“There’s no such thing as life without bloodshed. I think the notion that the species can be improved in some way, that everyone could live in harmony, is a really dangerous idea. Those who are afflicted with this notion are the first ones to give up their souls, their freedom. Your desire that it be that way will enslave you and make your life vacuous.” – Cormac McCarthy (author of the disaster novel The Road )
"How do we know when irrational exuberance has unduly escalated asset values?" – Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan, December 5, 1996
“And I do not hold to that. So no more running. I aim to misbehave.” – Nathan Fillion as Captain Mal Reynolds, Serenity , 2005. (Screenplay by Joss Whedon)
"Economists were created to make weather forecasters look good." – Rupert Murdoch
“He doubted whether they could survive the winter, even though they piled broken furniture into the fireplace. Some accident would quite likely overtake them, or pneumonia might strike them down. They were like the highly bred spaniels and pekinese who at the end of their leashes had once walked along the city streets. Milt and Ann, too, were city-dwellers, and when the city died, they would hardly survive without it. They would pay the penalty which in the history of the world, he knew, had always been inflicted upon organisms which specialized too highly.” – George Stewart Earth Abides , …
“[The fallout in subprime mortgages is] going to be painful to some lenders, but it is largely contained." – Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson, March 13, 2007
‘There is an old song which asserts ‘the best things in life are free.’ Not true! Utterly false! This was the tragic fallacy which brought on the decadence and collapse of the democracies of the twentieth century; those noble experiments failed because the people had been led to believe that they could simply vote for whatever they wanted . . . and get it, without toil, without sweat, without tears.” – Robert A. Heinlein, Starship Troopers
Too many people spend money they haven’t earned, to buy things they don’t want, to impress people they don’t like. – Will Rogers
“Don’t listen to anyone who tells you that you can’t do this or that. That’s nonsense. Make up your mind, you’ll never use crutches or a stick, then have a go at everything. Go to school, join in all the games you can. Go anywhere you want to. But never, never let them persuade you that things are too difficult or impossible.” – Sir Douglas Bader, (1910-1982), The legendary British fighter pilot who lost both legs in a flying accident, but went on to fly as a fighter pilot in World War II.
“Iron rusts from disuse; stagnant water loses its purity and in cold weather becomes frozen; even so does inaction sap the vigor of the mind.” – Leonardo da Vinci, Leonardo’s Notebooks
“The proliferation of state concealed carry laws has evidently reduced the rate of violent street crime to a considerable extent. When the goblins do not know who is armed and who is not, their professional enthusiasm declines. Now that Britain has made sure (insofar as any law can so insure) that everybody is disarmed, the streets are given back to the bad kid with the baseball bat. We hope they are satisfied.” – Jeff Cooper, Cooper’s Commentaries
“No one realized how bad the economy was. The projections, in fact, turned out to be worse. But we took the mainstream model as to what we thought — and everyone else thought — the unemployment rate would be.” – Vice President Joseph Biden, June 14, 2009 (Backing away from the BHO Administration’s estimate that “stimulus” funds could “create or save” 3.5 million jobs, instead now promising just 600,000 by the end of the summer.)
"The effectual fervent prayer of a righteous man availeth much." – James 5:16
“The Sierra Club’s unofficial motto is: ‘Take only pictures; leave only footprints.’ But my motto is: Take only safe shots; leave only large gut piles.” – James Wesley, Rawles
“There is no worse tyranny than to force a man to pay for what he does not want merely because you think it would be good for him.” – Robert A. Heinlein, The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress