Favorite Quotes

[Martin Hash]

“Man naturally desires, not only to be loved, but to be lovely.” - Adam Smith (The Theory of Moral Sentiments)
"A wise man is primarily moved by a sense of self-command." - Adam Smith
“People of the same trade seldom meet together, even for merriment and diversion, but the conversation ends in a conspiracy against the public, or in some contrivance to raise prices.” - Adam Smith

"Pay no attention to that man behind the curtain." - The Wizard in "The Wizard of Oz" movie

“Excuse me while I whip this out.” - Sheriff Bart in "Blazing Saddles" movie

Apocalypse Now
"You're fightin' for the biggest nothing in history." - Hubert
"The bullshit piled up so fast in Vietnam, you needed wings to stay above it." - Willard
"Disneyland? Fuck, man, this is better than Disneyland!" - Lance

"It's not surprising they're bitter, they cling to guns or religion or antipathy toward people who aren't like them or anti-immigrant sentiment or anti-trade sentiment as a way to explain their frustrations." - Barack Obama

“Lightheartedness is a treasure little regarded and widely forfeited to aggression, greed and horrendous tribal rituals.” - Dick Francis writing in The Edge pg. 75

"He who fights and runs away, may live to fight another day." - Oliver Goldsmith

“Wonder is the seed of knowledge” - Francis Bacon
“Knowledge is power” - Francis Bacon

"In all major socializing forces you will find an underlying movement to gain and maintain power through the use of words. From witch doctor to priest to bureaucrat it is all the same. A governed populace must be conditioned to accept power-words as actual things, to confuse the symbolized system with the tangible universe. In the maintenance of such a power structure, certain symbols are kept out of reach of common understanding – symbols such as those dealing with economic manipulation or those which define the local interpretation of sanity. Symbol-secrecy of this form leads to the development of fragmented sub-languages, each being a signal that its users are accumulating some form of power." - Frank Herbert in Dune

"The curious task of economics is to demonstrate to men how little they really know about what they imagine they can design." - Friedrich Hayek

“The riches of scholarship outlive calamity.” - Lowell

"I'd rather be lucky than good." - Lefty Gomez

"I believe there should be a tax on all foreigners living abroad." - Samuel Clemens aka Mark Twain

"I ain't like that no more." - Willian Muny in The Unforgiven

"It is, instead, about power. What Mr. Walker and his backers are trying to do is to make Wisconsin — and eventually, America — less of a functioning democracy and more of a third-world-style oligarchy." - Paul Krugman

“Unto whomsoever much is given, of him shall be much required.” - Bible

“Frustration turns into hate.” – Jose Napoleon Duarte

“Ideology dress the act of cannibalism in the garb of rectitude.” – Howard Bloom
“An ideology is usually a high-minded mask for a group’s itch to take power & resources from other social groups.” - Howard Bloom
“Your god, mannerisms, morals, and ideas are outward labels of your genetic contents.” – Howard Bloom

“The aim of politics is not to make people better or to alleviate their misery – it is to increase the power of one group against the power of another.” - Hans Morgenthau
“Man uses moral sense to narrow the aperture of his consciousness and ignore his appetite for power.” – Hans Morgenthau

“Politics as a practice, whatever its protestations, has always been the systematic organization of hatreds.” - Henry Adams

Terrorists
“The intensifying to anger of the natural scorn of youth for the mess their elders had made of the world. The desire to punish violently the objects of scorn. The death of love for parents. The permanent sneer for all forms of authority. The frustration of not being able to scourge the despised majority. And after that, the deeper, malignant distortions… The self-delusion that one’s feelings of inadequacy were the fault of society, and that it was necessary to destroy society in order to feel adequate. The infliction of pain and fear, to feed the hungry ego. The total surrender of reason to raw emotion, in the illusion of being moved by a sort of divine rage. The choice of an unattainable end, so that the violent means could go on and one. The addictive orgasm of the act of laying waste.” - Dick Francis in Trial Run pg. 253
“They are self-indulgent. It is easier to smash than to build.” - Dick Francis in Trial Run pg. 253

“[Theodore] Roosevelt held the biological view of the common man - a brute capable of self-refinement.” - Edmund Morris

“Walmart Stores are built on miserable wages, degrading treatment of ‘associates,’ promotion of environmentally-destructive suburban sprawl, elimination of competition from locally-owned store.” - SocialistWorker.org

“Rock is a gutter phenomenon.” – Allan Bloom

“Back to the Pleistocene” – Radical ecologists’ slogan

“British naval tradition consists of three things - rum, buggery & the lash.” - Winston Churchill

“Through the Past Darkly” - Rolling Stone Album name

Green gestures
"The secret of managing is to keep the guys who hate you away from the guys who are undecided." - Casey Stengel

"The man who plays alone never loses." - Old Sicilian proverb

"Acedia knowing the name (Rumpelstiltskin) is the 1st step of overcoming." - Kathleen Norris in "Acedia & me"
"Assault of the thoughts." - Kathleen Norris in "Acedia & me"

"Mindfulness is thinking about your thoughts." - Buddhist saying

“Expect the best & plan for the worst, and prepare to be surprised.” - Denis Waitley, American writer

Star Trek Original Series
“People don't like people who don't like them.” - Court Martial
“What else interests you? Everything! Less than that is betrayal of the intellect.” - Requiem For Methuselah
“Intellectual cultivation must come first or the individual makes errors, wastes time in unprofitable pursuits.” - Requiem For Methuselah

“I wish it were possible to obtain a single amendment taking from the Federal Government the power of borrowing.” - Thomas Jefferson

"It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends on his not understanding it." - Upton Sinclair

"Power lies in the hands of the person who cares the least about the relationship." - Willard Waller

"To the argument . . . that a majority may not deprive a minority of its constitutional right, the answer must be made that while this is sound in theory, in the long run it is the majority who will determine what the constitutional rights of the minorities are." - Supreme Court Chief Justice, William Rehnquist

"They were looking for kids who were trustworthy, loyal, helpful, friendly, courteous, kind, obedient, cheerful, thrifty, brave, clean and reverent, but unfortunately I was fickle, obstructive, hostile, rude, mean, defiant, glum, extravagant, cowardly, dirty and sacrilegious, so I joined the army." - George Carlin

"No solutions, only trade-offs." - Russ Roberts
“You can’t count on getting ‘better’ people.” - Russ Roberts
"People define themselves by what they refuse to eat." - Russ Roberts

"When fortresses & virgins get to talking, the end is in sight." - Benjamin Franklin
“Those who will sacrifice liberty for security deserve neither” - Benjamin Franklin

"Under Capitalism man exploits man. Under Communism, it's just the opposite." - John Kenneth Galbraith

"Puritanism: the haunting fear that someone, somewhere is having a good time." - H.L. Mencken

"Rally round the family, with a pocket full of shells." - from Bulls On Parade by Rage Against The Machine

"Where the is no law, there is no freedom." - John Locke

“It is in fact nothing short of a miracle that the modern methods of instruction have not yet entirely strangled the holy curiosity of inquiry; for what this delicate little plant needs more than anything, besides stimulation, is freedom. It is a very grave mistake to think that the enjoyment of seeing and searching can be promoted by means of coercion and a sense of duty.” – Albert Einstein

“I’m no fool, no siree, I wanna live to be 103, ‘cuz I’m no fool.” - Jiminy Cricket

"We see through a glass, darkly" - Apostle Paul, 1 Corinthians 13:12, (Imperfect vision of reality.)

“I have, for many years, been in favor of replacing the Fed with a computer.” - Milton Friedman

"I don't consider myself pugnacious by nature, but I actively advocate such belligerent actions because in a way I am at war with exploiters - we all are." - Robert B. Cialdini

"They picked up on the particular egalitarian ethos of the community, which discouraged the wealthy from flaunting their success and helped the unsuccessful obscure their failures." - Malcolm Gladwell
"Lesson Number One: The Importance of Being Jewish" - Malcolm Gladwell

"Practical intelligence includes things like knowing what to say to whom, knowing when to say it, and knowing how to say it for maximum effect." - Robert Sternberg

"All animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others." - pig proclamation in "Animal Farm"

“Deficits don’t matter.” - Dick Cheney

"We see through a glass, darkly." - Apostle Paul, 1 Corinthians 13:12, (Imperfect vision of reality.)

"Everybody has a plan 'til they get punched in the mouth." - Mike Tyson

"You have to be trusted, by the people that you lie to, so that when they turn their backs on you, you get the chance to stick the knife in." - Pink Floyd, "Dogs"

"Everybody's so different, and I haven't changed." - Joe Walsh, "Life's Been Good"

"I’ve never seen anyone change his mind because of the power of a superior argument or the acquisition of new facts. But I’ve seen plenty of people change behavior to avoid being mocked.” - Scott Adams
“There’s more Native American DNA in Stormy Daniels on any given weekend than Elizabeth Warren has.” - Scott Adams

“Everybody lies.” - Dr. House on the television show "House"

“I used to advertise my loyalty and I don't believe there is a single person I loved that I didn't eventually betray.” - Albert Camus

“You're under 18, you won’t be doing any time.” - Offspring, Come Out and Play

“Frustration turns into hate.” - Jose Napoleon Duarte

"Then one day you find, 10 years are gone behind you, No one told you when to run, You missed the starting gun." - Pink Floyd, Time

“Things are gonna change. I can feel it.” - Beck, Loser

“Rule 5: Don’t let your children do anything that makes you dislike them.” - Jordan Peterson’s 12 Rules for Life

"If you are alone you belong entirely to yourself." - Leonardo da Vinci

“While the Communists revolt, Republicans cower in their homes with fingers crossed, hoping the Supreme Court saves them.” - Tim Pool

“Pointing out hypocrisy has never won any argument ever.” - Scott Adams

“Communism being the elevation of the weak and the oppression of the strong in the name of arbitrary ‘equality,’ and fascism being the elimination of the weak or less fortunate in the name of making more room for the strong.” - unknown

