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"The Odyssey is the story of Americans up to the point where they are well-established, and even so it is detached from the historical side."
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"The grass always seems greener on the other side of the fence. Many politicians promise green, green grass by blending niceties with delusion and by using alluring confidence tricks. They voice attractive tales and tell things, people like to hear. But the post-factual grassland often appears to be parched and barren. ['The grass was greener over there']"

"The most courageous act in politics is to try to understand your opponent."

"A kingdom founded on injustice never lasts."

"The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary."

"Very few USA citizens realize that the USA corporate military is regarded by many to be both a domestic and international terrorist organization."

"A punishment to some, to some a gift, and to many a favor."

"Both political parties have moved to the right during the neoliberal period. Today's New Democrats are pretty much what used to be called "moderate Republicans. The "political revolution that Bernie Sanders called for, rightly, would not have greatly surprised Dwight Eisenhower.The fate of the minimum wage illustrates what has been happening. Through the periods of high and egalitarian growth in the '50s and '60s, the minimum wage-which sets a floor for other wages-tracked productivity. That ended with the onset of neoliberal doctrine. Since then, the minimum wage has stagnated (in real value). Had it continued as before, it would probably be close to $20 per hour. Today, it is considered a political revolution to raise it to $15."

"I think maybe the classic formulation was by David Hume in "Of the First Principles of Government," where he pointed out that "Force is always on the side of the governed." Whether it's a military society, a partially free society, or what we - not he - would call a totalitarian state, it's the governed who have the power. And the rulers have to find ways to keep them from using their power. Force has its limits, so they have to use persuasion. They have to somehow find ways to convince people to accept authority. If they aren't able to do that, the whole thing is going to collapse."
Explore more quotes by Raymond Queneau

"There have been only rare moments in history where individual histories were able to run their course without wars or revolutions."

"When Ulysses hears his own story sung by an epic poet and then he reveals his identity and the poet wants to continue singing, Ulysses isn't interested any longer. That's very astonishing."

"It seems to me that an author who has determined very new domains in literature is Gertrude Stein."

"It is the creator of fiction's point of view; it is the character who interests him. Sometimes he wants to convince the reader that the story he is telling is as interesting as universal history."

"One can easily classify all works of fiction either as descendants of the Iliad or of the Odyssey."

"To have one's own story told by a third party who doesn't know that the character in question is himself the hero of the story being told, that's a technical refinement."

"The Odyssey is the story of someone who, in the course of diverse experiences, acquires a personality or affirms and recovers his personality."

"Fiction has consisted either of placing imaginary characters in a true story, which is the Iliad, or of presenting the story of an individual as having a general historical value, which is the Odyssey."
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