Have a great Labor Day, everybody! To celebrate this important day, I created a little quiz to test our knowledge of important statements from famous people. Of course, anybody can easily find answers through a search engine, but what would be the fun of that? I will add the answers as people supply them.
Who said the following?
1. “Government is instituted for the common good; for the protection, safety, prosperity, and happiness of the people; and not for profit, honor, or private interest of any one man, family, or class of men.” John Adams.
2. “Labor is prior to and independent of capital. Capital is only the fruit of labor, and could never have existed if labor had not first existed. Labor is the superior of capital, and deserves much the higher consideration.” Abraham Lincoln.
3. “The welfare of each of us is dependent fundamentally upon the welfare of all of us.” Teddy Roosevelt.
4. “Recession is when a neighbor loses his job. Depression is when you lose yours.” Harry S. Truman.
5. “All the property that is necessary to a Man, for the conservation of the individual and the propagation of the species, is his natural right, which none can justly deprive him of: but all property superfluous to such purposes is the property of the public, who, by their laws, have created it, and who may therefore by other laws dispose of it, whenever the welfare of the public shall demand such disposition.” My sentimental favorite Benjamin Franklin.
6. “Democracy is the road to socialism.” Karl Marx.
7. “Civilization is the progress toward a society of privacy. The savage’s whole existence is public, ruled by the laws of his tribe. Civilization is the process of setting man free from men.” Ayn Rand.
Can you guess which of these quotes is my favorite one?
Clarissa's Blog 
Labour Day? Isn’t that the 1st of May?
5th September is Teachers’ Day in India — so happy teacher’s day, Clarissa. And happy teacher’s day to every other teacher/lecturer/professor reading this blog 🙂
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Thank you, Rimi!!!!!!! In my country September 1 is the Day of Knowledge and everybody goes to school.
The Americans celebrate their Labor Day not on May 1st because the idea of Workers’ Solidarity is non-American. 🙂
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*grin* I wondered about that — in India 1st May is a State holiday, and it threw me to see it being observed after this many months.
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May 1st is Workers Day, today is Work Day. Go fuck the Work Day, but I somewhat enjoys Workers Day
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Ah, thank you, David.
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Is number three by FDR? It reminds me of a Depression-era commercial I saw once.
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It is Roosevelt, indeed. Just the other one. Theodore Roosevelt.
Good guess!
Anybody else? Or will we allow our recent high school graduates like Pen to beat us at political knowledge? 🙂
How about which quote is my favorite? 🙂
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I think you’ve written about number seven before. Is that one your favorite?
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You know me well. 🙂 The quote is by Ayn Rand.
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Number two is Abraham Lincoln, I do believe.
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Exactly!
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“Government is instituted for the common good; for the protection, safety, prosperity, and happiness of the people; and not for profit, honor, or private interest of any one man, family, or class of men.”
– John Adams
This is currently a Tea Party favorite. Isn’t that weird? Common good? I have seldom heard Tea Partiers care about anything in common, just themselves.
“Labor is prior to and independent of capital. Capital is only the fruit of labor, and could never have existed if labor had not first existed. Labor is the superior of capital, and deserves much the higher consideration.”
-Abraham Lincoln
This is also a Tea Party favorite that they somehow twist into their “no taxation ever” credo. This is right out of David Ricardo who was one of the most influential economic thinkers of the early 19th Century. What is interesting to me is that classical economic theory states that there are four “agents in production”. These are land, labor, capital and entrepreneurship (management or organization) These agents are paid in the same order given as rent (to the land), wages (to labor), interest (to capital) and profits (to entrepreneurship). What I find astounding is that most American supporters of capitalism are lower class wage earners and don’t realize that capitalism is a way of making money by lending it for interest instead of working for it. We have these “blue collar” workers who listen to Glen Beck and Rush and loudly support the means for the bankers to get wealthy on the sweat of the brows of others.
“Democracy is the road to socialism.”
This is from the Communist Manifesto by Karl Marx
I am better at guessing “taxis” than your favorite of this group. My favorite is #1, but I work with the “agents in production” on a regular basis.
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Cool!
I said my readers are the best and the smartest!!!
Of course, the Tea Partiers can pervert anything good and turn it into an abomination. In themselves, the quotes from Adams and Lincoln are really great.
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“I have seldom heard Tea Partiers care about anything in common, just themselves.”
Actually, the Tea Party supporters seem to care only for the continued prosperity of those farthest away from themselves in economic and social terms. And *that* is what I find most utterly inexplicable about the Tea Party movement. It may have begun as a radical grassroots movement, but now it has been entirely appropriated by same heads the original Tea Partiers wanted to see rolling — and none of the TP folks have noticed.
Perhaps the Republican Right’s clever endorsement of non-textual radical re-imagining of Christianity — and therefore of anti-abortion and anti-homosexuality — had something to do with this irrational and bewildering support, but even at the root of that reason lies the abject political ignorance of most average, working Americans, and their strange sense of loyalty to public figures like Beck and Palin and Limbaugh and Bachmann. These people, in fact, have the best gig in town — they are supported and cheered and revered by the same people that they openly declare they intend to plunder and destroy. Reality must never have been so suspended, esp. in such a literate and technologically connected culture.
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‘ Reality must never have been so suspended, esp. in such a literate and technologically connected culture.”
-I think this is the quote of the month. So true and so tragic at the same time.
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Even though this state of affairs makes me deeply unhappy and nervous about our collective futures, thank you 🙂
Incidentally, a similar person has accused me to taking pornographic pictures of children. I am NOT amused: http://priyankanandy.com/2011/09/05/streetside-child-pornography/
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*similarly stupid person has accused me OF.
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The photos are definitely provocative. To a pedophile. To a normal person, they are touching, tender, sad, heart-breaking. But pornographic??? What kind of a freak assigns a sexual meaning to what’s going on in these photos?
Idiots abound.
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They’re not idiots, they’re just repressed pedophiles.
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Totally!
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That’s exactly what I thought (but then I thought perhaps I was being vindictive).
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How in the world do you have such a perceptive understanding of current US politics and culture while being located half a world away? I am sincerely amazed.
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I am very flattered by our amazement. Thank you. And you discount the dominance US political news has globally. Besides, as someone who studies non-quantitative variables influencing the economy, contemporary US politics interests me greatly.
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Wasn’t #4 first said by Richard Nixon??
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I think the first one was Truman. Then Nixon. Then Reagan.
I might be wrong, though.
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OK. I do not recall hearing reagan say that. I do recall something like it from Nixon. I was too young to remember whether Truman said it or not, and I do not recall reading that he did. (I was eight years old when Eisenhower became President.)
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Reagan. Sorry…
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Nah, he doesn’t deserve a capital letter.
I don’t like that guy. Bush Jr. was at least sincere. . .
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