Tuesday, August 25. 2009
Things determine each other, but man is ultimately self-determining.
Viktor Frankl (h/t, Vanderleun)
Saturday, August 22. 2009
Spending on medical treatment is a wonderful thing and a great privilege. People should want to spend more on it. Just check out my dental implants, or read my (stainless steel) left hip. Good stuff, but not cheap - but worth every penny, and only easily available in the good old USA.
The Barrister, in a post here last week: Medical care in Canada "imploding," says top doc - plus a few words about the government Octopus and hallucinations, plus a good word for costly American bionics
If you showed somebody an i-phone 20 years ago and told them that it cost $100,000, they would have thought it was a good deal.
Mark Simone on WABC radio this morning
Friday, August 21. 2009
The quality of moral behaviour varies in inverse ratio to the number of human beings involved.
Aldous Huxley (h/t, LGF)
Thursday, August 20. 2009
If Harry Reid showed up for a job interview, would you hire him?
Mark Simone, filling in for Mark Levin tonight on the radio.
Wednesday, August 19. 2009
The New Deal was a genuine revolution, whose deepest purpose was not simply reform within existing traditions, but a basic change in the social, and, above all, the power relationships within the nation. It was not a revolution by violence. It was a revolution by bookkeeping and lawmaking. In so far as it was successful, the power of politics had replaced the power of business. This is the basic power shift of all the revolutions of our time. This shift was the revolution.
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Tuesday, August 18. 2009
Always love your country - but never trust your government.
Robert Novak, 1931-2009
Monday, August 17. 2009
"A girl should look like a piece of candy."
Former Gucci designer Tom Ford. Might be a paraphrase, but that's how I remember it. This Friday post reminded me of the quote.
Friday, August 14. 2009
"Government is not reason; it is not eloquent; it is force. Like fire, it is a dangerous servant and a fearful master."
George Washington
Thursday, August 13. 2009
"All government, in its essence, is a conspiracy against the superior man: its one permanent object is to oppress him and cripple him. If it be aristocratic in organization, then it seeks to protect the man who is superior only in law against the man who is superior in fact; if it be democratic, then it seeks to protect the man who is inferior in every way against both. One of its primary functions is to regiment men by force, to make them as much alike as possible and as dependent upon one another as possible, to search out and combat originality among them. All it can see in an original idea is potential change, and hence an invasion of its prerogatives. The most dangerous man to any government is the man who is able to think things out for himself, without regard to the prevailing superstitions and taboos. Almost inevitably he comes to the conclusion that the government he lives under is dishonest, insane and intolerable, and so, if he is romantic, he tries to change it. And even if he is not romantic personally he is very apt to spread discontent among those who are. "
HL Mencken (h/t, reader)
Wednesday, August 12. 2009
Tattooed quotes seen on a guy's forearms in a greasy spoon in CT, one line on each arm:
Every saint has a past. Every sinner has a future.
Prison tattoos, I suspect. Pseudo-teutonic script, nicely rendered. Even if I had had a camera, I would not have asked this particular gent for a photo because he did not appear too friendly, nor did he appear to be one of my peeps. He had that lean and hungry look, if you know what I mean.
Monday, August 10. 2009
"The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed, and hence clamorous to be led to safety, by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary."
H.L.Mencken (h/t, Am Digest)
Sunday, August 9. 2009
Freedom is messy. In free societies, people will fall through the cracks — drink too much, eat too much, buy unaffordable homes, fail to make prudent provision for health care, and much else. But the price of being relieved of all those tiresome choices by a benign paternal government is far too high.
Mark Steyn, linked here.
Tuesday, August 4. 2009
'Whatever you give a woman, she will make greater. If you give her sperm, she'll give you a baby. If you give her a house, she'll give you a home. If you give her groceries, she'll give you a meal. If you give her a smile, she'll give you her heart. She multiplies and enlarges what is given to her. So, if you give her any crap, be ready to receive a ton of shit.'
Anon.
The universe was not made to our specifications. Nor were human beings. So there is nothing surprising in the fact that we are dissatisfied with many things at many times. The big question is whether we are prepared to follow any politician who claims to be able to "solve" our "problem."
If we are, then there will be a never ending series of "solutions," each causing new problems calling for still more "solutions." That way lies a never-ending quest, costing ever increasing amounts of the taxpayers' money and-- more important-- ever greater losses of your freedom to live your own life as you see fit, rather than as presumptuous elites dictate.
Thomas Sowell, in today's Utopia vs Freedom
Monday, August 3. 2009
Compromise, hell! That's what has happened to us all down the line - and that's the very cause of our woes. If freedom is right and tyranny is wrong, why should those who believe in freedom treat it as if it were a roll of bologna to be bartered a slice at a time?
Sen. Jesse Helms (1921-2008), writing in 1959 on compromise in politics.
If America isn't about freedom from the State, then it isn't about anything except lovely landscapes - and money and malls, but most countries are about those things, more or less.
Sunday, August 2. 2009
When you go to an Italian funeral, it's always "Too young, too young." When you go to an Irish funeral, it's always "He had a good run. Let's have a drink."
Deacon Kevin McCormack, on 770's WABC religion radio program this morning
Monday, July 27. 2009
In every language, the first word after "Mama!" that every kid learns to say is "Mine!" A system that doesn't allow ownership, that doesn't allow you to say "Mine!" when you grow up, has - to put it mildly - a fatal design flaw.
Frank Zappa (h/t, Samiz)
Friday, July 17. 2009
This is too important an issue to leave with bureaucrats.
Samizdata, discussing space flight but applicable to most things
Wednesday, July 15. 2009
"Universal health care isn't worth our freedom." From Dr. Tom Szasz in the WSJ this morning:
Henry David Thoreau famously remarked, "If I knew for a certainty that a man was coming to my house with the conscious design of doing me good, I should run for my life." Thoreau feared a single, unarmed man approaching him with such a passion in his heart. Too many people now embrace the coercive apparatus of the modern state professing the same design.
and
Our national conversation about curbing the cost of health care is crippled by the vocabulary in which we conduct it. We must stop talking about "health care" as if it were some kind of collective public service, like fire protection, provided equally to everyone who needs it. No government can provide the same high quality body repair services to everyone. Not all doctors are equally good physicians, and not all sick persons are equally good patients.
If we persevere in our quixotic quest for a fetishized medical equality we will sacrifice personal freedom as its price. We will become the voluntary slaves of a "compassionate" government that will provide the same low quality health care to everyone.
Monday, July 6. 2009
Human judges can show mercy. But against the laws of nature, there is no appeal.
Arthur C. Clarke (h/t, LGF)
Friday, July 3. 2009
Conservatives think liberals are stupid. Liberals think conservatives are evil.
Charles Krauthammer, via a piece at Classical
Thursday, June 25. 2009
Do not deceive yourselves. If any one of you thinks he is wise by the standards of this age, he should become a "fool" so that he may become wise. For the wisdom of this world is foolishness in God's sight. As it is written: "He catches the wise in their craftiness"; and again, "The Lord knows that the thoughts of the wise are futile."
1 Corinthians 3:18-20
Monday, June 22. 2009
When in danger or in doubt, run in circles, scream and shout.
Anon.
Wednesday, June 17. 2009
If there were omniscient men, if we could know not only all that affects the attainment of our present wishes but also our future wants and desires, there would be little case for liberty.
F.A. Hayek
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