John

“Each American generation neglects to pass on its experience to the next...our talent is for living in the present: that elation is beguiling during spells of relative calm, but each new crisis sends us reeling - because it seems unprecedented, and because what's past has become suspect.”
― Nora Sayre, Running Time: Films of the Cold War

“A cocktail or two, or several, I found, cheered me up for the foolishness of foolish people. A cocktail, or several, before dinner, enabled me to laugh whole-heartedly at things which had long since ceased being laughable. The cocktail was a prod, a spur, a kick, to my jaded mind and bored spirits.”
― Jack London, John Barleycorn: Alcoholic Memoirs

“The great majority of habitual drinkers are born not only without desire for alcohol, but with actual repugnance toward it. Not the first, nor the twentieth, nor the hundredth drink, succeeded in giving them the liking. But they learned, just as men learn to smoke; though it is far easier to learn to smoke than to learn to drink. They learned because alcohol was so accessible.”
― Jack London, John Barleycorn: Alcoholic Memoirs

“If you consulted your business experience instead of your ugly individualistic philosophy, you would know that believing in himself is one of the commonest signs of a rotter. Actors who can't act believe in themselves; and debtors who won't pay. It would be much truer to say that a man will certainly fail, because he believes in himself. Complete self-confidence is not merely a sin; complete self-confidence is a weakness.”
― G.K. Chesterton, Orthodoxy