1980s Popular Quotes & Sayings

The State is the sum total of the sacrifice, on its behalf, of its members. — Mahatma Gandhi

Insofar as Americans have a popular image of postal workers, it has become increasingly squalid. But this didn't just happen. It is the result of intentional policy choices. Since the 1980s, legislators have led the way in systematically defunding the post office and encouraging private alternatives as part of an ongoing campaign to convince Americans that government doesn't really work. — David Graeber

Football is an honest game. It's true to life. It's a game about sharing. Football is a team game. So is life. — Joe Namath

I never should have left her."

"Exactly right."

Opening his eyes, he sprang to his feet. "I can't waste another moment."

Dominic nodded. "Go."

Aden grabbed his coat and hat, cursing under his breath. "I am an idiot. A complete, sodding idiot."

Dominic's sardonic laugh followed him out the door. "Of course you are. You're a man in love. — Vanessa Kelly

Everything in life had its phases, and if you were smart, you learned to appreciate them all.

What really mattered, though, were the people in those moments with you. Memories are what we have and what we keep, and I held mine close. The ones I knew well, like a night on the beach with a boy who would always live in my heart, and the ones yet to come with another. — Sarah Dessen

Music should always be an adventure. — Coleman Hawkins

Perhaps the most extraordinary popular delusion about violence of the past quarter-century is that it is caused by low self-esteem. That theory has been endorsed by dozens of prominent experts, has inspired school programs designed to get kids to feel better about themselves, and in the late 1980s led the California legislature to form a Task Force to Promote Self-Esteem. Yet Baumeister has shown that the theory could not be more spectacularly, hilariously, achingly wrong. Violence is a problem not of too little self-esteem but of too much, particularly when it is unearned. — Steven Pinker

To point at the moon a finger is needed, but woe to those who take the finger for the moon ... — D.T. Suzuki

Forgetting extermination is part of extermination. — Jean Baudrillard

I don't care if your world is ending today because I wasn't invited to it anyway. — Marilyn Manson

Human nature has nevertheless been changed by the ever new appearance of these teachers of the purpose of existence: It now has one additional need - the need for the ever new appearance of such teachers and teachings of a "purpose." Gradually, man has become a fantastic animal that has to fulfill one more condition of existence than any other animal: man has to believe, to know, from time to time why he exists; his race cannot flourish without a periodic trust in life - without faith in reason in life. — Friedrich Nietzsche

During the 1970s and 1980s, the popular television soap opera As The World Turns portrayed sunrise during the opening credits and sunset during the closing credits ... The soap-opera sunrise showed the sun moving toward the left as it rose rather than to the right. They obviously had gotten a piece of film showing a sunset and played it in reverse ... Had they called their local astrophysicists, any one of us might have recommended that if they needed to save money, they could have shown the sunset in a mirror before they showed it running backward. — Neil DeGrasse Tyson

The story of his downfall is soon told; for it came, as so often happens, just when he felt unusually full of high hopes, good resolutions, and dreams of a better life. — Louisa May Alcott

We were Dex and Perry and our relationship seemed to thrive on the universe being out of order. Either that or our relationship actually caused the world to turn upside down. It was hard to say. — Karina Halle

the early 1980s, the A&W fast-food restaurant chain introduced a burger with a third of a pound of beef to compete with McDonald's popular quarter pounder. Although most customers preferred A&W's new burger in taste tests, it was a big disappointment in the marketplace. When focus groups were run to get to the bottom of this paradox, A&W discovered that many customers thought a burger with one-third of a pound of beef was less generous than one with one-quarter of a pound. Customers were attending to the denominator, just not very intelligently: The smaller "3" led many to conclude that one-third is smaller than one-quarter!21 — Thomas Gilovich