“It was the American middle class. No one's house cost more than two or three year's salary, and I doubt the spread in annual wages (except for the osteopath) exceeded more than five thousand dollars. And other than the doctor (who made house calls), the store managers, the minister, the salesman, and the banker, everyone belonged to a union. That meant they worked a forty-hour week, had the entire weekend off (plus two to four weeks' paid vacation in the summer), comprehensive medical benefits, and job security. In return for all that, the country became the most productive in the world and in our little neighborhood it meant your furnace was always working, your kids could be dropped off at the neighbors without notice, you could run next door anytime to borrow a half-dozen eggs, and the doors to all the homes were never locked -- because who would need to steal anything if they already had all that they needed?”
― Michael Moore, quote from Here Comes Trouble
“They convinced our mothers that if a food item came in a bottle -- or a can or a box or a cellophane bag -- then it was somehow better for you than when it came to you free of charge via Mother Nature....An entire generation of us were introduced in our very first week to the concept that phony was better than real, that something manufactured was better than something that was right there in the room. (Later in life, this explained the popularity of the fast food breakfast burrito, neocons, Kardashians, and why we think reading this book on a tiny screen with only three minutes of battery life left is enjoyable.”
― Michael Moore, quote from Here Comes Trouble
“I realized that this was the big secret of democracy -- that change can occur by starting off with just a few people doing something.”
― Michael Moore, quote from Here Comes Trouble
“One thing I learned as a journalist is that there is at least one disgruntled person in every workplace in America -- and at least double that number with a conscience. Hard as they try, they simply can't turn their heads away from an injustice when they see one taking place.”
― Michael Moore, quote from Here Comes Trouble
“It is the responsiblity of every human to know their actions and the consequences of their actions and to ask questions and to question things when they are wrong.”
― Michael Moore, quote from Here Comes Trouble
“If you could read, you knew shit.”
― Michael Moore, quote from Here Comes Trouble
“I had an unusually large-sized head, though this was not uncommon for a baby in the Midwest. The craniums in our part of the country were designed to leave a little extra room for the brain to grow in case one day we found ourselves exposed to something we didn't understand, like a foreign language, or a salad.”
― Michael Moore, quote from Here Comes Trouble
“The working people of the Flint area hated this rag, but it was our only daily so you read it. Everyone called it the "Flint Urinal." Editorially, the paper had historically been on the wrong side of every major social and political issue of the twentieth century -- "the wrong side" meaning: whatever side the union workers were on, the Urinal took the opposite position.”
― Michael Moore, quote from Here Comes Trouble
“We have no way of knowing what words you are going to misuse, so we cannot offer you a list. What we can offer, though, is a test that you yourself can apply to any word, whenever you are in doubt.
A Test: Do I Know This Word?
Ask yourself: 'Do I know this word?'
If the answer is no, then you do not know it.”
― Howard Mittelmark, quote from How Not to Write a Novel: 200 Classic Mistakes and How to Avoid Them—A Misstep-by-Misstep Guide
“My actions should depend on what I know, not what I suspect.”
― Christie Golden, quote from The Shattering: Prelude to Cataclysm
“feel an emotion it is necessary but not sufficient that neural signals from viscera, from muscles and joints, and from neurotransmitter nuclei—all of which are activated during the process of emotion—reach certain subcortical nuclei and the cerebral cortex. Endocrine and other chemical signals also reach the central nervous system via the bloodstream among other routes.”
― António R. Damásio, quote from Descartes' Error: Emotion, Reason and the Human Brain
“The Committee of 300 looks to social convulsions on a global scale, followed by depressions, as a softening-up technique for bigger things to come, as the principal method for creating masses of people all over the world who will become its “welfare” recipients of the future.”
― quote from Conspirators' Hierarchy: The Story of the Committee of 300
“I’m beginning to think that the world is divided into two kinds of men: those you can marry and don’t want to; those you want to marry and can’t.”
― Samuel Taylor, quote from Sabrina Fair
BookQuoters is a community of passionate readers who enjoy sharing the most meaningful, memorable and interesting quotes from great books. As the world communicates more and more via texts, memes and sound bytes, short but profound quotes from books have become more relevant and important. For some of us a quote becomes a mantra, a goal or a philosophy by which we live. For all of us, quotes are a great way to remember a book and to carry with us the author’s best ideas.
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