Linux Cubed Series 8: LINUX Games/Linux Cubed Series 8 - LINUX Games.iso/games/fortune-.tar/fortune-/fortune/datfiles/politics

Text File | 1995-10-20 | 112KB | 2,919 lines

$100 invested at 7% interest for 100 years will become $100,000, at
which time it will be worth absolutely nothing.
        -- Lazarus Long, "Time Enough for Love"
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1st graffitiist: QUESTION AUTHORITY!

2nd graffitiist: Why?
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A "No" uttered from deepest conviction is better and greater than a
"Yes" merely uttered to please, or what is worse, to avoid trouble.
        -- Mahatma Ghandi
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A billion here, a billion there -- pretty soon it adds up to real money.
        -- Sen. Everett Dirksen, on the U.S. defense budget
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A billion seconds ago Harry Truman was president.
A billion minutes ago was just after the time of Christ.
A billion hours ago man had not yet walked on earth.
A billion dollars ago was late yesterday afternoon at the U.S. Treasury.
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A bureaucrat's idea of cleaning up his files is to make a copy of everything
before he destroys it.
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A candidate is a person who gets money from the rich and votes from the
poor to protect them from each other.
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A citizen of America will cross the ocean to fight for democracy, but
won't cross the street to vote in a national election.
        -- Bill Vaughan
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A Difficulty for Every Solution.
        -- Motto of the Federal Civil Service
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A diplomat is a man who can convince his wife she'd look stout in a fur coat.
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A diplomat is a person who can tell you to go to hell in such a way that you
actually look forward to the trip.
        -- Caskie Stinnett, "Out of the Red"
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A diplomat's life consists of three things: protocol, Geritol, and alcohol.
        -- Adlai Stevenson
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A fanatic is one who can't change his mind and won't change the subject.
        -- Winston Churchill
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A free society is one where it is safe to be unpopular.
        -- Adlai Stevenson
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A general leading the State Department resembles a dragon commanding ducks.
        -- New York Times, Jan. 20, 1981
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A government that is big enough to give you all you want is big enough
to take it all away.
        -- Barry Goldwater
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A great empire, like a great cake, is most easily diminished at the edges.
        -- B. Franklin
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A great nation is any mob of people which produces at least one honest
man a century.
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A group of politicians deciding to dump a President because his morals
are bad is like the Mafia getting together to bump off the Godfather for
not going to church on Sunday.
        -- Russell Baker
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A lack of leadership is no substitute for inaction.
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A long memory is the most subversive idea in America.
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A national debt, if it is not excessive, will be to us a national blessing.
        -- Alexander Hamilton
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A nuclear war can ruin your whole day.
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A penny saved is a penny taxed.
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A penny saved kills your career in government.
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A people living under the perpetual menace of war and invasion is very easy to
govern.  It demands no social reforms.  It does not haggle over expenditures
on armaments and military equipment.  It pays without discussion, it ruins
itself, and that is an excellent thing for the syndicates of financiers and
manufacturers for whom patriotic terrors are an abundant source of gain.
        -- Anatole France
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A political man can have as his aim the realization of freedom,
but he has no means to realize it other than through violence.
        -- Jean Paul Sartre
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A prisoner of war is a man who tries to kill you and fails, and then
asks you not to kill him.
        -- Sir Winston Churchill, 1952
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A public debt is a kind of anchor in the storm; but if the anchor be
too heavy for the vessel, she will be sunk by that very weight which
was intended for her preservation.
        -- Colton
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A real diplomat is one who can cut his neighbor's throat without having
his neighbour notice it.
        -- Trygve Lie
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A real patriot is the fellow who gets a parking ticket and rejoices
that the system works.
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A right is not what someone gives you; it's what no one can take from you.
        -- Ramsey Clark
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A sect or party is an elegant incognito devised to save a man from
the vexation of thinking.
        -- Ralph Waldo Emerson, Journals, 1831
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A statesman is a politician who's been dead 10 or 15 years.
        -- Harry S. Truman
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A straw vote only shows which way the hot air blows.
        -- O'Henry
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A strong conviction that something must be done is the parent of many
bad measures.
        -- Daniel Webster
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Abraham Lincoln didn't die in vain.  He died in Washington, D.C.
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"After I asked him what he meant, he replied that freedom consisted of
the unimpeded right to get rich, to use his ability, no matter what the
cost to others, to win advancement."
        -- Norman Thomas
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Airplanes are interesting toys but of no military value.
    -- Marechal Ferdinand Foch, Professor of Strategy,
       Ecole Superieure de Guerre
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Alea iacta est.
    [The die is cast]
        -- Gaius Julius Caesar
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Alexander Hamilton started the U.S. Treasury with nothing - and that was
the closest our country has ever been to being even.
    -- The Best of Will Rogers
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All [zoos] actually offer to the public in return for the taxes spent
upon them is a form of idle and witless amusement, compared to which a
visit to a penitentiary, or even to a State legislature in session, is
informing, stimulating and ennobling.
        -- H. L. Mencken
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All bad precedents began as justifiable measures.
        -- Gaius Julius Caesar, quoted in "The Conspiracy of
           Catiline", by Sallust
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All diplomacy is a continuation of war by other means.
        -- Chou En Lai
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All kings is mostly rapscallions.
        --Mark Twain
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All other things being equal, a bald man cannot be elected President of
the United States.
        -- Vic Gold
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All people are born alike -- except Republicans and Democrats.
        -- Groucho Marx
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All the taxes paid over a lifetime by the average American are spent by
the government in less than a second.
        -- Jim Fiebig
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All wars are civil wars, because all men are brothers ... Each one owes
infinitely more to the human race than to the particular country in
which he was born.
        -- Francois Fenelon
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America is the country where you buy a lifetime supply of aspirin for one
dollar, and use it up in two weeks.
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America may be unique in being a country which has leapt from barbarism
to decadence without touching civilization.
        -- John O'Hara
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America: born free and taxed to death.
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An ambassador is an honest man sent abroad to lie and intrigue for the
benefit of his country.
        -- Sir Henry Wotton, 1568-1639
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An American's a person who isn't afraid to criticize the president but is
always polite to traffic cops.
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An efficient and a successful administration manifests itself equally in
small as in great matters.
        -- W. Churchill
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An honest politician is one who when he is bought will stay bought.
        -- Simon Cameron

There are honest journalists like there are honest politicians.  When
bought they stay bought.
        -- Bill Moyers
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Anarchy may not be a better form of government, but it's better than no
government at all.
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"...and the fully armed nuclear warheads, are, of course, merely a
courtesy detail."
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And they shall beat their swords into plowshares, for if you hit a man
with a plowshare, he's going to know he's been hit.
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And yet, seasons must be taken with a grain of salt, for they too have
a sense of humor, as does history.  Corn stalks comedy, comedy stalks
tragedy, and this too is historic.  And yet, still, when corn meets
tragedy face to face, we have politics.
        -- Dalglish, Larsen and Sutherland, "Root Crops and
           Ground Cover"
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Andrea: Unhappy the land that has no heroes.
Galileo: No, unhappy the land that _____needs heroes.
        -- Bertolt Brecht, "Life of Galileo"
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Another such victory over the Romans, and we are undone.
        -- Pyrrhus
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Any excuse will serve a tyrant.
        -- Aesop
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    "Any news from the President on a successor?" he asked hopefully.
    "None," Anita replied.  "She's having great difficulty finding someone
qualified who is willing to accept the post."
    "Then I stay," said Dr. Fresh.  "I'm not good for much, but I
can at least make a decision."
    "Somewhere," he grumphed, "there must be a naive, opportunistic
young welp with a masochistic streak who would like to run the most
up-and-down bureaucracy in the history of mankind."
        -- R.L. Forward, "Flight of the Dragonfly"
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Anybody that wants the presidency so much that he'll spend two years
organising and campaigning for it is not to be trusted with the office.
        -- David Broder
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Anyone who is capable of getting themselves made President should on no
account be allowed to do the job.
        -- Douglas Adams, "The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy"
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As long as war is regarded as wicked, it will always have its fascination.
When it is looked upon as vulgar, it will cease to be popular.
        -- Oscar Wilde, "Intentions"
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Audacity, and again, audacity, and always audacity.
        -- G.J. Danton
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Ban the bomb.  Save the world for conventional warfare.
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Be it our wealth, our jobs, or even our homes; nothing is safe while the
legislature is in session.
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Bedfellows make strange politicians.
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Blessed are the young, for they shall inherit the national debt.
        -- Herbert Hoover
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C'est magnifique, mais ce n'est pas la guerre!
    [It is magnificent, but it is not war]
        -- Pierre Bosquet, witnessing the charge of the Light Brigade
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"Cable is not a luxury, since many areas have poor TV reception."
        -- The mayor of Tucson, Arizona, 1989
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Canada Post doesn't really charge 32 cents for a stamp.  It's 2 cents
for postage and 30 cents for storage.
        -- Gerald Regan, Cabinet Minister, 12/31/83 Financial Post
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Census Taker to Housewife:
Did you ever have the measles, and, if so, how many?
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Concerning the war in Vietnam, Senator George Aiken of Vermount noted
in January, 1966, "I'm not very keen for doves or hawks.  I think we need
more owls."
        -- Bill Adler, "The Washington Wits"
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Conquering Russia should be done steppe by steppe.
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Corruption is not the #1 priority of the Police Commissioner.  His job
is to enforce the law and fight crime.
        -- P.B.A. President E. J. Kiernan
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Crime does not pay ... as well as politics.
        -- Alfred E. Newman
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Cutting the space budget really restores my faith in humanity.  It
eliminates dreams, goals, and ideals and lets us get straight to the
business of hate, debauchery, and self-annihilation."
        -- Johnny Hart
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Demand the establishment of the government in its rightful home at Disneyland.
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Democracy becomes a government of bullies, tempered by editors.
        -- Ralph Waldo Emerson
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Democracy is a device that insures we shall be governed no better than
we deserve.
        -- George Bernard Shaw
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Democracy is a form of government in which it is permitted to wonder
aloud what the country could do under first-class management.
        -- Senator Soaper
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Democracy is a form of government that substitutes election by the
incompetent many for appointment by the corrupt few.
        -- G.B. Shaw
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Democracy is a government where you can say what you think even if you
don't think.
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Democracy is a process by which the people are free to choose the man who
will get the blame.
        -- Laurence J. Peter
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Democracy is good.  I say this because other systems are worse.
        -- Jawaharlal Nehru
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Democracy is the name we give the people whenever we need them.
        -- Arman de Caillavet, 1913
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Democracy is the recurrent suspicion that more than half of the people
are right more than half of the time.
        -- E. B. White
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Democracy is the worst form of government except all those other
forms that have been tried from time to time.
        -- Winston Churchill
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Democracy means simply the bludgeoning of the people by the people for
the people.
        -- Oscar Wilde
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Demographic polls show that you have lost credibility across the board.
Especially with those 14 year-old Valley girls.
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Diplomacy is about surviving until the next century.  Politics is about
surviving until Friday afternoon.
        -- Sir Humphrey Appleby
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Diplomacy is the art of letting the other party have things your way.
        -- Daniele Vare
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Diplomacy is the art of saying "nice doggie" until you can find a rock.
        -- Wynn Catlin
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Diplomacy is to do and say, the nastiest thing in the nicest way.
        -- Balfour
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Disclose classified information only when a NEED TO KNOW exists.
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Don't be humble ... you're not that great.
        -- Golda Meir
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Don't mind him; politicians always sound like that.
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Don't steal... the IRS hates competition!
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Don't suspect your friends -- turn them in!
        -- "Brazil"
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Don't talk to me about naval tradition.  It's nothing but rum, sodomy and
the lash.
    -- Winston Churchill
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Don't vote -- it only encourages them!
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Due to a shortage of devoted followers, the production of great leaders
has been discontinued.
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Each person has the right to take part in the management of public affairs
in his country, provided he has prior experience, a will to succeed, a
university degree, influential parents, good looks, a curriculum vitae, two
3x4 snapshots, and a good tax record.
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Each person has the right to take the subway.
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Even though they raised the rate for first class mail in the United
States we really shouldn't complain -- it's still only two cents a day.

    [and getting better!  Soon it'll be down to a penny a day!]
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Ever wonder if taxation without representation might have been cheaper?
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Every country has the government it deserves.
        -- Joseph De Maistre
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Every one says that politicians lie all the time, and that just isn't so!
But you do have to understand body language to know when they're lying and
when they aren't.

