“
Don’t ever fight with Lisbeth Salander. Her attitude towards the rest of the world is that if someone threatens her with a gun, she’ll get a bigger gun.
”
”
Stieg Larsson (The Girl Who Played with Fire (Millennium, #2))
“
He had this old southern idea of what a lady should be. A lady should not carry a gun and spend most of her time covered in blood and corpses. I had two words for that attitude.
Yeah, those are the words.
”
”
Laurell K. Hamilton
“
Our greatest power as nations and individuals is not the ability
to employ assault weapons, suicide bombers, and drones
to destroy each other. The greater more creative powers
with which we may arm ourselves are grace and compassion
sufficient enough to love and save each other.
”
”
Aberjhani (Splendid Literarium: A Treasury of Stories, Aphorisms, Poems, and Essays)
“
Your greatest weapon is your MIND! Lock and load it with the greatest ammunition; EDUCATION. And protect it with your best defense; GOD.
”
”
Marck E. Estemil (It Is Time)
“
The signature item is an attitude. It is the gun in your holster that makes you feel well dressed and invincible.
”
”
Caroline de Maigret (How to Be Parisian Wherever You Are: Love, Style, and Bad Habits)
“
Since knowledge, thinking, and rational action are properties of the individual, since the choice to exercise his rational faculty or not depends on the individual, man’s survival requires that those who think be free of the interference of those who don’t. Since men are neither omniscient nor infallible, they must be free to agree or disagree, to cooperate or to pursue their own independent course, each according to his own rational judgment. Freedom is the fundamental requirement of man’s mind.
A rational mind does not work under compulsion; it does not subordinate its grasp of reality to anyone’s orders, directives, or controls; it does not sacrifice its knowledge, its view of the truth, to anyone’s opinions, threats, wishes, plans, or “welfare.” Such a mind may be hampered by others, it may be silenced, proscribed, imprisoned, or destroyed; it cannot be forced; a gun is not an argument. (An example and symbol of this attitude is Galileo.)
It is from the work and the inviolate integrity of such minds—from the intransigent innovators—that all of mankind’s knowledge and achievements have come. (See The Fountainhead.) It is to such minds that mankind owes its survival. (See Atlas Shrugged.)
”
”
Ayn Rand (Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal)
“
And you really want to give me a loaded gun and walk behind you with that attitude?” I called after him, making him stop for a second. “Always,” was his reply. If anything, the smile he was beaming at me had widened.
”
”
Adrienne Lecter (Outbreak (Green Fields #2))
“
Nowhere was the complacency of the establishment, with its blind faith in progress, more evident than in its attitude toward an elite degree: as long as my child goes to the right schools, upward mobility will continue. A university education had become the equivalent of a very expensive insurance policy, like owning a gun.
”
”
George Packer (The Unwinding: An Inner History of the New America)
“
I had thought about forgiveness more and more...I knew it wasn't a light that could be switched on in an instant-it grew day by day, week by week, month by month-but something was changing inside me now during the hours when I sat alone and tried to calm my feelings. A seed had been sown, and I sensed that, just as I'd once faced a choice about whether to use violence on the night when I stared at the gun, I know had another choice: to remain trapped in the bitterness of the past or to find peace in the present.
”
”
Emmanuel Jal (War Child: A Child Soldier's Story)
“
Suppose we were planning to impose a dictatorial regime upon the American people—the following preparations would be essential: 1. Concentrate the populace in megalopolitan masses so that they can be kept under close surveillance and where, in case of trouble, they can be bombed, burned, gassed or machine-gunned with a minimum of expense and waste. 2. Mechanize agriculture to the highest degree of refinement, thus forcing most of the scattered farm and ranching population into the cities. Such a policy is desirable because farmers, woodsmen, cowboys, Indians, fishermen and other relatively self-sufficient types are difficult to manage unless displaced from their natural environment. 3. Restrict the possession of firearms to the police and the regular military organizations. 4. Encourage or at least fail to discourage population growth. Large masses of people are more easily manipulated and dominated than scattered individuals. 5. Continue military conscription. Nothing excels military training for creating in young men an attitude of prompt, cheerful obedience to officially constituted authority. 6. Divert attention from deep conflicts within the society by engaging in foreign wars; make support of these wars a test of loyalty, thereby exposing and isolating potential opposition to the new order. 7. Overlay the nation with a finely reticulated network of communications, airlines and interstate autobahns. 8. Raze the wilderness. Dam the rivers, flood the canyons, drain the swamps, log the forests, strip-mine the hills, bulldoze the mountains, irrigate the deserts and improve the national parks into national parking lots. Idle speculations, feeble and hopeless protest. It was all foreseen nearly half a century ago by the most cold-eyed and clear-eyed of our national poets, on California’s shore, at the end of the open road. Shine, perishing republic.
”
”
Edward Abbey (Desert Solitaire)
“
In my opinion, we can’t respond to the lawsuit with mere general denials. I don’t want to get simple information out there—I want it disseminated with attitude, with some indignation. I not only want to win this battle in a court of law, but I also want to win it in the court of public opinion. That requires a misinformation campaign at the highest levels.
”
”
Mark M. Bello (Betrayal High (Zachary Blake Legal Thriller, #5))
“
Guns, double-crosses, hitmen… I can get used to a lot of things, but I’m never going to get used to sleeping where apocalypse bugs mate,” Wednesday said, walking into the room looking around. She dropped her Birkin on the floor and heard something scuttling behind the cheap plastic wood print veneer covered dresser. She turned to face Alvin, her head cocked to the side. “Seriously. I’m not saying five-star… I’m saying go on Expedia and find a place that actually has stars… any stars.
”
”
Dennis Sharpe (Wednesday)
“
Happiness isn’t something you pick up at the grocery store, nor is it something that comes to you at a certain age. It’s a trait that lives within all of us, and it flourishes when you begin appreciating the things in life we take for granted.
