Matt > Matt's Quotes

“on. “No matter how obstructive the Republicans may be, Obama has the responsibility of leadership. I’m worried that he’s overplaying his hand in saying that it’s all the Republicans’ fault.”
― Edward Klein, Blood Feud: The Clintons vs. the Obamas

“Jarrett favored “the Chicago Way.” Let Obama pat Clinton on the back so he would know later where to stick the knife.”
― Edward Klein, Blood Feud: The Clintons vs. the Obamas

“Last year, it cost the British taxpayers $57.8 million to maintain its royal family,” wrote Robert Keith Gray in Presidential Perks Gone Royal. “During that same year, it cost American taxpayers some $1.4 billion to house and serve the Obamas in the White House, along with their families, friends and visiting campaign contributors.”
― Edward Klein, Blood Feud: The Clintons vs. the Obamas

“Mr. S was finally retiring this year, which was a good thing, because he appeared to have run out of shits to give sometime in the previous century.”
― Ernest Cline, Armada

“I knew there was probably life elsewhere. But given the vast size and age of the universe, I also knew how astronomically unlikely it was we would ever make contact with it, much less within the narrow window of my own lifetime. We were all probably stuck here for the duration, on the third rock from our sun. Boldly going extinct.”
― Ernest Cline, Armada

“Once I got home, I sulked for a while. All my brilliant plans foiled by thermodynamics. Damn you, Entropy!”
― Andy Weir, The Martian

“Maybe I’ll post a consumer review. “Brought product to surface of Mars. It stopped working. 0/10.”
― Andy Weir, The Martian

“Bill Clinton also benefited from a friendly press corps. With their baby boomer background, more liberal views, and Ivy League lawyer credentials, the Clintons fit the mold of many of the baby boomer reporters. In time, of course, the press would turn on Clinton. In the 1992 campaign, however, it seemed to me that some news outlets allowed their zeal for change to undermine their high standards of journalistic objectivity. (The pattern would later repeat with another exciting candidate promising change, Barack Obama.)”
― George W. Bush, 41: A Portrait of My Father

“When the first giant bones were found in the 1820s and 1830s, scientists felt obliged to explain the bones as belonging to some oversize variant of a modern species. This was because it was believed that no species could ever become extinct, since God would not allow one of His creations to die. Eventually it became clear that this conception of God was mistaken, and the bones belonged to extinct animals.”
― Michael Crichton, Jurassic Park

“Even pure scientific discovery is an aggressive, penetrative act. It takes big equipment, and it literally changes the world afterward. Particle accelerators scar the land, and leave radioactive byproducts. Astronauts leave trash on the moon. There is always some proof that scientists were there, making their discoveries. Discovery is always a rape of the natural world. Always. “The scientists want it that way. They have to stick their instruments in. They have to leave their mark. They can’t just watch. They can’t just appreciate. They can’t just fit into the natural order. They have to make something unnatural happen. That is the scientist’s job, and now we have whole societies that try to be scientific.” He sighed,”
― Michael Crichton, Jurassic Park

“But now,” he continued, “science is the belief system that is hundreds of years old. And, like the medieval system before it, science is starting not to fit the world any more. Science has attained so much power that its practical limits begin to be apparent. Largely through science, billions of us live in one small world, densely packed and intercommunicating. But science cannot help us decide what to do with that world, or how to live. Science can make a nuclear reactor, but it cannot tell us not to build it. Science can make pesticide, but cannot tell us not to use it. And our world starts to seem polluted in fundamental ways—air, and water, and land—because of ungovernable science.” He sighed. “This much is obvious to everyone.”
― Michael Crichton, Jurassic Park

“Washington’s hair was reddish brown, and contrary to a common belief, he never wore a wig. The illusion that he did so derived from the powder that he sprinkled on his hair with a puffball in later life.”
― Ron Chernow, Washington: A Life

“For instance, Publius affirms that the electoral college "affords a moral certainty that the office of President will seldom fall to the lot of any man who is not in an eminent degree endowed with the requisite qualifications." In fact, he speaks of "a constant probability of seeing the station filled by characters preeminent for ability and virtue," or "at least respectable" (No.”
― Alexander Hamilton, The Federalist Papers

“BY 1798 the Federalist party had grown haughty by being too long in power. “When a party grows strong and feels its power, it becomes intoxicated, grows presumptuous and extravagant, and breaks to pieces,” Johns Adams later wrote, having presided over just such a situation as president.”
― Ron Chernow, Washington: A Life

“The world knows no emotion to match a dragon’s grief Save perhaps a dragon’s rage”
― Peter Flannery, Battle Mage

“And as for the pesky matter of free will, each and every player agreed to come to the Land willingly. They signed their digital names to the contract when they started playing the game. After all, the Prince thought with a small smile, who had time to read all that fine print?”
― Aleron Kong, The Land: Founding

“If you’re always on time, it implies that you never have anything better you should be doing.”
― Brandon Sanderson, Mistborn: The Final Empire

“You have picked up an unknown plant. Due to a lack of Herb Lore you have destroyed the plant. Maybe you can use what is left to apologize to your mom.”
― Aleron Kong, The Land: Founding

“People never really changed, yet the world did, with disturbing regularity. You just had to live with it, or at least live through it. Now and then, with luck, you could affect the direction of the changes, but even if you stopped one, you only set another in motion.”
― Robert Jordan, Crossroads of Twilight

“Chancellor Soh’s Republic wasn’t perfect—no government was or ever could be—but it was a system that gave people room to dream. No, even better. It encouraged dreams, big and small. The Republic had its flaws, but really, things could be a hell of a lot worse.”
― Charles Soule, Light of the Jedi

“The Chinese—in their program called the Belt and Road Initiative—have been pouring in development investments here and in other poor countries around the world. Publicly, the Chinese government says it’s just a way for them, as a growing world power, to share their good fortune and knowledge. Privately, Zeppos and others have received classified briefings depicting the Chinese’s real goal: securing resources, allies, and possible future military bases so China can never again be isolated and humiliated as it so often has been in its long history.”
― Bill Clinton, The President's Daughter

“I didn’t know enough about human politics to know who was correct, but I did know enough about politics in general to guess that everyone would interpret the law in the way that best suited themselves.”
― Brandon Sanderson, ReDawn