“A fair day’s-wages for a fair day’s-work:” it is as just a demand as Governed men ever made of Governing. It is the everlasting right of man. Indisputable as Gospels, as arithmetical multiplication-tables: it must and will have itself fulfilled.
Thomas Carlyle (1795-1881) Scottish essayist and historian
Past and Present, Book 1, ch. 3 “Manchester Insurrection” (1843)
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Of course, somehow, these champions of free market, these lovers of the invisible hand, cannot figure out that if people won’t sell you a good or service under the terms you set, free market competition demands that you offer better terms and conditions. It’s as simple as that. If you can’t buy a Porsche for $1.98, that doesn’t mean there’s an automobile shortage.
Peter Greene (contemp.) American teacher, blogger
“Florida’s Teacher Gap Is No Mystery,” Huffington Post (21 Nov 2017)
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This world is a place of business. What an infinite bustle! I am awaked almost every night by the panting of the locomotive. It interrupts my dreams. There is no sabbath. It would be glorious to see mankind at leisure for once. It is nothing but work, work, work. I cannot easily buy a blank-book to write thoughts in; they are commonly ruled for dollars and cents. An Irishman, seeing me making a minute in the fields, took it for granted that I was calculating my wages. If a man was tossed out of a window when an infant, and so made a cripple for life, or scared out of his wits by the Indians, it is regretted chiefly because he was thus incapacitated for — business! I think that there is nothing, not even crime, more opposed to poetry, to philosophy, ay, to life itself, than this incessant business.
Henry David Thoreau (1817-1862) American philosopher and writer
Essay (1863-10), “Life without Principle,” Atlantic Monthly, No. 72
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Based his lecture (1854-12-06) "What Shall It Profit?" Railroad Hall, Providence, Rhode Island. He had edited it for publication before his death, and it was published posthumously.
All progress is based upon a universal innate desire on the part of every organism to live beyond its income.
Samuel Butler (1835-1902) English novelist, satirist, scholar
The Note-Books of Samuel Butler, ch. 1 “Life” (1912)
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