Automatic Red Card

Famous quotes containing the words automatic, red and/or card:

    Predictions of the future are never anything but projections of present automatic processes and procedures, that is, of occurrences that are likely to come to pass if men do not act and if nothing unexpected happens; every action, for better or worse, and every accident necessarily destroys the whole pattern in whose frame the prediction moves and where it finds its evidence.
    Hannah Arendt (1906–1975)

    Its whether will ye be a rank robber’s wife,
    Or will ye die by my wee pen knife?

    Its I’ll not be a rank robber’s wife,
    But I’ll rather die by your wee pen knife.

    He ‘s killed this may and he ‘s laid her by,
    For to bear the red rose company.
    Unknown. Babylon; or, The Bonnie Banks o’ Fordie (l. 9–14)

    There is undoubtedly something religious about it: everyone believes that they are special, that they are chosen, that they have a special relation with fate. Here is the test: you turn over card after card to see in which way that is true. If you can defy the odds, you may be saved. And when you are cleaned out, the last penny gone, you are enlightened at last, free perhaps, exhilarated like an ascetic by the falling away of the material world.
    Andrei Codrescu (b. 1947)