“Were the ironies of taxation any better: raising money for schools and hospitals and roads and bridges, and spending it on blowing up schools and hospitals and roads and bridges in self-defeating wars?”

— Edward St. Aubyn

At Last, Chapter 6

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Edward St. Aubyn 50

British writer 1960

Ken Kesey book One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest

Source: One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest (1962), Ch. 4
Context: This is what I know. The ward is a factory for the Combine. It's for fixing up mistakes made in the neighborhoods and in the schools and in the churches, the hospital is. When a completed product goes back out into society, all fixed up good as new, better than new sometimes, it brings joy to the Big Nurse's heart; something that came in all twisted and different is now a functioning, adjusted component, a credit to the whole outfit and a marvel to behold.

“Everything was for tomorrow, but tomorrow never came. The present was only a bridge and on this bridge they are still groaning, as the world groans, and not one idiot ever thinks of blowing up the bridge.”

Henry Miller (1891–1980) American novelist

“By the road to the contagious hospital
under the surge of the blue
mottled clouds driven from the
northeast — a cold wind.”

William Carlos Williams book Spring and All

"Spring and All"
Spring and All (1923)

“Is it surprising that prisons resemble factories, schools, barracks, hospitals, which all resemble prisons?”

Michel Foucault book Discipline and Punish

Discipline and Punish (1977) as translated by Alan Sheridan, p. 228
Discipline and Punish (1977)

“Here at this bridge we'll go our separate ways—
forlorn beside the road, I watch flags fly.”

Đặng Trần Côn (1710–1745) writer

Source: Chinh phụ ngâm, Lines 43–44

“For millions of men and women, the church has been the hospital for the soul, the school for the mind and the safe depository for moral ideas.”

Gerald Ford (1913–2006) American politician, 38th President of the United States (in office from 1974 to 1977)

Speech to the International Eucharistic Conference, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania as quoted in the Los Angeles Herald-Examiner (13 August 1976)
1970s

“Now, I love being home, in this place where Ann and I were raised, where both of us were born. Ann was born in Henry Ford Hospital, I was born at Harper Hospital. No one's ever asked to see my birth certificate; they know that this is the place that we were born and raised.”

Mitt Romney (1947) American businessman and politician

On the campaign trail in his home state Michigan, at a rally near Detroit.
2012-08-24
Mitt Romney makes birth certificate quip at Michigan rally
Ewen
MacAskill
The Guardian
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2012/aug/24/mitt-romney-birth-certificate-quip?newsfeed=true
2012-08-25
2012-08-24
Romney stirs 'birther' controversy, Akin to stay in Senate race
CNN
http://edition.cnn.com/2012/08/24/politics/rnc-campaign-wrap/index.html
2012