Famous quotes containing the words empire and/or strikes:
“I date the end of the old republic and the birth of the empire to the invention, in the late thirties, of air conditioning. Before air conditioning, Washington was deserted from mid-June to September.... But after air conditioning and the Second World War arrived, more or less at the same time, Congress sits and sits while the presidents—or at least their staffs—never stop making mischief.”
—Gore Vidal (b. 1925)
“What strikes me as odd now is how much my father managed to get across to me without those heart-to-hearts which I’ve read about fathers and sons having in the study or in the rowboat or in the car.... Somehow I understood completely how he expected me to behave, in small matters as well as large, even though I can’t remember being given any lectures about it beyond the occasional, undramatic “You might as well be a mensch.””
—Calvin Trillin (20th century)