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Common Quotes

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Common Quotes

“Men and women ... do you not realize that the State is the worst enemy you have? It is a machine that crushes you in order to sustain the ruling class, your masters. Like naïve children you put your trust in your political leaders. You make it possible for them to creep into your confidence, only to have them betray you to the first bidder. But even where there is no direct betrayal, the labour politicians make common cause with your enemies to keep you in leash, to prevent your direct action. The State is the pillar of capitalism, and it is ridiculous to expect any redress from it.”

MenFirstsChildrenStatesActionPoliticalOrderCausesRealizingCommonLeaderEnemyClassWorstMastersPoliticianMen And WomenCapitalismDirectMachinesBetrayalRidiculousCrushLabourBetrayRulingCreepsPillarsWorst EnemyPolitical LeadersLeashesRedressDirect Action
Author:Emma Goldman
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“England has to fulfill a double mission in India: one destructive, the other regenerating - the annihilation of old Asiatic society, and the laying the material foundations of Western society in Asia... When a great social revolution shall have mastered the results of the bourgeois epoch... and subjected them to the common control of the most advanced peoples, then only will human progress cease to resemble that hideous, pagan idol, who would not drink the nectar but from the skulls of the slain.”

HumansSocialResultsCommonProgressMaterialsRevolutionDrinkIndiaEnglandFoundationWesternMissionsCeaseDestructiveIdolsAsiaPaganSkullsBourgeoisHideousAnnihilationEpochHuman ProgressNectarSocial RevolutionWestern Society
Author:Karl Marx
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“Cannot swords be turned to plowshares? Can we and all nations not live in peace? In our obsession with antagonisms of the moment, we often forget how much unites all the members of humanity. Perhaps we need some outside, universal threat to make us recognize this common bond. I occasionally think how quickly our differences worldwide would vanish if we were facing an alien threat from outside this world. And yet, I ask you, is not an alien force already among us? What could be more alien to the universal aspirations of our peoples than war and the threat of war?”

IfsThinkingWorldNeedsWarMomentsHumanityAsksForceNationsDifferencesForgetCommonThis WorldMembersUniversalThreatObsessionAliensAspirationAntagonism
Book:Ronald Reagan
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“It's actually quite common for presidents to believe that future generations will render a verdict on their presidencies that is more lasting or definitive than the judgments of their contemporaries. The reason is that although history is certainly "an argument without end" - we're still debating many age-old questions - time does help settle others.”

BelieveDoeStillsEndsReasonHelpingAgePresidentCommonGenerationsJudgmentArgumentSettlingLastingPresidencyFuture GenerationVerdict
Author:David Greenberg
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“What we want is another sample of life, which is not on our tree of life at all. All life that we've studied so far on Earth belongs to the same tree. We share genes with mushrooms and oak trees and fish and bacteria that live in volcanic vents and so on that it's all the same life descended from a common origin. What we want is a second tree of life. We want alien life, alien not necessarily in the sense of having come from space, but alien in the sense of belonging to a different tree altogether. That is what we're looking for, "life 2.0."”

WantDifferentEarthSpaceCommonTreeShareFishesAliensBelongingGenesOaksMushroomsSampleBacteriaTree Of LifeOak TreeAlien Life
Author:Paul Davies
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“When one sees one of the romantic creatures before him he imagines he is looking at some holy being, so wonderful that its one breath could dissolve him in a sea of a thousand charms and delights; but if one looks into the soul -- it's nothing but a common crocodile.”

IfsLooksSoulWomenCommonImagineWonderfulSeaHolyThousandCreaturesBreathsDelightCharmCrocodiles
Book:The Collected Works of Anton Chekhov: Novellas, Short Stories, Plays, Letters & Diary: Three Sisters, Seagull , The Shooting Party, Uncle Vanya, Cherry Orchard, Chameleon, Tripping Tongue, On The Road, Vanka, Ward No. Six, Swedish Match, Nightmare, Bear, Reluctant Hero, Joy…
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“I like to be surrounded by books. My wife Evelyn has a PhD in comparative literature so we have a lot of her Spanish and German literature books which are wasted on me, plus a lot of novels and books on art and architecture shared by us both. Evelyn used to edit an art magazine called FMR, so we have a common interest in design.”