    When a politician rubs his nose, he isn't lying.
    When a politician tugs on his ear, he isn't lying.
    When a politician scratches his collar bone, he isn't lying.
    When his mouth starts moving, that's when he's lying!
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Everything is controlled by a small evil group to which, unfortunately,
no one we know belongs.
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Extremism in the defense of liberty is no vice... moderation in the pursuit
of justice is no virtue.
        -- Barry Goldwater
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Fanaticism consists of redoubling your effort when you have forgotten your aim.
        -- George Santayana
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Far back in the mists of ancient time, in the great and glorious days of the
former Galactic Empire, life was wild, rich and largely tax free.

Mighty starships plied their way between exotic suns, seeking adventure and
reward among the furthest reaches of Galactic space.  In those days, spirits
were brave, the stakes were high, men were real men, women were real women
and small furry creatures from Alpha Centauri were real small furry creatures
from Alpha Centauri.  And all dared to brave unknown terrors, to do mighty
deeds, to boldly split infinitives that no man had split before -- and thus
was the Empire forged.
        -- Douglas Adams, "The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy"
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Fay: The British police force used to be run by men of integrity.
Truscott: That is a mistake which has been rectified.
        -- Joe Orton, "Loot"
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Fear and loathing, my man, fear and loathing.
        -- H.S. Thompson
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First rule of public speaking.
    First, tell 'em what you're goin' to tell 'em;
    then tell 'em;
    then tell 'em what you've tole 'em.
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For the first time we have a weapon that nobody has used for thirty years.
This gives me great hope for the human race.
        -- Harlan Ellison
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Forgive him, for he believes that the customs of his tribe are the laws
of nature!
        -- G.B. Shaw
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Fraud is the homage that force pays to reason.
        -- Charles Curtis, "A Commonplace Book"
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Free Speech Is The Right To Shout 'Theater' In A Crowded Fire.
        -- A Yippie Proverb
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Freedom begins when you tell Mrs. Grundy to go fly a kite.
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Freedom is nothing else but the chance to do better.
        -- Camus
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Freedom is slavery.
Ignorance is strength.
War is peace.
        -- George Orwell
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Freedom of the press is for those who happen to own one.
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Freedom's just another word for nothing left to lose.
        -- Kris Kristofferson, "Me and Bobby McGee"
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"... gentlemen do not read each other's mail."
        -- Secretary of State Henry Stimson, on closing down
           the Black Chamber, the precursor to the National
           Security Agency.
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Gentlemen,
    Whilst marching from Portugal to a position which commands the
approach to Madrid and the French forces, my officers have been
diligently complying with your requests which have been sent by H.M. ship
from London to Lisbon and thence by dispatch to our headquarters.
    We have enumerated our saddles, bridles, tents and tent poles,
and all manner of sundry items for which His Majesty's Government holds
me accountable. I have dispatched reports on the character, wit, and
spleen of every officer. Each item and every farthing has been accounted
for, with two regrettable exceptions for which I beg your indulgence.
    Unfortunately the sum of one shilling and ninepence remains
unaccounted for in one infantry battalion's petty cash and there has been
a hideous confusion as the the number of jars of raspberry jam issued to
one cavalry regiment during a sandstorm in western Spain.  This
reprehensible carelessness may be related to the pressure of circumstance,
since we are war with France, a fact which may come as a bit of a surprise
to you gentlemen in Whitehall.
    This brings me to my present purpose, which is to request
elucidation of my instructions from His Majesty's Government so that I
may better understand why I am dragging an army over these barren plains.
I construe that perforce it must be one of two alternative duties, as
given below.  I shall pursue either one with the best of my ability, but
I cannot do both:
    1. To train an army of uniformed British clerks in Spain for the
benefit of the accountants and copy-boys in London or perchance:
    2. To see to it that the forces of Napoleon are driven out of Spain.
        -- Duke of Wellington, to the British Foreign Office,
           London, 1812
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George Orwell 1984.  Northwestern 0.
        -- Chicago Reader 10/15/82
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George Orwell was an optimist.
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George Washington was first in war, first in peace -- and the first to
have his birthday juggled to make a long weekend.
        -- Ashley Cooper
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Give all orders verbally.  Never write anything down that might go into a
"Pearl Harbor File".
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"Give me enough medals, and I'll win any war."
        -- Napoleon
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Giving money and power to governments is like giving whiskey and
car keys to teenage boys.
    -- P.J. O'Rourke
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God shows his contempt for wealth by the kind of person he selects to
receive it.
        -- Austin O'Malley
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Good government never depends upon laws, but upon the personal qualities of
those who govern.  The machinery of government is always subordinate to the
will of those who administer that machinery.  The most important element of
government, therefore, is the method of choosing leaders.
        -- Frank Herbert, "Children of Dune"
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Good leaders being scarce, following yourself is allowed.
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Got a complaint about the Internal Revenue Service?
Call the convenient toll-free "IRS Taxpayer Complaint Hot Line Number":

    1-800-AUDITME
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Govern a great nation as you would cook a small fish.  Don't overdo it.
        -- Lao Tsu
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Government [is] an illusion the governed should not encourage.
        -- John Updike, "Couples"
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Government lies, and newspapers lie, but in a democracy they are different lies.
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Government spending?  I don't know what it's all about.  I don't know
any more about this thing than an economist does, and, God knows, he
doesn't know much.
        -- Will Rogers
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    Graduating seniors, parents and friends...
    Let me begin by reassuring you that my remarks today will stand up
to the most stringent requirements of the new appropriateness.
    The intra-college sensitivity advisory committee has vetted the
text of even trace amounts of subconscious racism, sexism and classism.
    Moreover, a faculty panel of deconstructionists have reconfigured
the rhetorical components within a post-structuralist framework, so as to
expunge any offensive elements of western rationalism and linear logic.
    Finally, all references flowing from a white, male, eurocentric
perspective have been eliminated, as have any other ruminations deemed
denigrating to the political consensus of the moment.

    Thank you and good luck.
        -- Doonesbury, the University Chancellor's graduation speech.
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Great Moments in History: #3

August 27, 1949:
    A Hall of Fame opened to honor outstanding members of the
    Women's Air Corp.  It was a WAC's Museum.
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    Grover Cleveland, though constantly at loggerheads with the
Senate, got on better with the House of Representatives.  A popular
story circulating during his presidency concerned the night he was
roused by his wife crying, "Wake up!  I think there are burglars in the
house."
    "No, no, my dear," said the president sleepily, "in the Senate maybe,
but not in the House."
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Grub first, then ethics.
        -- Bertolt Brecht
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Hark ye, Clinker, you are a most notorious offender.  You stand convicted of
sickness, hunger, wretchedness, and want.
        -- Tobias Smollet
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Has the great art and mystery of politics no apparent utility? Does it
appear to be unqualifiedly ratty, raffish, sordid, obscene and low down,
and its salient virtuosi a gang of umitigated scoundrels?  Then let us
not forget its high capacity to soothe and tickel the midriff, its
incomparable services as a maker of entertainment.
        -- H.L. Mencken, "A Carnival of Buncombe"
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Have you noticed the way people's intelligence capabilities decline
sharply the minute they start waving guns around?
        -- Dr. Who
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He didn't run for reelection.  "Politics brings you into contact with all
the people you'd give anything to avoid," he said. "I'm staying home."
        -- Garrison Keillor, "Lake Wobegone Days"
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He is the best of men who dislikes power.
        -- Mohammed
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He that would govern others, first should be the master of himself.
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He thinks the Gettysburg Address is where Lincoln lived.
        -- Wanda, "A Fish Called Wanda"
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He who attacks the fundamentals of the American broadcasting industry
attacks democracy itself.
        -- William S. Paley, chairman of CBS
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He who renders warfare fatal to all engaged in it will be the greatest
benefactor the world has yet known.
        -- Sir Richard Burton
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He who slings mud generally loses ground.
        -- Adlai Stevenson
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He's just a politician trying to save both his faces...
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Hear me, my chiefs, I am tired; my heart is sick and sad.  From where the
sun now stands I Will Fight No More Forever.
        -- Chief Joseph of the Nez Perce
%
Here comes the orator, with his flood of words and his drop of reason.
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History has much to say on following the proper procedures.  From a history
of the Mexican revolution:
    "Hidalgo was later defeated at Guadalajara.  The rebel army was
captured on its way through the mountains.  All were courtmartialed and
shot, except Hidalgo, because he was a priest.  He was handed over to
the bishop of Durango who excommunicated him and returned him to the
army where he was then executed."
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History is on our side (as long as we can control the historians).
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History is the version of past events that people have decided to agree on.
        -- Napoleon Bonaparte, "Maxims"
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History shows that the human mind, fed by constant accessions of knowledge,
periodically grows too large for its theoretical coverings, and bursts them
asunder to appear in new habiliments, as the feeding and growing grub, at
intervals, casts its too narrow skin and assumes another...  Truly the imago
state of Man seems to be terribly distant, but every moult is a step gained.
        -- Charles Darwin, from "Origin of the Species"
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History teaches us that men and nations behave wisely once they have
exhausted all other alternatives.
        -- Abba Eban
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How can you govern a nation which has 246 kinds of cheese?
        -- Charles de Gaulle
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How is the world ruled, and how do wars start?  Diplomats tell lies to
journalists, and they believe what they read.
        -- Karl Kraus, "Aphorisms and More Aphorisms"
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I am a friend of the working man, and I would rather be his friend
than be one.
        -- Clarence Darrow
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I am convinced that the truest act of courage is to sacrifice ourselves
for others in a totally nonviolent struggle for justice.  To be a man
is to suffer for others.
        -- Cesar Chavez
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I am not a politician and my other habits are also good.
        -- A. Ward
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I can hire one half of the working class to kill the other half.
        -- Jay Gould
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I don't care how poor and inefficient a little country is; they like to
run their own business.  I know men that would make my wife a better
husband than I am; but, darn it, I'm not going to give her to 'em.
        -- The Best of Will Rogers
%
"I don't care who does the electing as long as I get to do the nominating."
        -- Boss Tweed
%
I don't like the Dutchman.  He's a crocodile.  He's sneaky.  I don't trust him.
        -- Jack "Legs" Diamond, just before a peace conference
           with Dutch Schultz.

I don't trust Legs.  He's nuts.  He gets excited and starts pulling a
trigger like another guy wipes his nose.
        -- Dutch Schultz, just before a peace conference with
           "Legs" Diamond.
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I don't mind what Congress does, as long as they don't do it in the
streets and frighten the horses.
        -- Victor Hugo
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I DON'T THINK I'M ALONE when I say I'd like to see more and more planets
fall under the ruthless domination of our solar system.
        -- Jack Handley, The New Mexican, 1988.
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I find this corpse guilty of carrying a concealed weapon and I fine it $40.
        -- Judge Roy Bean, finding a pistol and $40 on a man he'd
           just shot.
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I found Rome a city of bricks and left it a city of marble.
        -- Augustus Caesar
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I have a dream.  I have a dream that one day, on the red hills of Georgia,
the sons of former slaves and the sons of former slaveowners will be able to
sit down together at the table of brotherhood.
        -- Martin Luther King, Jr.
%
I have already given two cousins to the war and I stand ready to sacrifice
my wife's brother.
        -- Artemus Ward
%
I have always noticed that whenever a radical takes to Imperialism,
he catches it in a very acute form.
        -- Winston Churchill, 1903
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I have discovered the art of deceiving diplomats. I tell them the truth
and they never believe me.
        -- Camillo Di Cavour
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I have gained this by philosophy:
that I do without being commanded what others do only from fear of the law.
        -- Aristotle
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I have never understood this liking for war.  It panders to instincts
already catered for within the scope of any respectable domestic establishment.
        -- Alan Bennett
%
I hold it, that a little rebellion, now and then, is a good thing...
        -- Thomas Jefferson
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I know not with what weapons World War III will be fought, but World
War IV will be fought with sticks and stones.
        -- Albert Einstein
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I like to believe that people in the long run are going to do more to promote
peace than our governments.  Indeed, I think that people want peace so much
that one of these days governments had better get out of the way and let them
have it.
        -- Dwight D. Eisenhower
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I might have gone to West Point, but I was too proud to speak to a congressman.
        -- Will Rogers
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I needed the good will of the legislature of four states.  I formed the
legislative bodies with my own money.  I found that it was cheaper that way.
        -- Jay Gould
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I never deny, I never contradict.  I sometimes forget.
        -- Benjamin Disraeli, British PM, on dealing with the
           Royal Family
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I never vote for anyone.  I always vote against.
        -- W.C. Fields
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I owe the government $3400 in taxes.  So I sent them two hammers and a
toilet seat.
        -- Michael McShane
%
I place economy among the first and most important virtues, and public debt as
the greatest of dangers to be feared.  To preserve our independence, we must
not let our rulers load us with perpetual debt.  If we run into such debts, we
must be taxed in our meat and drink, in our necessities and in our comforts,
in our labor and in our amusements.  If we can prevent the government from
wasting the labor of the people, under the pretense of caring for them, they
will be happy.
        -- Thomas Jefferson
%
I pledge allegiance to the flag
of the United States of America
and to the republic for which it stands,
one nation,
indivisible,
with liberty
and justice for all.
        -- Francis Bellamy, 1892
%
I prefer the most unjust peace to the most righteous war.
        -- Cicero

Even peace may be purchased at too high a price.
        -- Poor Richard
%
I realize that the MX missile is none of our concern.  I realize that the
whole point of living in a democracy is that we pay professional
congresspersons to concern themselves with things like the MX missile so we
can be free to concern ourselves with getting hold of the plumber.

