groups. But for the average voter, it's a flat line. Which says it doesn't matter whether zero percent of the public believes something or 100% of the average voters believe something - it doesn't affect the probability that that thing will be enacted. — Lawrence Lessig

I believe,' Muswell once said, 'that mental isolation is the essence of weird fiction. Isolation when confronted with disease, with madness, with horror and with death. These are the reverberations of the infinity that torments us.
("The White Hands") — Mark Samuels

When you write a program, think of it primarily as a work of literature. You're trying to write something that human beings are going to read. Don't think of it primarily as something a computer is going to follow. The more effective you are at making your program readable, the more effective it's going to be: You'll understand it today, you'll understand it next week, and your successors who are going to maintain and modify it will understand it. — Donald Knuth

Thus the twentieth century was gradually speeding up to today's rate of progress; its achievements, therefore, were equivalent to about twenty years of progress at the rate in 2000. We'll make another twenty years of progress in just fourteen years (by 2014), and then do the same again in only seven years. To express this another way, we won't experience one hundred years of technological advance in the twenty-first century; we will witness on the order of twenty thousand years of progress (again, when measured by today's rate of progress), or about one thousand times greater than what was achieved in the twentieth century. — Ray Kurzweil

There was a part of her she hadn't yet allowed to be born because it was too beautiful for this place — Denis Johnson

There's a tacit belief that actors shouldn't write books, they're sort of allowed to direct movies but there will be a lot of skepticism, and they shouldn't do artwork or music. There are these invisible roadblocks to gain entree to these areas for actors, and you kind of have to crash through those invisible barriers. — James Franco

Everyone has a story that consumes them for a lifetime — Kelly Modulon

What spreads the stench of bad conduct? It is the egoism and other 'flaws'. — Dada Bhagwan

You have learn to hire a management team, you have to learn how to manage You have to want success so badly that you learn how to manage. — Ron Conway

I do not have the angst and the anxiety of my youth. I've gotten to a place where I'm very comfortable with who I am. — Walton Goggins

It is impossible to understand addiction without asking what relief the addict finds, or hopes to find, in the drug or the addictive behaviour. — Gabor Mate

Papa," Alessandro said, his eyes closing. "She swims nude in the sea. She carries a pistol. And she wears perfume that makes me dizzy. Sometimes I go to the garden gate and smell the handle, because, when she touches it, the perfume stays. — Mark Helprin

The gospel confronts us with the hopelessness of our sinful condition. But we don't like what we see of ourselves in the gospel, so we shrink back from it. — David Platt

The fact of the matter is, is that we need our borders secured. Certainly, we realize that there's going to have to be some kind of immigration reform, but I don't believe any of that's going to move forward until our border is secured. — Jan Brewer