James > James's Quotes

“If you are allergic to a thing, it is best not to put that thing in your mouth, particularly if the thing is cats.”
― Lemony Snicket, The Wide Window

“That’s the problem with hitting the elites financially. Every time you hurt one, all it does is make another richer. That won’t stop until the baskets overflow with their godsdamned heads.”
― Matt Dinniman, A Parade of Horribles

“They tell the public it's because of terrorism, but it's about real estate. And money. That's what it's always been about. And the locals aren't their favorite shade of patriotic, so, you know, they gotta clean you out. People like you, people who were born in a different sort of landscape, you eventually start revolutions.”
― Matt Dinniman, Operation Bounce House

“The reason that the rich were so rich, Vimes reasoned, was because they managed to spend less money.

Take boots, for example. He earned thirty-eight dollars a month plus allowances. A really good pair of leather boots cost fifty dollars. But an affordable pair of boots, which were sort of OK for a season or two and then leaked like hell when the cardboard gave out, cost about ten dollars. Those were the kind of boots Vimes always bought, and wore until the soles were so thin that he could tell where he was in Ankh-Morpork on a foggy night by the feel of the cobbles.

But the thing was that good boots lasted for years and years. A man who could afford fifty dollars had a pair of boots that'd still be keeping his feet dry in ten years' time, while the poor man who could only afford cheap boots would have spent a hundred dollars on boots in the same time and would still have wet feet.

This was the Captain Samuel Vimes 'Boots' theory of socioeconomic unfairness.”
― Terry Pratchett, Men at Arms: The Play

“Public education does not exist for the benefit of students or the benefit of their parents. It exists for the benefit of the social order.

We have discovered as a species that it is useful to have an educated population. You do not need to be a student or have a child who is a student to benefit from public education. Every second of every day of your life, you benefit from public education.

So let me explain why I like to pay taxes for schools, even though I don't personally have a kid in school: It's because I don't like living in a country with a bunch of stupid people.”
― John Green

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

“Me: “This is obviously a clog. How about I take it apart and check the internal tubing?” NASA: (after five hours of deliberation) “No. You’ll fuck it up and die.” So I took it apart.”
― Andy Weir, The Martian

“All I wanted to do was watch media and not exist. I said, You know I don’t like fun.”
― Martha Wells, Fugitive Telemetry

“There was a big huge deal about it, and Security was all “but what if it takes over the station’s systems and kills everybody” and Pin-Lee told them “if it wanted to do that it would have done it by now,” which in hindsight was probably not the best response.”
― Martha Wells, Fugitive Telemetry

“If it used to be okay, but it’s not okay anymore, then maybe you should do something about it. Don’t compare your circumstances with how they were yesterday. Look at how they were years ago. We’re supposed to be making the world… the universe… a better place for our children. If it’s not better, if you’re dealing with cruelty, with neglect, then you should do something about it. So, yeah. Fuck ‘em. Fuck King Rust and his asshole child. If you’re unhappy with your government, then kick them out and set up your own, one that represents the people’s best interests. You shouldn’t have to put up with some loser who’s going to take the people’s money and waste it on games, especially when those games entail killing people weaker than him with little or no real danger to himself. What a pussy. That’s my opinion.”
― Matt Dinniman, Carl's Doomsday Scenario

“These corporate suits learned what a thousand organizations and governments throughout history already knew. If you go to war against drugs, drugs will always win. Drugs will win because what you’re really doing is going to war against the biological imperative all living creatures have to find comfort and happiness. And if you’re unwilling or unable to first provide that, artificial alternatives, no matter how destructive, will always prevail.”
― Matt Dinniman, A Parade of Horribles

“Where life is precious, life is precious.”
― Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah, Chain-Gang All-Stars

“I grunted with amusement. “Eat the rich,” I said. Rend looked at me, tongue lolling out. “Yum,” he said.”
― Matt Dinniman, A Parade of Horribles

“Because all the characters in this story—like all of humanity, apparently—have a little blank spot in their heads that says, “Kings. What a good idea.” The idea is powerful, and seductive, and should not be underestimated. To be a civilization of any worth, however, means acknowledging the idea—and then condemning it as laughably, madly stupid. May we come to live in such a worthier world, and soon.”
― Robert Jackson Bennett, A Drop of Corruption

“The second decade of the twenty-first century seems replete with examples as to why autocracies are, to put it mildly, very stupid. Our headlines are dominated by regimes with one nigh-all-powerful man at the top making any number of terrible choices, and then – to the bafflement of the entire globe – doubling down on them, thus inflicting massive suffering on his people. It seems the talents that make a man capable of navigating palace intrigue until he wins the throne generally don’t coexist with the talents required for – or even a passing interest in – good governance. P 459
Yet if the 2010’s awed us with the power of autocrats, the 2020’s seem hell-bent to refute it. More and more, it becomes impossible to deny that autocrats – like any ruler – are but men, yet men with no obligation to listen their people, and thus acknowledge reality. This, in turn, makes them fools: fools that are very difficult to dislodge from their thrones, true, but fools nonetheless. P 460”
― Robert Jackson Bennett, A Drop of Corruption

“Regardless, the second decade of the twenty-first century seems replete with examples as to why autocracies are, to put it mildly, very stupid. Our headlines are dominated by regimes with one nigh-all-powerful man at the top making any number of terrible choices, and then—to the bafflement of the entire globe—doubling down on them, thus inflicting massive suffering on his people. It seems the talents that make a man capable of navigating palace intrigue until he wins the throne generally don’t coexist with the talents required for—or even a passing interest in—good governance.”
― Robert Jackson Bennett, A Drop of Corruption

“I feel we needn’t bother looking at faces to find this man, Din! Just keep an eye out for the fellow with testicles large enough to cause back deformities, and we shall have our culprit”
― Robert Jackson Bennett, A Drop of Corruption