Carl Sagan

Scientists can routinely predict a solar eclipse, to the minute, a millennium in advance. You can go to the witch doctor to lift the spell that causes your pernicious anaemia, or you can take Vitamin B12. If you want to save your child from polio, you can pray or you can inoculate. If you're interested in the sex of your unborn child, you can consult plumb-bob danglers all you want… but they'll be right, on average, only one time in two. If you want real accuracy… try amniocentesis and sonograms. Try science.

Pete Buttigieg

Chasten, my husband, pointed out that if our kids someday, some Monday morning, come into class, you know, and kids are sitting around and the teacher's got the morning circle talking about how everybody's weekends went, and one of them says, I had the best weekend with my dads, is the teacher supposed to say, No, we don’t talk about that here?

Any age where it's appropriate to talk about a kid's mom and dad, then it should be appropriate to talk about a kid's mom and mom or dad and dad or whatever family structure we live with. That's part of what it means to be pro-family, is to be pro-every family.

Robert Hendrickson, Rector at St. Philip’s Episcopal Church, Tucson, AZ

This is an awful man, waving a book he hasn’t read, in front of a church he doesn’t attend, invoking laws he doesn’t understand, against fellow Americans he sees as enemies, wielding a military he dodged serving, to protect power he gained via accepting foreign interference, exploiting fear and anger he loves to stoke, after failing to address a pandemic he was warned about, and building it all on a bed of constant lies and childish inanity.

John Cusack

You don't fight fascists because you're guaranteed to win - you fight fascists because they are fascists- and the people of the world have memory - and they know where these stories end.

What He Said

Unknown (Benjamin Franklin)

In wine there is wisdom, in beer there is freedom, in water there is bacteria.

Benjamin Franklin

Behold the rain which descends from heaven upon our vineyards; there it enters the roots of the vines, to be changed into wine; a constant proof that God loves us, and loves to see us happy.

John Candy: Del Griffith (Planes, Trains & Automobiles)

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... I like me. My wife likes me. My customers like me. 'Cause I'm the real article. What you see is what you get.

Jane Goodall

It actually doesn't take much to be considered a difficult woman. That's why there are so many of us.

Tommy Douglas

Once more, let me remind you what fascism is. I need not wear a brown shirt or a green shirt. Fascism begins the moment a ruling class, fearing the people may use their political democracy to gain economic democracy, begins to destroy political democracy in order to retain its power of exploitation and special privilege.

Beware the Fascists

Marcus Aurelius

The opinion of 10,000 men is of no value if none of them know anything about the subject.

Seeking knowledge/a justified true belief

Virginia Woolf

Considering how common illness is, how tremendous the spiritual change it brings, how astonishing, when the lights of health go down, the undiscovered countries that are then disclosed, what wastes and deserts of the soul a slight attack of influenza brings to view, what precipices and lawns sprinkled with bright flowers a little rise of temperature reveals, what ancient and obdurate oaks are uprooted in us by the act of sickness… it is strange indeed that illness has not taken its place with love and battle and jealousy among the prime themes of literature.

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