ArtBookUsedLiteratureInterestCommonNovelWifeDesignMy WifeArchitectureMagazinesPlusEditsCommon InterestsComparative Literature
Author:David Chipperfield
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“People are mostly sane enough, of course, in the affairs of common life: the getting of food, shelter, and so on. But the moment they attempt any depth or generality of thought, they go mad almost infallibly. The vast majority, of course, adopt the local religious madness, as naturally as they adopt the local dress. But the more powerful minds will, equally infallibly, fall into the worship of some intelligent and dangerous lunatic, such as Plato, or Augustine, or Comte, or Hegel, or Marx.”

PeopleMindEnoughMomentsFallCoursesReligiousPowerfulCommonDangerousWorshipMadnessIntelligentDressesMadMajorityDepthAffairLocalsSaneShelterPlatoLunaticGeneralitiesHegelAugustineCommon LifePowerful Mind
Author:David Stove
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“You don't have to wait for something 'meaningful' to come into your life so that you can finally enjoy what you do. There is more meaning in joy than you will ever need. The 'waiting to start living' syndrome is one of the most common delusions of the unconscious state.”

NeedsStatesJoyWaitingEnjoyCommonMeaningfulUnconsciousDelusionSyndromes
Book:A New Earth (Oprah #61): Awakening to Your Life's Purpose
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“The great common people of this country are slaves, and monopoly is the master. . . . The politicians said we suffered from overproduction. Overproduction, when 10,000 little children, so statistics tell us, starve to death every year in the United States. . . . We will stand by our homes and stay by our fireside by force if necessary, and we will not pay our debts to the loan-shark companies until the government pays its debts to us.”

PeopleIfsYearsChildrenLittlesSaidCountryStatesHomeGovernmentForceUnitedCommonPayCompanyUnited StatesMastersPoliticianSlaveDebtStatisticsLoanMonopolySharks
Author:Mary Elizabeth Lease
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“I do believe you have a wound too. I do believe it is both specific to you and common to everyone. I do believe it is the thing about you that must be hidden and protected, it is the thing that must be tap danced over five shows a day, it is the thing that won't be interesting to other people if revealed. It is the thing that makes you weak and pathetic. It is the thing that truly, truly, truly makes loving you impossible. It is your secret, even from yourself. But it is the thing that wants to live.”

PeopleIfsWantBelieveShowsInterestingCommonSecretFiveImpossibleWeakWoundsProtectedPatheticLoving You
Author:Charlie Kaufman
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“There is always in the healthy mind an obscure prompting that religion teaches us rather to dig than to climb; that if we could once understand the common clay of earth we should understand everything. Similarly, we have the sentiment that if we could destroy custom at a blow and see the stars as a child sees them, we should need no other apocalypse. This is the great truth which has always lain at the back of baby-worship, and which will support it to the end.”

IfsNeedsShouldMindChildrenEndsEarthStarsCommonTeachSupportBabyHealthyWorshipBlowClimbsCustomsSentimentsObscureApocalypseClayHealthy Mind
Author:Gilbert K. Chesterton
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“There is a fundamental similarity between the persecution of individuals who engage in consenting homosexual activity in private, or who ingest, inject, or smoke various substances that alter their feelings and thoughts - and the traditional persecution of men for their religion... What all of these persecutions have in common is that the victims are harassed by the majority not because they engage in overtly aggressive or destructive acts... but because their conduct or appearance offends a group intolerant to and threatened by human differences.”

MenHumansFeelingsIndividualDifferencesCommonGroupsActivityVictimFundamentalsMajorityVariousAppearanceTraditionalSmokeSubstanceDestructiveAggressiveThreatenedHomosexualPersecutionSimilarity
Author:Thomas Szasz
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“Accounts of outrages committed by mobs form the every-day news of the times. They have pervaded the country from New England to Louisiana, they are neither peculiar to the eternal snows of the former nor the burning suns of the latter; they are not the creature of climate, neither are they confined to the slaveholding or the non-slaveholding States. Alike they spring up among the pleasure-hunting masters of Southern slaves, and the order-loving citizens of the land of steady habits. Whatever then their cause may be, it is common to the whole country.”

