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Quotes of the day: Addiction
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Published Friday, October 09, 2015 @ 11:08 PM EDT
Oct 09 2015

A moderate addiction to money may not always be hurtful; but when taken in excess it is nearly always bad for the health.
Clarence Day

All governments suffer a recurring problem: Power attracts pathological personalities. It is not that power corrupts but that it is magnetic to the corruptible. Such people have a tendency to become drunk on violence, a condition to which they are quickly addicted.
Frank Herbert

All sin tends to be addictive, and the terminal point of addiction is what is called damnation.
W.H. Auden

Being inoffensive, and being offended, are now the twin addictions of the culture.
Martin Amis

Clever gimmicks of mass distraction yield a cheap soulcraft of addicted and self-medicated narcissists.
Cornel West

Coleridge was a drug addict. Poe was an alcoholic. Marlowe was killed by a man whom he was treacherously trying to stab. Pope took money to keep a woman's name out of a satire, then wrote the piece so that she could still be recognized anyhow. Chatterton killed himself. Byron was accused of incest. Do you still want to be a writer? And if so, why?
Bennett Cerf

Every form of addiction is bad, no matter whether the narcotic be alcohol or morphine or idealism.
Carl Jung

I'll tell you why I like the cigarette business. It costs a penny to make. Sell it for a dollar. It's addictive. And there's fantastic brand loyalty.
Warren Buffett

I'm addicted to placebos. I'd quit, but it wouldn't matter.
Steven Wright

If addiction is judged by how long a dumb animal will sit pressing a lever to get a 'fix' of something, to its own detriment, then I would conclude that netnews is far more addictive than cocaine.
Rob Stampfli

If you say a modern celebrity is an adulterer, a pervert and a drug addict, all it means is that you've read his autobiography.
P.J. O'Rourke

In a consumer society there are inevitably two kinds of slaves: the prisoners of addiction and the prisoners of envy.
Ivan Illich

It is no defense of superstition and pseudoscience to say that it brings solace and comfort to people... If solace and comfort are how we judge the worth of something, then consider that tobacco brings solace and comfort to smokers; alcohol brings it to drinkers; drugs of all kinds bring it to addicts; the fall of cards and the run of horses bring it to gamblers; cruelty and violence bring it to sociopaths. Judge by solace and comfort only and there is no behavior we ought to interfere with.
Isaac Asimov

Like so many addicts, I'd thought that if I could only sort out my life, I could then sort out my drinking. It was a revelation to see that it would be simpler the other way around
Pete Townshend

Love and joy are incredibly habit-forming; often a single exposure is enough to cause permanent addiction.
John Brunner

Meetings are an addictive, highly self-indulgent activity that corporations and other large organizations habitually engage in only because they cannot actually masturbate.
Dave Barry

Money doesn't mind if we say it's evil, it goes from strength to strength. It's a fiction, an addiction, and a tacit conspiracy.
Martin Amis

Of what use is the universe? What is the practical application of a million galaxies? Yet just because it has no use, it has a use- which may sound like a paradox, but is not. What, for instance, is the use of playing music? If you play to make money, to outdo some other artist, to be a person of culture, or to improve your mind, you are not really playing- for your mind is not on the music. You don't swing. When you come to think of it, playing or listening to music is a pure luxury, an addiction, a waste of valuable time and money for nothing more than making elaborate patterns of sound.
Alan Watts

People get addicted to good e-mail like they get addicted to good chocolate.
Andy Brack

Since this is the age of science, not religion, psychiatrists are our rabbis, heroin is our pork, and the addict is the unclean person.
Thomas Szasz

So long as men denounce each other as mentally sick (homosexual, addicted, insane, and so forth)- so that the madman can always be considered the Other, never the Self- mental illness will remain an easily exploitable concept, and Coercive Psychiatry a flourishing institution.
Thomas Szasz

The pleasures of love are for those who are hopelessly addicted to another living creature.
Robertson Davies

The three most harmful addictions are heroin, carbohydrates, and a monthly salary.
Nassim Nicholas Taleb

There is nothing an addict likes more, or that serves as better pretext for continuing his present way of life, than to place the weight of responsibility for his situation somewhere other than on his own decisions.
Theodore Dalrymple

Too many young folk have addiction to superficial things and not enough conviction for substantial things like justice, truth and love.
Cornel West

We are addicted to our thoughts. We cannot change anything if we cannot change our thinking.
Santosh Kalwar

We are all addicts in various stages of degradation where I live on the Upper West Side, some to heroin, some to small dogs, and some to the New York Times. The heroin is cut, the dogs are paranoid, and the Times cheats by skimping on the West Coast ball scores. No matter, each of us goes upon the street solely in pursuit of his own particular curse.
Murray Kempton

Whether you sniff it smoke it eat it or shove it up your ass the result is the same: addiction.
William S. Burroughs

Why is it drug addicts and computer aficionados are both called users?
Clifford Stoll

You know how I got addicted to cocaine? I tried it. The problem with drugs is that they work- right up until the moment they decimate your life.
Aaron Sorkin

You know, I go to the theatre to be entertained... I don't want to see plays about rape, sodomy and drug addiction... I can get all that at home.
Peter Cook

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(October 10 is also the birthday of Harold Pinter and Helen Hayes.)


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