”
”
T.A. Uner (Guns and Dogs (American Legends, #1))
“
You go out into your world, and try and find the things that will be useful to you. Your weapons. Your tools. Your charms. You find a record, or a poem, or a picture of a girl that you pin to the wall and go, "Her. I'll try and be her. I'll try and be her - but here." You observe the way others walk, and talk, and you steal little bits of them - you collage yourself out of whatever you can get your hands on. You are like the robot Johnny 5 in Short Circuit, crying, "More input! More input for Johnny 5! as you rifle through books and watch films and sit in front of the television, trying to guess which of these things that you are watching - Alexis Carrington Colby walking down a marble staircase; Anne of Green Gables holding her shoddy suitcase; Cathy wailing on the moors; Courtney Love wailing in her petticoat; Dorothy Parker gunning people down; Grace Jones singing "Slave to the Rhythm" - you will need when you get out there. What will be useful. What will be, eventually, you?
And you will be quite on your own when you do all this. There is no academy where you can learn to be yourself; there is no line manager slowly urging you toward the correct answer. You are midwife to yourself, and will give birth to yourself, over and over, in dark rooms, alone.
And some versions of you will end in dismal failure - many prototypes won't even get out the front door, as you suddenly realize that no, you can't style-out an all-in-one gold bodysuit and a massive attitude problem in Wolverhampton. Others will achieve temporary success - hitting new land-speed records, and amazing all around you, and then suddenly, unexpectedly exploding, like the Bluebird on Coniston Water.
But one day you'll find a version of you that will get you kissed, or befriended, or inspired, and you will make your notes accordingly, staying up all night to hone and improvise upon a tiny snatch of melody that worked.
Until - slowly, slowly - you make a viable version of you, one you can hum every day. You'll find the tiny, right piece of grit you can pearl around, until nature kicks in, and your shell will just quietly fill with magic, even while you're busy doing other things. What your nature began, nature will take over, and start completing, until you stop having to think about who you'll be entirely - as you're too busy doing, now. And ten years will pass without you even noticing.
And later, over a glass of wine - because you drink wine now, because you are grown - you will marvel over what you did. Marvel that, at the time, you kept so many secrets. Tried to keep the secret of yourself. Tried to metamorphose in the dark. The loud, drunken, fucking, eyeliner-smeared, laughing, cutting, panicking, unbearably present secret of yourself. When really you were about as secret as the moon. And as luminous, under all those clothes.
”
”
Caitlin Moran (How to Build a Girl (How to Build a Girl, #1))
“
Without their uniforms, they were probably nobodies, rejects. Give a man a uniform. Give him a few sparkly badges, a purpose, a gun ... and suddenly, he was no longer just another kid trying to make it through life without being ridiculed. Suddenly, he was a part of something. Something important. Something powerful. Something greater than he could ever be on his own. It was amazing how empowering the group could be.
”
”
Kelseyleigh Reber (If I Resist (Circle and Cross, #2))
“
What role models do kids have nowadays?Some ridiculously overpaid footballer prone to childish tantrums?The morons in the Big Brother house,perhaps? Or maybe the various gun-toting rappers who regularly delight us with their expletive-ridden vocabulary and eccentric attitude to women?
”
”
Frank Chalk (It's Your Time You're Wasting)
“
The head/heart duality is a well-known cultural phenomenon. In everyday speech we use "heart" as a shorthand to refer to our emotional state or our faith and "head" to refer to cognition or reason. Should I follow my head or my heart? Both "head" and "heart," while they are literally the names of body parts, are commonly used to stand for nonbodily phenonmena, for mental processes. But what body part do we use when we want to refer explicitly to our coporeal self? Whe, the humble "ass," of course! Consider the seminal gangsta rappers Niggaz with Attitude, who in thier classic track "Straight Outta Compton" rhyme: "Niggaz start to mumble / They wanna rumble / Mix 'em and cook 'em in a pot like gumbo / Goin' off on a motherfucker like that / With a gat that's pointed at yo ass." Do the guys in NWA mean to say that a gun is literally pointed downward, at your tuchas? Of course not. We understand that in this context "ass" means "corporeal self.
”
”
David J. Linden (The Compass of Pleasure: How Our Brains Make Fatty Foods, Orgasm, Exercise, Marijuana, Generosity, Vodka, Learning, and Gambling Feel So Good)
“
No one has a gun to your head. You are the primary agenda-setter in your life.
”
”
Alan E. Nelson (The Power of a New Attitude)
“
Domenico had that ‘look-at-me I’ve-got-money’ attitude about him. A proper nouveau riche. In combination with his pig-like table manners at home, it was a sight to behold.
”
”
K.A. Merikan (Guns n' Boys: Book 1, Part 1 (Guns n' Boys, #1))
“
The notion that you can somehow defeat violence by submitting to it is simply a flight from fact. As I have said, it is only possible to people who have money and guns between themselves and reality. But why should they want to make this flight, in any case? Because, rightly hating violence, they do not wish to recognise that it is integral to modern society and that their own fine feelings and noble attitudes are all the fruit of injustice backed up by force. They do not want to learn where their incomes come from. Underneath this lies the hard fact, so difficult for many people to face, that individual salvation is not possible, that the choice before human beings is not, as a rule, between good and evil but between two evils.
”
”
George Orwell (All Art Is Propaganda: Critical Essays)
“
The best example I know, of this astonishingly stupid attitude towards sport, is that of Franz Ferdinand. His, however, was an achievement with the gun. He used to shoot at Konopist with no less than seven weapons and four loaders, and he once killed more than 4,000 birds, himself, in one day. [A propos of statistics and quite beside the point: a Yorkshireman once drank 52½ pints of beer in one hour.] Now why did Franz Ferdinand do this? Even if he shot for twelve hours at a stretch, without pause for luncheon, it means that he killed six birds in each minute of the day. The mere manual labour, a pheasant every ten seconds for twelve successive hours, is enough to make a road-mender stagger; and there is little wonder that, by the time the unhappy archduke had accumulated his collection of 300,000 head of game, he was shooting with rubber pads on his coat and a bandage round his ears. The unfortunate man had practically stunned himself with gunpowder, long before they bagged him also at Sarajevo.
