Wage Quotes (7 quotes)
Do not mistake a crowd of big wage-earners for the leisure class.
As quoted, without citation, in William Safire and Leonard Safir, Words of Wisdom (1990), 251.
Education is a better safeguard of liberty than a standing army. If we retrench the wages of the schoolmaster, we must raise those of the recruiting sergeant.
Given as a column-end filler in The Farmer's Cabinet, and American Herd Book (15 Mar 1839), Vol. 3, No. 8, 247. This is the earliest occurrence yet found by the editor. If you know the primary source, please contact the Webmaster.
Man has undergone agonizing decentralization. He has waged a steady struggle against decentralization , but at the same time—paradoxically—his accumulated knowledge has gradually forced him to abandon all illusions about his centrality.
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New frontiers of the mind are before us, and if they are pioneered with the same vision, boldness, and drive with which we have waged this war we can create a fuller and more fruitful employment and a fuller and more fruitful life.
Letter to Vannevar Bush (17 Nov 1944). As printed in Vannevar Bush, Science, the Endless Frontier: A report to the President (1945), viii.
The feudal model of agriculture collided, first, with environmental limits and then with a massive external shock – the Black Death. After that, there was a demographic shock: too few workers for the land, which raised their wages and made the old feudal obligation system impossible to enforce. The labour shortage also forced technological innovation. The new technologies that underpinned the rise of merchant capitalism were the ones that stimulated commerce (printing and accountancy), the creation of tradeable wealth (mining, the compass and fast ships) and productivity (mathematics and the scientific method).
In 'The End of Capitalism Has Begun', The Guardian (17 Jul 2015) (online).
The great companies did not know that the line between hunger and anger is a thin line. And money that might have gone to wages went for gas, for guns, for agents and spies, for blacklists, for drilling. On the highways the people moved like ants and searched for work, for food. And the anger began to ferment.
In The Grapes of Wrath (1939), 388.
What men of science want is only a fair day's wages for more than a fair day's work.
'Administrative Nihilism' (1871). In Collected Essays (1893), Vol. 1, 287.
In science it often happens that scientists say, 'You know that's a really good argument; my position is mistaken,' and then they would actually change their minds and you never hear that old view from them again. They really do it. It doesn't happen as often as it should, because scientists are human and change is sometimes painful. But it happens every day. I cannot recall the last time something like that happened in politics or religion.
(1987) -- 
