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113 quotes
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Scientific literature

Science and technology, and the various forms of art, all unite humanity in a single and interconnected system. As science progresses, the worldwide cooperation of scientists and technologists becomes more and more of a special and distinct intellectual community of friendship, in which, in place of antagonism, there is growing up a mutually advantageous sharing of work, a coordination of efforts, a common language for exchange of information, and solidarity, which are in many cases independent of the social and political differences of individual states.

★ 1.7
Novel · Satire

I think perhaps we want a more conscious life. We're tired of drudging and sleeping and dying. We're tired of seeing just a few people able to be individualists. We're tired of always deferring hope till the next generation. We're tired of hearing politicians and priests and cautious reformers...coax us, "Be calm! Be patient! Wait! We have the plans for a Utopia already made; just give us a bit more time and we’ll produce it; trust us; we're wiser than you." For ten thousand years they've said that. We want our Utopia now-and we're going to try our hands at it.

Sinclair Lewis
Main Street · 1920
★ 1.9
Scientific literature

It is a profoundly erroneous truism, repeated by all copy-books and by eminent people when they are making speeches, that we should cultivate the habit of thinking of what we are doing. The precise opposite is the case. Civilization advances by extending the number of important operations which we can perform without thinking about them. Operations of thought are like cavalry charges in a battle-they are strictly limited in number, they require fresh horses, and must only be made at decisive moments.

Alfred North Whitehead
An Introduction to Mathematics · 1911
★ 3.5
Film · Biography (film) · Biography

I know you're taking it in the teeth out there, but the first guy through the wall, he always gets bloody. Always. This is threatening not just a way of doing business, but in their minds, it's threatening the game. Really what it's threatening is their livelihoods, it's threatening their jobs. It's threatening the way that they do things. And every time that happens, whether it's the government, or a way of doing business, or whatever it is, the people who are holding the reins—they have their hands on the switch—they go batshit crazy.

John Henry
Moneyball · 2011
★ 3.5
Speech · Political speech

It was a creed written into the founding documents that declared the destiny of a nation: Yes, we can. It was whispered by slaves and abolitionists as they blazed a trail towards freedom through the darkest of nights. Yes, we can. It was sung by immigrants as they struck out from distant shores and pioneers who pushed westward against an unforgiving wilderness. Yes, we can. It was the call of workers who organized, women who reached for the ballot, a president who chose the moon as our new frontier, and a king who took us to the mountaintop and pointed the way to the promised land.

★ 3.7
Speech

Until the philosophy which holds one race superior and another inferior is finally and permanently discredited and abandoned... Until there are no longer first-class and second-class citizens of any nation... Until the color of a man's skin is of no more significance than the color of his eyes... Until the basic human rights are equally guaranteed to all without regard to race... Until that day, the dream of lasting peace and world citizenship and the rule of international morality will remain but a fleeting illusion, to be pursued but never attained.

★ 4.4