Jacob Hopkins quotes

  • An American has invented a remote control that will turn off any telly within a 20ft radius. What a marvellous device! What a splendid invention! What a really helpful and improving way of devoting your time to building something that turns off culture. Next week, I'm instigating Burn a Book Week, to encourage even more conversation. I've come up with a fantastic little device which I'll call a box of matches.

  • Books are the basis; purity is the force; preaching is the essence; utility is the principle.

  • Even when reading is impossible, the presence of books acquired (by passionate devotion to them) produces such an ecstasy that the buying of more books than one can peradventure read is nothing less than the soul reaching towards infinity ... we cherish books even if unread, their mere presence exudes comfort, their ready access, reassurance.

  • From the time I read my first Hemingway work, The Sun Also Rises, as a student at Soldan High School in St. Louis, I was struck with an affliction common to my generation: Hemingway Awe.

  • Equality is the heart and essence of democracy, freedom, and justice, equality of opportunity in industry, in labor unions, schools and colleges, government, politics, and before the law. There must be no dual standards of justice, no dual rights, privileges, duties, or responsibilities of citizenship. No dual forms of freedom.

  • Yeah, I left Idaho at 17. You know, I graduated high school a year early and just, you know, the typical story, packed up my car and moved out.

  • I was a very awkward high schooler, especially in early high school. I had the middle part with a swoop, all that. It was the late ’90s!

  • Like most parents, I've been stumped by homework, the big questions, such as: 'What is the point of geography - the pilot always knows where we are going?'. Answer: 'If you didn't know any geography, people would think you were an American, and you wouldn't be able to put them right because you wouldn't know where they live.'

  • Americans think the only funny Brits are John Cleese, Benny Hill and whoever makes our toothpaste. They're not laughing with us, they are laughing at us.

  • My goal has been to encourage jointness, to push people to think of affiliations rather than to operate as solo entrepreneurs.

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