But from time to time, I feel I must address major public issues such as
this, because in a free and open society, where the very future of the world
hinges on decisions made by our elected leaders, you never win large cash
journalism awards if you stick to the topics I usually write about, such as
nose-picking.
        -- Dave Barry, "At Last, the Ultimate Deterrent Against
           Political Fallout"
%
I see a good deal of talk from Washington about lowering taxes.  I hope
they do get 'em lowered down enough so people can afford to pay 'em.
        -- The Best of Will Rogers
%
I see where we are starting to pay some attention to our neigbors to
the south.  We could never understand why Mexico wasn't just crazy about
us; for we have always had their good will, and oil and minerals, at heart.
        -- The Best of Will Rogers
%
I steal.
        -- Sam Giancana, explaining his livelihood to his draft board

Easy.  I own Chicago.  I own Miami.  I own Las Vegas.
        -- Sam Giancana, when asked what he did for a living
%
I think that all good, right thinking people in this country are sick and
tired of being told that all good, right thinking people in this country are
fed up with being told that all good, right thinking people in this country
are fed up with being sick and tired.  I'm certainly not, and I'm sick and
tired of being told that I am!
        -- Monty Python
%
I think the world is run by C students.
        -- Al McGuire
%
I trust the first lion he meets will do his duty.
        -- J.P. Morgan on Teddy Roosevelt's safari
%
I try not to break the rules but merely to test their elasticity.
        -- Bill Veeck
%
I try to keep an open mind, but not so open that my brains fall out.
        -- Judge Harold T. Stone
%
I use not only all the brains I have, but all those I can borrow as well.
        -- Woodrow Wilson
%
I used to be a rebel in my youth.

This cause... that cause... (chuckle) I backed 'em ALL!  But I learned.
Rebellion is simply a device used by the immature to hide from his own
problems.  So I lost interest in politics.  Now when I feel aroused by
a civil rights case or a passport hearing... I realize it's just a device.
I go to my analyst and we work it out.  You have no idea how much better
I feel these days.
        -- J. Feiffer
%
I want to be the white man's brother, not his brother-in-law.
        -- Martin Luther King, Jr.
%
I was appalled by this story of the destruction of a member of a valued
endangered species.  It's all very well to celebrate the practicality of
pigs by ennobling the porcine sibling who constructed his home out of
bricks and mortar.  But to wantonly destroy a wolf, even one with an
excessive taste for porkers, is unconscionable in these ecologically
critical times when both man and his domestic beasts continue to maraud
the earth.
        Sylvia Kamerman, "Book Reviewing"
%
I was offered a job as a hoodlum and I turned it down cold.  A thief is
anybody who gets out and works for his living, like robbing a bank or
breaking into a place and stealing stuff, or kidnapping somebody.  He really
gives some effort to it.  A hoodlum is a pretty lousy sort of scum.  He
works for gangsters and bumps guys off when they have been put on the spot.
Why, after I'd made my rep, some of the Chicago Syndicate wanted me to work
for them as a hood -- you know, handling a machine gun.  They offered me
two hundred and fifty dollars a week and all the protection I needed.  I
was on the lam at the time and not able to work at my regular line.  But
I wouldn't consider it.  "I'm a thief," I said.  "I'm no lousy hoodlum."
        -- Alvin Karpis, "Public Enemy Number One"
%
I went to my mother and told her I intended to commence a different life.  I
asked for and obtained her blessing and at once commenced the career of a
robber.
        -- Tiburcio Vasquez
%
I wish a robot would get elected president.  That way, when he came to town,
we could all take a shot at him and not feel too bad.
        -- Jack Handley
%
I would like the government to do all it can to mitigate, then, in
understanding, in mutuality of interest, in concern for the common good,
our tasks will be solved.
        -- Warren G. Harding
%
I would like to electrocute everyone who uses the word 'fair' in connection
with income tax policies.
        -- William F. Buckley
%
I would much rather have men ask why I have no statue, than why I have one.
        -- Marcus Procius Cato
%
I would rather be a serf in a poor man's house and be above ground than
reign among the dead.
        -- Achilles, "The Odessey", XI, 489-91
%
I'd like to see the government get out of war altogether and leave the
whole field to private industry.
        -- Joseph Heller
%
"I'll carry your books, I'll carry a tune, I'll carry on, carry over,
carry forward, Cary Grant, cash & carry, Carry Me Back To Old Virginia,
I'll even Hara Kari if you show me how, but I will *not* carry a gun."
        -- Hawkeye, M*A*S*H
%
"I'll rob that rich person and give it to some poor deserving slob.
That will *prove* I'm Robin Hood."
        -- Daffy Duck, "Robin Hood Daffy", [1958, Chuck Jones]
%
I'm going to Vietnam at the request of the White House.  President Johnson
says a war isn't really a war without my jokes.
        -- Bob Hope
%
"I'm not stupid, I'm not expendable, and I'M NOT GOING!"
%
I'm proud to be paying taxes in the United States.  The only thing is
-- I could be just as proud for half the money.
        -- Arthur Godfrey
%
"I'm willing to sacrifice anything for this cause, even other people's lives."
%
I've always considered statesmen to be more expendable than soldiers.
%
If a nation values anything more than freedom, it will lose its freedom;
and the irony of it is that if it is comfort or money it values more, it
will lose that, too.
        -- W. Somerset Maugham
%
If built in great numbers, motels will be used for nothing but illegal
purposes.
        -- J. Edgar Hoover
%
If everybody minded their own business, the world would go around a deal faster.
        -- The Duchess, "Through the Looking Glass"
%
If fifty million people say a foolish thing, it's still a foolish thing.
        -- Bertrand Russell
%
If God had meant for us to be in the Army, we would have been born with
green, baggy skin.
%
If God wanted us to have a President, He would have sent us a candidate.
        -- Jerry Dreshfield
%
If Karl, instead of writing a lot about Capital, had made a lot of Capital,
it would have been much better.
        -- Karl Marx's Mother
%
If Patrick Henry thought that taxation without representation was bad,
he should see how bad it is with representation.
%
If people have to choose between freedom and sandwiches, they
will take sandwiches.
        -- Lord Boyd-orr

Eats first, morals after.
        -- Bertolt Brecht, "The Threepenny Opera"
%
If pro is the opposite of con, what is the opposite of progress?
%
If society fits you comfortably enough, you call it freedom.
        -- Robert Frost
%
If the American dream is for Americans only, it will remain our dream
and never be our destiny.
        -- Ren'e de Visme Williamson
%
If the government doesn't trust the people, why doesn't it dissolve them
and elect a new people?
%
"If the King's English was good enough for Jesus, it's good enough for me!"
        -- "Ma" Ferguson, Governor of Texas (circa 1920)
%
If the rich could pay the poor to die for them, what a living the poor
could make!
%
If they were so inclined, they could impeach him because they don't like
his necktie.
        -- Attorney General William Saxbe
%
If voting could change the system, it would be illegal.  If not voting
could change the system, it would be illegal.
%
If we all work together, we can totally disrupt the system.
%
If we can ever make red tape nutritional, we can feed the world.
        -- R. Schaeberle, "Management Accounting"
%
If we suffer tamely a lawless attack upon our liberty, we encourage it,
and involve others in our doom.
        -- Samuel Adams
%
If we won't stand together, we don't stand a chance.
%
If you don't strike oil in twenty minutes, stop boring.
        -- Andrew Carnegie, on public speaking
%
"If you ever want to get anywhere in politics, my boy, you're going to
have to get a toehold in the public eye."
%
If you give Congress a chance to vote on both sides of an issue, it
will always do it.
        -- Les Aspin, D., Wisconsin
%
If you go on with this nuclear arms race, all you are going to do is
make the rubble bounce.
        -- Winston Churchill
%
If you live in a country run by committee, be on the committee.
        -- Graham Summer
%
If you make any money, the government shoves you in the creek once a year
with it in your pockets, and all that don't get wet you can keep.
        -- The Best of Will Rogers
%
If you took all of the grains of sand in the world, and lined
them up end to end in a row, you'd be working for the government!
        -- Mr. Interesting
%
If you want to understand your government, don't begin by reading the
Constitution.  It conveys precious little of the flavor of today's
statecraft.  Instead, read selected portions of the Washington telephone
directory containing listings for all the organizations with titles
beginning with the word "National."
        -- George Will
%
If you wants to get elected president, you'se got to think up some
memoraboble homily so's school kids can be pestered into memorizin'
it, even if they don't know what it means.
        -- Walt Kelly, "The Pogo Party"
%
If your hands are clean and your cause is just and your demands are
reasonable, at least it's a start.
%
Illegal aliens have always been a problem in the United States. Ask any Indian.
        -- Robert Orben

