Monday, February 15. 2010
From Mrs Ike: Memories of the Life of Mamie Eisenhower, which contains a lot of letters Ike wrote to Mamie during the war. A quote from one of them:
"When I find myself contemplating a post-war experience, I always picture a little place away from the cities (but with someone near enough for occasional bridge) and the two of us just getting brown in the sun, (and possibly thick in the middle). A dozen cats and dogs, with a horse or two, maybe a place to fish (not too strenuously) and a field in which to shoot a few birds once in a while - I think that's roughly my idea of a good life."
Friday, February 12. 2010
A Catholic Church is the only thing that saves a man from the degrading slavery of being a child of his age.
G.K. Chesterton (h/t, Anchoress)
Wednesday, February 10. 2010
Everything comes from the great book of nature. Human attainments are an already printed book.
Antonio Gaudi
Friday, February 5. 2010
The American is the Englishman left to himself.
Alexis de Tocqueville, in a piece about de Tocqueville at Chicago Boyz
"Pleasing your enemies does not turn them into friends."
Who knows who first stated this ancient truism, but I snipped it from Kate.
Tuesday, February 2. 2010
An education is like exhibiting good manners. If you pretend to have them, it's the same as having them.
Sippican
Monday, February 1. 2010
On account of being a democracy and run by the people, we are the only nation in the world that has to keep a government four years, no matter what it does.
Will Rogers
Friday, January 29. 2010
'Liar' is just as ugly a word as 'thief,' because it implies the presence of just as ugly a sin in one case as in the other. If a man lies under oath or procures the lie of another under oath, if he perjures himself or suborns perjury, he is guilty under the statute law.
Under the higher law, under the great law of morality and righteousness, he is precisely as guilty if, instead of lying in a court, he lies in a newspaper or on the stump; and in all probability, the evil effects of his conduct are infinitely more widespread and more pernicious.
Teddy Roosevelt.
It reminds me that Dr. Bliss says "Lying is worse than theft of property, because it is the theft of somebody's reality."
Thursday, January 28. 2010
"Politicians never accuse you of 'greed' for wanting other people's money - only for wanting to keep your own money."
Joseph Sobran
Wednesday, January 27. 2010
"If you love wealth more than liberty, the tranquility of servitude better than the animating contest of freedom, depart from us in peace. We ask not your counsel nor your arms. Crouch down and lick the hand that feeds you. May your chains rest lightly upon you and may posterity forget that you were our countrymen."
Samuel Adams (Image is Copley's 1772 portrait of the firebrand rabble-rouser and tea-partyer)
Monday, January 25. 2010
Amendment 1
Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.
How complicated is that? How did this simple sentence confuse four members of the US Supreme Court? (Not that such an amendment should be needed, since the power to make laws regarding these things is not granted our federal government anyway. We believe, as Coyote might also, that laws regulating the political speech of non-profits are just as unconstitutional as other speech-control laws.)
Addendum: Many, or most, governments in the world hate free speech.
Wednesday, January 20. 2010
It is to me a new and consolatory proof that wherever the people are well-informed they can be trusted with their own government; that whenever things get so far wrong as to attract their notice, they may be relied on to set them to rights.
Thomas Jefferson to Richard Price, January 8, 1789, as quoted in the WSJ's Boston Tea Party this morning.
Tuesday, January 19. 2010
"One of life's greatest mysteries is how the boy who wasn't good enough to marry your daughter can be the father of the smartest grandchild in the world."
Jewish proverb
Friday, January 15. 2010
If you get to thinkin' you're a person of some influence, try orderin' somebody else's dog around.
Anon, via Theo
Thursday, January 14. 2010
Remember that silence is sometimes the best answer.
Anon, from Theo's old farmer quotes. Ain't that the truth.
Wednesday, January 13. 2010
Good judgment comes from experience, and a lotta that comes from bad judgment.
Anon., from Theo's Old Farmer quotes
Tuesday, January 12. 2010
The best sermons are lived, not preached.
Anon. (h/t, a collection of good farmer quotes at Theo)
Monday, January 11. 2010
"If the government doesn't trust the people, why doesn't it dissolve them and elect a new people?"
Berthold Brecht, speculatively attributed to H.L. Mencken at a good post at Big Lizards
Thursday, January 7. 2010
...my friend saw a leaf floating down from a tree in a peculiar swirling pattern. He then asked, "Dr. Einstein, why is the leaf falling from the tree like that rather than straight down?" Einstein replied with a smile, "I don't know."
Via a piece at Am Thinker by Lauri Regan. I find "I don't know" to be one of the most useful sentences in the English language.
Friday, January 1. 2010
If there was no Internets, I'd have to stand on the overpass and yell at cars.
Sippican, who recommends The Colorist to us. Wonderful pictures.
Thursday, December 31. 2009
To Change One’s Life:
1. Start immediately.
2. Do it flamboyantly.
3. No exceptions.
- William James (h/t, Protein). Sounds like a recipe for disaster for 99%.
Here's another, h/t Vermont Tiger:
New Year's is a harmless annual institution, of no particular use to anybody save as a scapegoat for promiscuous drunks, and friendly calls and humbug resolutions.
- Mark Twain
Wednesday, December 30. 2009
"[W]hen the resolution of enslaving America was formed in Great Britain, the British Parliament was advised by an artful man, who was governor of Pennsylvania, to disarm the people; that it was the best and most effectual way to enslave them; but that they should not do it openly, but weaken them, and let them sink gradually, by totally disusing and neglecting the militia."
George Mason, speech in the Virginia Ratifying Convention, 1788. h/t, Patriot Post
Monday, December 28. 2009
Fallacies do not cease to be fallacies because they become fashions.
G.K. Chesterton (h/t, Dr. Bob)
Wednesday, December 23. 2009
I have only one firm belief about the American political system, and that is this: God is a Republican and Santa Claus is a Democrat. God is an elderly or, at any rate, middle-aged male, a stern fellow, patriarchal rather than paternal and a great believer in rules and regulations. He holds men strictly accountable for their actions. He has little apparent concern for the material well-being of the disadvantaged. He is politically connected, socially powerful and holds the mortgage on virtually everything in the world. God is difficult. God is unsentimental. It is very hard to get into God’s heavenly country club. Santa Claus is another matter. He’s cute. He is nonthreatening. He’s always cheerful. And he loves animals. He may know who’s been naughty and who’s been nice, but he never does anything about it. He gives everyone everything they want without thought of a quid pro quo. He works hard for charities, and he’s famously generous to the poor. Santa Claus is preferable to God in every way but one: There is no such thing as Santa Claus.
PJ O'Rourke. Parliament of Whores. h/t, Samiz
Saturday, December 19. 2009
The future is not a result of choices among alternative paths offered by the present, but a place that is created - created first in the mind and will, created next in activity. The future is not some place we are going to, but one we are creating. The paths are not to be found, but made, and the activity of making them, changes both the maker and the destination.
John Schaar, author of Legitimacy in the Modern State
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