Thursday, March 30, 2017

Quotation of the day for March 30, 2017

The Quotation Of The Day Mailing List

Quotation of the Day for March 30, 2017



"So - we'd better get cooking the meth,' I said to the Poet, sitting to one side and slightly behind me. The Poet with an effort got his face to work and responded properly. 'This time we quit while the going's good.' The doctor and nurse were blank. When we got home the Poet said he supposed they didn't watch much US TV drama. It was only later that I thought that maybe, ever since Breaking Bad's first broadcast, oncologists and their nurses all over the Western world have been subjected to the meth-cooking joke each time they have applied their latest, assiduously rehearsed, non-brutal techniques for telling a patient as gently but honestly as possible, having first sized up their inner resilience with a few apparently innocent questions ('Tell me what you have been expecting from this appointment'), that they have inoperable cancer. Perhaps they failed to laugh at my - doubtless evasive - bid to lighten the mood, not because they didn't get the reference, but because they had said to each other too often after such an appointment: 'If I hear one more patient say they should start cooking meth, I'm going to wrestle them to the ground and bellow death into their faces - "Pay attention, I'm fucking telling you something important!"' I was mortified at the thought that before I'd properly started out on the cancer road, I'd committed my first platitude. I was already a predictable cancer patient."

- Jenny Diski, recalling receiving her diagnosis of inoperable cancer, described in her London Review of Books column and retold in her memoir In Gratitude.

Submitted by: Terry Labach
Mar. 28, 2017

Tweet this quotation


Follow us on Twitter to see what we're reading

Visit our blog
Find
Jenny Diski
at Amazon.ca.

Please support qotd by shopping at our Amazon.ca store
Find
Jenny Diski
at Amazon.com.

Please support qotd by shopping at our Amazon.com store

Wednesday, March 29, 2017

Quotation of the day for March 29, 2017

The Quotation Of The Day Mailing List

Quotation of the Day for March 29, 2017



"Once your faith, sir, persuades you to believe what your intelligence declares to be absurd, beware lest you likewise sacrifice your reason in the conduct of your life. In days gone by, there were people who said to us: "You believe in incomprehensible, contradictory and impossible things because we have commanded you to; now then, commit unjust acts because we likewise order you to do so." Nothing could be more convincing. Certainly any one who has the power to make you believe absurdities has the power to make you commit injustices."

- Voltaire, Questions sur les miracles (1765).

Submitted by: Mike Krawchuk
Mar. 28, 2017

Tweet this quotation


Follow us on Twitter to see what we're reading

Visit our blog
Find
Voltaire
at Amazon.ca.

Please support qotd by shopping at our Amazon.ca store
Find
Voltaire
at Amazon.com.

Please support qotd by shopping at our Amazon.com store

Saturday, March 25, 2017

Quotation of the day for March 25, 2017

The Quotation Of The Day Mailing List

Quotation of the Day for March 25, 2017



"I grew up in New Orleans, where no one did anything. It's an endlessly charming and delightful place, but the idea that your worth was connected to things you did in the world was an alien idea."

- Michael Lewis, author of the bestsellers Moneyball and The Big Short, in praise of laziness.

[http://www.inc.com/minda-zetlin/why-being-lazy-makes-you-successful-according-to-the-bestselling-author-of-money.html?utm_source=pocket&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=pockethits]

Submitted by: Terry Labach
Mar. 25, 2017

Tweet this quotation


Follow us on Twitter to see what we're reading

Visit our blog
Find
Michael Lewis
at Amazon.ca.

Please support qotd by shopping at our Amazon.ca store
Find
Michael Lewis
at Amazon.com.

Please support qotd by shopping at our Amazon.com store

Thursday, March 23, 2017

Quotation of the day for March 23, 2017

The Quotation Of The Day Mailing List

Quotation of the Day for March 23, 2017



"He's a poor person's idea of a rich person. They see him. They think, 'If I were rich, I'd have a fabulous tie like that. Why are my ties not made of 400 acres of polyester?' All that stuff he shows you in his house--the gold faucets--if you won the lottery, that's what you'd buy."

- Fran Lebowitz, on U.S. President Donald Trump.

[http://www.vanityfair.com/news/2016/10/fran-lebowitz-trump-clinton-election]

Submitted by: Mike Krawchuk
Mar. 23, 2017

Tweet this quotation


Follow us on Twitter to see what we're reading

Visit our blog
Find
Fran Lebowitz
at Amazon.ca.

Please support qotd by shopping at our Amazon.ca store
Find
Fran Lebowitz
at Amazon.com.

Please support qotd by shopping at our Amazon.com store

Saturday, March 18, 2017

Quotation of the day for March 18, 2017

The Quotation Of The Day Mailing List

Quotation of the Day for March 18, 2017



"Environmental Protection Agency: We absolutely do not need this. Clean rivers and breathable air are making us SOFT and letting the Chinese and the Russians get the jump on us. We must go back to the America that was great, when the air was full of coal and danger and the way you could tell if the air was breathable was by carrying a canary around with you at all times, perched on your leathery, coal-dust-covered finger. Furthermore, we will cut funding to Superfund cleanup in the EPA because the only thing manlier than clean water is DIRTY water."

- Alexandra Petri, in her satirical article, "Trump's budget makes perfect sense and will fix America, and I will tell you why."

