Ben Petiprin

“Another leading senator that I degraded was Caligula’s horse Incitatus who was to have become Consul three years later. I wrote to the Senate that I had no complaints to make against the private morals of this senator or his capacity for the tasks that had hitherto been assigned to him, but that he no longer had the necessary financial qualifications. For I had cut the pension awarded him by Caligula to the daily rations of a cavalry horse, dismissed his grooms and put him into an ordinary stable where the manger was of wood, not ivory, and the walls were whitewashed, not covered with frescoes. I did not, however, separate him from his wife, the mare Penelope: that would have been unjust.”
― Robert Graves, Claudius the God: And His Wife Messalina

“The reason it’s unlikely the Supreme Court would uphold a religious exemption for vaccinations or blood transfusions is not something intrinsic to those claims; it’s simply that Alito finds them weird. Birth control is banned by the Bible? Sure. Blood transfusions are banned by the Bible? Don’t be silly.”
― Anonymous

“There is a saying in the Mexican drug trade that it is better to live one good year than ten bad ones. Many young men enter the industry expecting to enjoy a decadent life for a short time before being incarcerated or killed. Young narcos behave recklessly: they go to night clubs, they race Bentleys, and they post pictures of themselves online with their co-conspirators (and with the occasional dead body). The only traffickers in Sinaloa who beat the odds are those who are content to follow a more austere life in the mountains.”
― Anonymous

“But the American hatred of criminals is especially unforgiving, reflecting our “sink or swim” mentality—the belief that America is the land of unlimited lawful opportunity and whoever fails to take the opportunity offered, turning to crime instead, has only himself to blame for his perverse choice and his condign punishment. We punish not only to deter or to incapacitate, but also to express our indignation. It is the Calvinist spirit at work. (Ferguson notes the philosophical and religious roots of penal severity in Machiavelli, Calvin, and Kant.) This is further intensified by the nation’s ethnic, religious, and racial diversity, for people have difficulty sympathizing with the failings of persons who are “other.” America is not one big happy family.”
― Anonymous