From the standpoint of the upper classes, the system had many merits. They felt that what was paid out of the poor rate was charity, and therefore a proof of their benevolence; at the same time, wages were kept at starvation level by a method which j...
Alan Garner: [looks at his manual] It says here we should work in teams. Who wants to be my spotter? Doug Billings: I don't think you should be doing too much gambling tonight, Alan. Alan Garner: Gambling? Who said anything about gambling? It's not g...
King Arthur: I am your king. Woman: Well, I didn't vote for you. King Arthur: You don't vote for kings. Woman: Well how'd you become king then? [Angelic music plays... ] King Arthur: The Lady of the Lake, her arm clad in the purest shimmering samite ...
John Anderton: No doubt the precogs have already seen this. Lamar Burgess: No doubt. John Anderton: You see the dilemma don't you. If you don't kill me, precogs were wrong and precrime is over. If you do kill me, you go away, but it proves the system...
Ripley: Lieutenant, what do those pulse rifles fire? Gorman: 10 millimeter explosive tip caseless. Standard light armor piercing round, why? Ripley: Well, look where your team is. They're right under the primary heat exchangers. Gorman: So? Ripley: S...
Bruce Wayne - age 8: [riding his father's monorail] Did you build this train, Dad? Thomas Wayne: Gotham's been good to our family, but the city's been suffering. People less fortunate than us have been enduring very hard times. So we built a new, che...
When Lillian (Holt) argues that leadership steals your spirit, she means that institutional pressures change you; they erode your courage, passion and humour and wear you down so that important things don't get named and get overtaken by the trivial....
In 1959, Vice-President Nixon, speaking to members of California’s Commonwealth Club, was asked if he’d like to see the parties undergo an ideological realignment—the sort that has since taken place—and he replied, “I think it would be a gr...
Every telecomm company is as big a corporate welfare bum as you could ask for. Try to imagine what it would cost at market rates to go around to every house in every town in every country and pay for the right to block traffic and dig up roads and er...
Cavenaugh rubbed his hands together and smiled his sunny smile. 'I like that idea. It's reassuring. If we can have no secrets, it means we can't, after all, go so far afield as we might,' he hesitated, 'yes, as we might.' Eastman looked at him sourly...
I was amongst them – the first female pilot who had got admission to the Sturmoviks…Since my childhood I’d been lucky enough to meet good people. Wherever I studied, wherever I worked I would meet loyal friends, kind-hearted tutors. I was train...
Despite my resistance to hyperbole, the LHC belongs to a world that can only be described with superlatives. It is not merely large: the LHC is the biggest machine ever built. It is not merely cold: the 1.9 kelvin (1.9 degrees Celsius above absolute ...
Most people, when directly confronted by evidence that they are wrong, do not change their point of view or course of action but justify it even more tenaciously. Even irrefutable evidence is rarely enough to pierce the mental armor of self-justifica...
I have these secret pangs of shame about being single, like I wasn't good enough to get a husband. Rita reminded me of something I'd told her once, about the five rules of the world as arrived at by this Catholic priest named Tom Weston. The first ru...
Lowell Bergman: I did not burn you. I did not give you up to anyone! Jeffrey Wigand: This is my house... In front of my wife, my kids? What business do we have? Lowell Bergman: To straighten something out with you. Right here. Right now. Jeffrey Wiga...
Oddball: This engine's been modified by our mechanical genius here, Moriarty. Right? Moriarty: Whatever you say, babe. [giggles] Oddball: These engines are the fastest in any tanks in the European Theater of Operations, forwards or backwards. You see...
Iko 'Jitz' Fujitsu, Marty's Boss in 2015: [shouts] McFly! Middle-Aged Marty: Fujitsu-san, Konnichiwa. Iko 'Jitz' Fujitsu, Marty's Boss in 2015: McFly, I was monitoring that scan you just interfaced. You are *terminated*! Middle-Aged Marty: Terminated...
The colonialist's existence is so closely aligned with that of the colonized that he will never be able to overcome the argument which states that misfortune is good for something. With all his power he must disown the colonized while their existence...
Is it possible that future generations will regard our present agribuisness and eating practices in much the same way we now view Nero's entertainments or Mengele's experiments? My own initial reaction is that such a comparison is hysterical, extreme...
If I – as a beneficiary of that exact formula – will concede that my own life was indeed enriched by that precise familial structure, will the social conservatives please (for once!) concede that this arrangement has always put a disproportionate...
By exiling human judgment in the last few decades, modern law changed role from useful tool to brainless tyrant. This legal regime will never be up to the job, any more than the Soviet system of central planning was, because ti can't think. The comed...
