Jenn Martinelli Blogging in Boston

This is an old favorite of mine, and probably over-quoted, but I love it, so:

You employ stone, wood and concrete, and with these materials you build houses and palaces. That is construction. Ingenuity is at work. But suddenly you touch my heart, you do me good, I am happy and I say: ‘This is beautiful.’ That is Architecture. Art enters in.

Le Corbusier

This is one of the most perfect things I have ever read on Twitter.

@robreed: If the U.S. was always so willing to trade freedom & personal liberties for security we never would have declared independence from England.

See the original

Follow @robreed on Twitter

I would like you all to know, that versions of these same things still regularly come out of Rob Reed's mouth:

List of notable Rob Reed quotes

Will his wisdom never end?

I want people to know that almost everything that concerns them in their daily lives is of no consequence whatsoever. Nothing and nobody is really important,so people, realising that, should get on with their lives, go mad, take their clothes off, jump in the canal, jump into one of those supermarket trolleys, race ‘round the supermarket and steal Mars bars and, y’know, kiss kittens and sit on the back of bread vans.

Whatever makes people happy they should just do it, ‘cos time is a mere scratch and life is nothing

Morrissey via my friend, S.

I also sort of dedicate this to Heather Rose

We have also arranged things so that almost no one understands science and technology. This is a prescription for disaster. We might get away with it for a while, but sooner or later this combustible mixture of ignorance and power is going to blow up in our faces.

Carl Sagan

Thanks, S., for the quote.

Loyalty to petrified opinion never yet broke a chain or freed a human soul.

Mark Twain

I'm a bad boyfriend, I'll give you that. But at least I'm a decent human being, unlike everybody else.

Rob Reed

Basically the reason people talk is so they can lie. Otherwise it wouldn't be necessary.

Rob Reed

Well, the telling of jokes is an art of its own, and it always rises from some emotional threat. The best jokes are dangerous, and dangerous because they are in some way truthful.

Kurt Vonnegut

Here is a great quote from Howard Zinn, thanks to an email from my mom:

To be hopeful in bad times is not just foolishly romantic. It is based on the fact that human history is a history not only of cruelty, but also of compassion, sacrifice, courage, kindness. What we choose to emphasize in this complex history will determine our lives. If we see only the worst, it destroys our capacity to do something. If we remember those times and places — and there are so many — where people have behaved magnificently, this gives us the energy to act, and at least the possibility of sending this spinning top of a world in a different direction.

And if we do act, in however small a way, we don't have to wait for some grand utopian future. The future is an infinite succession of presents, and to live now as we think human beings should live, in defiance of all that is bad around us, is itself a marvelous victory.