Immigration is the sincerest form of flattery.
        -- Jack Paar
%
Imbalance of power corrupts and monopoly of power corrupts absolutely.
        -- Genji
%
Immigration is the sincerest form of flattery.
        -- Jack Paar
%
In America, any boy may become president and I suppose that's just one
of the risks he takes.
        -- Adlai Stevenson
%
In an orderly world, there's always a place for the disorderly.
%
In case of atomic attack, the federal ruling against prayer in schools
will be temporarily canceled.
%
In defeat, unbeatable; in victory, unbearable.
        -- W. Churchill, on General Montgomery
%
In Dr. Johnson's famous dictionary patriotism is defined as the last
resort of the scoundrel.  With all due respect to an enlightened but
inferior lexicographer I beg to submit that it is the first.
        -- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary"
%
In fiction the recourse of the powerless is murder; in life the recourse
of the powerless is petty theft.
%
In Germany they first came for the Communists and I didn't speak up because
I wasn't a Communist.  Then they came for the Jews, and I didn't speak up
because I wasn't a Jew.  Then they came for the trade unionists, and I
didn't speak up because I wasn't a trade unionist.  Then they came for the
Catholics, and I didn't speak up because I was a Protestant.  Then they came
for me -- and by that time no one was left to speak up.
        -- Pastor Martin Niemoller
%
In Italy, for thirty years under the Borgias, they had warfare, terror,
murder, and bloodshed, but they produced Michaelangelo, Leonardo da Vinci
and the Renaissance.  In Switzerland, they had brotherly love, they had
five hundred years of democracy and peace -- and what did they produce?
The cuckoo-clock.
        -- Orson Welles, "The Third Man"
%
In our civilization, and under our republican form of government, intelligence
is so highly honored that it is rewarded by exemption from the cares of office.
        -- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary"
%
In Pierre Trudeau, Canada has finally produced a Prime Minister worthy of
assassination.
        -- John Diefenbaker
%
In the Halls of Justice the only justice is in the halls.
        -- Lenny Bruce
%
In those days he was wiser than he is now -- he used to frequently take
my advice.
        -- Winston Churchill
%
In war it is not men, but the man who counts.
        -- Napoleon
%
In war, truth is the first casualty.
        -- U Thant
%
... indifference is a militant thing ... when it goes away it leaves
smoking ruins, where lie citizens bayonetted through the throat.  It is
not a children's pastime like mere highway robbery.
        -- Stephen Crane
%
Individualists unite!
%
Indomitable in retreat; invincible in advance; insufferable in victory.
        -- Winston Churchill, on General Montgomery
%
Inform all the troops that communications have completely broken down.
%
    Inheritance taxes are getting so out of line, that the deceased family
often doesn't have a legacy to stand on.
%
Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.
        -- Martin Luther King, Jr.
%
Interesting poll results reported in today's New York Post: people on the
street in midtown Manhattan were asked whether they approved of the US
invasion of Grenada.  Fifty-three percent said yes; 39 percent said no;
and 8 percent said "Gimme a quarter?"
        -- David Letterman
%
Interfere?  Of course we should interfere!  Always do what you're
best at, that's what I say.
        -- Doctor Who
%
It follows that any commander in chief who undertakes to carry out a plan
which he considers defective is at fault; he must put forth his reasons,
insist of the plan being changed, and finally tender his resignation rather
than be the instrument of his army's downfall.
        -- Napoleon, "Military Maxims and Thought"
%
It got to the point where I had to get a haircut or both feet firmly
planted in the air.
%
It is better to die on your feet than to live on your knees.
%
It is better to wear chains than to believe you are free, and weight
yourself down with invisible chains.
%
It is difficult to legislate morality in the absence of moral legislators.
%
It is easier to be a "humanitarian" than to render your own country its
proper due; it is easier to be a "patriot" than to make your community a
better place to live in; it is easier to be a "civic leader" than to treat
your own family with loving understanding; for the smaller the focus of
attention, the harder the task.
        -- Sydney J. Harris
%
It is easier to fight for one's principles than to live up to them.
        -- Alfred Adler
%
It is enough to make one sympathize with a tyrant for the determination
of his courtiers to deceive him for their own personal ends...
        -- Russell Baker and Charles Peters
%
It is impossible to defend perfectly against the attack of those who want
to die.
%
It is like saying that for the cause of peace, God and the Devil will
have a high-level meeting.
        -- Rev. Carl McIntire, on Nixon's China trip
%
It is necessary for the welfare of society that genius should be privileged
to utter sedition, to blaspheme, to outrage good taste, to corrupt the
youthful mind, and generally to scandalize one's uncles.
        -- George Bernard Shaw
%
It is not the critic who counts, or how the strong man stumbled, or whether
the doer of deeds could have done them better.  The credit belongs to the
man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and
blood, who strives valiantly, who errs and comes short again and again; who
knows the great enthusiasm, the great devotion, and who spends himself in a
worthy cause, and if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that
he'll never be with those cold and timid souls who never know either victory
or defeat.
        -- Teddy Roosevelt
%
It is now 10 p.m.  Do you know where Henry Kissinger is?
        -- Elizabeth Carpenter
%
It is said an Eastern monarch once charged his wise men to invent him a
sentence to be ever in view, and which should be true and appropriate
in all times and situations.  They presented him the words: "And this,
too, shall pass away."
        -- Abraham Lincoln
%
It may be better to be a live jackal than a dead lion, but it is better
still to be a live lion.  And usually easier.
        -- Lazarus Long
%
It pays in England to be a revolutionary and a bible-smacker most of
one's life and then come round.
        -- Lord Alfred Douglas
%
It seems a little silly now, but this country was founded as a protest
against taxation.
%
It seems like the less a statesman amounts to, the more he loves the flag.
%
It took a while to surface, but it appears that a long-distance credit card
may have saved a U.S. Army unit from heavy casualties during the Grenada
military rescue/invasion. Major General David Nichols, Air Force ... said
the Army unit was in a house surrounded by Cuban forces.  One soldier found
a telephone and, using his credit card, called Ft. Bragg, N.C., telling Army
officiers there of the perilous situation. The officers in turn called the
Air Force, which sent in gunships to scatter the Cubans and relieve the unit.
        -- Aviation Week and Space Technology
%
"It was a Roman who said it was sweet to die for one's country.  The
Greeks never said it was sweet to die for anything.  They had no vital lies."
        -- Edith Hamilton, "The Greek Way"
%
It was the Law of the Sea, they said.  Civilization ends at the waterline.
Beyond that, we all enter the food chain, and not always right at the top.
        -- Hunter S. Thompson
%
It's a good thing we don't get all the government we pay for.
%
It's a recession when your neighbour loses his job; it's a depression
when you lose yours.
        -- Harry S. Truman
%
    "It's a summons."
    "What's a summons?"
    "It means summon's in trouble."
        -- Rocky and Bullwinkle
%
It's getting uncommonly easy to kill people in large numbers, and the first
thing a principle does -- if it really is a principle -- is to kill somebody.
        -- Dorothy L. Sayers, "Gaudy Night"
%
It's important that people know what you stand for.
It's more important that they know what you won't stand for.
%
It's no surprise that things are so screwed up: everyone that knows how
to run a government is either driving taxicabs or cutting hair.
        -- George Burns
%
It's the opinion of some that crops could be grown on the moon.  Which raises
the fear that it may not be long before we're paying somebody not to.
        -- Franklin P. Jones
%
    Jacek, a Polish schoolboy, is told by his teacher that he has
been chosen to carry the Polish flag in the May Day parade.
    "Why me?"  whines the boy.  "Three years ago I carried the flag
when Brezhnev was the Secretary; then I carried the flag when it was
Andropov's turn, and again when Chernenko was in the Kremlin.  Why is
it always me, teacher?"
    "Because, Jacek, you have such golden hands," the teacher
explains.
        -- being told in Poland, 1987
%
Join in the new game that's sweeping the country.  It's called "Bureaucracy".
Everybody stands in a circle.  The first person to do anything loses.
%
Join the army, see the world, meet interesting, exciting people, and kill them.
%
Join the Navy; sail to far-off exotic lands, meet exciting interesting people,
and kill them.
%
Just as most issues are seldom black or white, so are most good solutions
seldom black or white.  Beware of the solution that requires one side to be
totally the loser and the other side to be totally the winner.  The reason
there are two sides to begin with usually is because neither side has all
the facts.  Therefore, when the wise mediator effects a compromise, he is
not acting from political motivation.  Rather, he is acting from a deep
sense of respect for the whole truth.
        -- Stephen R. Schwambach
%
Keep your laws off my body!
%
Know thyself.  If you need help, call the C.I.A.
%
L'etat c'est moi.
    [I am the state.]
        -- Louis XIV
%
Law stands mute in the midst of arms.
        -- Marcus Tullius Cicero
%
Lawful Dungeon Master -- and they're MY laws!
%
Leadership involves finding a parade and getting in front of it; what
is happening in America is that those parades are getting smaller and
smaller -- and there are many more of them.
        -- John Naisbitt, "Megatrends"
%
Let no guilty man escape.
        -- U.S. Grant
%
Let the people think they govern and they will be governed.
        -- William Penn, founder of Pennsylvania
%
Let us never negotiate out of fear, but let us never fear to negotiate.
        -- John F. Kennedy
%
Liberty don't work as good in practice as it does in speeches.
    -- The Best of Will Rogers
%
Liberty is always dangerous, but it is the safest thing we have.
        -- Harry Emerson Fosdick
%
Life is a concentration camp.  You're stuck here and there's no way
out and you can only rage impotently against your persecutors.
        -- Woody Allen
%
Listen, there is no courage or any extra courage that I know of to find out
the right thing to do.  Now, it is not only necessary to do the right thing,
but to do it in the right way and the only problem you have is what is the
right thing to do and what is the right way to do it.  That is the problem.
But this economy of ours is not so simple that it obeys to the opinion of
bias or the pronouncements of any particular individual, even to the President.
This is an economy that is made up of 173 million people, and it reflects
their desires, they're ready to buy, they're ready to spend, it is a thing
that is too complex and too big to be affected adversely or advantageously
just by a few words or any particular -- say, a little this and that, or even
a panacea so alleged.
        -- D.D. Eisenhower, in response to: "Has the government
        been lacking in courage and boldness in facing up to
        the recession?"
%
Lots of folks are forced to skimp to support a government that won't.
%
Love America -- or give it back.
%
"MacDonald has the gift on compressing the largest amount of words into
the smallest amount of thoughts."
        -- Winston Churchill
%
Majorities, of course, start with minorities.
        -- Robert Moses
%
Man is a military animal, glories in gunpowder, and loves parade.
        -- P.J. Bailey
%
Man is by nature a political animal.
        -- Aristotle
%
Many a bum show has been saved by the flag.
        -- George M. Cohan
%
Massachusetts has the best politicians money can buy.
%
Message will arrive in the mail.  Destroy, before the FBI sees it.
%
Mickey Mouse wears a Spiro Agnew watch.
%
Military intelligence is a contradiction in terms.
        -- Groucho Marx
%
Military justice is to justice what military music is to music.
        -- Groucho Marx
%
Most people want either less corruption or more of a chance to
participate in it.
%
Mr. Salter's side of the conversation was limited to expressions of assent.
When Lord Copper was right he said "Definitely, Lord Copper"; when he was
wrong, "Up to a point."
    "Let me see, what's the name of the place I mean?  Capital of Japan?
Yokohama isn't it?"
    "Up to a point, Lord Copper."
    "And Hong Kong definitely belongs to us, doesn't it?"
    "Definitely, Lord Copper."
        -- Evelyn Waugh, "Scoop"
%
My central memory of that time seems to hang on one or five or maybe forty
nights -- or very early mornings -- when I left the Fillmore half-crazy and,
instead of going home, aimed the big 650 Lightning across the Bay Bridge at
a hundred miles an hour ... booming through the Treasure Island tunnel at
the lights of Oakland and Berkeley and Richmond, not quite sure which
turnoff to take when I got to the other end ... but being absolutely certain
that no matter which way I went I would come to a place where people were
just as high and wild as I was: no doubt at all about that.
        -- Hunter S. Thompson
%
"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. Chesterton, "The Defendant"
%
My experience with government is when things are non-controversial, beautifully
co-ordinated and all the rest, it must be that not much is going on.
        -- J.F. Kennedy
%
My father was a saint, I'm not.
        -- Indira Gandhi
%
My folks didn't come over on the Mayflower, but they were there to meet
the boat.
%
My own life has been spent chronicling the rise and fall of human systems,
and I am convinced that we are terribly vulnerable.  ...  We should be
reluctant to turn back upon the frontier of this epoch. Space is indifferent
to what we do; it has no feeling, no design, no interest in whether or not
we grapple with it. But we cannot be indifferent to space, because the grand,
slow march of intelligence has brought us, in our generation, to a point
from which we can explore and understand and utilize it. To turn back now
would be to deny our history, our capabilities.
        -- James A. Michener
%
NAPOLEON: What shall we do with this soldier, Giuseppe?  Everything he
      says is wrong.
GIUSEPPE: Make him a general, Excellency, and then everything he says
      will be right.
        -- G. B. Shaw, "The Man of Destiny"
%
National security is in your hands - guard it well.
%
Necessity is the plea for every infringement of human freedom.
It is the argument of tyrants; it is the creed of slaves.
        -- William Pitt, 1783
%
Neglect of duty does not cease, by repetition, to be neglect of duty.
        -- Napoleon
%
Nemo me impune lacessit.
    [No one provokes me with impunity]
        -- Motto of the Crown of Scotland
%
Never let your sense of morals prevent you from doing what is right.
        -- Salvor Hardin, "Foundation"
%
Never trust an automatic pistol or a D.A.'s deal.
        -- John Dillinger
%
"Never underestimate the power of a small tactical nuclear weapon."
%
Next to being shot at and missed, nothing is really quite as satisfying
as an income tax refund.
        -- F. J. Raymond
%
Nihilism should commence with oneself.
%
No man's ambition has a right to stand in the way of performing a simple
act of justice.
        -- John Altgeld
%
No matter whether th' constitution follows th' flag or not, th' supreme
court follows th' iliction returns.
        -- Mr. Dooley
%
No, my friend, the way to have good and safe government, is not to trust it
all to one, but to divide it among the many, distributing to every one exactly
the functions he is competent to.  It is by dividing and subdividing these
republics from the national one down through all its subordinations, until it
ends in the administration of every man's farm by himself; by placing under
every one what his own eye may superintend, that all will be done for the best.
        -- Thomas Jefferson, to Joseph Cabell, 1816
%
No-one would remember the Good Samaritan if he had only had good
intentions.  He had money as well.
        -- Margaret Thatcher
%
Nobody shot me.
        -- Frank Gusenberg, his last words, when asked by police
        who had shot him 14 times with a machine gun in the Saint
        Valentine's Day Massacre.

