#contra

I didn't sign any contracts, and I didn't see any oil. ↗

— Vladimir Zhirinovsky

#contracts #i #oil #see #sign

Beautiful she is, sir! Lovely! Sometimes Luke a great tree in flower, sometimes like a white daffadowdilly, small and slender like. Hard as di'monds, soft as moonlight. Warm as sunlight, cold as frost in the stars. Proud and far-off as a snow-mountain, and as merry as any lass I ever saw with daisies in her hair in springtime. ↗

— J.R.R. Tolkien

#beauty

I'm an alien in my own world, a writer without words, a musician without a piano, a magician without a wand. I am fooled by infinite words that rush in my blood, yet imprisoned by the very thoughts of silence. I'm a gray green fallow leaf on trees and abandoned on the streets, a never-ending spring season and an eternal autumn. I'm the golden of the sun and the silver of the moon, the fog of dawn and the amber of dusk. I'm the white and the red flag , the obedient and the rebel. I am the coward in the brave, and the child in the man. I am, but a writer. ↗

— Nema Al-Araby

#suffering #writer #musician

I've never believed in tying myself up in a long-range contract, and I've been very outspoken on that subject. ↗

— Sugar Ray Leonard

#believed #contract #i #long-range #myself

China is a country, still, of great contrast. While hundreds of millions of people are part of the middle class and yearn for things made in America - American brands, movies, music - there are other hundreds of millions of people throughout China who are living on the equivalent of one U.S. dollar a day. ↗

— Gary Locke

#american #brands #china #class #contrast

I've always wanted to write a book relating my experiences growing up as a deaf child in Chicago. Contrary to what people might think, it wasn't all about hearing aids and speech classes or frustrations. ↗

— Marlee Matlin

#aids #always #book #chicago #child

On the contrary a film can promote the idea of change without any political message whatsoever but in its form and language can tell people that they can change their lives and contribute to progressive changes in the world. ↗

— Wim Wenders

#change #changes #contrary #contribute #film

The system becomes more coherent as it is further extended. The elements which we require for explaining a new class of facts are already contained in our system. In false theories, the contrary is the case. ↗

— William Whewell

#becomes #case #class #coherent #contained

And yet we have what purports, or professes, or is claimed, to be a contract—the Constitution—made eighty years ago, by men who are now all dead, and who never had any power to bind us, but which (it is claimed) has nevertheless bound three generations of men, consisting of many millions, and which (it is claimed) will be binding upon all the millions that are to come; but which nobody ever signed, sealed, delivered, witnessed, or acknowledged; and which few persons, compared with the whole number that are claimed to be bound by it, have ever read, or even seen, or ever will read, or see. ↗

— Lysander Spooner

#anarcho-capitalism #anarchy #classical-liberalism #constitution #free-market

If you were offered the chance to live your own life again, would you seize the opportunity? The only real philosophical answer is automatically self-contradictory: 'Only if I did not know that I was doing so.' To go through the entire experience once more would be banal and Sisyphean—even if it did build muscle—whereas to wish to be young again and to have the benefit of one's learned and acquired existence is not at all to wish for a repeat performance, or a Groundhog Day. And the mind ought to, but cannot, set some limits to wish-thinking. All right, same me but with more money, an even sturdier penis, slightly different parents, a briefer latency period… the thing is absurd. I seriously would like to know what it was to be a woman, but like blind Tiresias would also want the option of re-metamorphosing if I wished. How terrible it is that we have so many more desires than opportunities. ↗

— Christopher Hitchens

#conundrums #desire #groundhog-day #life #money