Thursday, March 31, 2011

Equal

"In republican governments, men are all equal; equal they are also in despotic governments: in the former, because they are everything; in the latter, because they are nothing." --Charles-Louis de Secondat Baron de Montesquieu (1689-1755) Source: "The Spirit of Laws" (1748)

Wednesday, March 30, 2011

Obedience

"Civil disobedience, that's not our problem. Our problem is that people are obedient all over the world in the face of poverty and starvation and stupidity, and war, and cruelty. Our problem is that people are obedient while the jails are full of petty thieves, and all the while the grand thieves are running the country. That's our problem." --Howard Zinn

Tuesday, March 29, 2011

Change

"To change masters is not to be free." --Jose Marti y Perez (1853-1895)

Monday, March 28, 2011

Struggle

"To see what is in front of one's nose needs a constant struggle." --George Orwell

Sunday, March 27, 2011

Belief IV

"Belief means not wanting to know what is true." --Friedrich Nietzsche (1844-1900) Source: The Anti-Christ, 1889

Saturday, March 26, 2011

Futures

"People are all over the world telling their one dramatic story and how their life has turned into getting over this one event. Now their lives are more about the past than their future."
--Chuck Palahniuk, Invisible Monsters, 1999

Friday, March 25, 2011

Shiny

"If all the world's a stage, the USA is the shiny vertical pole in the middle."
--The Covert Comic

Thursday, March 24, 2011

Exigencies


"Emergency does not create power. Emergency does not increase granted power or remove or diminish the restrictions imposed upon power granted or reserved. The Constitution was adopted in a period of grave emergency. Its grants of power to the federal government and its limitations of the power of the States were determined in the light of emergency, and they are not altered by emergency."
--Justice Charles Evans Hughes (1862-1948)
Chief Justice of the U.S. Supreme Court
Source: Home Building & Loan Assn v. Blairsdell, 1934

Wednesday, March 23, 2011

Lackeys

"If for no other reason, personal pride should prompt every governor and state legislator to take a secessionist attitude they were not elected to be lackeys of the federal bureaucracy."
--Frank Choderov, 1952

Tuesday, March 22, 2011

Difference VII

"The only difference between death and taxes is that death doesn't get worse every time Congress meets." 
--Will Rogers

Monday, March 21, 2011

Exercise

"It would be a healthy exercise for every politician to look in the mirror every morning and remind himself that he holds office only because, in a two-man race against another mediocrity, a modest majority of those half-informed people who imagined that their votes mattered reckoned that he was the lesser evil. And they weren't too sure about that."
--Joseph Sobran

Sunday, March 20, 2011

Both II

"Socialism is but Catholicism addressing itself not to the soul but to the sense of men... [Both implore you to] accept authority, accept the force which it employs, resign yourself to all-powerful managers, give up the free choice and the free act... They both seek to sacrifice man."
--Auberon Herbert (1838-1906) English author

Saturday, March 19, 2011

Crammed


"I believe that if we had and would keep our dirty, bloody, dollar-soaked fingers out of the business of these nations so full of depressed, exploited people, they will arrive at a solution of their own -- and if unfortunately their revolution must be of the violent type because the "haves" refuse to share with the "have-nots" by any peaceful method, at least what they get will be their own, and not the American style, which they don't want and above all don't want crammed down their throats by Americans. "
--General David M. Shoup Commandant of the Marine Corps 1960-63, winner of the Congressional Medal of Honor
Source: May 14, 1966

Friday, March 18, 2011

Followers

"One who walks in another's tracks leaves no footprints."
--Proverb

Thursday, March 17, 2011

Stamp

"Is that a miniature postage stamp, or what's left of the Constitution?"
--Heard on KGOE Radio, Eureka, California, http://www.kgoe.com
(Unknown whether they are the author, but since the quote doesn't
come up on a Google search, someone there could well be)

