The intimate contest for self-command never ends, and lifetime happiness requires finding the right balance between present impulses and future well-being. — Virginia Postrel Balance Copy Share Image
Kidney donors don't have to be close relatives of recipients, but they do need to have the right blood type. And kidneys… — Virginia Postrel Copy Share Image
Like the 'test tube babies' born of in vitro fertilization, cloned children need not be identifiable, much less freaks or outcasts. — Virginia Postrel Babies Copy Share Image
A lot of consumers actively enjoy advertising, especially fashion print ads and clever TV commercials. The nostalgic cable channel TVLand features not… — Virginia Postrel Copy Share Image
Persuasion has become a kind of force. The more the advertiser knows about what consumers want, and the more desires the product… — Virginia Postrel Copy Share Image
The SAT is not perfect. We all know smart, knowledgeable people who do badly on standardized tests. But neither is it useless.… — Virginia Postrel Copy Share Image
As discomfiting as it is to both market optimists and policy activists, a certain amount of instability is inherent to the economy. — Virginia Postrel Activists Copy Share Image
There's a popular saying that the Internet interprets censorship as damage and routes around it. Desire and innovation will trump policy, the… — Virginia Postrel Argument Copy Share Image
In mid-July 2007, after a routine mammogram, I was diagnosed with breast cancer. As cancer diagnoses go, mine wasn't particularly scary. The… — Virginia Postrel Copy Share Image
Aesthetics has become too important to be left to the aesthetes. To succeed, hard-nosed engineers, real estate developers, and MBAs must take… — Virginia Postrel Aesthetic Copy Share Image
Religion, art, and science flourish best in a free society. True, freedom does not afford much opportunity for grand gestures. It has… — Virginia Postrel Copy Share Image
America is a mosaic not of groups but of individuals, each of whom carries a host of cultural influences, some chosen, some… — Virginia Postrel Copy Share Image
People without children do have the freedom to do things that caring parents with dependent kids can't - to work long hours,… — Virginia Postrel Copy Share Image
Barack Obama has brought glamour back to American politics - not the faux glamour-by-association of campaigning with movie stars or sailing with… — Virginia Postrel Copy Share Image
Though designed as a mere convenience, clothing sizes establish an unintended norm, an ideal from which deviations seem like flaws. There's nothing… — Virginia Postrel Copy Share Image
Traditional PCs face competition from specialty products like Palm Pilots and from the servers that provide the nodes in computer networks. Microsoft's… — Virginia Postrel Competition Copy Share Image
Glamour is not something you possess but something you perceive, not something you have but something you feel. It is a subjective… — Virginia Postrel Copy Share Image
Apple doesn't need to maximize book sales. It simply needs to keep publishers happy enough to maintain an impressive-sounding inventory of titles… — Virginia Postrel Copy Share Image
In a media culture, we not only judge strangers by how they look but by the images of how they look. So… — Virginia Postrel Copy Share Image
Viewers don't care how big media companies are. They care whether they can dump those they don't like, whether because of lousy… — Virginia Postrel Copy Share Image
Glamour is translucent — not transparent, not opaque. It invites us into the world but it doesn’t give us a completely clear… — Virginia Postrel Copy Share Image
Apocalyptic fiction, while ultimately about God's purposes, usually portrays an immediate, human world of competing conspiracies. Whatever happens is orchestrated, coordinated and… — Virginia Postrel Copy Share Image
The growth of medical expenditures in the U.S. is not caused by administrative costs but by increases in the technical intensity of… — Virginia Postrel Copy Share Image
Our eyes and brains pretty consistently like some human forms better than others. Shown photos of strangers, even babies look longer at… — Virginia Postrel Copy Share Image
I think glamour has a genuine appeal, has a genuine value. I'm not against glamour. But there's a kind of wonder in… — Virginia Postrel Copy Share Image
Some of the higher price of L.A. real estate does reflect the intrinsic pleasure of living there, as I'm reminded every time… — Virginia Postrel Copy Share Image
I like kids, but I don't expect to have any of my own. I'm 40 years old and spend most of my… — Virginia Postrel Copy Share Image
Like Disneyland, luxury retailers have long had to figure out how to overcome customers' natural inertia. Unlike less pricey stores, they tend… — Virginia Postrel Copy Share Image
When Baby Boomer women started choosing hotel-like birthing centers over hospital delivery rooms, hospitals quickly wised up. Now even rural hospitals offer… — Virginia Postrel Baby Copy Share Image
The glamour of air travel - its aspirational meaning in the public imagination - disappeared before its luxury did, dissipating as flying… — Virginia Postrel Copy Share Image
By binding image and desire, glamour gives us pleasure, even as it heightens our yearning. It leads us to feel that the… — Virginia Postrel Copy Share Image
Kidney disease is a low-profile, unglamorous problem, a disease that disproportionately strikes minorities and the poor. Its celebrity spokesman is blue-collar comedian… — Virginia Postrel Blue Copy Share Image
At the simplest level, only people who know they do not know everything will be curious enough to find things out. — Virginia Postrel Copy Share Image
The evergreen story of people in debt becomes even sexier in an economic downturn, when debts inevitably get harder to pay. — Virginia Postrel Copy Share Image
The definition of an 'operating system' is bound to evolve with customer demands and technological possibilities. — Virginia Postrel Copy Share Image
When I was in college, I wanted to be editor of 'Reason' when I grew up. It was an impractical ambition, especially… — Virginia Postrel Ambition Copy Share Image
The low point for neon came in 1982, when Holiday Inn did away with its signature 'Great Sign,' replacing the neon extravaganza… — Virginia Postrel Copy Share Image
For designers, the rigidity of an alphabet presents a never-ending artistic challenge: How do you do something new and still preserve the… — Virginia Postrel Alphabet Copy Share Image
At the basic consumer level, the profusion of fonts appeals to a culture that celebrates expressive individualism. — Virginia Postrel Copy Share Image
We know beauty when we see it, and our reactions are remarkably consistent. Beauty is not just a social construct, and not… — Virginia Postrel Beautiful Copy Share Image
