Citizen

"Since the days of Greece and Rome, when the word 'citizen' was a title of honor, we have often seen more emphasis put on the rights of citizenship than on its responsibilities."
--Robert F. Kennedy

State's

"Crime and bad lives are the measure of a State's failure, all crime in the end is the crime of the community."
--H.G. Wells,
"A Modern Utopia" (1905)

Specialists II

"... if the majority of men cannot know what is good for them, each for himself, how can they know what is good for others by proxy? If they are to be controlled by specialists, how and by what standard can they choose the specialist?"
--Ayn Randv

Forever III

"He was going to live forever, or die in the attempt."
--Joseph Heller,
"Catch-22"

Mayhem

"In debates between anarchists and statists, the burden of proof clearly should rest on those who place their trust in the state. Anarchy’s mayhem is wholly conjectural; the state’s mayhem is undeniably, factually horrendous."
--Robert Higgs

Dignity IV

"Historical, religious, and existential treatises suggest that for some persons at some times, it is rational not to avoid physical death at all costs. Indeed the spark of humanity can maximize its essence by choosing an alternative that preserves the greatest dignity and some tranquility of mind."
--Norman Mailer,
"The Executioner's Song" (1979)

Vigor

"A good solution applied with vigor now is better than a perfect solution applied ten minutes later."
--George S. Patton

Tool II

"We must use time as a tool, not as a crutch."
--John F. Kennedy

Taste II

"You tasted it. Isn't that enough? Of what do you ever get more than a taste? That's all we're given in life, that's all we're given of life. A taste. There is no more."
--Philip Roth,
March 19, 1933 - May 22, 2018
"The Dying Animal"

Rope

"Nixon's the kind of guy that if you were drowning 50 feet off shore, he'd throw you a 30 foot rope. Then Kissinger would go on TV the next night and say that the President had met you more than half-way."
--Mort Sahl (1973)

Disappears

" sometimes even in the habitual course of life, the reality of this world disappears all at once, and we feel ourselves in the middle of its interests as we should at a ball, where we did not hear the music; the dancing that we saw there would appear insane."
--Anne Louise Germaine de Staël

Anything VI

"I return one last time to the places of death all around us, the places of slaughter to which, in a huge communal effort, we close our hearts. Each day a fresh holocaust, yet, as far as I can see, our moral being is untouched. We do not feel tainted. We can do anything, it seems, and come away clean."
--J.M. Coetzee

Invitation

"I accepted an invitation to talk to the women's branch of the Ku Klux Klan... I was escorted to the platform, was introduced, and began to speak...In the end, through simple illustrations I believed I had accomplished my purpose. A dozen invitations to speak to similar groups were proffered."
--Margaret Sanger,
"An Autobiography" (1936)

Defense II

They call me "a teacher, a fomenter of violence." I would say point blank, "That is a lie. I'm not for wanton violence, I'm for justice." I feel that if white people were attacked by Negroes — if the forces of law prove unable, or inadequate, or reluctant to protect those whites from those Negroes — then those white people should protect and defend themselves from those Negroes, using arms if necessary. And I feel that when the law fails to protect Negroes from whites' attacks, then those Negroes should use arms if necessary to defend themselves. "Malcolm X advocates armed Negroes!" What was wrong with that? I'll tell you what's wrong. I was a black man talking about physical defense against the white man. The white man can lynch and burn and bomb and beat Negroes — that's all right: "Have patience"..."The customs are entrenched"..."Things will get better."
--Malcolm X,
"The Autobiography of Malcolm X" (1965)

Proles

"But the proles, if only they could somehow become conscious of their own strength, would have no need to conspire. They needed only to rise up and shake themselves like a horse shaking off flies. If they chose they could blow the Party to pieces tomorrow morning. Surely sooner or later it must occur to them to do it? And yet --!"
--George Orwell

Strangest

"This is the strangest life I've ever known."
--Jim Morrison,
"Waiting for the Sun"

Gladiatorial

The demolition derby is, pure and simple, a form of gladiatorial combat for our times.
--Tom Wolfe
(March 2, 1931 - May 14, 2018)
"Clean Fun at Riverhead"

Respectable II

"If we desire respect for the law, we must first make the law respectable."
--Louis D. Brandeis

Ecclesiastical

"For most people reform meant relief from ecclesiastical extortions."
--Barbara Tuchman
"A Distant Mirror" (1978)

Honourable

"The only politician ever to have entered parliament with honourable intentions, was Guy Fawkes."
--Terry Deary

Poke

"There's something that doesn't make sense. Let's go and poke it with a stick."
--Steven Moffat

Culture III

"Moral certainty is always a sign of cultural inferiority. The more uncivilized the man, the surer he is that he knows precisely what is right and what is wrong. All human progress, even in morals, has been the work of men who have doubted the current moral values, not of men who have whooped them up and tried to enforce them. The truly civilized man is always skeptical and tolerant, in this field as in all others. His culture is based on 'I am not too sure.' "
--H. L. Mencken
(1880-1956)

Valued

"[The founding fathers] conferred, as against the Government,
the right to be left alone -- the right most valued by civilized men."
--Justice Louis D. Brandeis
(1856-1941) US Supreme Court Justice
1928

Wishes

"It is an approved maxim in war, never to do what the enemy wishes you to do, for this reason alone, that he desires it."
--Napoleon Bonaparte
(1769-1821)

Deadlines

"I love deadlines. I love the whooshing noise they make as they go by."
--Douglas Adams,
"The Salmon of Doubt"

Fallacy II

"The illusion of Sin and Guilt, the madness of our species, is the act of cursing the world under the misapprehension that one is cursing only one part of it. To curse the fig tree, as in the funniest and most misunderstood parable of Jesus, is to curse the soil in which it grew, the seed, the rains, the sun; the whole world, eventually — because no part is truly separate from the whole. The fallacy is that one can judge the part in isolation from the whole is 'the Lie that all men believe.'"
--Robert Anton Wilson,
"The Historical Illuminatus" as spoken by Sigismundo Celine

Aggregation

"We all do no end of feeling, and we mistake it for thinking. And out of it we get an aggregation which we consider a boon. Its name is public opinion. It is held in reverence. Some think it the voice of God."
--Mark Twain,
"Corn-Pone Opinions" (1925)

Sake

"Man exists for his own sake
and not to add a laborer to the State."
--Ralph Waldo Emerson
(1803-1882)
Source: Journal, 1839

Happier

"So we shall let the reader answer this question for himself: who is the happier man, he who has braved the storm of life and lived or he who has stayed securely on shore and merely existed?"
--Hunter S. Thompson

Insult

"I won't insult your intelligence by suggesting that you really believe what you just said."
--William F. Buckley Jr.

Here II

"I'm here to change the world, and if I am not, I am probably wasting my time."
--Utah Phillips