”
”
T.H. White (England Have My Bones)
“
Reviewing our experiences, we had become more and more convinced that carrying arms was not only unnecessary in most grizzly country but was certainly no good for the desired atmosphere and proper protocol in obtaining good film records. If we were to obtain such film and fraternize successfully with the big bears, it would be better to go unarmed in most places. The mere fact of having a gun within reach, cached somewhere in a pack or a hidden holster, causes a man to act with unconscious arrogance and thus maybe to smell different or to transmit some kind of signal objectionable to bears. The armed man does not assume his proper role in association with the wild ones, a fact of which they seem instantly aware at some distance. He, being wilder than they, whether he likes to admit it or not, is instantly under even more suspicion than he would encounter if unarmed. One must follow the role of an uninvited visitor—an intruder—rather than that of an aggressive hunter, and one should go unarmed to insure this attitude.
”
”
John McPhee (Coming into the Country)
“
I disliked the attitude of those who came up from the cities to hunt—their braggadocio, their faux machismo, the unpleasant transformative effect of guns and camouflage on otherwise unremarkable men, for in my experience it was generally men who hunted in this way.
”
”
John Connolly (The Burning Soul (Charlie Parker, #10))
“
Hawking’s inadequate view of God could well be linked with his attitude to philosophy in general. He writes: “Philosophy is dead.”9 But this itself is a philosophical statement. It is manifestly not a statement of science. Therefore, because it says that philosophy is dead, it contradicts itself. It is a classic example of logical incoherence. Not only that: Hawking’s book, insofar as it is interpreting and applying science to ultimate questions like the existence of God, is a book about metaphysics — philosophy par excellence.
”
”
John C. Lennox (Gunning for God: Why the New Atheists are missing the target)
“
I can understand the teachers saying it’s a gun at my head, but they’ve got the same gun at the parents’ head at the moment. The parent goes up to the teacher and says, well, I’m not satisfied with what you’re doing, and the teacher can say, well tough. You can’t take him away, you can’t move him, you can’t do what you like, so go away and stop bothering me. That can be the attitude of some teachers today, and often is. But now that the positions are being reversed [with vouchers] and the roles are changed, I can only say tough on the teachers. Let them pull their socks up and give us a better deal and let us participate more.
”
”
Milton Friedman (Free to Choose: A Personal Statement)
“
There had been two dates between us. Mistake. It made working together more awkward, and he couldn’t cope with me being a female version of him. He had this old southern idea of what a lady should be. A lady should not carry a gun and spend most of her time covered in blood and corpses. I had two words for that attitude. Yeah, those are the words. There
”
”
Laurell K. Hamilton (Circus of the Damned (Anita Blake, Vampire Hunter, #3))
“
When I reached the age of five, I was told I was adopted as a baby, at that time I was gun and holster mad, a bit of a lone ranger, as was the rage in those days. My parents, Tom and Brenda, told me they went to see all these special kids and they picked me out from them. Waiting for my reaction, I looked up at my parents and chimed, ‘Did I have my guns on?
”
”
Stephen Richards (Born to Fight: The True Story of Richy Crazy Horse Horsley)
“
The police are there to do the job, not to think about it,' was the line used by critics, the harshest of which were often other police. But police officers see and hear at first hand the things that ail a society, and along the way they gain trememdous insight into how to fix problems or processes, even if they can't change people's behaviours or attitudes. With the right systems and resources, their personal capacity for creating a safer society is far more powerful than the guns they carry. This would be the thinking driving my direction when I later came to Victoria to take charge of its police force.
”
”
Christine Nixon (Fair Cop)
“
Have you ever asked yourself what kind of story the story of your life is? I always thought mine would be a coming-of-age story. A small-town girl making it in the big city, like Melanie Griffith in Working Girl or Dolly Parton in 9 to 5. Sure, I’d struggle for everything I achieved, but in the end my plucky can-do attitude would ensure I’d triumph over whatever obstacles stood in my way. Like Legally Blonde or Pretty Woman or Pride and Prejudice, the story of my life would be an uplifting comedy, in turns fun and moving and aspirational. I’d be strong and spirited and a riot to be around. I’d be beautiful and smart and kids would love me. That’s what I thought. But now—looking down at the gun in my hands, feeling the heft of it, its cold reality in my palm—I’m not so sure I got the genre right. In fact I’m not even sure I’m the main character anymore.
”
”
Catherine Steadman (The Disappearing Act)
“
It may not have been directly related to my fears for Chris when he was gone, but I grew more apprehensive about being alone with the children in the house. We lived in a relatively quiet suburb, and yet-what would I do if there was an intruder?
Before we had kids, the answer was simple: I’d hide or run away. I didn’t want to hurt anyone, even a thief. But now that I had children my attitude changed:
Take one step inside my house and I will put a bullet through your skull.
One day after he’d returned home from the Ramadi deployment, Chris and I went down to a gun range. As he showed me some of the basics, I started asking questions.
And more questions.
And more after that.
Why this, and why that.
“Really?” he said finally. “Are you challenging what I said?”
“No, no,” I tried to explain. “I just want to know everything about it.”
Maybe husbands shouldn’t teach wives about certain things, and vice versa. I did eventually get pretty good with a gun-but that was after enlisting a friend of Chris’s to help teach me. Somehow those sessions were a little easier.
