Monday, June 22, 2020
Quotable: Guns & Wealth
" ... Where do you stand on this gun stuff?"
"I own them and know how to use them, as you are aware," Cantrell says.
... Cantrell has evidently decided that a more thorough answer to Randy's gun question is merited. "But the more I practiced with them the more scared I got. Or maybe depressed."
"What do you mean?" ...
"Holding one of those things in your hands, cleaning the barrel and shoving the rounds into clips, really brings you face-to-face with what a desperate, last-ditch measure they really are. I mean, if it gets to the point where we are shooting at people and vice versa, then we have completely screwed up. So in the end, they only strengthened my interest in making sure we could do without them."
"And hence the Crypt?" Randy asks.
"My involvement in the Crypt is arguably a direct result of a few very bad dreams that I had about guns."
Source: Neal Stephenson. Cryptonomicon, 2000 Harper Perennial paperback edition, p. 719.
"Wealth that is stored up in gold is dead. It rots and stinks. True wealth is made every day by men getting up out of bed and going to work. By schoolchildren doing their lessons, improving their minds ..."
Source: Character of Goto Dengo in Cryptonomicon, p. 861.
Labels: art and literature, economics, guns, philosophy, quotations
