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It is only when the people become ignorant and corrupt, when they degenerate into a populace, that they are incapable of exercising the sovereignty. Usurpation is then an easy attainment, and an usurper soon found. The people themselves become the willing instruments of their own debasement and ruin. Let us, then, look to the great cause, and endeavor to preserve it in full force. Let us by all wise and constitutional measures promote intelligence among the people as the best means of preserving our liberties.

James Monroe

First Inaugural Address of James Monroe

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Monroe, James. "First Inaugural Address." 4 Mar. 1817, Front steps, Old Brick Capitol, Washington, DC, USA.

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Keep you doped with religion and sex and TV
And you think you're so clever and classless and free
But you're still fucking peasants as far as I can see.

John Lennon

Working Class Hero

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Lennon, John. "Working Class Hero." John Lennon/Plastic Ono Band. Apple Records, 1970.

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Well maybe the real God uses tricks, you know? Maybe he's not omnipotent. He's just been around so long he knows everything.

Groundhog Day

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Groundhog Day. Directed by Harold Ramis, Columbia Pictures, 1993.

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The urge for destruction is also a creative urge!

Mikhail Bakunin

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Bakunin, Michael (published as Jules Elysard). "Die Reaktion in Deutschland." Jahrbuch für Wissenschaft und Kunst. c. 1842.

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I know the disposition of women: when you will, they won't; when you won't, they set their hearts upon you of their own inclination.

Terence

The Eunuch

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Terence. Eunuchus [The Eunuch]. 161 BC, Megalesian Games, Rome, Italy, act 4, sc. 7.

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In a progressive country change is constant; and the great question is, not whether you should resist change which is inevitable, but whether that change should be carried out in deference to the manners, the customs, the laws, the traditions of the people, or in deference to abstract principles and arbitrary and general doctrines.

Benjamin Disraeli

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Disraeli, Benjamin. Speech on Reform Bill of 1867. Conservative Banquet. 29 Oct. 1867, Edinburgh, Scotland, UK.

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That orbed maiden with white fire laden,
Whom mortals call the Moon.

Percy Bysshe Shelley

The Cloud

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Shelley, Percy Bysshe. "The Cloud." Prometheus Unbound, A Lyrical Drama, in Four Acts, With Other Poems. London: Charles and James Ollier, 1820, I. 45.

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Shelley, Percy Bysshe. "The Cloud." Percy Bysshe Shelley: The Major Works, edited by Zachary Leader and Michael O'Neill. Oxford University Press, 2009, I. 45.

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You can never replace anyone because everyone is made up of such beautiful specific details.

Before Sunset

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Before Sunset. Directed by Richard Linklater, Castle Rock Entertainment/ Detour Filmproduction/Columbia Pictures, 2004.

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O poor mortals, how ye make this Earth bitter for each other.

Thomas Carlyle

The French Revolution: A History

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Carlyle, Thomas. The French Revolution: A History. London: James Fraser, 1837, pt. 1, bk. 5, ch. 5.

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I am angry. We should all be angry. Anger has a long history of bringing about positive change.

Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

We Should All Be Feminists

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Adichie, Chimamanda Ngozi. We Should All Be Feminists. Fourth Estate, 2014.

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Life is so constructed that the event does not, cannot, will not, match the expectation.

Charlotte Brontë

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Brontë, Charlotte. Villette. London: Smith, Elder & Co., 1853, ch. 36.

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Brontë, Charlotte. Villette, edited by Helen Cooper. Penguin Classics, 2004, ch. 36.

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You’ll never get anywhere if you go about what-iffing like that.

Roald Dahl

Quoted in Charlie and the Great Glass Elevator

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Dahl, Roald. Charlie and the Great Glass Elevator. Alfred A. Knopf, 1972.

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Their united reigns are possibly the only period of history in which the happiness of a great people was the sole object of government.

Edward Gibbon

The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire

On the Roman emperors Antoninus Pius and Marcus Aurelius.

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Gibbon, Edward. The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire. Vol. 1, London: Strahan & Cadell, 1776, ch. 3.

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Gibbon, Edward. The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire: Volumes 1-6. Vol. 1. Everyman's Library, 2010, ch. 3.

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The past is always with us. Where we come from, what we go through, how we go through it; all this shit matters.

D'Angelo Barksdale

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The Wire

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"All Prologue." The Wire, written by David Simon and Ed Burns and Joy Kecken, directed by Steve Shill, season 2, episode 6, Blown Deadline Productions and Home Box Office, 2003.

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Love looks not with the eyes but with the mind;
And therefore is winged Cupid painted blind.

William Shakespeare

A Midsummer Night's Dream

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Shakespeare, William. A Midsummer Night's Dream. The Lord Chamberlain's Men, c. 1599, The Theatre, London, England, UK, act 1, sc. 1.

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Shakespeare, William. "A Midsummer Night's Dream." The Norton Shakespeare, edited by Stephen Greenblatt, et al., 3rd ed., W. W. Norton & Company, 2015, act. 1, sc. 1.

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And ever has it been that love knows not its own depth until the hour of separation.

Kahlil Gibran

The Prophet

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Gibran, Kahlil. "The Coming of the Ship." The Prophet. Alfred A. Knopf, 1923.

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Gibran, Kahlil. "The Coming of the Ship." The Prophet. Penguin Classics, 2019.

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The great enemy of clear language is insincerity. When there is a gap between one’s real and one’s declared aims, one turns as it were instinctively to long words and exhausted idioms, like a cuttlefish squirting out ink.

George Orwell

Politics and the English Language

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Orwell, George. "Politics and the English Language." Horizon, Apr. 1946, vol. 13, issue 76, pp. 252-265.

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Orwell, George. "Politics and the English Language." The Collected Essays, Journalism and Letters of George Orwell, vol. 4: In Front of Your Nose 1945-1950, edited by Sonia Orwell and Ian Angus. David R. Godine, 1999, no. 38.

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