Steven Benson Quotes & Sayings

Let me simplify my take on intervention. To me it is mostly about having a systematic protocol to determine when to intervene and when to leave systems alone. And we may need to intervene to control the iatrogenics of modernity - particularly the large-scale harm to the environment and the concentration of potential (though not yet manifested) damage, the kind of thing we only notice when it is too late. The ideas advanced here are not political, but risk-management based. I do not have a political affiliation or allegiance to a specific party; rather, I am introducing the idea of harm and fragility into the vocabulary so we can formulate appropriate policies to ensure we don't end up blowing up the planet and ourselves. — Nassim Nicholas Taleb

I've learned a lot about stage-managing for illustration. Sometimes you have to delete characters from a scene just to keep from overcrowding the image. I've also learned to making big-scale design decisions early. — Scott Westerfeld

We're not going to baby sit a civil war. — Barack Obama

Usually, the first thing a country does in the course of economic development is to introduce a lot of livestock. Our data are showing that this is not a very smart move and the Chinese are listening. They are realizing that animal-based agriculture is not the way to go ... We are basically a vegetarian species and should be eating a wide variety of plant food and minimizing our intake of animal foods ... — T. Colin Campbell

106 [degrees] in the valley ... I was sweating like Dan Rather checking for forged documents. — Jay Leno

Fantasy is not practice for what is real - fantasy is the opiate of women. — Shannon Hale

Everybody in America is a part of this big herd of cattle being led to the marketplace, not to be sold, which is usual with cattle, but to do the buying. And everyone is branded. — George Carlin

Moore relished taking cops down. It wasn't a job to him - he'd received a divine calling. — John Foxjohn

A roster,for example, is a lovely machine - who doesn't love its warm, crispy ejaculations? — Robert Brockway

Goodness can be found sometimes in the middle of hell. — Charles Bukowski

Revenge loses sight of the end in the means, but it's end is not wholly bad - it wants the evil of the bad man to be to him what it is to everyone else. This is proved by the fact that the avenger wants the guilty party not merely to suffer, but to suffer at his hands, and to know it, and to know why. Hence the impulse to taunt the guilty man with his crime at the moment of taking vengeance: hence, too, such natural expressions as 'I wonder how he'd like it if the same thing were done to him' or 'I'll teach him'. For the same reason when we are going to abuse a man in words we say we are going to 'let him know what we think of him'. — C.S. Lewis

A grower of chrysanthemums awaited a visit from the emperor, who was coming to enjoy his blossoms, of which there were hundreds in bloom. The grower selected one magnificent specimen, then cut down all the others, leaving this one perfect flower. The emperor arrived and sat for several hours quietly gazing at this beautiful flower, letting its beauty have its way with him. Can you imagine being so caught up in appreciation of one flower that everything else fades into the background? — John Templeton

When I turned 16, I got my driver's license like the rest of my classmates, but I also got an extra present: a two-day practice session in a Formula Ford: my first open-wheel racing car and the first step on the ladder toward becoming a professional driver. — Charlie Kimball

I prefer a positive view of freedom, drawing on another tradition of political thinking that goes all the way back to the ancient Greek polis. — David Blunkett