Only Capone kills like that.
        -- George "Bugs" Moran, on the Saint Valentine's Day Massacre

The only man who kills like that is Bugs Moran.
        -- Al Capone, on the Saint Valentine's Day Massacre
%
Nobody takes a bribe.  Of course at Christmas if you happen to hold out
your hat and somebody happens to put a little something in it, well, that's
different.
        -- New York City Police Commissioner (Ret.) William P.
           O'Brien, instructions to the force.
%
Nothing in life is so exhilarating as to be shot at without result.
        -- Winston Churchill

Next to being shot at and missed, nothing is really quite as
satisfying as an income tax refund.
        -- F.J. Raymond
%
Nothing is illegal if one hundred businessmen decide to do it.
        -- Andrew Young
%
Nothing, nothing, nothing, no error, no crime is so absolutely repugnant
to God as everything which is official; and why? because the official is
so impersonal and therefore the deepest insult which can be offered to a
personality.
        -- Soren Kierkegaard
%
Now and then an innocent man is sent to the legislature.
%
"Nuclear war would mean abolition of most comforts, and disruption of
normal routines, for children and adults alike."
        -- Willard F. Libby, "You *Can* Survive Atomic Attack"
%
"Nuclear war would really set back cable."
        -- Ted Turner
%
O'Brien held up his left hand, its back toward Winston, with the
thumb hidden and the four fingers extended.
    "How many fingers am I holding up, Winston?"
    "Four."
    "And if the Party says that it is not four but five -- then how many?"
    "Four."
    The word ended in a gasp of pain.
        -- George Orwell
%
Oh, I don't blame Congress.  If I had $600 billion at my disposal, I'd
be irresponsible, too.
        -- Lichty & Wagner
%
Old soldiers never die.  Young ones do.
%
On account of being a democracy and run by the people, we are the only
nation in the world that has to keep a government four years, no matter
what it does.
        -- Will Rogers
%
Once is happenstance,
Twice is coincidence,
Three times is enemy action.
        -- Auric Goldfinger
%
    Once there was a marine biologist who loved dolphins. He spent his
time trying to feed and protect his beloved creatures of the sea.  One day,
in a fit of inventive genius, he came up with a serum that would make
dolphins live forever!
    Of course he was ecstatic. But he soon realized that in order to mass
produce this serum he would need large amounts of a certain compound that was
only found in nature in the metabolism of a rare South American bird.  Carried
away by his love for dolphins, he resolved that he would go to the zoo and
steal one of these birds.
    Unbeknownst to him, as he was arriving at the zoo an elderly lion was
escaping from its cage.  The zookeepers were alarmed and immediately began
combing the zoo for the escaped animal, unaware that it had simply lain down
on the sidewalk and had gone to sleep.
    Meanwhile, the marine biologist arrived at the zoo and procured his
bird.  He was so excited by the prospect of helping his dolphins that he
stepped absentmindedly stepped over the sleeping lion on his way back to his
car.  Immediately, 1500 policemen converged on him and arrested him for
transporting a myna across a staid lion for immortal porpoises.
%
Once upon a time there was a kingdom ruled by a great bear.  The peasants
were not very rich, and one of the few ways to become at all wealthy was
to become a Royal Knight.  This required an interview with the bear.  If
the bear liked you, you were knighted on the spot.  If not, the bear would
just as likely remove your head with one swat of a paw.  However, the family
of these unfortunate would-be knights was compensated with a beautiful
sheepdog from the royal kennels, which was itself a fairly valuable
possession.  And the moral of the story is:

The mourning after a terrible knight, nothing beats the dog of the bear that
hit you.
%
Once you've seen one nuclear war, you've seen them all.
%
One nuclear bomb can ruin your whole day.
%
One of the lessons of history is that nothing is often a good thing to
do and always a clever thing to say.
        -- Will Durant
%
One organism, one vote.
%
One planet is all you get.
%
One seldom sees a monument to a committee.
%
Only two kinds of witnesses exist.  The first live in a neighborhood where
a crime has been committed and in no circumstances have ever seen anything
or even heard a shot.  The second category are the neighbors of anyone who
happens to be accused of the crime.  These have always looked out of their
windows when the shot was fired, and have noticed the accused person standing
peacefully on his balcony a few yards away.
        -- Sicilian police officer
%
Our congratulations go to a Burlington Vermont civilian employee of the
local Army National Guard base.  He recently received a substational cash
award from our government for inventing a device for optical scanning.
His device reportedly will save the government more than $6 million a year
by replacing a more expensive helicopter maintenance tool with his own,
home-made, hand-held model.

Not suprisingly, we also have a couple of money-saving ideas that we submit
to the Pentagon free of charge:

    (a) Don't kill anybody.
    (b) Don't build things that do.
    (c) And don't pay other people to kill anybody.

We expect annual savings to be in the billions.
        -- Sojourners
%
Our sires' age was worse that our grandsires'.
We their sons are more worthless than they:
so in our turn we shall give the world a progeny yet more corrupt.
        -- Quintus Horatius Flaccus (Horace)
%
Our swords shall play the orators for us.
        -- Christopher Marlowe
%
Ours is a world of nuclear giants and ethical infants.
        -- General Omar N. Bradley
%
Patriotism is the last refuge of a scoundrel.
        -- S. Johnson, "The Life of Samuel Johnson" by J. Boswell

In Dr. Johnson's famous dictionary patriotism is defined as the last
resort of the scoundrel.  With all due respect to an enlightened but
inferior lexicographer I beg to submit that it is the first.
        -- Ambrose Bierce

When Dr. Johnson defined patriotism as the last refuge of a scoundrel,
he ignored the enormous possibilities of the word reform.
        -- Sen. Roscoe Conkling

Public office is the last refuge of a scoundrel.
        -- Boies Penrose
%
Patriotism is the virtue of the vicious.
        -- Oscar Wilde
%
Peace cannot be kept by force; it can only be achieved by understanding.
        -- Albert Einstein
%
Peace is much more precious than a piece of land... let there be no more wars.
        -- Mohammed Anwar Sadat, 1918-1981
%
People never lie so much as after a hunt, during a war, or before an election.
        -- Otto Von Bismarck
%
People of privilege will always risk their complete destruction
rather than surrender any material part of their advantage.
        -- John Kenneth Galbraith
%
People that can't find something to live for always seem to find something to
die for.  The problem is, they usually want the rest of us to die for it too.
%
People usually get what's coming to them ... unless it's been mailed.
%
People who develop the habit of thinking of themselves as world
citizens are fulfilling the first requirement of sanity in our time.
        -- Norman Cousins
%
Perhaps the most widespread illusion is that if we were in power we would
behave very differently from those who now hold it -- when, in truth, in
order to get power we would have to become very much like them.  (Lenin's
fatal mistake, both in theory and in practice.)
%
Persistence in one opinion has never been considered a merit in political
leaders.
        -- Marcus Tullius Cicero, "Ad familiares", 1st century BC
%
Pilfering Treasury property is paticularly dangerous: big thieves are
ruthless in punishing little thieves.
        -- Diogenes
%
Poland has gun control.
%
Political history is far too criminal a subject to be a fit thing to
teach children.
        -- W.H. Auden
%
Political speeches are like steer horns.  A point here, a point there,
and a lot of bull inbetween.
        -- Alfred E. Neuman
%
Political T.V. commercials prove one thing: some candidates can tell
all their good points and qualifications in just 30 seconds.
%
Politicians are the same all over.  They promise to build a bridge even
where there is no river.
    -- Nikita Khrushchev
%
Politicians should read science fiction, not westerns and detective stories.
        -- Arthur C. Clarke
%
Politicians speak for their parties, and parties never are, never have
been, and never will be wrong.
        -- Walter Dwight
%
Politics -- the gentle art of getting votes from the poor and campaign
funds from the rich by promising to protect each from the other.
        -- Oscar Ameringer
%
Politics and the fate of mankind are formed by men without ideals and without
greatness.  Those who have greatness within them do not go in for politics.
        -- Albert Camus
%
Politics are almost as exciting as war, and quite as dangerous.  In war,
you can only be killed once.
        -- Winston Churchill
%
Politics is not the art of the possible.  It consists in choosing
between the disastrous and the unpalatable.
        -- John Kenneth Galbraith
%
Politics is the ability to foretell what is going to happen tomorrow, next
week, next month and next year.  And to have the ability afterwards to
explain why it didn't happen.
        -- Winston Churchill
%
Politics makes strange bedfellows, and journalism makes strange politics.
        -- Amy Gorin
%
Politics, as a practice, whatever its professions, has always been the
systematic organisation of hatreds.
        -- Henry Adams, "The Education of Henry Adams"
%
Politics, like religion, hold up the torches of matrydom to the
reformers of error.
        -- Thomas Jefferson
%
Populus vult decipi.
    [The people like to be deceived.]
%
Post proelium, praemium.
    [After the battle, the reward.]
%
Postmen never die, they just lose their zip.
%
Poverty begins at home.
%
Poverty must have its satisfactions, else there would not be so many poor
people.
        -- Don Herold
%
Power corrupts.  Absolute power is kind of neat.
        -- John Lehman, Secretary of the Navy, 1981-1987
%
Power is poison.
%
Power is the finest token of affection.
%
Power tends to corrupt, absolute power corrupts absolutely.
        -- Lord Acton
%
Practical politics consists in ignoring facts.
        -- Henry Adams
%
President Reagan has noted that there are too many economic pundits and
forecasters and has decided on an excess prophets tax.
%
Put a rogue in the limelight and he will act like an honest man.
        -- Napoleon Bonaparte, "Maxims"
%
Question authority.
%
QUESTION AUTHORITY.

(Sez who?)
%
Question: Is it better to abide by the rules until they're changed or
help speed the change by breaking them?
%
Remember folks.  Street lights timed for 35 mph are also timed for 70 mph.
        -- Jim Samuels
%
"Remember, if it's being done correctly, here or abroad, it's ___not the U.S.
Army doing it!"
        -- Good Morning VietNam
%
Reporter (to Mahatma Gandhi): Mr Gandhi, what do you think of Western
    Civilization?
Gandhi:    I think it would be a good idea.
%
Reunite Gondwondaland!
%
Rev. Jim:    What does an amber light mean?
Bobby:        Slow down.
Rev. Jim:    What...   does...  an...  amber...  light...  mean?
Bobby:        Slow down.
Rev. Jim:    What....     does....     an....     amber....     light....
%
"Rights" is a fictional abstraction.  No one has "Rights", neither machines
nor flesh-and-blood.  Persons... have opportunities, not rights, which they
use or do not use.
        -- Lazarus Long
%
Rule the Empire through force.
        -- Shogun Tokugawa
%
Sauron is alive in Argentina!
%
Scrubbing floors and emptying bedpans has as much dignity as the Presidency.
        -- Richard Nixon
%
Secrecy is the beginning of tyranny.
%
Sed quis custodiet ipsos Custodes?
    [Who guards the Guardians?]
%
Sentenced to two years hard labor (for sodomy), Oscar Wilde stood handcuffed
in driving rain waiting for transport to prison.  "If this is the way Queen
Victoria treats her prisoners," he remarked, "she doesn't deserve to have
any."
%
Serfs up!
        -- Spartacus
%
Shah, shah!  Ayatollah you so!
%
Sherry [Thomas Sheridan] is dull, naturally dull; but it must have taken
him a great deal of pains to become what we now see him.  Such an excess of
stupidity, sir, is not in Nature.
        -- Samuel Johnson
%
Signs of crime: screaming or cries for help.
        -- The Brown University Security Crime Prevention Pamphlet
%
Since a politician never believes what he says, he is surprised
when others believe him.
        -- Charles DeGaulle
%
Since aerosols are forbidden, the police are using roll-on Mace!
%
[Sir Stafford Cripps] has all the virtues I dislike and none of the
vices I admire.
        -- Winston Churchill
%
Slaves are generally expected to sing as well as to work ... I did not, when
a slave, understand the deep meanings of those rude, and apparently incoherent
songs.  I was myself within the circle, so that I neither saw nor heard as
those without might see and hear.  They told a tale which was then altogether
beyond my feeble comprehension: they were tones, loud, long and deep,
breathing the prayer and complaint of souls boiling over with the bitterest
anguish.  Every tone was a testimony against slavery, and a prayer to God
for deliverance from chains.
        -- Frederick Douglass
%
So from the depths of its enchantment, Terra was able to calculate a course
of action.  Here at last was an opportunity to consort with Dirbanu on a
friendly basis -- great Durbanu which, since it had force fields which Earth
could not duplicate, must of necessity have many other things Earth could
use; mighty Durbanu before whom we would kneel in supplication (with purely-
for-defense bombs hidden in our pockets) with lowered heads (making invisible
the knife in our teeth) and ask for crumbs from their table (in order to
extrapolate the location of their kitchens).
        -- Theodore Sturgeon, "The World Well Lost"
%
... so long as the people do not care to exercise their freedom, those
who wish to tyrranize will do so; for tyrants are active and ardent,
and will devote themselves in the name of any number of gods, religious
and otherwise, to put shackles upon sleeping men.
        -- Voltarine de Cleyre
%
So many men, so many opinions; every one his own way.
        -- Publius Terentius Afer (Terence)
%
Some men rob you with a six-gun -- others with a fountain pen.
        -- Woodie Guthrie
%
    Somewhat alarmed at the continued growth of the number of employees
on the Department of Agriculture payroll in 1962, Michigan Republican Robert
Griffin proposed an amendment to the farm bill so that "the total number of
employees in the Department of Agriculture at no time exceeds the number of
farmers in America."
        -- Bill Adler, "The Washington Wits"
%
Stamp out organized crime!!  Abolish the IRS.
%
    Strange memories on this nervous night in Las Vegas.  Five years later?
Six?  It seems like a lifetime, or at least a Main Era -- the kind of peak that
never comes again.  San Fransisco in the middle sixties was a very special time
and place to be a part of.  Maybe it meant something.  Maybe not, in the long
run...  There was madness in any direction, at any hour.  If not across the
Bay, then up the Golden Gate or down 101 to Los Altos or La Honda...  You could
strike sparks anywhere. There was a fantastic universal sense that whatever we
were doing was right, that we were winning...
    And that, I think, was the handle -- that sense of inevitable victory
over the forces of Old and Evil.  Not in any mean or military sense; we didn't
need that. Our energy would simply prevail.  There was no point in fighting
-- on our side or theirs.  We had all the momentum; we were riding the crest
of a high and beautiful wave.  So now, less than five years later, you can go
up on a steep hill in Las Vegas and look West, and with the right kind of eyes
you can almost ___see the high-water mark -- that place where the wave finally
broke and rolled back.
        -- Hunter S. Thompson
%
Such a foolish notion, that war is called devotion, when the greatest
warriors are the ones who stand for peace.
%
Support your local police force -- steal!!
%
Support your right to arm bears!!
%
Support your right to bare arms!
        -- A message from the National Short-Sleeved Shirt Association
%
Surprise!  You are the lucky winner of random I.R.S. Audit!  Just type
in your name and social security number.  Please remember that leaving
the room is punishable under law:

