#rita

In the United States there's a Puritan ethic and a mythology of success. He who is successful is good. In Latin countries, in Catholic countries, a successful person is a sinner. ↗

— Umberto Eco

#countries #ethic #good #latin #mythology

About these developments George Orwell, in Nineteen Eighty-Four, was quite wrong. He described a new kind of state and police tyranny, under which the freedom of speech has become a deadly danger, science and its applications have regressed, horses are again plowing untilled fields, food and even sex have become scarce and forbidden commodities: a new kind of totalitarian puritanism, in short. But the very opposite has been happening. The fields are plowed not by horses but by monstrous machines, and made artificially fertile through sometimes poisonous chemicals; supermarkets are awash with luxuries, oranges, chocolates; travel is hardly restricted while mass tourism desecrates and destroys more and more of the world; free speech is not at all endangered but means less and less. ↗

— John A. Lukacs

#george-orwell #orwell #prophecy #puritanism #food

I became an actor by doing school plays and youth theaters, and then National Youth Theatre of Great Britain. And then I did study at the London Academy of Music and Dramatic Arts. For me that was a good way to enter the field, to work in the theater. ↗

— Chiwetel Ejiofor

#actor #arts #became #britain #did

But more than anything else, for the British folks Irish people were all terrorists. So when we went to Britain, it was always a lot of resistance to U2. And that's why we came to America. ↗

— Bono

#america #anything #britain #british #came

Without Britain, Europe would remain only a torso. ↗

— Ludwig Erhard

#europe #only #remain #torso #without

Here I am, where I ought to be. A writer must have a place where he or she feels this, a place to love and be irritated with. ↗

— Louise Erdrich

#feels #here #i #i am #irritated

I rate Morrissey as one of the best lyricists in Britain. For me, he's up there with Bryan Ferry. ↗

— David Bowie

#britain #bryan #ferry #i #me

Authority figures are so irritating. Because they always tell you to do things for reasons that aren't very good. That sums up what authority is about for me. ↗

— Rupert Everett

#always #authority #authority figures #because #figures

Historically, royal families have represented an institution. The institution is built on heritage, and is timeless in that sense. ↗

— Frederik, Crown Prince of Denmark

#families #heritage #historically #institution #represented

There is more criticism of puritanism, and more distance from Christian morality, than there has been before. ↗

— Susie Bright

#before #christian #criticism #distance #morality