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"The kingdom of poverty is very strongly fortified. It can be conquered only through making industry serve the whole people. We are all very far as yet from achieving this service, but since Prohibition came to this country we have made more rapid strides toward bringing industry around to the real service of humanity than we made during all the previous history of the world. When this service is perfected, we shall have made prosperity universal and have abolished poverty. The nation cannot go forward on this programme—which is the finest of all programmes—unless it has a full complement of brains and initiative. The nearer we approach national total abstinence, the more brains and initiative we shall have at command." Henry Ford   "Some service jobs, like housecleaning and hair cutting, seem resistant to technological change—at least until we learn to build robot maids and barbers. In the past, however, we have seen major improvements in service productivity. During the 1950s and 1960s, for example, a linked set of technological and social changes—widespread availability of private cars and home refrigerators, the growth of supermarkets and an improved road system—led to huge increases in retail productivity. An earlier era saw a surge in office productivity because of such revolutionary innovations as typewriters, carbon paper and vertical file cabinets. Indeed, the most significant American business success story of the late 20th century may well be Wal-Mart, which has applied extensive computerization and a home-grown version of Japan's 'just in time' inventory methods to revolutionize retailing." Paul Krugman   "And what shall we gain? Surely it is enough to have half the human race straining every nerve to outrun their fellows in the race for subsistence or power? Surely we need some human beings who will watch and pray, who will observe and inspire, and, above all, who will guard and love all who are weak, unfit or distressed. Is there not a special service of woman, as there is a special service of man? The man is paid directly or indirectly by the community to create commodities in return for his subsistence. We collectivists believe that it is best that he should be enlisted and paid directly by the community, so that he may feel himself enrolled as a servant and minister of society. We believe that only by this direct and recognised enrolment can we ensure that he is producing and not destroying, that he is working for his fellows and not warring against them or living on them. Should not women, too, be enrolled as servants of the community, creators of something more precious than commodities, creators of the nation's children? And as man with his unremitting activity and physical restlessness seems fitted to labour, direct and organize, so woman, with her long periods of passive existence and her constantly recurring physical incapacity, seems ordained to watch over the young and guard over the rising generation and preserve for all the community the peaceful and joyful home." Beatrice Webb   "What was later conceptualized as 'feudalism'—a pyramid of power and duty based on the granting of land in return for service—lasted for only about a century after the Conquest. It was eroded by land tenure becoming in practice and in Common Law permanent, and increasingly paid for not by personal service but by money rents—the number of such tenancies roughly tripled in the two centuries after Domesday Book. 'Feudal' obligations were also complicated by land being held from more than one lord, who might be rivals, or held by women or children." Robert Tombs   "Until August 1914, a sensible, law-abiding Englishman could pass through life and hardly notice the existence of the state beyond the post office and the policeman. He could live where he liked and as he liked. He had no official number or identity card. He could travel abroad or leave his country for ever without a passport or any sort of official permission. He could exchange his money for any other currency without restriction or limit. He could buy goods from any country in the world on the same terms as he bought goods at home. For that matter, a foreigner could spend his life in this country without permit and without informing the police. Unlike the countries of the European continent, the state did not require its citizens to perform military service. An Englishman could enlist, if he chose, in the regular army, the navy, or the territorials. He could also ignore, if he chose, the demands of national defence. Substantial householders were occasionally called on for jury service. Otherwise, only those helped the state who wished to do so." Alan John Percivale Taylor   "In every election, I have had to choose either the grab bag of proposals offered by one party, 95 per cent of which are distasteful, or the grab bag offered by the other party, 97 per cent of which are distasteful. That is hardly a choice. At least when I buy a General Motors automobile, I do not have to buy GM gasoline, GM schools for my children, GM garbage collection service, GM old age annuities, or GM anything else. In a free market, I can separate my decisions on what automobile I buy from my choice of what gasoline I consume, which service station I patronize, which mechanic I go to for repairs, or which company insures my car or administers the funds I save for my retirement income." Yale Brozen   "The efficiency of the government in dominating its subjects, the all-encompassing character of its coercion, the complete mass regimentation on a scale involving millions of men—and, one might add, the enormity of the slaughter, the planned, systematic mass slaughter, in peacetime, initiated by a government against its own citizens—these are the insignia of twentieth-century totalitarianism (Nazi and communist), which are without parallel in recorded history. In the totalitarian regimes, as the Germans found out after only a few months of Hitler's rule, every detail of life is prescribed, or proscribed. There is no longer any distinction between private matters and public matters. 