“The crisis takes a much longer time coming than you think, and then it happens much faster than you would have thought, and that’s sort of exactly the Mexican story. It took forever and then it took a night.” – Economist Rudiger Dornbusch (as quoted in John Mauldin’s newsletter, Thoughts from the Front Line)
“The adjective ‘public’ modifies the noun ‘school’ the same way it does ‘transportation’ or ‘restroom’: serving as a warning that it is filthy and full of junkies and criminals.” – Tamara, the editor of the View From The Porch blog
“You have no idea what anything is worth until you need it and can’t get it.” – An anonymous comment posted at ZeroHedge.
“If you can’t do it with a .30-06, it probably can’t be done.” – The Late Col. Jeff Cooper
“They all hold swords, [being] expert in war: every man [hath] his sword upon his thigh because of fear in the night.” – Song of Solomon 3:8 (KJV)
“The U.S. economic and systemic-solvency crises of the last five years continue to deteriorate. Yet they remain just the precursors to the coming Great Collapse: a hyperinflationary great depression. The unfolding circumstance will encompass a complete loss in the purchasing power of the U.S. dollar; a collapse in the normal stream of U.S. commercial and economic activity; a collapse in the U.S. financial system, as we know it; and a likely realignment of the U.S. political environment.” – John Williams of Shadowstats
“In reading The History of Nations, we find that, like individuals, they have their whims and their peculiarities, their seasons of excitement and recklessness, when they care not what they do. We find that whole communities suddenly fix their minds upon one object and go mad in its pursuit; that millions of people become simultaneously impressed with one delusion, and run after it, till their attention is caught by some new folly more captivating than the first.” – Charles MacKay, from the preface to his classic book “Extraordinary Popular Delusions and The Madness of Crowds“
“There is never a better measure of what a person is than what he does when he’s absolutely free to choose.” – William M. Bulger
“We’re on the threshold of disaster. We need to increase food production by 50 to 70 percent on less land with less resources, less water and, frankly, not enough technology.”- Dr. Nancy Irlbec, Associate Dean of academic affairs for Colorado State University’s College of Agricultural Sciences, describing global food production and the demographics of the 21st Century.
The entire TSA paradigm is flawed. It requires an impossibility for it to succeed. For the TSA model to work, every single possible means of causing danger to an aircraft or its passengers must be eliminated. This is an impossibility. While passengers are being frisked and digitally strip-searched a few dozen yards away [inside the ostensibly ‘secure’ area], cooks and dish washers at the local concourse “Chili’s” [restaurant] are using and cleaning butcher knives.” – Former FBI Agent Steve Moore, writing in his G-Man’s Cafe blog
“Had the Japanese [army’s territorial conquest in Asia] got as far as India, Gandhi’s theories of “passive resistance” would have floated down the Ganges River with his bayoneted, beheaded carcass.” – Mike Vanderboegh.
“But of the times and the seasons, brethren, ye have no need that I write unto you. For yourselves know perfectly that the day of the Lord so cometh as a thief in the night. For when they shall say, Peace and safety; then sudden destruction cometh upon them, as travail upon a woman with child; and they shall not escape. But ye, brethren, are not in darkness, that that day should overtake you as a thief. Ye are all the children of light, and the children of the day: we are not of the night, nor of darkness. Therefore …
“A man’s heart deviseth his way: but the LORD directeth his steps.” – Proverbs 16:9 (KJV)
“By many indicators, Greece is devolving into something unprecedented in modern Western experience. A quarter of all Greek companies have gone out of business since 2009, and half of all small businesses in the country say they are unable to meet payroll. The suicide rate increased by 40 percent in the first half of 2011. A barter economy has sprung up, as people try to work around a broken financial system. Nearly half the population under 25 is unemployed. Last September, organizers of a government-sponsored seminar on emigrating to Australia, an event that drew 42 people a year earlier, were …
“A wild boar stood under a tree, and rubbed his tusks against the trunk. A fox passing by asked him why he thus sharpened his teeth when there was no danger threatening from either huntsman or hound. He replied, ‘I do it advisedly; for it would never do to have to sharpen my weapons just at the time I ought to be using them.’ To be well prepared for war is the best guarantee of peace.” – The Fables of Aesop