MY FAVORITE QUOTES

POLITICAL

ASSORTED POLITICAL QUOTES

They that can give up essential liberty to purchase a little temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety. Benjamin Franklin Historical Review of Pennsylvania, 1759

My definition of a free society is a society where it is safe to be unpopular. ADLAI E. STEVENSON

Freedom is not worth having if it does not include the freedom to make mistakes. Mahatma Gandhi

The Democrats are the party that says government will make you smarter, taller, richer, and remove the crabgrass on your lawn. The Republicans are the party that says government doesn't work and then they get elected and prove it. P.J. O'Rourke

"If the American people ever allow private banks to control the issue of their money, first by inflation and then by deflation, the banks and corporations that will grow up around them (around the banks), will deprive the people of their property until their children will wake up homeless on the continent their fathers conquered." Thomas Jefferson

Ancient Rome declined because it had a Senate; now what's going to happen to us with both a Senate and a House? Will Rogers

No man's life, liberty or property are safe while the legislature is in session. Judge Gideon J. Tucker

Get all the fools on your side and you can be elected to anything. Frank Dane

Anyway, no drug, not even alcohol, causes the fundamental ills of society. If we're looking for the source of our troubles, we shouldn't test people for drugs, we should test them for stupidity, ignorance, greed and love of power P.J. O'Rourke

"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." ~ Dwight Eisenhower

"VOICE or no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked, and denounce the peacemakers for lack of patriotism ..." - Hermann Goering, Nazi Reichsmarschall

"Strange times are these in which we live when old and young are taught in falsehoods school. And the one man that dares to tell the truth is called at once a lunatic and fool" -- Plato.

"If Tyranny and Oppression come to this land, it will be in the guise of fighting a foreign enemy." James Madison, while a United States Congressman

"My country, right or wrong," is a thing that no patriot would think of saying except in a desperate case. It is like saying, "My mother, drunk or sober." -- G.K. Chesterson

"Bad officials are elected by good citizens who do not vote." -George Jean Nathan

Once unquestioning obedience, once fully enslaved, Once fully enslaved, no nation, state, city of this Earth, ever afterward resumes its liberty. --Walt Whitman

"We are now faced with the fact that tomorrow is today. We are confronted with the fierce urgency of NOW. In this unfolding conundrum of life and history, there "is" such a thing as being too late. This is no time for apathy or complacency. THIS IS A TIME FOR VIGOROUS AND POSITIVE ACTION." Martin Luther King, Jr.

"Poverty is the worst form of violence." Mohandas Gandhi

Hermann Goering at the Nuremberg trials, not long before Hitler's vice-Fuhrer poisoned himself in his jail cell: "It is always a simple matter to drag people along whether it is a democracy, or a fascist dictatorship, or a parliament, or a communist dictatorship. Voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. This is easy. All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked, and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger. It works the same in every country."

“Censorship reflects a society’s lack of confidence in itself. It is a hallmark of an authoritarian regime . . . .” — Supreme Court Justice Potter Stewart, dissenting Ginzberg v. United States, 383 U.S. 463 (1966)

FOOD

The next time you feel like complaining, remember that your garbage disposal probably eats better than 30 percent of the people in the world. --Robert Orben

"How can a nation be great if its bread tastes like Kleenex?" Julia Child

"delectable chile-con-carne... composed of delicate meats minced with aromatic herbs and the poignant chile colorado -- a compound full of singular saver and a fiery zest..." O. Henry 'The Enchanted Kiss'

Never serve oysters in a month that has no paycheck in it. P. J. O'Rourke

My doctor told me to stop having intimate dinners for four. Unless there are three other people. Orson Welles (1915 - 1985)

If this is coffee, please bring me some tea; but if this is tea, please bring me some coffee. Abraham Lincoln

The most remarkable thing about my mother is that for thirty years she served the family nothing but leftovers. The original meal has never been found. Calvin Trillin

"My illness is due to my doctor's insistence that I drink milk, a whitish fluid they force down helpless babies." W.C. Fields

LIFE

The best things in life are nearest: Breath in your nostrils, light in your eyes, flowers at your feet, duties at your hand, the path of right just before you. Then do not grasp at the stars, but do life's plain, common work as it comes, certain that daily duties and daily bread are the sweetest things in life. --Robert Louis Stevenson

Holding on to anger, resentment and hurt only gives you tense muscles, a headache and a sore jaw from clenching your teeth. Forgiveness gives you back the laughter and the lightness in your life. Joan Lunden, in Healthy Living Magazine

Red: I don't think you ought to be doing this to yourself, Andy. This is just s--tty pipedreams. I mean, Mexico is way the hell down there and you're in here, and that's the way it is. Andy: Yeah, right. That's the way it is. It's down there and I'm in here. I guess it comes down to a simple choice, really. Get busy livin' or get busy dyin'. THE SHAWHANK REDEMPTION

The worst loneliness is not to be comfortable with yourself. — Mark Twain

HUMOR

A Hospital is no place to be sick. Samuel Goldwyn

The report of my death was an exaggeration. Mark Twain (1835 - 1910), New York Journal, June 2, 1897

There's no trick to being a humorist when you have the whole government working for you. Will Rogers (1879 - 1935)

MORE TO COME