”
”
Taya Kyle (American Wife: Love, War, Faith, and Renewal)
“
Obama benefited from Saul Alinsky’s transracial strategy to assemble an effective coalition. Alinsky’s goal was for the activist to reach America’s white middle class because, as he put it, “that is where the power is.” Alinsky had nothing but contempt for left-wing activists who treated the white middle class as a bunch of square, sexually uptight, gun-toting, small-minded racists. Yes, Alinsky wrote, the middle class is mighty screwed up. But it has become that way because it’s desperate; its economic condition is deteriorating and so people turn to guns and religion to give them consolation. (Sound familiar?) Alinsky advocated that a successful activist must not disdain the middle class but rather join it. Certainly he wasn’t calling for an embrace of the provincial values of the middle class. Rather, he urged that activists adopt the style and attitude of the middle class. If the middle class is “square,” then be square. Don’t wear the black leather jacket and the hippie bandana; wear a suit and tie. Don’t come across as an angry misfit; come across as a nice young man who is only upset because of manifest injustice. Smile a lot; smiles are a great way to disguise rage and contempt. In this way, Alinsky argued, the activist could build a rapport with ordinary Americans and mobilize them on behalf of radical causes.10
”
”
Dinesh D'Souza (The Roots of Obama's Rage)
“
...the attitude of Gorky and his paper. He had returned to Russia early in 1914, taken a pacifist line on the the outbreak of war, but had pursued it with a restraint which protected him from most of the obloquy poured on others of similar views After the February Revolution of 1917 he had regarded the Bolsheviks as merely one among a number of progressive parties, and it was not unexpected that in October he should warn about the future. Now, he not only printed the Zinoviev-Kamenev statement but also a leading article in which he said:
'Ever more persistent rumors are spreading to the effect that on 2 November a Bolshevik rising will take place; in other words, that the hideous scenes of 16 to 18 July may be repeated. That means that once more there will appear motor lorries overfilled with men with rifles and revolvers in their trembling hands, and these rifles will shoot at shop windows, at people, at random. They will shoot only because the men armed with them will try to kill their fear. All dark instincts of the crowd irritated by disorder, by the falsehood and filth of politics, will flare up and ooze forth poisonous malice, hatred, vengeance. People will be killing one another, in their inability to destroy their own bestial stupidity.
The unorganized crowd will creep out into the streets, hardly understanding what it wants, while under its cover, adventurers, thieves, [and] professional assassins will set out to "create the history of the Russian revolution".
In brief, there will be repeated that bloody, senseless slaughter, which we have already witnessed, and which has undermined through our whole land the moral importance of the revolution, and has shaken its cultural meaning.
”
”
Ronald William Clark (Lenin)
“
The thunder howled and the rain splashed, the leaves played with the breeze and the lightning flashed, and the tigress growled at last.
She looked here and she looked there, she hadn't seen so much rain anywhere, a desire suddenly came in her heart, a mad longing that had to start, she felt deep love in the rain, looking at her cubs all over again
But two years ago she had been wounded, By cowardly men who wanted her grounded, They were afraid of her power, they wanted to capture her and to enslave her in their tower
They laid traps and they waited in the trees, The jungle was full of birds and the bees, The tigress was out hunting for meat, her cubs awaiting in the cave for their treat
There was something missing in the air, the fragrance of jasmine was not there, The tigress looked up into the trees and saw the men's faces painted in grease, She challenged them looking into their eyes, And saw fear, fright , and faces full of lies! She roared with all her might, This was her land, She had all the right!
The cowardly men crouching behind the trees, Fired their guns in twos and threes, The brave Tigress looked them in the eye, She was the fire and she was the sky, Indomitable force, invincible power, She was the Tigress, The Queen in her Empire
None of the bullets could break her Spirit,
Only one could graze her right leg a bit, She roared with all her heart's might, For she was the Queen for all to sight!
The guns emptied and no more bullets to shoot, The cowardly men jumped from the trees and ran away in two hoots! The Tigress laughed and loudly roared,
For she was the power and her Spirit soared
She is the Tigress inside every Woman,
She has the Power to defeat any Man,
Love her and she would love you back,
Respect her and she would respect you back,
Dare to harm her and she would defeat you till the Last!
”
”
Avijeet Das
“
THE PARTY
And at last the police are at the front door,
summoned by a neighbor because of the noise,
two large cops asking Peter,
who had signed the rental agreement, to end the party.
Our peace can’t be disturbed, one of the officers states.
But when we receive a complaint we act on it.
The police on the front stoop wear as their shoulder patch
an artist’s palette, since the town likes to think of itself as
an art colony, and indeed, Pacific Coast Highway
two blocks inland, which serves as the main north-south street,
is lined with commercial galleries featuring
paintings of the surf by moonlight
—like this night, but without anybody on the sand
and with a bigger moon. And now Dennis,
as at every party once the police
arrive at the door, moves through the dancers,
the drinkers, the talkers, to confront the uniforms and
guns, to object, he says, to their attempt to stop
people harmlessly enjoying themselves, and to argue
it isn’t even 1 a.m. Then Stuart, as usual,
pushes his way to the discussion happening at the door
and in his drunken manner tries to
justify to the cops Dennis’ attitude, believing he can
explain things better to authority, which of course
annoys Dennis, and soon those two
are disputing with each other, tonight exasperating Peter,
whose sole aim is to get the officers to leave
before they are provoked enough to demand to enter
to check ID or something, and maybe smell the pot
and somebody ends up arrested
with word getting back to the landlord
and having the lease or whatever Peter had signed
cancelled, and all staying here evicted.
The Stones, or Janis, are on the stereo now,
as the police stand firm like time, like
death—You have to shut it down—as the dancing inside
continues, the dancers forgetting for a moment a low mark
on a quiz, or their draft status, or a paper due Monday,
or how to end the war in Asia, or some of their poems
rejected by a magazine, or the situation
in Watts or of Chavez’s farmworkers,
or that they wish they had asked Erin rather than Joan
to dance.