[https://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/compost/wp/2017/03/16/trumps-budget-makes-perfect-sense-and-will-fix-america-and-i-will-tell-you-why/?utm_term=.0b2563ed1ebe]

Submitted by: Mike Krawchuk
Mar. 17, 2017

Tweet this quotation


Follow us on Twitter to see what we're reading

Visit our blog
Find
Environmental Protection Agency
at Amazon.ca.

Please support qotd by shopping at our Amazon.ca store
Find
Environmental Protection Agency
at Amazon.com.

Please support qotd by shopping at our Amazon.com store

Friday, March 17, 2017

Quotation of the day for March 17, 2017

The Quotation Of The Day Mailing List

Quotation of the Day for March 17, 2017



"Innovation was the driving force behind [the] new era, sometimes personified by Wall Street, on other occasions by Silicon Valley. The place where the magic happened was "the ideopolis": the postindustrial city, where highly credentialed professionals advised clients, taught college students, wrote software, cracked mortgage-backed securities--and were served in turn by an army of retail greeters and latte foamers who were proud to share their betters' values."

- Thomas Frank, from his book, Listen, Liberal: Or, What Ever Happened to the Party of the People?

Submitted by: Mike Krawchuk
Mar. 16, 2017

Tweet this quotation


Follow us on Twitter to see what we're reading

Visit our blog
Find
Thomas Frank
at Amazon.ca.

Please support qotd by shopping at our Amazon.ca store
Find
Thomas Frank
at Amazon.com.

Please support qotd by shopping at our Amazon.com store

Saturday, March 11, 2017

Quotation of the day for March 11, 2017

The Quotation Of The Day Mailing List

Quotation of the Day for March 11, 2017



"All babies look like Winston Churchill."

- W.H. Auden

Submitted by: Mike Krawchuk
Sep. 12, 2016

Tweet this quotation


Follow us on Twitter to see what we're reading

Visit our blog
Find
W.H. Auden
at Amazon.ca.

Please support qotd by shopping at our Amazon.ca store
Find
W.H. Auden
at Amazon.com.

Please support qotd by shopping at our Amazon.com store

Friday, March 10, 2017

Quotation of the day for March 10, 2017

The Quotation Of The Day Mailing List

Quotation of the Day for March 10, 2017



"...we never let a work exist for more than two weeks. If you don't see it, you don't see it. We will never make another floating pier, never place another curtain across a canyon - and we will never wrap another parliament."

- Christo (Christo Vladimirov Javacheff)

[https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2017/feb/07/how-we-made-the-wrapped-reichstag-berlin-christo-and-jeanne-claude-interview]

Submitted by: Jean Rogers
Feb. 8, 2017

Tweet this quotation


Follow us on Twitter to see what we're reading

Visit our blog
Find
Christo
at Amazon.ca.

Please support qotd by shopping at our Amazon.ca store
Find
Christo
at Amazon.com.

Please support qotd by shopping at our Amazon.com store

Thursday, March 9, 2017

Quotation of the day for March 9, 2017

The Quotation Of The Day Mailing List

Quotation of the Day for March 9, 2017



"The President is merely the most important among a large number of public servants. He should be supported or opposed exactly to the degree which is warranted by his good conduct or bad conduct, his efficiency or inefficiency in rendering loyal, able, and disinterested service to the Nation as a whole. Therefore it is absolutely necessary that there should be full liberty to tell the truth about his acts, and this means that it is exactly necessary to blame him when he does wrong as to praise him when he does right. Any other attitude in an American citizen is both base and servile. To announce that there must be no criticism of the President, or that we are to stand by the President, right or wrong, is not only unpatriotic and servile, but is morally treasonable to the American public. Nothing but the truth should be spoken about him or any one else. But it is even more important to tell the truth, pleasant or unpleasant, about him than about any one else."

- Theodore Roosevelt, 26th US President (1858-1919)

Submitted by: Patsy Wang-Iverson
Feb. 7, 2017

Tweet this quotation


Follow us on Twitter to see what we're reading

Visit our blog
Find
Theodore Roosevelt
at Amazon.ca.

Please support qotd by shopping at our Amazon.ca store
Find
Theodore Roosevelt
at Amazon.com.

Please support qotd by shopping at our Amazon.com store

Wednesday, March 8, 2017

Quotation of the day for March 8, 2017

The Quotation Of The Day Mailing List

Quotation of the Day for March 8, 2017



"I found much that was alarming about being a citizen during the tenures of Richard Nixon and George W. Bush. But, whatever I may have seen as their limitations of character or intellect, neither was anything like as humanly impoverished as Trump is: ignorant of government, of history, of science, of philosophy, of art, incapable of expressing or recognizing subtlety or nuance, destitute of all decency, and wielding a vocabulary of seventy-seven words that is better called Jerkish than English."

- Philip Roth, novelist

[http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2017/01/30/philip-roth-e-mails-on-trump]

Submitted by: Mike Krawchuk
Mar. 8, 2017

Tweet this quotation


Follow us on Twitter to see what we're reading

Visit our blog
Find
Philip Roth
at Amazon.ca.

Please support qotd by shopping at our Amazon.ca store
Find
Philip Roth
at Amazon.com.

Please support qotd by shopping at our Amazon.com store