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1 " There is such a thing as emotional rubbish; it is produced in the factories of the mind. It consists of pain that has long since passed and is no longer useful. It consists of precautions that were important in the past, but that serve no purpose in the present. "
2 " Miss Millick wondered just what had happened to Mr. Wran. He kept making the strangest remarks when she took dictation. Just this morning he had quickly turned around and asked, " Have you ever seen a ghost, Miss Millick?" And she had tittered nervously and replied, " When I was a girl there was a thing in white that used to come out of the closet in the attic bedroom when you slept there, and moan. Of course it was just my imagination. I was frightened of lots of things." And he had said, " I don't mean that traditional kind of ghost. I mean a ghost from the world today, with the soot of the factories in its face and the pounding of machinery in its soul. The kind that would haunt coal yards and slip around at night through deserted office buildings like this one. A real ghost. Not something out of books." And she hadn't known what to say. (" Smoke Ghost" ) "
3 " At last, we arrived home. Indian Vale. The house my father had built that had become mine and that one day would be my daughter’s, if she chose to stay in the area. She wouldn’t, though. Why should she? The young people here moved somewhere else as fast as they could, and the old folks withered away and died. The factories vanished and the mines and mills sank into the ground, and in their places were erected fast food joints and furniture rental places and pawnshops. Sometimes I hear places like where I live called “Real America,” and I know it rankles some folks—city folks, mostly—something awful, and I wish I could tell them it’s only done out of politeness. That it’s only people saying nice things about the dying. "
― Jason Miller , Red Dog (Slim in Little Egypt, #2)
4 " The development of the proletarian elite does not take place in an academic setting. Rather, it is brought about by battles in the factories and unions, by disciplinary punishments and some very dirty fights within the parties and outside of them, by jail sentences and illegality. Students do not flock in large numbers there as they do to the lecture halls and laboratories of the bourgeoisie. The career of a revolutionary does not consists of banquets and honarary titles, of interesting research projects and professional salaries; more likely, it will acquaint them with misery, dishonory and jail and, at the end, uncertainty. These conditions are made bearable only by a super-human faith. Understandably, this way of life will not be the choice of those who are nothing more than clever. "
― Max Horkheimer
5 " I mean to tell you, the Law's notion of justice is more cold-blooded than any outlaw I ever knew. And I mean 'outlaw,' not criminal. 'Criminal' doesn't distinguish between guys like men and the guys who own the banks and insurance companies and stock markets, who own the factories and coal mines and oil fields, who own the goddamn Law. I once said to John that being an outlaw was about the only way left for a man to hold on to his self-respect, and he said Ain't that the sad truth. The girls laughed along with us because they knew it wasn't a joke.... John got the publicity because he loved it ... he carried on like the whole thing was an adventure movie and he was Douglas Fairbanks. He wanted to to be a 'star.' That's how he was. Not me. I never even liked having my picture taken. All I ever wanted was to show the bastards who own the law that it didn't mean they owned me. "
― James Carlos Blake , Handsome Harry
6 " What had been a region of model farming became almost a desert, for more than half the population was exiled or sent to concentration camps. The young people left the villages, the boys to go to the factories if they could get jobs, or to become vagabonds if they couldn’t.***An echo of the tragic fate of Russia’s German Protestant population reached the world when the Mennonites flocked to Moscow and sought permission to leave the country. Some of these Germans had tried to obey the government and had formed collective farms, only to have them liquidated as Kulak collectives. Being first-class farmers, they had committed the crime of making even a Kolkhoz productive and prosperous.Others had quite simply been expropriated from their individual holdings. All were in despair. Few were allowed to leave Russia. They were sent to Siberia to die, or herded into slave labor concentration camps. The crime of being good farmers was unforgivable, and they must suffer for this sin.***Cheat or be cheated, bully or be bullied, was the law of life. Only the German minority with their strong religious and moral sense—the individual morality of the Protestant as opposed to the mass subservience demanded by the Greek Orthodox Church and the Soviet Government—retained their culture and even some courage under Stalin’s Terror. "
― Freda Utley , Lost Illusion
7 " In the history of enterprise most of the protagonists of major new products and companies began their education - not in the classroom where the old ways are taught but in the factories and labs where new ways are wrought ... nothing has been so rare in recent years as an Ivy League graduate who has made a significant innovation in American enterprise. "