Virginia Postrel Quotes & Sayings (Page 10)

“The biggest threat to a better life is the desire to keep the future under control - to make the world predictable by reining in creativity and enterprise. Progress as a neat blueprint, with no deviations and no surprise, may work in children's cartoons or utopian novels. But it's just a fantasy.”

“The glamour of twentieth-century air travel helped to persuade once-fearful travelers to take to the skies and encouraged parochial Americans to go out and see the world.”

“The Internet exposes a diversity of opinion, experience, and taste we'd been led to believe didn't exist. If you were unusual in 1950 or 1980 - and everyone is unusual in one way or another - you were an isolated anomaly. Now you're a Web ring, a Yahoo category.”

“The Internet's abundance - of information, goods, tastes and sources of authority - creates unparalleled opportunities for individuals to get exactly what they want. But this plenitude threatens political and cultural authorities who believe in telling individuals what they can have rather than letting them choose for themselves.”

“The intimate contest for self-command never ends, and lifetime happiness requires finding the right balance between present impulses and future well-being.”

“The low point for neon came in 1982, when Holiday Inn did away with its signature 'Great Sign,' replacing the neon extravaganza with a forgettable green plastic box.”

“The Taliban outlawed wearing polish in the late 1990s, punishing some offenders by amputating a fingertip. Importing polish was banned only in July 2001, which suggests that women were still wearing painted nails within the safety of their homes.”

“The theater itself is a lie. Its deaths are mere special effects. Its tales never happened. Even the histories are distorted for dramatic effect. The theater is unnatural, a place of imagination. But the theater tells the audience something true: that the world requires judgments.”

“Though designed as a mere convenience, clothing sizes establish an unintended norm, an ideal from which deviations seem like flaws. There's nothing like a trip to the dressing room to convince a woman - fat, thin, or in between - that she's a freak.”

“Viewers don't care how big media companies are. They care whether they can dump those they don't like, whether because of lousy service or because of crummy shows.”