1940s

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Dry your eyes, baby; it's out of character.

Notorious

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Notorious. Directed by Alfred Hitchcock, RKO Pictures/Vanguard Films, 1946.

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You know, Mr. Bernstein, if I hadn't been very rich, I might have been a really great man.

Citizen Kane

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Citizen Kane. Directed by Orson Welles. RKO Radio Pictures/Mercury Productions, 1941.

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There are only four ways in which a ruling class can fall from power. Either it is conquered from without, or it governs so inefficiently that the masses are stirred to revolt, or it allows a strong and discontented Middle group to come into being, or it loses its own self-confidence and willingness to govern. These causes do not operate singly, and as a rule all four of them are present in some degree. A ruling class which could guard against all of them would remain in power permanently. Ultimately the determining factor is the mental attitude of the ruling class itself.

George Orwell

Nineteen Eighty-Four

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Orwell, George. Nineteen Eighty-Four. Secker & Warburg, 1949, pt. 2, ch. 9.

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I would give the greatest sunset in the world for one sight of New York's skyline.

Ayn Rand

The Fountainhead

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Rand, Ayn. The Fountainhead. Bobbs Merrill, 1943, pt. 3, ch. 4.

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As long as there are sovereign nations possessing great power, war is inevitable.

Albert Einstein

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Einstein, Albert. "Einstein on the Atomic Bomb." Interviewed by Raymond Swing. Atlantic Monthly, Nov. 1945.

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Einstein, Albert. Einstein on Politics: His Private Thoughts and Public Stands on Nationalism, Zionism, War, Peace, and the Bomb. Princeton University Press, 2013, ch. 8.

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In order to be content men must also have the possibility of developing their intellectual and artistic powers.

Albert Einstein

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Einstein, Albert. "Freiheit und Wissenschaft [Freedom and Science]." 1940.

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Einstein, Albert. "On Freedom." Out of My Later Years. Philosophical Library/Open Road, 2015, ch. 6.

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I did not come here to solve anything.
I came to sing,
And for you to sing with me.

Pablo Neruda

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Neruda, Pablo. Que Despierte El Leñador. Colección Yagruma, 1948.

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The painting has a life of its own. I try to let it come through.

Jackson Pollock

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Pollock, Jackson. "My Painting." Possibilities, no. 1, Winter 1947-1948, p. 79.

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The life of a man is three-score years and ten: a little more, a little less. The life of a Nation is the fullness of the measure of its will to live.

Franklin D. Roosevelt

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Roosevelt, Franklin D. "Third Inaugural Address." 20 Jan. 1941, East Portico, US Capitol Building, Washington, DC, USA.

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Roosevelt, Franklin D. "Third Inaugral Address: Washington, DC, January 20, 1941." Great Speeches, edited by John Grafton. Dover, 1999.

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Marxism is essentially a product of the bourgeois mind.

Joseph Schumpeter

Capitalism, Socialism, and Democracy

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Schumpeter, Joseph Alois. Capitalism, Socialism, and Democracy. Harper & Brothers, 1942, pt. 1, ch. 1.

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It is so crowded and yet so lonely, isn't it?

Gilda

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Gilda. Directed by Charles Vidor, Columbia Pictures, 1946.

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We are protected by the enormity of your stupidity, for a time.

Notorious

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Notorious. Directed by Alfred Hitchcock, RKO Pictures/Vanguard Films, 1946.

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Things in life will not always run smoothly. Sometimes we will be rising toward the heights—then all will seem to reverse itself and start downward. The great fact to remember is that the trend of civilization itself is forever upward; that a line drawn through the middle of the peaks and the valleys of the centuries always has an upward trend.

Franklin D. Roosevelt

Fourth Inaugural Address of Franklin D. Roosevelt

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Roosevelt, Franklin D. "Fourth Inaugural Address." 20 Jan. 1945, East Portico, US Capitol Building, Washington, DC, USA.

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Roosevelt, Franklin D. "Fourth Inaugral Address: Washington, DC, January 20, 1945." Great Speeches, edited by John Grafton. Dover, 1999.

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A joke worth laughing at always has an idea behind it, and usually a subversive idea.

George Orwell

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Orwell, George. "Charles Dickens." Inside the Whale and Other Essays. Victor Gollancz, 1940, pt. 6.

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Common sense is actually nothing more than a deposit of prejudices laid down in the mind prior to the age of eighteen.

Albert Einstein

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Einstein, Albert. Quoted in The Universe and Dr. Eistein. Written by Lincoln Barnett. Sloane, 1950. Originally printed in Harpers, 1948.

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We have learned that we cannot live alone, at peace; that our own well-being is dependent on the well-being of other Nations, far away... We have learned to be citizens of the world, members of the human community.

Franklin D. Roosevelt

Fourth Inaugural Address of Franklin D. Roosevelt

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Original Citation

Roosevelt, Franklin D. "Fourth Inaugural Address." 20 Jan. 1945, East Portico, US Capitol Building, Washington, DC, USA.

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Current Citation

Roosevelt, Franklin D. "Fourth Inaugral Address: Washington, DC, January 20, 1945." Great Speeches, edited by John Grafton. Dover, 1999.

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The great enemy of clear language is insincerity. When there is a gap between one’s real and one’s declared aims, one turns as it were instinctively to long words and exhausted idioms, like a cuttlefish squirting out ink.

George Orwell

Politics and the English Language

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Original Citation

Orwell, George. "Politics and the English Language." Horizon, Apr. 1946, vol. 13, issue 76, pp. 252-265.

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Current Citation

Orwell, George. "Politics and the English Language." The Collected Essays, Journalism and Letters of George Orwell, vol. 4: In Front of Your Nose 1945-1950, edited by Sonia Orwell and Ian Angus. David R. Godine, 1999, no. 38.

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