Quotes of famous people

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Barack Obama 1158

44th President of the United States of America 1961

Oscar Wilde 812

Irish writer and poet 1854–1900

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“There can be no effective control of corporations while their political activity remains.”

Theodore Roosevelt (1858–1919) American politician, 26th president of the United States

1910s, The New Nationalism (1910)
Context: There can be no effective control of corporations while their political activity remains. To put an end to it will be neither a short nor an easy task, but it can be done. We must have complete and effective publicity of corporate affairs, so that the people may know beyond peradventure whether the corporations obey the law and whether their management entitles them to the confidence of the public. It is necessary that laws should be passed to prohibit the use of corporate funds directly or indirectly for political purposes; it is still more necessary that such laws should be thoroughly enforced. Corporate expenditures for political purposes, and especially such expenditures by public-service corporations, have supplied one of the principal sources of corruption in our political affairs.

“A century and a half after its birth, the modern business corporation, an artificial person made in the image of a human psychopath, now is seeking to remake real people in its image.”

Joel Bakan (1959) Canadian writer, musician, filmmaker and legal scholar

Source: The Corporation: The Pathological Pursuit of Profit and Power (2004), Chapter 5, Corporations Unlimited, p. 135

People , Birth , Business , Personality

“There is a relationship between government, media and industry that is evident even at this most spurious and superficial level. These three institutions support one another. We know that however cool a media outlet may purport to be, their primary loyalty is to their corporate backers. We know also that you cannot criticise the corporate backers openly without censorship and subsequent manipulation of this information.”

Russell Brand (1975) British comedian, actor, and author

Russell Brand - The Guardian (2013)

Support , Loyalty

“People are being pushed around, disrespected, defrauded, injured, and given the runaround by arrogant corporate bureaucrats using nameless, robotic, and tyrannical "fine print" contract barricades.”

Ralph Nader (1934) American consumer rights activist and corporate critic

To the Ramparts (2018)

People

“I believe that the officers, and, especially, the directors, of corporations should be held personally responsible when any corporation breaks the law.”

Theodore Roosevelt (1858–1919) American politician, 26th president of the United States

1910s, The New Nationalism (1910)
Context: We have come to recognize that franchises should never be granted except for a limited time, and never without proper provision for compensation to the public. It is my personal belief that the same kind and degree of control and supervision which should be exercised over public-service corporations should be extended also to combinations which control necessaries of life, such as meat, oil, or coal, or which deal in them on an important scale. I have no doubt that the ordinary man who has control of them is much like ourselves. I have no doubt he would like to do well, but I want to have enough supervision to help him realize that desire to do well. I believe that the officers, and, especially, the directors, of corporations should be held personally responsible when any corporation breaks the law.

Law , Personality

“Government is humbug. There is no government. Behind the noisy, smoke-belching, larger-than-life illusion of government are ordinary human beings. It isn't accurate to say government 'is composed of' people; government is simply people. They may be good people but they are very bad wizards. Mortals have no magic. Individuals are the only human reality. All groups are fictions. That is, groups have no concrete existence; they are not beings or entities in themselves; they exist only in the abstract, in the mind. Governments, nations, societies, classes, tribes, cub scout packs, football teams, corporations, labor unions, proletariats, political parties, majorities, elite minorities, communities, civilizations and such are all fictions. Those words only describe, or try to describe, a relationship between persons.”

Roger Lea MacBride (1929–1995) American writer, TV producer, and politician; 1976 Libertarian Party candidate for President

A New Dawn for America : The Libertarian Challenge (1976) p. 16

Life , People , Communication , Reality

“Donald Trump is a fascist. … Not in the sense of an all-purpose bad guy, but in the sense of somebody who sincerely believes that the toxic combination of strong government and strong corporations should run the nation and the world. He spent his previous career negotiating with the government on behalf of corporations; now he has switched teams. But it’s the same game.”

Michael Kinsley (1951) American political journalist, commentator television host

Donald Trump is actually a fascist (December 9, 2016)

World , Guy , Game , Sense

“This administration is not sympathetic to corporations, it is indentured to corporations.”

Ralph Nader (1934) American consumer rights activist and corporate critic

Quoted in a news conference (3 October 1972), speaking on the Nixon Administration; reported in The Washington Post (4 October 1972), p. A2.

“Our greatest polluter is the government (i.e., U.S. military), not corporate America. Putting government in charge of protecting the environment is like asking the fox to guard the hen house.”

Mary Ruwart (1949) American scientist and libertarian activist

Source: Short Answers to the Tough Questions: How to Answer the Questions Libertarians Are Often Asked, (2012), p. 48

Housing

“I finally understood what my grandmother meant. If I wasn't comfortable with myself, I would never be comfortable.”

Marjane Satrapi (1969) Artist

Source: Persepolis 2: The Story of a Return

“This passage from nothingness to real being, this quitting of oneself is a birth accompanied by pain, for by it natural love is excluded. All grief except grief for sin comes from love of the world. In God is neither sorrow, nor grief, nor trouble. Wouldst thou be free from all grief and trouble, abide and walk in God, and to God alone. As long as love of the creature is in us, pain cannot cease.”

Meister Eckhart (1260–1328) German theologian

Sermon VII : Outward and Inward Morality
Meister Eckhart’s Sermons (1909)

Love , God , Pain , World

“I have never seen an angel. Show me an angel, and I'll paint one.”

Gustave Courbet (1819–1877) French painter

Courbet, c 1860's, later quoted by Vincent van Gogh in a letter to brother Theo (July, 1885); in The letters of Vincent van Gogh, ed. Ronal de Leeuw - Penguin, New York, 1996, p. 302
1860s

Angels , Painting

“One should use common words to say uncommon things”

Arthur Schopenhauer (1788–1860) German philosopher

“Truth that is naked is the most beautiful, and the simpler its expression the deeper is the impression it makes”

Arthur Schopenhauer (1788–1860) German philosopher

Essays, On Authorship and Style
Context: Truth that is naked is the most beautiful, and the simpler its expression the deeper is the impression it makes; this is partly because it gets unobstructed hold of the hearer’s mind without his being distracted by secondary thoughts, and partly because he feels that here he is not being corrupted or deceived by the arts of rhetoric, but that the whole effect is got from the thing itself.

Truth , Beauty