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There is a terrible truthfulness about photography that sometimes makes a thing look ridiculous.
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The medieval doctors of divinity who did not pretend to settle how many angels could dance on the point of a needle cut a very poor figure as far as romantic credulity is concerned beside the modern physicists who have settled to the billionth of a millimetre every movement and position in the dance of the electrons. Not for worlds would I question the precise accuracy of these calculations or the existence of electrons (whatever they may be). The fate of Joan is a warning to me against such heresy.
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Golf is typical capitalist luncay.
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When Satan makes impure verses, Allah sends a divine tune to cleanse them.
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Make it a rule never to give a child a book you would not read yourself.
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If Despotism failed only for want of a capable benevolent despot, what chance has Democracy, which requires a whole population of capable voters.
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People exaggerate the value of things they haven't got everybody worships truth and unselfishness because they have no experience with them.
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There is nothing in religion but fiction.
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You have a choice of trusting the natural stability of gold, or the honesty and intelligence of members of government.
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It is the mark of a truly intelligent person to be moved by statistics.
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Every girl has a right to be loved.
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You may well ask me why...I took the time to write [books]. I can only reply that I do not know. There was no why about it. I had to: that was all.
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Nothing is ever accomplished by a reasonable man.
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I am sorry to have to introduce the subject of Christmas. It is an indecent subject; a cruel, gluttonous subject; a drunken, disorderly subject; a wasteful, disastrous subject; a wicked, cadging, lying, filthy, blasphemous and demoralizing subject. Christmas is forced on a reluctant and disgusted nation by the shopkeepers and the press: on its own merits it would wither and shrivel in the fiery breath of universal hatred; and anyone who looked back to it would be turned into a pillar of greasy sausages.
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I hate performers who debase great works of art; I long for their annihilation.
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I have not wasted my life trifling with literary fools in taverns, as Johnson did, when he should have been shaking England with the thunder of his spirit...
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The most sublime courage I have ever witnessed has been among that class too poor to know they possessed it, and too humble for the world to discover it.
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There is only one universal passion fear.
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Has fear ever held a man back from anything he really wanted?
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Perhaps you know some well-off families who do not seem to suffer from their riches. They do not overeat themselves; they find occupations to keep themselves in health; they do not worry about their position; they put their money into safe investments and are content with a low rate of interest; and they bring up their children to live simply and do useful work. But this means that they do not live like rich people at all, and might therefore just as well have ordinary incomes.
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The policy of letting things alone, in the practical sense that the Government should never interfere with business or go into business itself, is called Laisser-faire by economists and politicians. It has broken down so completely in practice that it is now discredited; but it was all the fashion in politics a hundred years ago, and is still influentially advocated by men of business and their backers who naturally would like to be allowed to make money as they please without regard to the interest of the public.
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I have never admitted the right of an elderly author to alter the work of a young author, even when the young author happens to be his former self.
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Those who minister to poverty and disease are accomplices in the two worst of all the crimes.
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The one point on which all women are in furious secret rebellion against the existing law is the saddling of the right to a child with the obligation to become the servant of a man.