Name
#
%
Take Care of the Molehills, and the Mountains Will Take Care of Themselves.
        -- Motto of the Federal Civil Service
%
Take your Senator to lunch this week.
%
TANSTAAFL
%
Tax reform means "Don't tax you, don't tax me, tax that fellow behind
the tree."
        -- Russell Long
%
Taxes are going up so fast, the government is likely to price itself
out of the market.
%
Taxes are not levied for the benefit of the taxed.
%
Ten persons who speak make more noise than ten thousand who are silent.
        -- Napoleon I
%
That government is best which governs least.
        -- Henry David Thoreau, "Civil Disobedience"
%
That's where the money was.
        -- Willie Sutton, on being asked why he robbed a bank

It's a rather pleasant experience to be alone in a bank at night.
        -- Willie Sutton
%
... The Anarchists' [national] anthem is an international anthem that
consists of 365 raspberries blown in very quick succession to the tune
of "Camptown Races".  Nobody has to stand up for it, nobody has to
listen to it, and, even better, nobody has to play it.
        -- Mike Harding, "The Armchair Anarchist's Almanac"
%
The Army needs leaders the way a foot needs a big toe.
        -- Bill Murray
%
The assertion that "all men are created equal" was of no practical use
in effecting our separation from Great Britain and it was placed in the
Declaration not for that, but for future use.
        --  Abraham Lincoln
%
The attacker must vanquish; the defender need only survive.
%
The avoidance of taxes is the only intellectual pursuit that carries any
reward.
        -- John Maynard Keynes
%
The better the state is established, the fainter is humanity.
To make the individual uncomfortable, that is my task.
        -- Nietzsche
%
The bureaucracy is expanding to meet the needs of an expanding bureaucracy.
%
The Constitution may not be perfect, but it's a lot better than what we've got!
%
The control of the production of wealth is the control of human life itself.
        -- Hilaire Belloc
%
The Crown is full of it!
        -- Nate Harris, 1775
%
The danger is not that a particular class is unfit to govern.  Every class
is unfit to govern.
        -- Lord Acton
%
The degree of civilization in a society can be judged by entering its prisons.
        -- F. Dostoyevski
%
The dirty work at political conventions is almost always done in the grim
hours between midnight and dawn.  Hangmen and politicians work best when
the human spirit is at its lowest ebb.
        -- Russell Baker
%
The distinction between Freedom and Liberty is not accurately known;
naturalists have been unable to find a living specimen of either.
        -- Ambrose Bierce
%
The doctrine of human equality reposes on this: that there is no man
really clever who has not found that he is stupid.
        -- Gilbert K. Chesterson
%
The end move in politics is always to pick up a gun.
        -- Buckminster Fuller
%
The eyes of taxes are upon you.
%
The fact that an opinion has been widely held is no evidence that it is not
utterly absurd; indeed, in view of the silliness of the majority of mankind,
a widespread belief is more often likely to be foolish than sensible.
        -- Bertrand Russell, in "Marriage and Morals", 1929
%
The fact that people are poor or discriminated against doesn't necessarily
endow them with any special qualities of justice, nobility, charity or
compassion.
        -- Saul Alinsky
%
The famous politician was trying to save both his faces.
%
The fashionable drawing rooms of London have always been happy to accept
outsiders -- if only on their own, albeit undemanding terms.  That is to
say, artists, so long as they are not too talented, men of humble birth,
so long as they have since amassed several million pounds, and socialists
so long as they are Tories.
        -- Christopher Booker
%
The first duty of a revolutionary is to get away with it.
        -- Abbie Hoffman
%
The founding fathers tried to set up a judicial system where the accused
received a fair trial, not a system to insure an acquittal on technicalities.
%
    The General disliked trying to explain the highly technical inner
workings of the U.S. Air Force.
    "$7,662 for a ten cup coffee maker, General?" the Senator asked.
    In his head he ran through his standard explanations.  "It's not so,"
he thought.  "It's a deterrent."  Soon he came up with, "It's computerized,
Senator.  Tiny computer chips make coffee that's smooth and full-bodied.  Try
a cup."
    The Senator did.  "Pfffttt!  Tastes like jet fuel!"
    "It's not so," the General thought.  "It's a deterrent."
    Then he remembered something.  "We bought a lot of untested computer
chips," the General answered.  "They got into everything.  Just a little
mix-up.  Nothing serious."
    Then he remembered something else.  It was at the site of the
mysterious B-1 crash.  A strange smell in the fuel lines.  It smelled like
coffee.  Smooth and full bodied...
        -- Another Episode of General's Hospital
%
The genius of our ruling class is that it has kept a majority of the
people from ever questioning the inequity of a system where most people
drudge along paying heavy taxes for which they get nothing in return.
        -- Gore Vidal
%
The government has just completed work on a missile that turned out to be a
bit of a boondoggle; nicknamed "Civil Servant", it won't work and they can't
fire it.
%
The Government just announced today the creation of the Neutron Bomb II.
Similar to the Neutron Bomb, the Neutron Bomb II not only kills people
and leaves buildings standing, but also does a little light housekeeping.
%
The graveyards are full of indispensable men.
        -- Charles de Gaulle
%
The greatest dangers to liberty lurk in insidious encroachment by men
of zeal, well-meaning but without understanding.
        -- Justice Louis D. Brandeis
%
The greatest disloyalty one can offer to great pioneers is to refuse to
move an inch from where they stood.
%
The hardest thing in the world to understand is the income tax.
        -- Albert Einstein
%
The hater of property and of government takes care to have his warranty
deed recorded, and the book written against fame and learning has the
author's name on the title page.
        -- Ralph Waldo Emerson, Journals, 1831
%
The health of a democratic society may be measured by the quality
of functions performed by private citizens.
        -- Alexis de Tocqueville
%
The income tax has made more liars out of the American people than golf
has.  Even when you make a tax form out on the level, you don't know
when it's through if you are a crook or a martyr.
        -- Will Rogers
%
The inherent vice of capitalism is the unequal sharing of blessings;
the inherent virtue of socialism is the equal sharing of misery.
        -- Churchill
%
The introduction of a new kind of music must be shunned as imperiling the
whole state, for styles of music are never disturbed without affecting
the most important political institutions. ...  The new style, gradually
gaining a lodgement, quitely insinuates itself into manners and customs,
and from it ... goes on to attack laws and constitutions, displaying the
utmost impudence, until it ends by overturning everything.
        -- Plato, "Republic", 370 B.C.
%
The IRS spends God knows how much of your tax money on these toll-free
information hot lines staffed by IRS employees, whose idea of a dynamite tax
tip is that you should print neatly.  If you ask them a real tax question,
such as how you can cheat, they're useless.

So, for guidance, you want to look to big business.  Big business never pays
a nickel in taxes, according to Ralph Nader, who represents a big consumer
organization that never pays a nickel in taxes...
        -- Dave Barry, "Sweating Out Taxes"
%
The law will never make men free; it is men who have got to make the law free.
        -- Henry David Thoreau
%
The Least Successful Executions
    History has furnished us with two executioners worthy of attention.
The first performed in Sydney in Australia.  In 1803 three attempts were
made to hang a Mr. Joseph Samuels.  On the first two of these the rope
snapped, while on the third Mr. Samuels just hung there peacefully until he
and everyone else got bored.  Since he had proved unsusceptible to capital
punishment, he was reprieved.
    The most important British executioner was Mr. James Berry who
tried three times in 1885 to hang Mr. John Lee at Exeter Jail, but on each
occasion failed to get the trap door open.
    In recognition of this achievement, the Home Secretary commuted
Lee's sentence to "life" imprisonment.  He was released in 1917, emigrated
to America and lived until 1933.
        -- Stephen Pile, "The Book of Heroic Failures"
%
The Least Successful Police Dogs
    America has a very strong candidate in "La Dur", a fearsome looking
schnauzer hound, who was retired from the Orlando police force in Florida
in 1978.  He consistently refused to do anything which might ruffle or
offend the criminal classes.
    His handling officer, Rick Grim, had to admit: "He just won't go up
and bite them.  I got sick and tired of doing that dog's work for him."
    The British contenders in this category, however, took things a
stage further.  "Laddie" and "Boy" were trained as detector dogs for drug
raids.  Their employment was terminated following a raid in the Midlands in
1967.
    While the investigating officer questioned two suspects, they
patted and stroked the dogs who eventually fell asleep in front of the
fire.  When the officer moved to arrest the suspects, one dog growled at
him while the other leapt up and bit his thigh.
        -- Stephen Pile, "The Book of Heroic Failures"
%
The less a statesman amounts to, the more he loves the flag.
        -- Kin Hubbard
%
The lion and the calf shall lie down together but the calf won't get much sleep.
        -- Woody Allen
%
"The Lord gave us farmers two strong hands so we could grab as much as
we could with both of them."
        -- Joseph Heller, "Catch-22"
%
The majority of the stupid is invincible and guaranteed for all time.  The
terror of their tyranny, however, is alleviated by their lack of consistency.
        -- Albert Einstein
%
The man who follows the crowd will usually get no further than the crowd.  The
man who walks alone is likely to find himself in places no one has ever been.
        -- Alan Ashley-Pitt
%
The man with the best job in the country is the Vice President.  All he has
to do is get up every morning and say, "How's the President?"
        -- Will Rogers

The vice-presidency ain't worth a pitcher of warm spit.
        -- Vice President John Nance Garner
%
The mark of the immature man is that he wants to die nobly for a cause,
while the mark of a mature man is that he wants to live humbly for one.
        -- Wilhelm Stekel
%
    The Minnesota Board of Education voted to consider requiring all
students to do some "volunteer work" as a prerequisite to high school
graduation.
    Senator Orrin Hatch said that "capital punishment is our society's
recognition of the sanctity of human life."
    According to the tax bill signed by President Reagan on December 22,
1987, Don Tyson and his sister-in-law Barbara run a "family farm."  Their
"farm" has 25,000 employees and grosses $1.7 billion a year.  But as a "family
farm" they get tax breaks that save them $135 million a year.
    Scott L. Pickard, spokesperson for the Massachusetts Department of
Public Works, calls them "ground-mounted confirmatory route markers."  You
probably call them road signs, but then you don't work in a government agency.
    It's not "elderly" or "senior citizens" anymore.  Now it's "chrono-
logically experienced citizens."
    According to the FAA, the propeller blade didn't break off, it was
just a case of "uncontained blade liberation."
        -- Quarterly Review of Doublespeak (NCTE)
%
The Moral Majority is neither.
%
The more control, the more that requires control.
%
The more you sweat in peace, the less you bleed in war.
%
The new Congressmen say they're going to turn the government around.  I
hope I don't get run over again.
%
The Official Colorado State Vegetable is now the "state legislator".
%
The only winner in the War of 1812 was Tchaikovsky.
        -- David Gerrold
%
The poetry of heroism appeals irresitably to those who don't go to a war,
and even more so to those whom the war is making enormously wealthy."
        -- Celine
%
The polite thing to do has always been to address people as they wish to be
addressed, to treat them in a way they think dignified.  But it is equally
important to accept and tolerate different standards of courtesy, not
expecting everyone else to adapt to one's own preferences.  Only then can
we hope to restore the insult to its proper social function of expressing
true distaste.
        -- Judith Martin, "Miss Manners' Guide to Excruciatingly
           Correct Behavior"
%
The politician is someone who deals in man's problems of adjustment.
To ask a politician to lead us is to ask the tail of a dog to lead the dog.
        -- Buckminster Fuller
%
The price of greatness is responsibility.
%
The price of seeking to force our beliefs on others is that someday
they might force their beliefs on us.
        -- Mario Cuomo
%
The primary theme of SoupCon is communication.  The acronym "LEO"
represents the secondary theme:

