Abraham Lincoln

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Labor is prior to, and independent of, capital. Capital is only the fruit of labor, and could never have existed if labor had not first existed. Labor is the superior of capital, and deserves much the higher consideration.

A Hacker News comment on Entrepreneurs by notacoward

Entrepreneurship is like one of those carnival games where you throw darts or something.

Middle class kids can afford one throw. Most miss. A few hit the target and get a small prize. A very few hit the center bullseye and get a bigger prize. Rags to riches! The American Dream lives on.

Rich kids can afford many throws. If they want to, they can try over and over and over again until they hit something and feel good about themselves. Some keep going until they hit the center bullseye, then they give speeches or write blog posts about "meritocracy" and the salutary effects of hard work.

Poor kids aren't visiting the carnival. They're the ones working it.

i have thought about this hacker news comment nearly every day since november ninth twenty seventeen pic.twitter.com/mz5auDBkKl

— josh ackerman (@joshuaackerman) June 7, 2022

Oscar Wilde

In America the President reigns for four years, and Journalism governs for ever and ever.

Barry M. Goldwater

Mark my word, if and when these preachers get control of the [Republican] party, and they're sure trying to do so, it's going to be a terrible damn problem. Frankly, these people frighten me. Politics and governing demand compromise. But these Christians believe they are acting in the name of God, so they can't and won't compromise. I know, I've tried to deal with them.

Too late, we're there

Pope Francis (Condemns Russia's War in Ukraine)

Let there be a decision for peace. May there be an end to the flexing of muscles while people are suffering.

John Stuart Mill

Landlords grow rich in their sleep without working, risking or economizing. The increase in the value of land, arising as it does from the efforts of an entire community, should belong to the community and not to the individual who might hold title.

John Green

Public education does not exist for the benefit of students or the benefit of their parents. It exists for the benefit of the social order.

We have discovered as a species that it is useful to have an educated population. You do not need to be a student or have a child who is a student to benefit from public education. Every second of every day of your life, you benefit from public education.

So let me explain why I like to pay taxes for schools, even though I don't personally have a kid in school: It's because I don't like living in a country with a bunch of stupid people.

Dwight D. Eisenhower

Don't join the book burners. Don't think you are going to conceal faults by concealing evidence that they ever existed. Don't be afraid to go in your library and read every book, as long as that document does not offend our own ideas of decency. That should be the only censorship.

Ulysses S. Grant

If we are to have another contest in the near future of our national existence I predict that the dividing line will not be Mason & Dixon … but between patriotism & intelligence on the one side & superstition, ambition & ignorance on the other.

Grant could see it.

Navajo Proverb

You can't wake a person who is pretending to be asleep.

Isaac Asimov

There is a cult of ignorance in the United States, and there has always been. The strain of anti-intellectualism has been a constant thread winding its way through our political and cultural life, nurtured by the false notion that democracy means that ‘my ignorance is just as good as your knowledge.’

Friedrich Nietzsche

Not that you lied to me but that I no longer believe you has shaken me.

Ernest Hemingway

To be able to say: I loved this person, we had a hell of a nice time together, it’s over but in a way it will never be over and I do know that I for sure loved this person, to be able to say that and mean it, that’s rare, señor. That’s rare and valuable.

Tibetan Proverb

The secret of living well and longer is: eat half, walk double, laugh triple and love without measure.

Plato

For a change to a new type of music is something to beware of as a hazard of all our fortunes.

-Plato c. 380 BCE The Republic, Book IV, 424c