“People speak sometimes about the “bestial” cruelty of man, but that is terribly unjust and offensive to beasts, no animal could ever be so cruel as a man, so artfully, so artistically cruel.”
“Economies transform at the convergence of technologies. It’s never a single technology that changes everything because technologies are always interdependent with other technologies. And sometimes when a few amazing technologies converge, it’s enough to completely transform society.”
“If Congress can apply money indefinitely to the general welfare and are the sole and supreme judges of the general welfare, they may take the care of religion into their own hands; they may establish teachers in every state, county, and parish, and them out of the public treasury; they may take into their own hands the education of their children, establishing in like manner schools throughout the Union, they may undertake the regulation of all roads, other than post roads. In short everything from the highest object of state legislation down to the most minute object of police would be thrown under the power of Congress.”
“Playing pool with Korean officials one evening in the Koryo Hotel, which has become the nightspot for foreign businessmen and an increasing number of diplomats (to say nothing of the burgeoning number of spies and journalists traveling under second identities), I was handed that day’s edition of the Pyongyang Times. At first glance it seemed too laughable for words: endless pictures of the ‘Dear Leader’—Little Boy’s exalted title—as he was garlanded by adoring schoolchildren and heroic tractor drivers. Yet even in these turgid pages there were nuggets: a telegram congratulating the winner of the Serbian elections; a candid reference to the ‘hardship period’ through which the country had been passing; an assurance that a certain nuclear power plant would be closed as part of a deal with Washington. Tiny cracks, to be sure. But a complete and rigid edifice cannot afford fissures, however small. There appear to be no hookers, as yet, in Pyongyang. Yet if casinos come, can working girls be far behind? One perhaps ought not to wish for hookers, but there are circumstances when corruption is the only hope.”
