“It’s best for anyone who’s been in the military service if he’s had some disagreeable experiences… to talk about it and get it out of his system and then forget it.” – Frank Woodruff Buckles (America’s last surviving WWI Veteran, age 107)
“God forbid we should ever be twenty years without such a rebellion. The people cannot be all, and always, well informed. The part which is wrong will be discontented, in proportion to the importance of the facts they misconceive. If they remain quiet under such misconceptions, it is lethargy, the forerunner of death to the public liberty. … And what country can preserve its liberties, if it’s rulers are not warned from time to time, that this people preserve the spirit of resistance? Let them take arms. The remedy is to set them right as to the facts, pardon and …
“For a quarter century, those who recalled Charles Mackay’s [non-fiction book] Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds and its many successors, and pointed out that uncontrolled speculation always ends the same dismal way, were told that they ought to shut up until they learned something about economics. Sober warnings from distinguished scholars were drowned out by a chorus of cheerleading, while less prestigious voices were pushed out to the fringes of the blogosphere. What is now painfully clear is that those marginalized voices were right all along, and their warnings could have spared us a massive economic disaster …
‘If we find our government in all its branches rushing headlong… into the arms of monarchy, if we find them violating our dearest rights, the trial by jury, the freedom of the press, the freedom of opinion, civil or religious, or opening on our peace of mind or personal safety the sluices of terrorism, if we see them raising standing armies, when the absence of all other danger points to these as the sole objects on which they are to be employed, then indeed let us withdraw and call the nation to its tents. But while our functionaries are wise, …
“History is a vast early warning system” – Norman Cousins
“Murphy’s Law: “If there’s more than one way to do a job, and one of those ways will result in disaster, then somebody will do it that way.” – Capt. Edward A. Murphy, Jr., Wright-Patterson Air Force Base, circa 1949
"The problem with political jokes is they get elected." – Henry Cate, VII
"Politics is the art of looking for trouble, finding it everywhere, diagnosing it incorrectly, and applying the wrong remedies." – Groucho Marx
"The liberties of our country, the freedoms of our civil constitution are worth defending at all hazards; and it is our duty to defend them against all attacks. We have received them as a fair inheritance from our worthy ancestors: they purchased them for us with toil and danger and expense of treasure and blood, and transmitted them to us with care and diligence. It will bring an everlasting mark of infamy on the present generation, enlightened as it is, if we should suffer them to be wrested from us by violence without a struggle, or be cheated out of …
"An election is coming. Universal peace is declared and the foxes have a sincere interest in prolonging the lives of the poultry." – T.S. Eliot
"Politicians and diapers should be changed often, and for the same reason." – Mark Twain
"People never lie so much as after a hunt, during a war or before an election." – Otto von Bismarck
A clown is funny in the circus ring, but what would be the normal reaction to opening a door at midnight and finding the same clown standing there in the moonlight?" – Lon Chaney, Sr.
"There is only one thing more painful than learning from experience and that is not learning from experience." – Archibald McLeish
"There can be no such thing, in law or in morality, as actions forbidden to an individual, but permitted to a mob." – Ayn Rand