'There are to be no more private Germans,' said Friedrich Sieburg, a Nazi writer; 'each is to attain significance only by his service to the state, and to find complete self-fulfillment in this service.' 'The only person who is still a private individual in Germany,' boasted Robert Ley, a member of the Nazi hierarchy, after several years of Nazi rule, 'is somebody who is asleep.'" Leonard Peikoff   "If we woke up tomorrow and decided to stop moderating content we would end up with a service very few people or advertisers would want to use. Ultimately we're running a business, and a business wants to grow the number of customers it serves. Enforcing policy is a business decision. Different businesses and services will have different policies, some more liberal than others, and we believe it is critical this variety continues to exist. Forcing every business to behave the same reduces innovation and individual choice, and diminishes free marketplace ideals. If instead we woke up tomorrow and decided to ask the government to tell us what content to take down or leave up, we may end up with a service that couldn't be used to question the government. This is a reality in many countries today, and is against the rights of an individual. This would also have the effect of putting enormous resource requirements on businesses and services, which will further entrench only those who are able to afford it. Smaller businesses would not be able to compete, and all activity would be centralized into very few businesses." Jack Dorsey   "The aristocratic ideal of virtus is, in its strict application, a concept at once extrovert and exclusive: extrovert in its emphasis on action, on facta; exclusive in its concern for the family and in that the service of the respublica alone was regarded as a fit field for the exercise of a noble's talents. Outside the service of the respublica there can be no magistratus and therefore, strictly speaking, no gloria, no nobilitas, no virtus. The traditional contempt of the Roman aristocrat for the business man is notorious from the writers of the first century B.C. All trade was stigmatised as undignified, especially for a man of rank, and retail trade held in particular contempt. Indeed, the word mercator appears as almost a term of abuse, while even a successful business man was considered inferior to a member of the senatorial aristocracy. This attitude, although it derives to a certain extent from the greatly increased self-consciousness of the nobility in the first century, was already developing by the end of the third. Plautus, at least, makes frequent reference to the commercial classes, who are invariably treated with hostility and contempt." Donald Earl   "If America has a service to perform in the world—and I believe it has—it is in large part the service of its own example. In our excessive involvement in the affairs of other countries, we are not only living off our assets and denying our own people the proper enjoyment of their resources; we are also denying the world the example of a free society enjoying its freedom to the fullest. This is regrettable indeed for a nation that aspires to teach democracy to other nations, because, as Burke said: 'Example is the school of mankind, and they will learn at no other.'" William Fulbright   "Hawthorne on the one side is so subtle and slender and unpretending, and the American world on the other is so vast and various and substantial, that it might seem to the author of The Scarlet Letter and the Mosses from an Old Manse, that we render him a poor service in contrasting his proportions with those of a great civilization. But our author must accept the awkward as well as the graceful side of his fame; for he has the advantage of pointing a valuable moral. This moral is that the flower of art blooms only where the soil is deep, that it takes a great deal of history to produce a little literature, that it needs a complex social machinery to set a writer in motion. American civilization has hitherto had other things to do than to produce flowers, and before giving birth to writers it has wisely occupied itself with providing something for them to write about." Henry James   "I reject any narrative that seeks to divide police and communities that they serve. I reject a storyline that says when it comes to public safety there's an 'us' and a 'them'—a narrative that too often gets served up to us by news stations seeking ratings, or tweets seeking retweets, or political candidates seeking some attention. I know that's shocking that political candidates do that. Because your work and your service really has helped make America safer than it's been in decades, and that's something for which every American should be proud." Barack Obama   "Oblonsky never chose his tendencies and opinions any more than he chose the style of his hat or coat. He always wore those which happened to be in fashion. Moving in a certain circle where a desire for some form of mental activity was part of maturity, he was obliged to hold views in the same way he was obliged to wear a hat. If he had a reason for preferring Liberalism to the Conservatism of many in his set, it was not that he considered the liberal outlook more rational but because it corresponded better with his mode of life. The Liberal Party maintained that everything in Russia was bad; and in truth Oblonsky had many debts and decidedly too little money. The Liberal Party said that marriage was an obsolete institution which ought to be reformed; and indeed family life gave Oblonsky very little pleasure, forcing him to tell lies and dissemble, which was quite contrary to his nature. The Liberal Party said, or rather assumed, that religion was only a curb on the illiterate; and indeed Oblonsky could not stand through even the shortest church service without aching feet, or understand the point of all that dreadful, high-flown talk about the other world, when life in this world was really very pleasant." Leo Tolstoy   "The girls in men's clothing win the men they love by a more laborious means, for they cannot use veils and coquetry; they must offer and not