MayCountryStatesWholeFormOrderCausesPleasureCommonSunLandMastersHabitCitizensCreaturesEternalNewsSpringAccountsEnglandSlaveClimateCommittedSnowFormerBurningLatterSouthernPeculiarSteadyHuntingConfinedOutrageLouisianaNew England
Book:Lincoln: Political Writings and Speeches
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“An important advance in the life of a people is the transformation of the religion of fear into the moral religion. But one must avoid the prejudice that regards the religions of primitive peoples as pure fear religions and those of the civilized races as pure moral religions. All are mixed forms, though the moral element predominates in the higher levels of social life. Common to all these types is the anthropomorphic character of the idea of God.”

PeopleImportantIdeasCharacterFormSocialLevelsCommonRaceMoralTypeHigherPureElementsPrejudiceTransformationRegardCivilizedPrimitiveSocial LifeHigher Level
Book:Einstein on Cosmic Religion and Other Opinions and Aphorisms
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“We can now determine, easily and relatively cheaply, the detailed chemical architecture of genes ; and we can trace the products of these genes ( enzymes and proteins ) as they influence the course of embryology . In so doing we have made the astounding discovery that all complex animal phyla - arthropods and vertebrates in particular - have retained, despite their half-billion years of evolutionary independence, an extensive set of common genetic blueprints for building bodies.”

YearsMadeBodyCoursesAnimalCommonHalfInfluenceBuildingParticularProductsDiscoveryIndependenceComplexesDetermineArchitectureBillionsDespiteChemicalsGenesProteinBlueprintsEnzymesVertebratesArthropods
Book:Leonardo's Mountain Of Clams
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“If we make this readjustment to view Homo sapiens as an ultimate in oddball rarity, and life at bacterial grade as the common expression of a universal phenomenon, then we could finally ask the truly fundamental question raised by the prospect of Martian fossils. If life originates as a general property of the material universe under certain conditions (probably often realized), then how much can the basic structure and constitution of life vary from place to independent place?”

IfsCertainUniverseAsksViewsCommonConditionsExpressionMaterialsUltimateUniversalConstitutionIndependentFundamentalsStructurePropertyRaisedGradesPhenomenonFossilsVaryHomo SapiensRarityMartiansOddballs
Author:Stephen Jay Gould
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“Among the words that can be all things to all men, the word "race" has a fair claim to being the most common, most ambiguous and most explosive. No one today would deny that it is one of the great catchwords about which ink and blood are spilled in reckless quantities. Yet no agreement seems to exist about what race means.”

MenMeanSeemsTodayCommonRaceBloodFairsAll ThingsClaimsDenyAgreementQuantityInkRecklessAmbiguousExplosives
Book:Race: a study in superstition
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“On the one hand, society needs a common faith and vigorous institutions with the power to coerce; and on the other, the individual as a human soul or as the bearer of a new and possibly saving heresy, must be free. It is difficult enough to reconcile these two needs, but the problem holds another hazard: the need of action under the pressure of time.”

NeedsHumansTwoSoulEnoughProblemHandsActionIndividualDifficultCommonPressureInstitutionsSavingHuman SoulHeresyVigorousReconcileHazardsCoerce
Author:Jacques Barzun
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“God hath given to mankind a common library, His creatures; to every man a proper book, himself being an abridgment of all others. If thou read with understanding, it will make thee a great master of philosophy, and a true servant of the divine Author: if thou but barely read, it will make thee thine own wise man and the Author's fool.”

IfsMenBookPhilosophyGivenUnderstandingCommonWiseMankindDivineMastersFoolCreaturesLibraryEvery ManTheeServant
Book:Enchiridion Institutions, Essays and Maxims, political, moral & divine. Divided into four centuries. By Francis Quarles
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“The Adlerians, in the name of "individual psychology," take the side of society against the individual. ... Adler's later thought succumbs to the worst of his earlier banalization. It is conventional, practical, and moralistic. "Our science ... is based on common sense." Common sense, the half-truths of a deceitful society, is honored as the honest truths of a frank world.”

WorldNamesIndividualSidesCommonHalfPsychologyWorstHonestPracticalsCommon SenseFrankConventionalHonoredDeceitfulHonest TruthHalf TruthAdler
Author:Alfred Adler
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