That dancing, that music,
the party, even after the cops leave
with their warning Don’t make us come back
continues, the dancing has lasted for
years, decades, across a new century, through the fear of
nuclear obliteration, the great fires, fierce rain,
Main Beach and Forest Avenue flooded,
war after war, love after love, that dancing
goes on, the dancing, the party, the night,
the dancing
”
”
Tom Wayman
“
Jimena sensed their fear. That brought a smile to her face. Her reputation was still so big that even tough enimigas wouldn't face her down.
She strutted past them, her heels snapping loudly on the sidewalk. She enjoyed the feel of their admiring eyes, their sideways glances and the wonder she saw on their faces. Jimena wasn't choloed out in khakis, a tight T, and long, boyfriend-borrowed Pendletons. She wore a slinky dress and ankle-breaking high-heels. The rain made the dress cling to her body, so they knew she wasn't strapping. No gun. Still, they were afraid to confront her.
This time she stopped for the red light, pausing to let the chicas know she didn't fear them. It felt good to be the toughest chola en el condado de Los Angeles. She was still down for Ninth Street, her old gang, but at age fifteen, already a veterana. A leyenda, her homegirls told her with pride. Jimena had been a real badass before she understood her destiny. She glanced at the scars and tattoos on her hand. What would the klika-girls do if they knew her true identity?
”
”
Lynne Ewing (Night Shade (Daughters of the Moon, #3))
“
Jeremy has wondered about what kind of television shows the characters in television shows watch. Television characters almost always have better haircuts, funnier friends, simpler attitudes toward sex. They marry magicians, win lotteries, have affairs with women who carry guns in their purses. Curious things happen to them on an hourly basis. Jeremy and I can forgive their haircuts. We just want to ask them about their television shows.
”
”
John Joseph Adams (Other Worlds Than These)
“
And at the root of our stupidity on issues from guns to education to gay marriage is our bone deep ignorance when it comes to religion. America is being held hostage by the Christian evangelical right. Repressive attitudes toward sex, women, homosexuality, and contraception, as well as superstition-based notions of life and death, have infected the culture, our educational system, and our government. People calling themselves Christians slam the brakes on social progress, grounding their self-righteousness in a literal interpretation of a book written thousands of years ago by people living halfway around the world. It’s as if there’s a Monkey Trial being waged over every aspect of modern life. Our
”
”
Ian Gurvitz (WELCOME TO DUMBFUCKISTAN: The Dumbed-Down, Disinformed, Dysfunctional, Disunited States of America)
“
The most thoughtful progressive scholars recognized that the Court was responding to a broad shift in attitudes about gun rights. For one thing, elections matter. The presidents who appointed the five justices in the majority all were themselves NRA members.
”
”
Michael Waldman (The Second Amendment)
“
And he came to see there was nothing arbitrary or capricious about the Trump administration’s attitude toward public data. Under each act of data suppression usually lay a narrow commercial motive: a gun lobbyist, a coal company, a poultry company. “The NOAA webpage used to have a link to weather forecasts,” he said. “It was highly, highly popular. I saw it had been buried. And I asked: Now, why would they bury that?” Then he realized: the man Trump nominated to run NOAA thought that people who wanted a weather forecast should have to pay him for it. There was a rift in American life that was now coursing through American government. It wasn’t between Democrats and Republicans. It was between the people who were in it for the mission, and the people who were in it for the money.
”
”
Michael Lewis (The Fifth Risk: Undoing Democracy)
“
Being an evangelical [religiously understood] does not lead one to enthusiastically support border walls with Mexico; favoring Christian nationalism does. Being an evangelical does not seem to sour Americans’ attitudes toward stronger gun control legislation; endorsing Christian nationalism does. Being an evangelical was not an important predictor of which Americans voted for Donald Trump in 2016; supporting Christian nationalism was.
”
”
Paul D. Miller (The Religion of American Greatness: What’s Wrong with Christian Nationalism)
“
Sweden, a nation that officially promotes gender equality, once pressured a toy company to change its Christmas catalog so that it featured boys with a Barbie Dream House and girls with guns and action figures.7 But when the Swedish psychologist Anders Nelson asked three- and five-year-old children to show him their toy collections, things turned out differently. Almost every child had his or her own room with a staggering average of 532 toys. After going through 152 rooms and classifying thousands of toys, Nelson concluded that the collections reflected exactly the same stereotypes as in other countries. The boys had more tools, vehicles, and games, and the girls had more household items, caregiving devices, and outfits. Their preferences had proved immune to the equality ethos of Swedish society. Studies in other countries confirm that the attitudes of parents have little or no impact on children’s toy preferences.
”
”
Frans de Waal (Different: Gender Through the Eyes of a Primatologist)
“
I can put in a call, get an armed response.” “So you ring somebody, and they send you a gun?” Her tone was incredulous. “No. They send out a team of people, all with guns.” “To what? Protect our dead bodies? I mean, no offence, but you guys are insane.” “Well, we feel the same about the American attitude to guns.” “Yeah,
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Caimh McDonnell (The Dublin Trilogy Deluxe Part 2)
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And there on the door-step beside the red-headed boy, alert but calm and unmoved, sat the contrast of it all, a creature whose attitude and being flooded Mrs. Abington’s mind with visions of brown fields and gorgeous autumn woods, of men in khaki with guns, of the sudden, startling whir of quail and grouse, of the wide ranging of tireless dogs with a scent more keen than eyesight. He appeared to her as the incarnation of the out-of-doors, the genius of wood and field, the spirit of wide spaces, held prisoner within these walls of brick.
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Walter Alden Dyer (Many Dogs There Be (Short Story Index Reprint Series))
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Suppose we were planning to impose a dictatorial regime upon the American people — the following preparations would be essential:
1. Concentrate the populace in megalopolitan masses so that they can be kept under close surveillance and where, in case of trouble, they can be bombed, burned, gassed or machine-gunned with a minimum of trouble.