Wednesday, March 16, 2011

Bu$hamaism

"Communism and fascism or nazism, although poles apart in their intellectual content, are similar in this, that both have emotional appeal to the type of personality that takes pleasure in being submerged in a mass movement and submitting to superior authority."
--James A. C. Brown (1911-1964)
Source: Techniques of Persuasion, 1963

Tuesday, March 15, 2011

Certainly

"Whenever you are asked if you can do a job, tell 'em, 'Certainly I can!' Then get busy and find out how to do it."
--Theodore Roosevelt

Monday, March 14, 2011

Confused

"Vietnam was the first war ever fought without any censorship. Without censorship, things can get terribly confused in the public mind."
--General William Westmoreland
Source: Time magazine, 5 April 1982,
on the anti-war sentiment in the U.S. during the Vietnam War

Sunday, March 13, 2011

Poker


"God moves in extremely mysterious, not to say, circuitous ways. God does not play dice with the universe; He plays an ineffable game of His own devising, which might be compared, from the perspective of any of the other players (i.e., everybody, to being involved in an obscure and complex version of poker in a pitch-dark room, with blank cards, for infinite stakes, with a Dealer who won't tell you the rules, and who 'smiles all the time.'"
--Terry Pratchett (1948~) English Writer

Saturday, March 12, 2011

Exalted

"As long as mankind shall bestow more liberal applause on their destroyers than on their benefactors, the thirst for military glory will remain the vice of the most exalted characters."
--Edward Gibbon

Friday, March 11, 2011

Half II

"Whether you're a pessimist or an optimist, you must admit the diaper is half full, not half empty."
--Phil Garding

Thursday, March 10, 2011

Invariably

"One of the most horrible features of war is that all the war-propaganda, all the screaming and lies and hatred, comes invariably from people who are NOT fighting."
--George Orwell, 1938

Wednesday, March 09, 2011

Situations

"Handle every stressful situation like a dog. If you can't eat it or play with it, pee on it and walk away."
--Author Unknown

Tuesday, March 08, 2011

Bargain

"We've witnessed a fire sale of American liberties at bargain basement prices, in return for the false promise of more security... The America being designed right now won't resemble the America we've been defending... The danger isn't that Big Brother may storm the castle gates. The danger is that Americans don't realize that he is already inside the castle walls." --Wayne LaPierre, CEO of National Rifle Association

Monday, March 07, 2011

Pirate

"It's better to be a pirate than to join the Navy."
--Steve Jobs, Odyssey: Pepsi to Apple

Sunday, March 06, 2011

Millions

"Millions long for immortality who don't know what to do with themselves on a rainy Sunday afternoon."
--Susan Ertz, Anger in the Sky

Saturday, March 05, 2011

Tie

"The two enemies of the people are criminals and government, so let us tie the second down with the chains of the Constitution so the second will not become the legalized version of the first." --Thomas Jefferson (1743-1826)

Friday, March 04, 2011

Simply

The word "slaughter" sounds scary, but by simply removing the "s" you can reveal the innocent word "laughter." At least that's how my defense attorney explained it.
--Kim Moser

Thursday, March 03, 2011

Deceptions

"A man who lies to himself, and believes his own lies, becomes unable to recognize truth, either in himself or in anyone else, and he ends up losing respect for himself and for others. When he has no respect for anyone, he can no longer love, and in him, he yields to his impulses, indulges in the lowest form of pleasure, and behaves in the end like an animal in satisfying his vices. And it all comes from lying to others and to yourself."
--Fyodor Dostoyevsky (1821-1881)
Source: The Brothers Karamazov

Wednesday, March 02, 2011

Unions

"A unionized public employee, a member of the Tea Party, & a CEO are sitting at a table. In the middle of the table there is a plate with a dozen cookies on it. The CEO reaches across & takes 11 cookies looks at the Tea Partier & says, 'look out for that union guy, he wants a piece of your cookie.' " --Michael Ames Connor

Tuesday, March 01, 2011

Someone II

"Someone must speak for them. I do not see a delegation for the four footed. I see no seat for eagles. We forget and we consider ourselves superior, but we are after all a mere part of the Creation."
--Oren Lyons, Onondaga