It's not the destination that matters. It's the change of scene.
Happy Hour: a depressing comment on the rest of the day and a victory for the most limited Dionysian view of human nature.
Armaments; extremely useful for fighting wars, a deadweight in any civil economy.
The most powerful force possessed by the individual citizen is her own government. . . . Government is the only organized mechanism that makes possible that level of shared disinterest known as the public good.
Born in elevators and supermarkets, Muzak has spread to restaurants, hotels, airplanes, telephone hold services, and waiting rooms. The public-relations experts believe that human beings fear silence - that is, the absence of constantly imposed direction. It is further believed that if we can be relieved of our fears, we will gain enough self-confidence to buy, eat, vote, fly, or simply go on living.
A foreigner is an individual who is considered either comic or sinister. When the victim of a disaster - preferably natural but sometimes political -the foreigner may also be pitied from a distance for a short period of time.
After a period in which technocrats attempted to become stars and stars to become politicians, the political void has been occupied by the force of mediocrity, which can easily master enough of the star techniques to produce inoffensive personalities and enough of the rational vocabulary to create the sounds of competence.
There is no branch of mathematics, however abstract, which may not some day be applied to phenomena of the real world.
I want people to look at a checkerboard and think of me!
I'm a very emotional person, and I love feeling things, so I tend to approach things kind of openly.
The trains are central to Bombay just as the subway is central to New York; they are the great social laboratory of that city. And today, they became a charnel-house.