2. Mechanize agriculture to the highest degree of refinement, thus forcing most of the scattered farm and ranching population into the cities. Such a policy is desirable because farmers, woodsmen, cowboys, Indians, fishermen and other relatively self-sufficient types are difficult to manage unless displaced from their natural environment.
3. Restrict the possession of firearms to the police and the regular military organizations.
4. Encourage or at least fail to discourage population growth. Large masses of people are more easy manipulated and dominated that scattered individuals.
5. Continue military conscription. Nothing excels military training for creating in young men an attitude of prompt, cheerful obedience to officially constituted authority.
6. Divert attention from deep conflicts within society by engaging in foreign wars; make support of these wars a test for loyalty, thereby exposing and isolating potential opposition to the new order.
7. Overlay the nation with a finely reticulated network of communications, airlines and interstate autobahns.
8. Raze the wilderness. Dam the rivers, flood the canyons, drain the swamps, log the forests, strip-mine the hills, bulldoze the mountains, irrigate the deserts and improve the national parks into national parking lots.
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Edward Abbey (Desert Solitaire)
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The shootings, the denials, the scoffing at all evidence of institutionalized misogyny, the pushback against gun control, the patronizing attitude of editors and politicians, only served to radicalize those women. Before the shooting, they were students. Now they were warriors. Before I was not a witch, wrote Ruth Zardo. But now I am one.
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Louise Penny (A World of Curiosities (Chief Inspector Armand Gamache, #18))
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A lady should not carry a gun and spend most of her time covered in blood and corpses. I had two words for that attitude. Yeah, those are the words.
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Laurell K. Hamilton (Circus of the Damned (Anita Blake, Vampire Hunter, #3))
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Short term interventions will call for more guns and force in affected areas, in order to protect the vulnerable and suppress proliferation of terrorism and sectarian hatred, but the forward-looking leadership driving for sustainable solutions must now promote deliberate intents to influence systems of education, belief, culture, values and attitudes to promote tolerance, mutual respect, love and hope for all to succeed. If this area was given the same kind of attention and resources that HIV-AIDS has received to date, I can promise you, the same progress made in the containment of HIV-AIDS, would also have been made on the extremism front.
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Archibald Marwizi (Making Success Deliberate)
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My personal convictions drive me to join those like-minded, in the recruitment of a growing army without guns, no hatred or prejudice, but with a leadership voice of influence and harnessing resources to create the change they desire. The major problems facing the world, particularly our beloved African continent, will not be won by sanctions, cruelty, ethnic cleansing, revenge, guns or bullets. The challenges are not largely externally motivated, so the platform to change them must shift. Shift from selfish to selfless, from external to internal, from behaviours to beliefs. Some of them are externally sponsored but self-inflicted, whilst most of them are due to greed, short-sightedness, abuse and selfishness.
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Archibald Marwizi (Making Success Deliberate)
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CHAPTER 9 THE FARM NEAR HARPERS FERRY WEST VIRGINIA U.S.A. ONCE again, Mitch Rapp found himself standing in front of the cell holding Louis-Philippe Gould. And once again, Stan Hurley was watching. “Want me to hold on to your gun?” It was a noticeable change in his friend’s attitude. A few days ago, he’d have paid money to walk in there and execute the Frenchman. Now they needed him. Hurley perhaps more than anyone. “Turn off the cameras, Stan.” “Irene was pretty specific about that. She says they stay on.” “Don’t make me repeat myself, old man.” Hurley swore under his breath and took a seat in front of a computer terminal at the end of the corridor. He wasn’t exactly from the digital era, and it took him a few moments with the mouse to find the right application. Finally, he turned back to Rapp. “I’ve still got the image, but it’s not recording. You need to leave him alive, Mitch. But if you can’t, do it close range and sloppy. That way we can tell Irene he went for your gun.” Rapp reached for the door, trying to shut off his emotions as it swung open. This wasn’t about him or his past. It was about his job and
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Kyle Mills (The Survivor (Mitch Rapp, #14))
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Come on, tough guy.” “You can get fresh with me in the snow and threaten me with a gun all you want. But if you really want my help, you’ll put your weight on me and move your feet.” “In about two minutes, my extremities are going to be so numb I won’t be able to do anything for either of us—even if you do shoot. So move.”
He couldn’t have been rescued by some meek, mousy thing who’d do what he said without the attitude? He tapped the butt of the gun against her shoulder. “That’s pretty bold talk for a woman who’s got no advantage.”
“Uh-huh. I’m not the one bleeding to death.
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Julie Miller (Crossfire Christmas (The Precinct #24))
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Regarding the social cognitive mechanisms of cultivation theory, probably the most important work that has been done has focused on the influence of TV depictions on the accessibility of related constructs and attitudes from memory (Busselle, 2001; Busselle and Shrum, 2003; Shrum, 1995, 1996, 1999, 2003; Shrum and O’Guinn, 1993; Tapper, 1995). Numerous studies have demonstrated that heavy viewing of particular genres of TV increases the accessibility of related constructs from memory. Constructs that are accessible from memory bias our judgments about and perceptions of our social environment (Higgins, 1996; Sherman and Corty, 1984). In particular, the accessibility of these constructs at least partially mediates the influence of TV on perceptions of social reality (Shrum, 2002). Thus, the cultivation effect of the media appears to operate, at least in part, by increasing the accessibility of constructs that are related to what heavy viewers are watching. For example, if a person watches a lot of crime dramas, then crime and related constructs (e. g., guns, police, etc.) would be more accessible from memory than unrelated constructs.