    Law Enforcement Officials

The overall theme of SoupCon shall be:

    Avoiding Communication with Law Enforcement Officials
        -- M. Gallaher
%
The problem with most conspiracy theories is that they seem to believe that
for a group of people to behave in a way detrimental to the common good
requires intent.
%
The problem with this country is that there is no death penalty for
incompetence.
%
The public demands certainties;  it must be told definitely and a bit
raucously that this is true and that is false.  But there are no certainties.
        -- H.L. Mencken, "Prejudice"
%
The public is an old woman.  Let her maunder and mumble.
        -- Thomas Carlyle
%
The Puritan hated bear-baiting, not because it gave pain to the bear, but
because it gave pleasure to the spectators.
        -- Thomas Macaulay, "History of England"
%
The question is, why are politicians so eager to be president?  What is it
about the job that makes it worth revealing, on national television, that
you have the ethical standards of a slime-coated piece of industrial waste?
        -- Dave Barry, "On Presidential Politics"
%
The revolution will not be televised.
%
"The Right Honorable Gentleman is indebted to his memory for his jests
and to his imagination for his facts."
        -- Sheridan
%
The rule is, jam to-morrow and jam yesterday, but never jam today.
        -- Lewis Carroll
%
The scum also rises.
        -- Dr. Hunter S. Thompson
%
The so-called lessons of history are for the most part the rationalizations
of the victors.  History is written by the survivors.
        -- Max Lerner
%
The time for action is past!  Now is the time for senseless bickering.
%
The time was the 19th of May, 1780.  The place was Hartford, Connecticut.
The day has gone down in New England history as a terrible foretaste of
Judgement Day.  For at noon the skies turned from blue to grey and by
mid-afternoon had blackened over so densely that, in that religious age,
men fell on their knees and begged a final blessing before the end came.
The Connecticut House of Representatives was in session.  And, as some of
the men fell down and others clamored for an immediate adjournment, the
Speaker of the House, one Col. Davenport, came to his feet.  He silenced
them and said these words: "The day of judgment is either approaching or
it is not.  If it is not, there is no cause for adjournment.  If it is, I
choose to be found doing my duty.  I wish therefore that candles may be
brought."
        -- Alistair Cooke
%
The trouble with this country is that there are too many politicians
who believe, with a conviction based on experience, that you can fool
all of the people all of the time.
        -- Franklin Adams
%
The two oldest professions in the world have been ruined by amateurs.
        -- G.B. Shaw
%
The two party system ... is a triumph of the dialectic.  It showed that
two could be one and one could be two and had probably been fabricated
by Hegel for the American market on a subcontract from General Dynamics.
        -- I.F. Stone
%
The universe is ruled by letting things take their course.  It cannot be
ruled by interfering.
        -- Chinese proverb
%
The very powerful and the very stupid have one thing in common.  Instead of
altering their views to fit the facts, they alter the facts to fit their
views ... which can be very uncomfortable if you happen to be one of the
facts that needs altering.
        -- Doctor Who, "Face of Evil"
%
"The wages of sin are death; but after they're done taking out taxes,
it's just a tired feeling:"
%
The way I understand it, the Russians are sort of a combination of evil and
incompetence... sort of like the Post Office with tanks.
        -- Emo Philips
%
The world's great men have not commonly been great scholars, nor its great
scholars great men.
        -- Oliver Wendell Holmes
%
The Worst Bank Robbery
    In August 1975 three men were on their way in to rob the Royal Bank of
Scotland at Rothesay, when they got stuck in the revolving doors.  They
had to be helped free by the staff and, after thanking everyone,
sheepishly left the building.
    A few minutes later they returned and announced their intention of
robbing the bank, but none of the staff believed them.  When they demanded
5,000 pounds in cash, the head cashier laughed at them, convinced that it
was a practical joke.
    Then one of the men jumped over the counter, but fell to the floor
clutching his ankle.  The other two tried to make their getaway, but got
trapped in the revolving doors again.
%
The Worst Prison Guards
    The largest number of convicts ever to escape simultaneously from a
maximum security prison is 124.  This record is held by Alcoente Prison,
near Lisbon in Portugal.
    During the weeks leading up to the escape in July 1978 the prison
warders had noticed that attendances had fallen at film shows which
included "The Great Escape", and also that 220 knives and a huge quantity
of electric cable had disappeared.  A guard explained, "Yes, we were
planning to look for them, but never got around to it."  The warders had
not, however, noticed the gaping holes in the wall because they were
"covered with posters".  Nor did they detect any of the spades, chisels,
water hoses and electric drills amassed by the inmates in large quantities.
The night before the breakout one guard had noticed that of the 36
prisoners in his block only 13 were present.  He said this was "normal"
because inmates sometimes missed roll-call or hid, but usually came back
the next morning.
    "We only found out about the escape at 6:30 the next morning when
one of the prisoners told us," a warder said later.  [...]  When they
eventually checked, the prison guards found that exactly half of the gaol's
population was missing.  By way of explanation the Justice Minister, Dr.
Santos Pais, claimed that the escape was "normal" and part of the
"legitimate desire of the prisoner to regain his liberty."
        -- Stephen Pile, "The Book of Heroic Failures"
%
There appears to be irrefutable evidence that the mere fact of overcrowding
induces violence.
        -- Harvey Wheeler
%
There are a lot of lies going around.... and half of them are true.
        -- Winston Churchill
%
There are no manifestos like cannon and musketry.
        -- The Duke of Wellington
%
There are only two things in this world that I am sure of, death and
taxes, and we just might do something about death one of these days.
        -- shades
%
There are two kinds of fool. One says, "This is old, and therefore good."
And one says, "This is new, and therefore better"
        -- John Brunner, "The Shockwave Rider"
%
There but for the grace of God, goes God.
        -- Winston Churchill, speaking of Sir Stafford Cripps.
%
There can be no daily democracy without daily citizenship.
        -- Ralph Nader
%
There cannot be a crisis next week.  My schedule is already full.
        -- Henry Kissinger
%
There is a certain impertinence in allowing oneself to be burned for an opinion.
        -- Anatole France
%
There is hopeful symbolism in the fact that flags do not wave in a vacuum.
        -- Arthur C. Clarke
%
There is Jackson standing like a stone wall.  Let us determine to die,
and we will conquer.  Follow me.
        -- General Barnard E. Bee (CSA)
%
There is no act of treachery or mean-ness of which a political party
is not capable; for in politics there is no honour.
        -- Benjamin Disraeli, "Vivian Grey"
%
There is no education that is not political.  An apolitical
education is also political because it is purposely isolating.
%
There is no satisfaction in hanging a man who does not object to it.
        -- G.B. Shaw
%
There is no security on this earth.  There is only opportunity.
        -- General Douglas MacArthur
%
There is not a man in the country that can't make a living for himself and
family.  But he can't make a living for them *and* his government, too,
the way his government is living.  What the government has got to do is
live as cheap as the people.
        -- The Best of Will Rogers
%
There is one difference between a tax collector and a taxidermist --
the taxidermist leaves the hide.
        -- Mortimer Caplan
%
There is only one way to kill capitalism -- by taxes, taxes, and more taxes.
        -- Karl Marx
%
There is perhaps in every thing of any consequence, secret history, which
it would be amusing to know, could we have it authentically communicated.
        -- James Boswell
%
There never was a good war or a bad peace.
        -- B. Franklin
%
There's no trick to being a humorist when you have the whole government
working for you.
        -- Will Rogers
%
There's nothing in the middle of the road but yellow stripes and dead
armadillos.
        -- Jim Hightower, Texas Agricultural Commissioner
%
They call them "squares" because it's the most complicated shape they can
deal with.
%
"They make a desert and call it peace."
        -- Tacitus (55?-120?)
%
They sentenced me to twenty years of boredom for trying to change the
system from within.  I'm coming now I'm coming to reward them.  First
we take Manhattan, then we take Berlin.

I'm guided by a signal in the heavens.  I'm guided by this birthmark on
my skin.  I'm guided by the beauty of our weapons.  First we take Manhattan,
then we take Berlin.

I'd really like to live beside you, baby.  I love your body and your spirit
and your clothes.  But you see that line there moving through the station?
I told you I told you I told you I was one of those.
    -- Leonard Cohen, "First We Take Manhattan"
%
"They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary
safety deserve neither liberty nor safety."
        -- Benjamin Franklin, 1759
%
They use different words for things in America.
For instance they say elevator and we say lift.
They say drapes and we say curtains.
They say president and we say brain damaged git.
        -- Alexie Sayle
%
They will only cause the lower classes to move about needlessly.
        -- The Duke of Wellington, on early steam railroads.
%
They're giving bank robbing a bad name.
        -- John Dillinger, on Bonnie and Clyde
%
Thieves respect property; they merely wish the property to become
their property that they may more perfectly respect it.
        -- G.K. Chesterton, "The Man Who Was Thursday"
%
This is a country where people are free to practice their religion,
regardless of race, creed, color, obesity, or number of dangling keys...
%
    Thompson, if he is to be believed, has sampled the entire rainbow of
legal and illegal drugs in heroic efforts to feel better than he does.
    As for the truth about his health: I have asked around about it.  I
am told that he appears to be strong and rosy, and steadily sane.  But we
will be doing what he wants us to do, I think, if we consider his exterior
a sort of Dorian Gray facade.  Inwardly, he is being eaten alive by tinhorn
politicians.
    The disease is fatal.  There is no known cure.  The most we can do
for the poor devil, it seems to me, is to name his disease in his honor.
From this moment on, let all those who feel that Americans can be as easily
led to beauty as to ugliness, to truth as to public relations, to joy as to
bitterness, be said to be suffering from Hunter Thompson's disease.  I don't
have it this morning.  It comes and goes.  This morning I don't have Hunter
Thompson's disease.
        -- Kurt Vonnegut Jr., on Dr. Hunter S. Thompson: Excerpt
        from "A Political Disease", Vonnegut's review of "Fear and
        Loathing: On the Campaign Trail '72"
%
"Those who do not do politics will be done in by politics."
        -- French Proverb
%
Those who have had no share in the good fortunes of the mighty
Often have a share in their misfortunes.
        -- Bertolt Brecht, "The Caucasian Chalk Circle"
%
Those who have some means think that the most important thing in the
world is love.  The poor know that it is money.
        -- Gerald Brenan
%
Those who profess to favor freedom, and yet deprecate agitation, are
men who want rain without thunder and lightning.  They want the ocean
without the roar of its many waters.
        -- Frederick Douglass
%
To be excellent when engaged in administration is to be like the North
Star.  As it remains in its one position, all the other stars surround it.
        -- Confucius
%
To make tax forms true they should read "Income Owed Us" and "Incommode You".
%
To say you got a vote of confidence would be to say you needed a vote of
confidence.
        -- Andrew Young
%
To think contrary to one's era is heroism.  But to speak against it is madness.
        -- Eugene Ionesco
%
To use violence is to already be defeated.
        -- Chinese proverb
%
Today is a good day to bribe a high-ranking public official.
%
Too often I find that the volume of paper expands to fill the available
briefcases.
        -- Governor Jerry Brown
%
Travel important today;  Internal Revenue men arrive tomorrow.
%
Treaties are like roses and young girls -- they last while they last.
        -- Charles DeGaulle
%
True leadership is the art of changing a group from what it is to what
it ought to be.
        -- Virginia Allan
%
Two battleships assigned to the training squadron had been at sea on maneuvers
in heavy weather for several days.  I was serving on the lead battleship and
was on watch on the bridge as night fell.  The visibility was poor with patchy
fog, so the Captain remained on the bridge keeping an eye on all activities.
    Shortly after dark, the lookout on the wing of the bridge reported,
"Light, bearing on the starboard bow."
    "Is it steady or moving astern?" the Captain called out.
    Lookout replied, "Steady, Captain," which meant we were on a dangerous
collision course with that ship.
    The Captain then called to the signalman, "Signal that ship: We are on
a collision course, advise you change course 20 degrees."
    Back came a signal "Advisable for you to change course 20 degrees."
    In reply, the Captain said, "Send: I'm a Captain, change course 20
degrees!"
    "I'm a seaman second class," came the reply, "You had better change
course 20 degrees."
    By that time, the Captain was furious. He spit out, "Send: I'm a
battleship, change course 20 degrees."
    Back came the flashing light: "I'm a lighthouse!"
    We changed course.
        -- The Naval Institute's "Proceedings"
%
"Ubi non accusator, ibi non judex."

