can-i-quote-you-on-that - Tumblr blog

[can-i-quote-you-on-that]

We always find something, eh Didi, to give us the impression we exist?

Waiting For Godot (Samuel Beckett)

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ESTRAGON: In the meantime let us try and converse calmly, since we are incapable of keeping silent. VLADIMIR: You're right, we're inexhaustible. ESTRAGON: It's so we won't think.

Waiting For Godot (Samuel Beckett)

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There's man all over for you, blaming on his boots the faults of his feet.

Waiting For Godot (Samuel Beckett)

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People often confuse leadership with managerial skills.

Sleeping Giants (Sylvain Neuvel)

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I just think that's not all he is. What he did, however horrifying, doesn't have to negate every other day of his life. He has a family, a mother that brought him into the world, fed him, bathed him. She dressed him for school. She drove him to soccer practice. You can't expect her to see this in black-and-white. She can't. Neither can I. I refuse to think of him in such simple terms. You thought he was good enough before. Well, before hasn't changed. Everything he did, up until that day, is still true.

Sleeping Giants (Sylvain Neuvel)

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I wish I could tell you exactly how many lives this is worth losing, but I cannot. At some point we might decide that we could live with 1,151 dead, but not 1,152. It is, by definition, arbitrary.

Sleeping Giants (Sylvain Neuvel)

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Isn't that just a bit arbitrary? - Of course it is. Most things are. Eight people died while we raced the Soviets to the moon. Another fourteen lost their lives in the Challenger and Columbia accidents, and yet the space program is still around. Space exploration is important enough to justify the death of twenty-two people. Had 22,000 people died, things might have been different.

Sleeping Giants (Sylvain Neuvel)

[can-i-quote-you-on-that]

Isn't that just a bit arbitrary? - Of course it is. Most things are. Eight people died while we raced the Soviets to the moon. Another fourteen lost their lives in the Challenger and Columbia accidents, and yet the space program is still around. Space exploration is important enough to justify the death of twenty-two people. Had 22,000 people died, things might have been different. [ . . . ] I wish I could tell you exactly how many lives this is worth losing, but I cannot. At some point we might decide that we could live with 1,151 dead, but not 1,152. It is, by definition, arbitrary.

Sleeping Giants (Sylvain Neuvel)

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It's just what we call human nature for people with too much firepower in their hands. Ever been in a bar fight? - I assume this is a rhetorical question. - Well, that's how it starts. You bump into someone, make them spill their drink. They yell at you and push you away. You pretend that you apologized while you poke at their chest. Everybody 'proportionally responds' until someone gets their teeth knocked out. No one really wants to fight, but no one wants to be the one to back off either. It's a hundred times worse with military men, and a hundred times more so with politicians. So we're gonna do our thing, they're gonna do their thing, and if we're really lucky we won't send twenty million people to their deaths in the process.

Sleeping Giants (Sylvain Neuvel)

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- You killed eight people, you son of a bitch! Eight US citizens - a child, for God's sake! A six-year-old girl, with curly red hair and bright blue eyes. - Would you feel any better if her eyes had been a different color?

Sleeping Giants (Sylvain Neuvel)

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I have the utmost respect for the National Security Agency. I also hold my dentist and my accountant in very high esteem. I have not, however, asked either of them to lead our research team.

Sleeping Giants (Sylvain Neuvel)

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I was smart enough to know it was wrong, but not brave enough to stop them.

Sleeping Giants (Sylvain Neuvel)

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I have no problem expressing anger. I don't think many people do. I could say the same about joy, gratitude, frustration, amazement. Things like love, fear, shame, desire, helplessness, now that's another story.

Sleeping Giants (Sylvain Neuvel)

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Generally speaking, people tend not to question what they've been told was true. Scientists are no different; they've just been told a lot more things.

Sleeping Giants (Sylvain Neuvel)

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If you can look up at the sky, it's safe to say you'll eventually try to find a way to get up there, and space-faring species might at least be open to the idea of not being alone in the universe.

Sleeping Giants (Sylvain Neuvel)

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It seems reasonable to assume that most or all species similar to humans would go through more or less the same evolutionary steps. Make fire, invent the wheel, those types of things. Flight might be a good criterion, or spaceflight. If you can look up at the sky, it's safe to say you'll eventually try to find a way to get up there, and space-faring species might at least be open to the idea of not being alone in the universe.

Sleeping Giants (Sylvain Neuvel)

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'Mijo, if the Bible tells me I shouldn't love my kids, then the Bible is wrong.'

The Lesbiana's Guide To Catholic School (Sonora Reyes)