Todd N

“Epictetus nicely likened this process to gaming: “The counters are indifferent and the dice are indifferent: how do I know which way they will fall? But to use the throw carefully and skillfully, that is my job.”
― Marcus Aurelius, Meditations: The Annotated Edition

“He considered himself in a class above the ordinary run of beggars, who, he said, were an abject lot, without even the decency to be ungrateful. He”
― George Orwell, Down and Out in Paris and London

“When news of the false alarm leaked to the press, the Air Force denied that the missile warning had ever been taken seriously. Percy, who later became a Republican senator from Illinois, disputed that account. He recalled a sense of panic at NORAD. A subsequent investigation found the cause of the computer glitch. The BMEWS site at Thule had mistakenly identified the moon, slowly rising over Norway, as dozens of long-range missiles launched from Siberia.”
― Eric Schlosser, Command and Control: Nuclear Weapons, the Damascus Accident, and the Illusion of Safety

“If told I am a bad poet, I smile; but if told I am a poor scholar, I reach for my heaviest dictionary.”
― Vladimir Nabokov, Strong Opinions