(Where there is no police, there is no speed limit.)
        -- Roman Law, trans. Petr Beckmann (1971)
%
Under a government which imprisons any unjustly, the true place for a
just man is also a prison.
        -- Henry David Thoreau
%
Under any conditions, anywhere, whatever you are doing, there is some
ordinance under which you can be booked.
        -- Robert D. Sprecht, Rand Corp.
%
Under capitalism, man exploits man.  Under communism, it's just the opposite.
        -- J.K. Galbraith
%
Under every stone lurks a politician.
        -- Aristophanes
%
United Nations, New York, December 25.  The peace and joy of the Christmas
season was marred by a proclamation of a general strike of all the military
forces of the world.  Panic reigns in the hearts of all the patriots of
every persuasion.  Meanwhile, fears of universal disaster sank to an all-time
low over the world.
        -- Isaac Asimov
%
Unknown person(s) stole the American flag from its pole in Etra Park sometime
between 3pm Jan 17 and 11:30 am Jan 20.  The flag is described as red, white
and blue, having 50 stars and was valued at $40.
        -- Windsor-Heights Herald "Police Blotter", Jan 28, 1987
%
Unquestionably, there is progress.  The average American now pays out
twice as much in taxes as he formerly got in wages.
        -- H. L. Mencken
%
Usually, when a lot of men get together, it's called a war.
        -- Mel Brooks, "The Listener"
%
Veni, vidi, vici.
    [I came, I saw, I conquered].
        -- Gaius Julius Caesar
%
Very few things happen at the right time, and the rest do not happen
at all.  The conscientious historian will correct these defects.
        -- Herodotus
%
Victory uber allies!
%
"Violence accomplishes nothing."  What a contemptible lie!  Raw, naked
violence has settled more issues throughout history than any other method
ever employed.  Perhaps the city fathers of Carthage could debate the
issue, with Hitler and Alexander as judges?
%
Violence is a sword that has no handle -- you have to hold the blade.
%
Violence is molding.
%
Violence is the last refuge of the incompetent.
        -- Salvor Hardin
%
Vote anarchist.
%
War doesn't prove who's right, just who's left.
%
War hath no fury like a non-combatant.
        -- Charles Edward Montague
%
War is an equal opportunity destroyer.
%
War is delightful to those who have had no experience of it.
        -- Desiderius Erasmus
%
War is like love, it always finds a way.
        -- Bertolt Brecht, "Mother Courage"
%
War is much too serious a matter to be entrusted to the military.
        -- Clemenceau
%
War is peace.  Freedom is slavery.  Ketchup is a vegetable.
%
War spares not the brave, but the cowardly.
        -- Anacreon
%
[Washington, D.C.] is the home of... taste for the people -- the big,
the bland and the banal.
        -- Ada Louise Huxtable
%
Washington, D.C: Fifty square miles almost completely surrounded by reality.
%
We all declare for liberty, but in using the same word we do not all mean
the same thing.
        -- A. Lincoln
%
We are all born equal... just some of us are more equal than others.
%
We are all worms.  But I do believe I am a glowworm.
        -- Winston Churchill
%
We cannot do everything at once, but we can do something at once.
        -- Calvin Coolidge
%
We have not inherited the earth from our parents, we've borrowed it from
our children.
%
... we must not judge the society of the future by considering whether or not
we should like to live in it; the question is whether those who have grown up
in it will be happier than those who have grown up in our society or those of
the past.
        -- Joseph Wood Krutch
%
We should be glad we're living in the time that we are.  If any of us had been
born into a more enlightened age, I'm sure we would have immediately been taken
out and shot.
        -- Strange de Jim
%
We should have a great many fewer disputes in the world if only words were
taken for what they are, the signs of our ideas only, and not for things
themselves.
        -- John Locke
%
We should have a Vollyballocracy.  We elect a six-pack of presidents.
Each one serves until they screw up, at which point they rotate.
        -- Dennis Miller
%
We the unwilling, led by the ungrateful, are doing the impossible.
We've done so much, for so long, with so little,
that we are now qualified to do something with nothing.
%
We totally deny the allegations, and we're trying to identify the allegators.
%
We tried to close Ohio's borders and ran into a Constitutional problem.
There's a provision in the Constitution that says you can't close your
borders to interstate commerce, and garbage is a form of interstate commerce.
        -- Ohio Lt. Governor Paul Leonard
%
We'll try to cooperate fully with the IRS, because, as citizens, we feel
a strong patriotic duty not to go to jail.
        -- Dave Barry
%
Well, don't worry about it...  It's nothing.
        -- Lieutenant Kermit Tyler (Duty Officer of Shafter Information
           Center, Hawaii), upon being informed that Private Joseph
           Lockard had picked up a radar signal of what appeared to be
           at least 50 planes soaring toward Oahu at almost 180 miles
           per hour, December 7, 1941.
%
Well, he didn't know what to do, so he decided to look at the government,
to see what they did, and scale it down and run his life that way.
        -- Laurie Anderson
%
What a strange game.  The only winning move is not to play.
        -- WOP, "War Games"
%
What does it take for Americans to do great things; to go to the moon, to
win wars, to dig canals linking oceans, to build railroads across a continent?
In independent thought about this question, Neil Armstrong and I concluded
that it takes a coincidence of four conditions, or in Neil's view, the
simultaneous peaking of four of the many cycles of American life.  First, a
base of technology must exist from which to do the thing to be done.  Second,
a period of national uneasiness about America's place in the scheme of human
activities must exist.  Third, some catalytic event must occur that focuses
the national attention upon the direction to proceed.  Finally, an articulate
and wise leader must sense these first three conditions and put forth with
words and action the great thing to be accomplished.  The motivation of young
Americans to do what needs to be done flows from such a coincidence of
conditions. ...  The Thomas Jeffersons, The Teddy Roosevelts, The John
Kennedys appear.  We must begin to create the tools of leadership which they,
and their young frontiersmen, will require to lead us onward and upward.
        -- Dr. Harrison H. Schmidt
%
"What George Washington did for us was to throw out the British, so that we
wouldn't have a fat, insensitive government running our country. Nice try
anyway, George."
        -- D.J. on KSFO/KYA
%
What I want is all of the power and none of the responsibility.
%
What is status?
    Status is when the President calls you for your opinion.

Uh, no...
    Status is when the President calls you in to discuss a
    problem with him.

Uh, that still ain't right...
    STATUS is when you're in the Oval Office talking to the President,
    and the phone rings.  The President picks it up, listens for a
    minute, and hands it to you, saying, "It's for you."
%
What is the robbing of a bank compared to the founding of a bank?
        -- Bertold Brecht
%
What is the sound of one hand clapping?
%
What orators lack in depth they make up in length.
%
What we need is either less corruption, or more chance to participate in it.
%
What's a cult?  It just means not enough people to make a minority.
        -- Robert Altman
%
When a man assumes a public trust, he should consider himself as public
property.
        -- Thomas Jefferson
%
When a place gets crowded enough to require ID's, social collapse is not
far away.  It is time to go elsewhere.  The best thing about space travel
is that it made it possible to go elsewhere.
        -- R.A. Heinlein, "Time Enough For Love"
%
When a shepherd goes to kill a wolf, and takes his dog along to see
the sport, he should take care to avoid mistakes.  The dog has certain
relationships to the wolf the shepherd may have forgotten.
        -- Robert Pirsig, "Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance"
%
When asked by an anthropologist what the Indians called America before
the white men came, an Indian said simply "Ours."
        -- Vine Deloria, Jr.
%
When I came back to Dublin I was courtmartialed in my absence and sentenced
to death in my absence, so I said they could shoot me in my absence.
        -- Brendan Behan
%
When I hear a man applauded by the mob I always feel a pang of pity
for him.  All he has to do to be hissed is to live long enough.
        -- H.L. Mencken, "Minority Report"
%
When I was a boy I was told that anybody could become President.  Now
I'm beginning to believe it.
        -- Clarence Darrow
%
When in doubt, do what the President does -- guess.
%
When neither their poverty nor their honor is touched, the majority of men
live content.
        -- Niccolo Machiavelli
%
When smashing monuments, save the pedstals -- they always come in handy.
        -- Stanislaw J. Lem, "Unkempt Thoughts"
%
When some people decide it's time for everyone to make big changes,
it means that they want you to change first.
%
When taxes are due, Americans tend to feel quite bled-white and blue.
%
When the government bureau's remedies don't match your problem, you modify
the problem, not the remedy.
%
When the revolution comes, count your change.
%
When we are planning for posterity, we ought to remember that virtue is
not hereditary.
        -- Thomas Paine
%
When we jumped into Sicily, the units became separated, and I couldn't find
anyone.  Eventually I stumbled across two colonels, a major, three captains,
two lieutenants, and one rifleman, and we secured the bridge.  Never in the
history of war have so few been led by so many.
        -- General James Gavin
%
When you go into court you are putting your fate into the hands of twelve
people who weren't smart enough to get out of jury duty.
        -- Norm Crosby
%
When you have an efficient government, you have a dictatorship.
        -- Harry Truman
%
When you have to kill a man it costs nothing to be polite.
        -- Winston Churchill, on formal declarations of war
%
When you live in a sick society, just about everything you do is wrong.
%
When you say that you agree to a thing in principle, you mean that
you have not the slightest intention of carrying it out in practice.
        -- Otto Von Bismarck
%
When you're in command, command.
        -- Admiral Nimitz
%
Whenever I hear anyone arguing for slavery, I feel a strong impulse to
see it tried on him personally.
        -- Abraham Lincoln
%
Where the system is concerned, you're not allowed to ask "Why?".
%
Where you stand depends on where you sit.
        -- Rufus Miles, HEW
%
Why bother building any more nuclear warheads until we use the ones we have?
%
Why can't you be a non-conformist like everyone else?
%
Why don't somebody print the truth about our present economic condition?
We spent years of wild buying on credit, everything under the sun, whether
we needed it or not, and now we are having to pay for it, howling like a
pet coon.  This would be a great world to dance in if we didn't have to
pay the fiddler.
        -- The Best of Will Rogers
%
    Will Rogers, having paid too much income tax one year, tried in
vain to claim a rebate.  His numerous letters and queries remained
unanswered.  Eventually the form for the next year's return arrived.  In
the section marked "DEDUCTIONS," Rogers listed: "Bad debt, US Government
-- $40,000."
%
    ... with liberty and justice for all ... who can afford it.
%
With reasonable men I will reason;
with humane men I will plead;
but to tyrants I will give no quarter.
        -- William Lloyd Garrison
%
Workers of the world, arise!  You have nothing to lose but your chairs.
%
World tensions have, if anything, increased in the quarter century since
H.G. Wells uttered his glum warning: "There is no more evil thing on
earth than race prejudice, none at all.  I write deliberately -- it is
the worst single thing in life now.  It justifies and holds together more
baseness, cruelty and abomination than any other sort of error in the world."
        -- Sydney Harris
%
World War Three can be averted by adherence to a strictly enforced dress code!
%
    "Wrong," said Renner.
    "The tactful way," Rod said quietly, "the polite way to disagree with
the Senator would be to say, `That turns out not to be the case.'"
%
You can have peace.  Or you can have freedom. Don't ever count on having
both at once.
        -- Lazarus Long
%
You first have to decide whether to use the short or the long form. The
short form is what the Internal Revenue Service calls "simplified", which
means it is designed for people who need the help of a Sears tax-preparation
expert to distinguish between their first and last names.  Here's the
complete text:

"(1) How much did you make?  (AMOUNT)
(2) How much did we here at the government take out?  (AMOUNT)
(3) Hey!  Sounds like we took too much!  So we're going to
     send an official government check for (ONE-FIFTEENTH OF
     THE AMOUNT WE TOOK) directly to the (YOUR LAST NAME)
     household at (YOUR ADDRESS), for you to spend in any way
     you please! Which just goes to show you, (YOUR FIRST
     NAME), that it pays to file the short form!"

The IRS wants you to use this form because it gets to keep most of your
money.  So unless you have pond silt for brains, you want the long form.
        -- Dave Barry, "Sweating Out Taxes"
%
You have all the characteristics of a popular politician: a horrible voice,
bad breeding, and a vulgar manner.
        -- Aristophanes
%
You must include all income you receive in the form of money, property
and services if it is not specifically exempt.  Report property (goods)
and services at their fair market values.  Examples include income from
bartering or swapping transactions, side commissions, kickbacks, rent
paid in services, illegal activities (such as stealing, drugs, etc.),
cash skimming by proprietors and tradesmen, "moonlighting" services,
gambling, prizes and awards.  Not reporting such income can lead to
prosecution for perjury and fraud.
        -- Excerpt from Taxachussetts income tax forms
%
You roll my log, and I will roll yours.
        -- Lucius Annaeus Seneca
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You should never wear your best trousers when you go out to fight for
freedom and liberty.
        -- Henrik Ibsen
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