20th century

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I think perhaps we want a more conscious life. We're tired of drudging and sleeping and dying. We're tired of seeing just a few people able to be individualists. We're tired of always deferring hope till the next generation. We're tired of hearing politicians and priests and cautious reformers...coax us, "Be calm! Be patient! Wait! We have the plans for a Utopia already made; just give us a bit more time and we’ll produce it; trust us; we're wiser than you." For ten thousand years they've said that. We want our Utopia now-and we're going to try our hands at it.

Sinclair Lewis

Main Street

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Original Citation

Lewis, Sinclair. Main Street. Harcourt, Brace and Howe, 1920, ch. 16.

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Lewis, Sinclair. "Main Street." Sinclair Lewis: Main Street and Babbitt, edited by John Hersey. Library of America, 1992, ch. 16.

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You never had a rope around your neck. Well, I'm going to tell you something. When that rope starts to pull tight, you can feel the devil bite your ass!

The Good, the Bad and the Ugly

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The Good, the Bad and the Ugly [Il buono, il brutto, il cattivo]. Directed by Sergio Leone, Produzioni Europee Associati/Constantin Film, 1966.

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You wanna hurt me? Go right ahead if it makes you feel any better. I'm an easy target. Yeah, you're right. I talk too much. I also listen too much. I could be a cold-hearted cynic like you, but I don't like to hurt people's feelings. Well, you think what you want about me. I'm not changing. I like me. My wife likes me. My customers like me. 'Cause I'm the real article. What you see is what you get.

Planes, Trains and Automobiles

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Planes, Trains and Automobiles. Directed by John Hughes, Hughes Entertainment, 1987.

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When you are a Bear of Very Little Brain, and you Think of Things, you find sometimes that a Thing which seemed very Thingish inside you is quite different when it gets out into the open and has other people looking at it.

A.A. Milne

The House at Pooh Corner

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Original Citation

Milne, A. A. The House at Pooh Corner. Methuen, 1928, ch. 6.

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Milne, A. A. The House at Pooh Corner. Dutton Books for Young Readers, 2018, ch. 6.

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All progress is based upon a universal innate desire on the part of every organism to live beyond its income.

Samuel Butler (Novelist)

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Samuel Butler. The Note-Books of Samuel Butler, edited by Henry Festing Jones. A. C. Fifield, 1912, ch. 1.

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Love is not just a feeling; it's a practice, something you practice whether you feel like it or not.

Wendell Berry

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Berry, Wendell. Quoted in "Interview with Wendell Berry." Interviewed by Vince Pennington. The Kentucky Review, Spring 1996.

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There is a Chinese curse which says "May he live in interesting times." Like it or not, we live in interesting times. They are times of danger and uncertainty; but they are also the most creative of any time in the history of mankind.

Robert F. Kennedy

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Kennedy, Robert F. "Day of Affirmation." National Union of South African Students meeting. 6 June 1966, Jameson Hall, University of Cape Town, Cape Town, South Africa, Africa.

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Nothing is more dangerous than an idea, when you have only one idea.

Alain (Emile Chartier)

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Chartier, Émile [published as Alain]. Propos sur le Religion no. 74. Editions Rieder, 1938.

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Language and our thought-grooves are inextricably interwoven, are, in a sense, one and the same.

Edward Sapir

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Sapir, Edward. Language: An Introduction to the Study of Speech. Harcourt, Brace and Company, 1921, ch. 10.

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The most savage controversies are those about matters as to which there is no good evidence either way. Persecution is used in theology, not in arithmetic, because in arithmetic there is knowledge, but in theology there is only opinion.

Bertrand Russell

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Russell, Bertrand. "An Outline of Intellectual Rubbish." Unpopular Essays. George Allen & Unwin, 1950.

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Our country has deliberately undertaken a great social and economic experiment, noble in motive and far-reaching in purpose.

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Hoover, Herbert. Letter to Senator W. H. Borah. 23 Feb. 1928.

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Oh yeah. Lotta pressure. You gotta rise above it. You gotta harness in the good energy, block out the bad. Harness. Energy. Block. Bad. Feel the flow Happy. Feel it. It's circular. It's like a carousel. You pay the quarter, you get on the horse, it goes up and down, and around. It's circular. Circle, with the music, the flow. All good things.

Happy Gilmore

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Happy Gilmore. Directed by Dennis Dugan, Brillstein-Grey Entertainment/Robert Simonds Productions, 1996.

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Great Britain has lost an empire and has not yet found a role.

Dean Acheson

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Quoted in The Guardian

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Acheson, Dean. "Special Relationship." 6 Dec. 1962, West Point, NY, USA.

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No, not again. I...why does it say paper jam when there is no paper jam? I swear to God, one of these days, I just kick this piece of shit out the window!

Office Space

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Office Space. Directed by Mike Judge, Judgemental Films, 1999.

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Life is a copiously branching bush, continually pruned by the grim reaper of extinction, not a ladder of predictable progress.

Stephen Jay Gould

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Gould, Stephen Jay. Wonderful Life: The Burgess Shale and the Nature of History. W. W. Norton & Co., 1989, ch. 1.

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She was the People's Princess, and that is how she will stay... In our hearts and in our memories forever.

Tony Blair

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Blair, Tony. Press Release. Associated Press, 31 Aug. 1997.

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Keep violence in the mind
Where it belongs.

Brian Aldiss

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Barefoot in the Head

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Aldiss, Brian. Barefoot in the Head. Faber & Faber, 1969.

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Whatever women do they must do twice as well as men to be thought half as good.

Charlotte Whitton

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Whitton, Charlotte. Canada Month. June 1963.

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We are not the masters. The people are the masters. We are the servants of the people... What the electorate gives, the electorate can take away.

Tony Blair

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Blair, Tony. Addressing Labour MPs on the first day of the new Parliment. 7 May 1977, Palace of Westminster, London, England, UK.

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How do we know when irrational exuberance has unduly escalated asset values?

Alan Greenspan

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Greenspan, Alan. "The Challenge of Central Banking in a Democratic Society." The Annual Dinner and Francis Boyer Lecture of The American Enterprise Institute for Public Policy Research. 5 Dec. 1996, Washington, DC, USA.

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