Labor Unions

Thirty years of Reaganomics and they could never figure out that by destroying labor unions, they destroyed the middle class which was the economic engine of America.
--Humuhumunukunukuapuaa

Theory

In everyday language a theory means a hunch or speculation. Not so in science. In science, the word theory refers to a comprehensive explanation of an important feature of nature that is supported by many facts gathered over time.
--National Academy of Sciences

Portals

Mistakes are the portals of discovery.
--James Joyce

Crude Matter

Luminous beings are we, not this crude matter.
--Yoda

Play

The goal of the future is full unemployment, so we can play. That's why we have to destroy the present politico-economic system.
--Arthur C. Clarke

Promises

Little in life is as satisfying as keeping promises.
--Dean Koontz

Gears

Life is like a 10-speed bicycle. Most of us have gears we never use.
--Charles Schultz

A Book

You believe in a book that has talking animals, wizards, witches, demons, sticks turning into snakes, burning bushes, food falling from the sky, people walking on water, and all sorts of magical, absurd and primitive stories, and you say that we are the ones that need help?
--Mark Twain

Book of Spells

I remain convinced that American conservative thought is now not a philosophy but, rather, a book of spells, a series of conjuring words that have meaning only to the initiates.
--Charles P. Pierce

Metaphor

On close inspection, "depression is a chemical imbalance" turns out to be every bit as much a model, a metaphor, a story, as "depression is an excess of black bile."
--Katherine Sharpe

Priority Option

Never allow someone to be your priority while allowing yourself to be their option.
--Mark Twain

Pleasure

The sacrifice of pleasures is of course itself a pleasure.
--Muriel Spark

The Sum

Everything is the sum of the past...There is nothing, not even the human soul, the highest spiritual manifestation we know of, that does not come within this universal law.
--Teilhard de Chardin

He Owes

All accumulation, therefore, of personal property, beyond what a man's own hands produce, is derived to him by living in society; and he owes on every principle of justice, of gratitude, and of civilisation, a part of that accumulation back again to society from whence the whole came.
--Tom Paine

Stand In

Every variety of nationalism, in every country in the world, involves some degree of invention, imagination and amnesia, standing in for actual history.
--Andrew O'Hehir

Fix

The entire universe depends on everything fitting together just right. If you can fix the broken piece, everything can go right back.
--Benh Zeitlin and Lucy Alibar

Aware

Humankind is no less than the universe having become aware of itself.
--Drew Monkman

Why

The first question which we have a right to ask will be, "Why is there something rather than nothing?"
--Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz (1714)