“Curses, foiled again.” - Snidely Whiplash

"The reasonable man adapts himself to the world: the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore all progress depends on the unreasonable man." ― George Bernard Shaw, Man and Superman

"I'm too old to know everything." - Oscar Wilde
"A good friend will always stab you in the front." - Oscar Wilde

"Let every nation know, whether it wishes us well or ill, that we shall pay any price, bear any burden, meet any hardship, support any friend, oppose any foe, to assure the survival and the success of liberty." - JFK

“Extremism in the defense of liberty is no vice.” - Barry Goldwater

"Fascists don't know what Fascism is." - Michael Malice

"Swim out past the breakers, watch the world die.” - the song "Santa Monica" by Everclear

“With my family, I’m a Communist; with my close friends, I’m a Socialist; at the state level politics, I’m a Democrat; at higher levels of politics, I’m a Republican; at the federal level politics; I’m a Libertarian." - Nassim Taleb

“What better time than now?” - the song "Guerrilla Radio" by Rage Against the Machine
“All hell can’t stop us now.” - the song "Guerrilla Radio" by Rage Against the Machine

[adwinistrator]

I have a foreboding of an America in my children's or grandchildren's time - when the United States is a service and information economy; when nearly all the manufacturing industries have slipped away to other countries; when awesome technological powers are in the hands of a very few, and no one representing the public interest can even grasp the issues; when the people have lost the ability to set their own agendas or knowledgeably question those in authority; when, clutching our crystals and nervously consulting our horoscopes, our critical faculties in decline, unable to distinguish between what feels good and what's true, we slide, almost without noticing, back into superstition and darkness.

Carl Sagan, The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark, 1995.

[adwinistrator]

Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed. This world in arms is not spending money alone. It is spending the sweat of its laborers, the genius of its scientists, the hopes of its children. The cost of one modern heavy bomber is this: a modern brick school in more than 30 cities. It is two electric power plants, each serving a town of 60,000 population. It is two fine, fully equipped hospitals. It is some fifty miles of concrete pavement. We pay for a single fighter plane with a half million bushels of wheat. We pay for a single destroyer with new homes that could have housed more than 8,000 people. This is, I repeat, the best way of life to be found on the road the world has been taking. This is not a way of life at all, in any true sense. Under the cloud of threatening war, it is humanity hanging from a cross of iron. [...] Is there no other way the world may live?

President Dwight D. Eisenhower, 1953.

[SuburbanFarmer]

Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed. This world in arms is not spending money alone. It is spending the sweat of its laborers, the genius of its scientists, the hopes of its children. The cost of one modern heavy bomber is this: a modern brick school in more than 30 cities. It is two electric power plants, each serving a town of 60,000 population. It is two fine, fully equipped hospitals. It is some fifty miles of concrete pavement. We pay for a single fighter plane with a half million bushels of wheat. We pay for a single destroyer with new homes that could have housed more than 8,000 people. This is, I repeat, the best way of life to be found on the road the world has been taking. This is not a way of life at all, in any true sense. Under the cloud of threatening war, it is humanity hanging from a cross of iron. [...] Is there no other way the world may live?

President Dwight D. Eisenhower, 1953.

Good one.

[TheReal_ND]

[adwinistrator]

In an ever-changing, incomprehensible world the masses had reached the point where they would, at the same time, believe everything and nothing, think that everything was possible and nothing was true. The totalitarian mass leaders based their propaganda on the correct psychological assumption that, under such conditions, one could make people believe the most fantastic statements one day, and trust that if the next day they were given irrefutable proof of their falsehood, they would take refuge in cynicism; instead of deserting the leaders who had lied to them, they would protest that they had known all along that the statement was a lie and would admire the leaders for their superior tactical cleverness.

-Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism, 1951.

[Okeefenokee]

Pass the damn ham, please

Scout Finch

[adwinistrator]

"Of all the enemies to public liberty war is, perhaps, the most to be dreaded, because it comprises and develops the germ of every other. War is the parent of armies; from these proceed debts and taxes; and armies, and debts, and taxes are the known instruments for bringing the many under the domination of the few. In war, too, the discretionary power of the Executive is extended; its influence in dealing out offices, honors, and emoluments is multiplied; and all the means of seducing the minds, are added to those of subduing the force, of the people. The same malignant aspect in republicanism may be traced in the inequality of fortunes, and the opportunities of fraud, growing out of a state of war, and in the degeneracy of manners and of morals engendered by both. No nation could preserve its freedom in the midst of continual warfare."

-James Madison, Political Observations, 1795.

[adwinistrator]

But Orcs and Trolls spoke as they would, without love of words or things; and their language was actually more degraded and filthy than I have shown it. I do not suppose that any will wish for a closer rendering, though models are easy to find. Much the same sort of talk can still be heard among the orc-minded; dreary and repetitive with hatred and contempt, too long removed from good to retain even verbal vigour, save in the ears of those to whom only the squalid sounds strong.

- J. R. R. Tolkien, The Return of the King, 1955

[Speaker to Animals]

Look at Tolkein predicting the rise of the neomarxist left.