Sourced and curated.

Main Street · 1920

★ 1.9

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.

Main Street · 1920

★ 1.9

But I do know that about ten times as many people find their lives dull, and unnecessarily dull, as ever admit it; and I do believe that if we busted out and admitted it sometimes, instead of being nice and patient and loyal for sixty years, and then nice and patient and dead for the rest of eternity, why, maybe, possibly, we might make life more fun.

Babbitt · 1922

★ 1.9

The Maker of a universe with stars a hundred thousand light-years apart was interested, furious, and very personal about it if a small boy played baseball on Sunday afternoon.

Elmer Gantry · 1927

★ 1.9

I am convinced that everything that is worth while in the world has been accomplished by the free, inquiring, critical spirit, and that the preservation of this spirit is more important than any social system whatsoever. But the men of ritual and the men of barbarism are capable of shutting up the men of science and of silencing them forever.

In order to get beyond racism, we must first take account of race. There is no other way. And in order to treat some persons equally, we must treat them differently.

It Can't Happen Here · 1935

★ 1.9

Supreme Court opinion · Legal writing

Harry A. Blackmun

Regents of University of California v. Bakke · 1978

★ 1.9

Sociology · Economic literature

The dog... Commends himself to our favor by affording play to our propensity for mastery, and as he is also an item of expense, and commonly serves no industrial purpose, he holds a well-assured place in men's regard as a thing of good repute.

Thorstein Veblen

1899

★ 1.9

Thus it came to him merely to run away was folly, because he could never run away from himself.

Babbitt · 1922

★ 1.9

Why, America’s the only free nation on earth. Besides! Country’s too big for a revolution. No, no! Couldn’t happen here!

If you can actually count your money, then you are not really a rich man.

It Can't Happen Here · 1935

★ 1.9

Newspaper

J. Paul Getty

Observer · 1957

★ 1.9

I'm against picketing, but I don't know how to show it.

Big sisters are the crab grass in the lawn of life.

Strategic Grill Locations · 1999

★ 1.9

Comic strip

Charles M. Schulz

Peanuts · 1961

★ 2.0

I hate flossing, I just wish I had one long curvy tooth. It didn't need to be split up.

They were careless people, Tom and Daisy—they smashed up things and creatures and then retreated back into their money or their vast carelessness, or whatever it was that kept them together, and let other people clean up the mess they had made.

Strategic Grill Locations · 1999

★ 2.0

Novel

They slipped briskly into an intimacy from which they never recovered.

The Great Gatsby · 1925

★ 2.1

Novel

The victor belongs to the spoils.

This Side of Paradise · 1920

★ 2.2

Novel · Magazine

What'll we do with ourselves this afternoon? And the day after that, and the next thirty years?

Metropolitan Magazine · 1922

★ 2.2

Novel

The Great Gatsby · 1925

★ 2.2

If carrots got you drunk, rabbits would be fucked up.

Whenever I walk people try to hand me out flyers. And when someone tries to hand me out a flyer it's kinda like they're saying, "Here, you throw this away."

Strategic Grill Locations · 1999

★ 2.2

Comedy special · Comedy (stand up)

Comedy Central Presents · 1999

★ 2.6

My friend said to me, "I think the weather's trippy." I said, "no man, it's not the weather that's trippy, perhaps it is the way that we perceive it that is indeed trippy." Then I thought "man, I shoulda just said 'yeah'."

My ancestors were Puritans from England. They arrived here in 1648 in the hope of finding greater restrictions than were permissible under English law at that time.

Strategic Grill Locations · 1999

★ 2.6

Garrison Keillor

1990

★ 3.4

Personal journal

Any coward can sit in his home and criticize a pilot for flying into a mountain in fog. But I would rather, by far, die on a mountainside than in a bed.

Charles Lindbergh

1938

★ 3.5

Comedy special · Comedy (stand up)

I can't use liquor as a crutch, because a crutch helps me walk. Liquor severely screws up the way I walk. It ain't like a crutch, it's like a step I didn't see.

Comedy Central Presents · 1999

★ 3.5

I think Bigfoot is blurry, that's the problem. It's not the photographer's fault. Bigfoot is blurry, and that's extra scary to me. There's a large, out of focus monster, roaming the countryside.

Strategic Grill Locations · 1999

★ 3.5

Why are you so afraid of the word ‘Fascism,’ Doremus? Just a word-just a word! And might not be so bad, with all the lazy bums we got panhandling relief nowadays, and living on my income tax and yours-not so worse to have a real Strong Man, like Hitler or Mussolini-like Napoleon or Bismarck in the good old days-and have ‘em really run the country and make it efficient and prosperous again. ‘Nother words, have a doctor who won’t take any back-chat, but really boss the patient and make him get well whether he likes it or not!

No one can possibly achieve any real and lasting success or "get rich" in business by being a conformist.

It Can't Happen Here · 1935

★ 3.5

J. Paul Getty

1965

★ 3.5

Comedy special · Comedy (stand up)

I especially hate turtlenecks. Like wearing a turtleneck is like being strangled by a really weak guy, all day.

Comedy Central Presents · 1999

★ 3.5

I've never done a single thing I've wanted to in my whole life! I don't know 's I've accomplished anything except just get along.

The test of a first-rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposed ideas in the mind at the same time, and still retain the ability to function.

Babbitt · 1922

★ 3.6

Essay · Magazine

That is part of the beauty of all literature. You discover that your longings are universal longings, that you're not lonely and isolated from anyone. You belong.

1936

★ 3.6

The wise and tragic sense of life. By this I mean...the sense that life is essentially a cheat and its conditions are those of defeat, and that the redeeming things are not "happiness and pleasure" but the deeper satisfactions that come out of struggle.

1938

★ 3.6

Letter

The place to improve the world is first in one's own heart and head and hands.

1940

★ 3.6

Autobiography and memoir

Robert M. Pirsig

Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenence · 1974

★ 3.6

Autobiography and memoir

You look at where you're going and where you are and it never makes sense, but then you look back at where you've been and a pattern seems to emerge.

Robert M. Pirsig

Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenence · 1974

★ 3.6

Sociology · Economic literature

Conspicuous consumption of valuable goods is a means of reputability to the gentleman of leisure.

Thorstein Veblen

1899

★ 3.7

Short story

At eighteen our convictions are hills from which we look; at forty-five they are caves in which we hide.

1920

★ 3.7

He loved the People just as much as he feared and detested Persons.

It Can't Happen Here · 1935

★ 3.7

It isn't what you earn but how you spend it that fixes your class.

It Can't Happen Here · 1935

★ 3.7

Every man is a king so long as he has someone to look down on.

It is in the thirties that we want friends. In the forties we know they won't save us any more than love did.

It Can't Happen Here · 1935

★ 3.7

Personal journal