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Beverly Roskos-Ewoldsen
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There is no doubt that 'force multipliers' - squad automatic weapons - have changed the character of warfare once again, just as their predecessors did during the First World War, if perhaps not to quite the same degree. In the immediate future it seems that most armies will be using some form of 5.56mm machine-gun at squad level, be it a box-fed LSW or belt-fed SAW. If there is a cloud on the horizon where modern light machine-guns are concerned it is that they are not powerful enough for long-range work, or for penetrating cover and light armour. Nevertheless, the new generation of light machine-guns will remain in use well into the next century, not least because they are popular with the soldiers who operate them, the machine-gunners. Likewise, there will still be a place for the heavier GPMG, which does have the 'punch' that the LSW lacks.
Machine-guns themselves have become lighter, and their operating principles both more secure and more efficient; the ammunition they use has shrunk to a quarter of its original size and become almost 100 percent reliable. The one important thing which has not changed dramatically is the human component; the attitude with which man faces the prospect of death in battle, and how he prepares himself to face that possibility quite deliberately, for it was the original invention of the machine-gun which reformed that. More than any other single 'advance' in weapons technology, the machine-gun allowed an individual (or actually, a small team of men) to dominate a sector of the battlefield. They had an inhuman advantage which simply had to be exploited if they were to be on the winning side, whether their opponents were Zulus, Sioux, or Dervishes, or other industrialized nations to be beaten into last place in the race toward economic supremacy. Whether the machine-gun has been as important, in any sense at all of the word, as it near-contemporary, the internal combustion engine - or even, date one say it, the bicycle or sewing machine - is still to be decided, but there is one clear, irrefutable fact connected with its short history: it has killed tens of millions of men, women and children and blighted the lives of tens of millions more.
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Roger Ford (The Grim Reaper: Machine Guns And Machine-gunners In Action)
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Thanks, Buddy,” DADDIE said. “I’m glad we had this little chat.”
“You’re welcome, Daddy. Say, who is decanting next? I had Martha on my scorecard, but with, yours truly, up and running, I figured you’d probably have changed the order around.”
“Yes, Martha’s next. I figure it is fifty-fifty odds that you’ll probably break something on that shell of yours, and she’ll need to fix it.”
“Sweet,” Jason said. “She gives me all the cool space bandages when I get boo-boos.”
DADDIE smiled. “Well, I’m using your roster, so be prepared. Li Mei will decant after that, and she’s gunning for your job.”
Jason smiled and flexed. “Bring it. No one can match my awesomeness.”
DADDIE nodded and said, “Good, that’s what I want to hear. If everyone has that attitude, we’ll do just fine, never mind what Lloyd’s of London said.
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Eric Holtgrefe (Innocence Lost: Book One of The Corpus Ad Astra Adventure)
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Never step out — not even halfway out — without a gun, a light, a knife and an attitude. Always be prepared — clothing, footwear and in your head — to run, fight and climb fences.
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John Connor (Guncrank Diaries)
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Please, never step out your door, no matter where you live — not to the backyard, the barn, the mailbox or your Maserati — without a gun, a light, a knife and an attitude.
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John Connor (Guncrank Diaries)
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There are three main reasons why fighting about homework doesn’t make sense. First, you may find yourself enforcing rules and attitudes you don’t really believe in. One dad was horrified to find himself telling his ten-year-old daughter how very important it was to memorize all the state capitals—even though, as he put it, “I made it through college and law school, but gun to my head, I have no idea what the capital of Wyoming is.” (It’s Cheyenne. But please don’t test us on the other forty-nine.) Parents commonly feel responsible for policing homework without thinking about the underlying goal: to raise curious, self-directed learners.
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William Stixrud (The Self-Driven Child: The Science and Sense of Giving Your Kids More Control Over Their Lives)
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Always expect the unexpected. Never get too when things are going well, because otherwise the fall will be a lot harder.
dinosaurs: triceratops and stegosaurus.
Weather forecasters are like prison visitors. Nice people but usually misguided.
The answer was yes, no, and maybe all rolled in one.
She added that she hoped she might see him again. Not if I catch sight of you first, he thought.
But like anything in life, you can never quite tell. People you know always have the ability to shock you.
The label said it was "just like the mama used to cook" but if that was the case mama had obviously long since been banned from the kitchen.
He wasn't work-shy. He was work-allergic.
The problem these days is that gangsters, whether they be small time drug dealers with guns and attitude or wannabe urban godfathers like Nicholas Tyndall, have no qualms about using serious violence and the treat of it to get what they want, because they know that neither the judicial system nor the police service have the wherewithal or the powers to protect those who speak out against them.
English prisons are roughly on a par with English traffic, English weather and English hospitals. In other words, fucking terrible.
The striation marks on a bullet are the microscopic scratches caused by imperfections on the surface of the interior of a gun's barrel that are unique to each individual firearm, and act as its calling card.The same striation marks will appear on a bullet every time a particular gun is fired.
'The last time I spent quality time with you was Heathrow last week and five people ended up shot'
The thing with me is that I am pessimist who's constantly trying to be optimistic, but can't quite manage it. Experience gained through years of policework doesn't allow for that sort of naivety.
They say its a grand life if you don't weaken and for so long I've tried to live my life like that, but at that moment in time, weakness felt so tempting that I almost open my arms to greet it.
'And the whole time I couldn't wait to leave. And you know what, thy were the best years of my life.
