A Quote by Thomas Frank

A lot of populists after populism died just became socialists. At the beginning of the 20th century, socialism looked like it was going to take off. It didn't, of course, but a lot of people thought it was going to.
In Europe, populism is sort of a dirty word, but we have this wonderful history of populism in America, including the abolitionist populists and the white and black populists working together in the nineteenth century.
D-Day represents the greatest achievement of the american people and system in the 20th century. It was the pivot point of the 20th century. It was the day on which the decision was made as to who was going to rule in this world in the second half of the 20th century. Is it going to be Nazism, is it going to be communism, or are the democracies going to prevail?
When I was a kid, I looked at art as a way of blending everything. One of my favorite composers is Wagner - who coined the term "gesamtkunstwerk," or "total art work." That's what was going on in the 19th century, and the 20th century just kept it going.
My mother Molly had a nervous breakdown after my father Chic died, aged 50. He was a very generous man who ran a shop in Dundee giving a lot of people tick. When he died, a lot of people hadn't paid their bills, so he died with a lot of debt. After he died, my mother went doolally.
I think a lot of people - to be candid about it - are like, if Donald Trump can be president, so can I. And I think there's a whole crop, a new generation of people who aren't on the tip of anyone's tongue, just like Bill Clinton wasn't on anyone's tongue; just like a lot of people didn't expect Barack Obama to take off like he did. I think we will have a lot of new people running, and there are obviously a lot of fantastic people who have run before, or standard-bearers, right. All right. So, I think there's just going to be a ton of those people.
After I dropped out of college at the age of 19, I became a mortgage broker, and when I went back to school I thought about going into real estate law. I probably would have made a lot more money and died of boredom by now.
It's very important to understand that 21st century authoritarian rule does not look like 20th century authoritarian rule. You're not going to have people in parade ground formations. You're not going to have a police state. You're not going to people with decorative armbands bullying people on the sidewalks. And the leaders won't stand at microphones for hours ranting at people. All of that is so 80 years ago.
As time has gone on and we're at the end of the 20th century and major publishing is a big business, yes, of course we're going to get a lot of plain, mediocre trash. There are a lot of writers who get huge advances for books that don't go anywhere and they have to burn them somewhere or throw them away. I always think about all the poor trees that have been sacrificed.
In 2007, in the early 2007, everybody saw the housing market was falling, and at any given moment a lot of people thought it was going to fall more, and a lot of people thought it was going to rebound. You just didn't know.
Night to night, doing the clubs is a lot of fun too because you have a lot more freedom and you don't have to worry about swearing or going off the script or going long or going short. If you bomb, only a handful of people see it. On TV, a lot of people see it.
Before I had my son, I became obsessed by this painting I'd seen in an art gallery. It was a lot of money, but I felt such a rush of adrenaline when I wrote the cheque to buy it. I thought I was going to gaze lovingly at it forever, but after just two weeks, I realised I didn't really like it any more.
It's fun to sentimentalize the 20th-century lifestyle and the 20th-century brain, but it helps nobody, it makes you look ancient, there's no going back, and you'd be miserable if you did.
Ballet became this escape for me. I feel like I was on my own a lot. I was searching for stability, so I was going off on my own and imagining what I thought stability was. Ballet became a way for me to cope.
We had no sleep or days off or anything like that and then, when the band became big, Hendrix became a star and looked down at us lot.
In 2002, a lot of the pundits didn't get the off-year elections right. In 2004, a lot of people thought I was going down eight days before the election.
After we finished touring 'Ignore The Ignorant' we had this perfect idea that we were going to take a couple of years off, that was the plan. Because we thought we were definitely going to take time off, I was going to go back to college, that was what I was going to do. Because the whole idea of it was that I have spent ten years in this band and not even realised that that amount of time has passed.
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