20th century

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Diplomacy is to do and say
The nastiest thing in the nicest way.

Isaac Goldberg

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Goldberg, Isaac. The Reflex. Oct. 1927.

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Sherman made the terrible discovery that men make about their fathers sooner or later... That the man before him was not an aging father but a boy, a boy much like himself, a boy who grew up and had a child of his own and, as best he could, out of a sense of duty and, perhaps love, adopted a role called Being a Father so that his child would have something mythical and infinitely important: a Protector, who would keep a lid on all the chaotic and catastrophic possibilities of life.

Tom Wolfe

The Bonfire of the Vanities

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Wolfe, Tom. The Bonfire of the Vanities. Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1987.

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Freedom in economic arrangements is itself a component of freedom broadly understood, so economic freedom is an end in itself...economic freedom is also an indispensable means toward the achievement of political freedom.

Milton Friedman

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Friedman, Milton. Capitalism and Freedom. University of Chicago Press, 1962, ch. 1.

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Truth is not merely what we are thinking, but also why, to whom, and under what circumstances we say it.

Václav Havel

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Havel, Václav. Pokoušení [Temptation]. 22 May 1986, Burgtheater, Vienna, Austria.

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Mankind's true moral test, its fundamental test (which lies deeply buried from view) consists of its attitudes towards those who are at its mercy: animals.

Milan Kundera

The Unbearable Lightness of Being

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Kundera, Milan. L'insoutenable légèreté de l'être [The Unbearable Lightness of Being]. Gallimard, 1984.

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Kundera, Milan. The Unbearable Lightness of Being, translated by Michael Henry Heim. Harper Perennial, 2009.

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Truth must of necessity be stranger than fiction...For fiction is the creation of the human mind, and therefore is congenial to it.

G.K. Chesterton

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Chesterton, G.K. "The Club of Queer Trades." The Collected Works of G.K. Chesterton. Vol. 6, Ignatius Press, 1991. Originally published by Harper & Brothers, 1905.

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After love, book collecting is the most exhilarating sport of all.

A.S.W. Rosenbach

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A Book Hunter's Holiday

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Rosenbach, A. S. W. A Book Hunter's Holiday. Houghton Mifflin Company, 1936.

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Never lose your temper with the Press or the public is a major rule of political life.

Christabel Pankhurst

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Pankhurst, Christabel. Unshackled: The Story of how We Won the Vote. Hutchinson, 1959, ch. 5.

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Chumps always make the best husbands... All the unhappy marriages come from the husband having brains.

P.G. Wodehouse

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Wodehouse, P. G. The Adventures of Sally. Herbert Jenkins, 1922. Originally published in Collier's Magazine, 8 Oct. 1921-31 Dec. 1921.

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He was of the faith chiefly in the sense that the church he currently did not attend was Catholic.

Kingsley Amis

One Fat Englishman

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Amis, Kingsley. One Fat Englishman. Harcourt, Brace & World/Gollancz, 1963.

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Cocaine habit-forming? Of course not. I ought to know. I've been using it for years.

Tallulah Bankhead

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Bankhead, Tallulah. Tallulah: My Autobiography. Harper & Bros./Victor Gollancz, 1952, ch. 4.

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I don't like people who have never fallen or stumbled. Their virtue is lifeless and it isn't of much value. Life hasn't revealed its beauty to them.

Boris Pasternak

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Pasternak, Boris. До́ктор Жива́го [Dr. Zhivago]. Feltrinelli, pt. 2, ch. 13, sect. 12.

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Pasternak, Boris. Doctor Zhivago, translated by Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky. Vintage International, 2011, pt. 2, ch. 13, sect. 12.

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All the animals, the plants, the minerals, even other kinds of men, are being broken and reassembled every day, to preserve an elite few, who are the loudest to theorize on freedom, but the least free of all.

Thomas Pynchon

Gravity's Rainbow

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Pynchon, Thomas. Gravity's Rainbow. Viking Press, 1973.

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Life is made up of constant calls to action, and we seldom have time for more than hastily contrived answers.

Learned Hand

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Hand, Learned. "At Forescore." Harvard University Annual Dinner. 18 Jan. 1952, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA, USA.

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I love a sunburnt country,
A land of sweeping plains,
Of ragged mountain ranges,
Of droughts and flooding rains.

Dorothea Mackellar

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Core of My Heart

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Mackellar, Dorothea. "Core of My Heart." The Spectator, 5 Sept. 1908.

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Mackellar, Dorothea. "My Country." My Country and Other Poems. Viking, 1988.

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Now, I had heard that word at least ten times a day from my old man. My father worked in profanity the way other artists might work in oils or clay. It was his true medium; a master.

Ralphie Parker

A Christmas Story

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A Christmas Story. Directed by Bob Clark, Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, 1983.

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To men a man is but a mind. Who cares
What face he carries or what form he wears?
But woman's body is the woman.

Ambrose Bierce

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Bierce, Ambrose. The Cynic's Word Book. Arthur F. Bird, 1906.

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Bierce, Ambrose. The Devil's Dictionary. Dover Publications, 1993.

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To you from failing hands we throw
The torch; be yours to hold it high.
If ye break faith with us who die
We shall not sleep, though poppies grow
In Flanders fields.

John McCrae

In Flanders Fields

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McCrae, John. "In Flanders Fields." Punch, 8 Dec. 1915.

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Where torture has been long applied we find that it is developed to grades of incredible horror.

William Graham Sumner

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Sumner, William Graham. Folkways: A Study of Mores, Manners, Customs and Morals. Ginn & Company, 1906, ch. 5.

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If, in some cataclysm, all of scientific knowledge were to be destroyed, and only one sentence passed on to the next generations of creatures, what statement would contain the most information in the fewest words? I believe it is the atomic hypothesis (or the atomic fact, or whatever you wish to call it) that all things are made of atoms-little particles that move around in perpetual motion, attracting each other when they are a little distance apart, but repelling upon being squeezed and into one another.