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Simon Kernick (The Crime Trade (Tina Boyd #1))
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The reason behind Israel’s engagement with Lebanon was justified at the time as based on national security grounds, with other nations admiring the Jewish state’s actions and wanting to learn from them, but there was something more existential at work. In his 1998 book on the Middle East, From Beirut to Jerusalem, the New York Times journalist Thomas Friedman gave an anecdote from 1982 about the real, less acknowledged mission of Israeli forces: Two targets in particular seemed to interest [Ariel] Sharon’s army. One was the PLO Research Center. There were no guns at the PLO Research Center, no ammunition and no fighters. But there was something more dangerous—books about Palestine, old records and land deeds belonging to Palestinian families, photographs about Arab life in Palestine, historical archives about the Arab life in Palestine and, most important, maps—maps of pre-1948 Palestine with every Arab village on it before the state of Israel came into being and erased many of them. The Research Center was like an ark containing the Palestinians’ heritage—some of their credentials as a nation. In a certain sense, this is what Sharon most wanted to take home from Beirut. You could read it in the graffiti the Israeli boys left behind on the Research Center walls: [/block]Palestinians? What’s that?[block] And [/block]Palestinians, fuck you[block], and [/block]Arafat, I will hump your mother[block]. (The PLO later forced Israel to return the entire archive as part of a November 1983 prisoner exchange.)56 It is not hard to see why this attitude was and remains so appealing to some governments. It is a desire to militarily destroy an opponent but also erase its history and ability to remember what has been lost. When surveillance technology is added to the mix, tested on unwilling subjects, it’s even harder to successfully resist.
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Antony Loewenstein (The Palestine Laboratory: How Israel Exports the Technology of Occupation Around the World)
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I once debated a pro-gun friend about the benefits of better gun control. I did my homework. I found empirical evidence suggesting violence may be triggered by other acts of violence, but guns make the violence worse. I found Leonard Berkowitz and Anthony LePage’s studies conducted over 50 years ago, which showed that the presence of a gun sitting on a table, relative to an object not associated with violence (like a badminton racquet), elicits stronger aggressive responses from participants. I found that more than 32,000 people die and over 67,000 people are injured by firearms each year in the United States. I found that firearm injuries result in over $48 billion in medical and work-loss costs annually. I believe attitudes about firearms should be scientifically driven and evidence-based, but none of these facts mattered to my pro-gun friend! Low-need-for-evidence individuals may portray themselves as concerned with or conveying evidence, but evidence is not actually important to them. Only high-need-for-evidence individuals care about evidence.
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John V. Petrocelli (The Life-Changing Science of Detecting Bullshit)
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In the field trails, there are certain fundamental requisites for the winner who is sufficiently outstanding to engrave his name upon the highest annals of fame. He must have the hunting instinct and the desire to go. He must have a faultless nose, as well as good judgement about likely places for game, so as not to waste a lot of valuable time in hunting out his ground. He must go as fast as his nose will let him and as wide as the country permits or occasion requires. He must have purpose in his running, as well as style and animation in all his movements, especially in his attitudes on game. Whether he be working in close, or far out on the line of the horizon, he must always respond to signals from his handler; and yet—delicate distinction—he must have a mind of his won and not depend too much upon his handler. In short, he must be independent and at the same time lend himself to control.
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Horace Lytle (Gun Dogs Afield)
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All us good citizens in Jersey got attitude. We got pride. We got brass balls the size of watermelons. We got rude hand gestures and loaded guns... most of us. It's not like we're a pushover state like California. If you want to make points and get extra virgins when you blow yourself up, clearly Jersey is the place to accomplish that, you see what I'm saying? It's not like we're easy.
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Janet Evanovich (Look Alive Twenty-Five (Stephanie Plum, #25))
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What's that?' The one who'd hassled Kohn turned at a noise. He found his cheek meeting a gun muzzle. Muffled sounds came from all around.
'Your worst nightmare,' said a voice from the darkness, about a metre away. 'A yid kid with an AK and attitude.'
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Ken MacLeod (The Star Fraction)
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Self-absorption is not empowerment, it's sophisticated barbarism.
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Abhijit Naskar (Heart Force One: Need No Gun to Defend Society)
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On November 8, 1923, he and his associates marched on the Bürgerbräukeller, a beer hall where Kahr was making a speech in front of 3,000 people. Beer halls at that time were common meeting locations in Germany. Hitler and some 600 SA, a paramilitary wing of the Nazi Party, surrounded the beer hall and set up a machine gun in the auditorium. Hitler and his forces took control of the building, taking Kahr, Seisser, and Lossow into a room at gunpoint where they demanded they support the coup. Kahr refused, stating that he could not possibly collaborate since he had been taken from the auditorium under heavy guard. Irritated by this, Hitler went back into the auditorium and gave a speech explaining the action they had taken to the audience. One supporter of Kahr, Dr. Karl Alexander von Mueller, a professor of modern history and political science, reported that the attitude of the crowd was changed with just a few sentences, which he described as almost magical. By the end of his speech, the beer hall erupted in a roar of support for Hitler.
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Hourly History (Adolf Hitler: A Life From Beginning to End (World War 2 Biographies))
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Hausen himself could not get over the “hostility of the Belgian people.” To discover “how we are hated” was a constant amazement to him. He complained bitterly of the attitude of the D’Eggremont family in whose luxurious château of forty rooms, with green-houses, gardens, and stable for fifty horses, he was billeted for one night. The elderly Count went around “with his fists clenched in his pockets”; the two sons absented themselves from the dinner table; the father came late to dinner and refused to talk or even respond to questions, and continued in this unpleasant attitude in spite of Hausen’s gracious forbearance in ordering his military police not to confiscate the Chinese and Japanese weapons collected by Count D’Eggremont during his diplomatic service in the Orient. It was a most distressing experience.
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Barbara W. Tuchman (The Guns of August)
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His general attitude to what he called the man in the street was that he ought constantly to be covered by machine-guns; this having become impossible, owing to the weakness, in the past, of the great Whig families, he must be doped into submission with the fiction that huge reforms, to be engineered by the Conservative party, were always just round the next corner. Like this he could be kept quiet indefinitely, as long as there was no war.
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Nancy Mitford (The Pursuit of Love)
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he came to see there was nothing arbitrary or capricious about the Trump administration’s attitude toward public data. Under each act of data suppression usually lay a narrow commercial motive: a gun lobbyist, a coal company, a poultry company.
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Michael Lewis (The Fifth Risk)