exact service, and as valets they must see their loved ones at their least heroic. In As You Like It Rosalind finds the means to wean Orlando off his futile Italianate posturing, disfiguring the trees with bad poetry; love at first sight for a stranger lady who addressed kind words to him on a day of victory becomes the love of familiarity for a sexless boy who teaches him about women and time, discovering her own role as she teaches him his, thereby leaping the bounds of femininity and tutelage. In Romeo and Juliet the same effect is got by Romeo's overhearing Juliet's confession of love, so that she cannot dwell on form, however fain. Because their love is not sanctioned by their diseased society they are destroyed, for Shakespearean love is always social and never romantic in the sense that it does not seek to isolate itself from society, family and constituted authority. In Midsummer Night's Dream obsession is shown as hallucination and a madness, exorcized by the communal rite. Portia in The Merchant of Venice only manages to show Bassanio the worth of what he really found in his leaden casket when she dons an advocate's gown to plead for Antonio, her husband's friend and benefactor, so that her love is seen to knit male society together, not to tear it apart." Germaine Greer   "The concept of GDP, an aggregate measure of output at market prices, does not account for all the value of innovations. Yet over time an increase in GDP is the result of innovation, and so to argue against growth is to argue for an end to innovation. Those who think growth is 'delusional' need to explain what they think should be taken away from people when a new product or service they want comes along, to prevent GDP from growing." Diane Coyle   "We on this side propose entire disarmament. We believe in an international police force. I do not believe that we could get satisfactory sanctions by means of a number of individual national forces which would have to be called up by a central authority. I think we have to go much further than that. I want to see air forces abolished, and an international air service. I should like to see navies abolished, and an international mercantile marine. I should like to see all the armies of separate states abolished, in exactly the same way as, in civilised countries, we make people hand over their revolvers and rely on the police force. Of course, there must be a police force which is loyal to the ideals. But I also suggest that, without that, we may get a useful breathing space by qualitative disarmament." Clement Attlee   "As late as 2018, a staggering two-thirds of Democrats told YouGov pollsters that Trump's legitimacy was questionable because Russia 'tampered with vote tallies on Election Day to help the president' in 2016—a theory for which there is precisely no evidence, but which was bolstered by the likes of Biden's staff secretary, Neera Tanden. Americans, she argued, 'have intuitive sense Russians did enough damage to affect more than 70k votes in 3 states.' No doubt, had Trump won re-election, a healthy number of Democrats would confess to their belief that his victory was a result of the full flowering of a conspiracy to weaponize the U.S. Postal Service—an allegation that was lent credence by Senate Democrats who actually held hearings on the issue." Noah Rothman   "There will be jobs to be done about the badness of which taken by themselves nobody has any doubt, but which have to be done in the service of some higher end, and which have to be executed with the same expertness and efficiency as any others. And as there will be need for actions which are bad in themselves, and which all those still influenced by traditional morals will be reluctant to perform, the readiness to do bad things becomes a path to promotion and power. The positions in a totalitarian society in which it is necessary to practice cruelty and intimidation, deliberate deception and spying, are numerous." Friedrich Hayek   "One of the philosophers who knelt at the footsteps of her throne said that she was 'the emblem of a generation distracted between the intense need of believing and the difficulty of belief.' Well, we happen to live, fortunately or unfortunately for ourselves, in a generation which is 'distracted' by quite other problems, and we are sheep that look up to George Eliot and are not fed by her ponderous moral aphorisms and didactic ethical influence. Perhaps another generation will follow us which will be more patient, and students yet unborn will read her gladly. Let us never forget, however, that she worked with all her heart in a spirit of perfect honesty, that she brought a vast intelligence to the service of literature, and that she aimed from first to last at the loftiest goal of intellectual ambition." Edmund Gosse   "The year is 2011, and Milo Cress is in fourth grade in Burlington, Vermont. In the spirit of personal conservation, the 9-year-old launches the 'Be Straw Free' campaign to persuade neighborhood restaurants and 'concerned citizens to reduce the use and waste of disposable plastic straws.' Due to the lack of reliable figures on the issue, the fourth-grader decides to conduct a phone survey with three national manufacturers and averaged the results to reach the estimate that the country consumes 500 million straws each day. Our fledgling activist promptly earns adoring local and national coverage. Then in 2012, the nonprofit Eco-Cycle picks up Milo's campaign and partners with the National Parks Service to publish a blog poston Milo's research. And once a statistic enters the hallowed ground of a dot.gov URL—voila—the number is now enshrined as fact-checking gospel. Five years later, the 500 million figure is everywhere: appearing in CNN, USA Today, The Washington Post, Fox News, NPR, National Geographic, and The New York Times. The number graces U.N. climate reports, nonprofit white papers, and proposed bills in statehouses from Hartford to Sacramento. Climbing from a fourth grade classroom in Burlington Elementary to the governor's desk in Sacramento in seven short years—Milo's statistic grew up to be somebody." Theodore Gioia