Tim

“At one stage in the heated intramural debate, ex-ACS president and longtime director Alton Ochsner took the floor and regaled his eminent colleagues with a tale intended to disarm those still unpersuaded by the proof against smoking. There was a certain Russian count, Ochsner told them, who, suspecting his attractive young wife of infidelity, advised her that he was leaving their home for an extended trip, but in fact posted himself at a nearby residence to spy on her. The very first night after his leave-taking, the count watched by moonlight as a sleigh pulled up to his house, a handsome lieutenant from the Czar's Guard bounded out, the count's wife greeted the hussar at the door and led him inside, and in a moment the couple was seen through an upstairs bedroom window in candlelit silhouette as they wildly embraced; after another moment the candle was blown out. "Proof! Proof!" said the anguished count, smiting himself on the brow. "If I only had the proof!”
― Richard Kluger, Ashes to Ashes: America's Hundred-Year Cigarette War, the Public Health, and the Unabashed Triumph of Philip Morris

“For the first time in their history, Americans had come up against a problem they could not begin to master with traditional American solutions -- private capital, individual initiative, hard work -- and yet the region confronting the problem happened to believe most fervently in such solutions. [...] When they finally saw the light, however, their attitude miraculously changed -- though the myth didn't -- and the American West quietly became the first and most durable example of the modern welfare state.”
― Marc Reisner, Cadillac Desert: The American West and Its Disappearing Water

“You've got to choose some line of action and live by it. Otherwise nothing matters at all. You probably end with a gas oven. I've chosen certain people who've had the lean portion for some centuries now."

"But your people are betrayed all the time."

"It doesn't matter. You might say it's the only job left for anyone--sticking to a job. It's no good taking a moral line--my people commit atrocities like the others. I suppose if I believed in a God it would be simpler."

"Do you believe," she said, "that your leaders are any better than L.'s?" She swallowed her brandy and began to tap the counter nervously with the little metal bullet.

"No. Of course not. But I still prefer the people they lead--even if they lead them all wrong."

"The poor, right or wrong," she scoffed.

"It's no worse, is it, than my country right or wrong? You choose your side once for all--of course it may be the wrong side. Only history can tell that.”
― Graham Greene, The Confidential Agent

“That project, the State Water Project, more than anything else, is the symbol of California's immense wealth, determination, and grandiose vision -- a demonstration that it can take its rightful place in the company of nations rather than mere states. It has also offered one of the country's foremost examples of socialism for the rich.”
― Marc Reisner, Cadillac Desert: The American West and Its Disappearing Water