BS: Great Quotes - relevant to today's world

Subject: BS: Great Quotes - relevant to today's world
From: katlaughing
Date: 02 Oct 07 - 08:23 PM

Venezuelan Liberator Simon Bolivar said: "The continuation of the authority in the same individual frequently has been the end of democratic Governments."

That was used on a banner seen in Caracas in reference to Chavez' proposal to be re-elected indefinitely. His police tore it down. Seems to me it equally applies to the resident in the white house.

Subject: RE: BS: Great Quotes - relevant to today's world
From: JohnInKansas
Date: 02 Oct 07 - 08:30 PM

Voltaire(?) is reported to have said:

"To be a diplomat, it is not sufficient to be ignorant. One must also be polite."

politician=diplomat=(choose one for yourself)?

John

Subject: RE: BS: Great Quotes - relevant to today's world
From: Peace
Date: 02 Oct 07 - 08:32 PM

"Sometimes I lie awake at night, and ask, 'Where have I gone wrong?' Then a voice says to me, 'This is going to take more than one night.'"

Charles Schulz

Subject: RE: BS: Great Quotes - relevant to today's world
From: GUEST,micca at work
Date: 03 Oct 07 - 04:47 AM

" Wether it is nude sunbathing or dealing with "political" or quasi-political(or Government), organisations Cover Your Ass"

Subject: RE: BS: Great Quotes - relevant to today's world
From: Emma B
Date: 03 Oct 07 - 06:01 AM

"Learn from yesterday, live for today, hope for tomorrow. The important thing is not to stop questioning."

Albert Einstein

Subject: RE: BS: Great Quotes - relevant to today's world
From: GUEST,TV Junkies
Date: 03 Oct 07 - 08:45 AM

The best argument against democracy is a five-minute conversation with the average voter.
Winston Churchill

Subject: RE: BS: Great Quotes - relevant to today's world
From: Rapparee
Date: 03 Oct 07 - 09:22 AM

All legislation, all government, all society is founded upon the principle of mutual concession, politeness, comity, courtesy upon these everything is based...Let him who elevates himself above humanity, above its weaknesses, its infirmities, its wants, its necessities, say, if he pleases, I will never compromise but let no one who is not above the frailties of our common nature disdain compromises.
                                                 -- Henry Clay

Subject: RE: BS: Great Quotes - relevant to today's world
From: Midchuck
Date: 03 Oct 07 - 09:54 AM

I will give a link, rather than a quote - since every line found there fits this thread, why try to pick one?

Peter

Subject: RE: BS: Great Quotes - relevant to today's world
From: dwditty
Date: 03 Oct 07 - 10:08 AM

We have met the enemy,and he is us.

Subject: RE: BS: Great Quotes - relevant to today's world
From: Donuel
Date: 03 Oct 07 - 01:24 PM

The Bush family always roots for Goliath to slay David.

Elections may dissapoint and the counters cheat, but just remember that the crowd chose Barrabas.

Subject: RE: BS: Great Quotes - relevant to today's world
From: Donuel
Date: 03 Oct 07 - 01:34 PM

You can count many things that don't matter
and heap praise designed only to flatter
but the things that matter
and really do count
are unbound by everyday matter.

by Yours Truely

Subject: RE: BS: Great Quotes - relevant to today's world
From: Blindlemonsteve
Date: 03 Oct 07 - 01:45 PM

Never judge the broadness of a mans shoulders by the price tag of the shirt that hangs on them.
Blindlemonsteve 2007

Subject: RE: BS: Great Quotes - relevant to today's world
From: Liz the Squeak
Date: 03 Oct 07 - 01:56 PM

Programming today is a race between software engineers striving to build bigger and better idiot-proof programs, and the Universe trying to produce bigger and better idiots.

So far, the Universe is winning.

LTS

Subject: RE: BS: Great Quotes - relevant to today's world
From: Ebbie
Date: 03 Oct 07 - 02:21 PM

"You can go wrong by being too skeptical as readily as by being too trusting.

"One man's theology is another man's belly laugh.

"Men rarely (if ever) manage to dream up a god superior to themselves. Most gods have the manners and morals of a spoiled child.

"There is no conclusive evidence of life after death. But there is no evidence of any sort against it. Soon enough you will know. So why fret about it?"

Midchuck, that's a great link. Thanks. Heinlein was a great phrasemaker.

Subject: RE: BS: Great Quotes - relevant to today's world
From: Donuel
Date: 03 Oct 07 - 02:24 PM

With the exception of self destruction...

Whats wrong with having the USA do something that would make the whole world stand up and cheer?
Its been 68 years since the whole world cheered the US and 30 odd years since we were cheered on the moon.

In the end the only thing the rich will have to plunder is themselves.







edit

You can count many things that don't matter
and heap praise designed only to flatter
but the things that matter
and really do count
are ideas above everyday matter
that matter every day

Subject: RE: BS: Great Quotes - relevant to today's world
From: Don(Wyziwyg)T
Date: 03 Oct 07 - 04:39 PM

Politics:- It's all a case of mind over matter. They don't mind and we don't matter!

Don T.

Subject: RE: BS: Great Quotes - relevant to today's world
From: Grainne
Date: 03 Oct 07 - 05:31 PM

Those who forget the past are condemned to repeat it.

Subject: RE: BS: Great Quotes - relevant to today's world
From: Peace
Date: 03 Oct 07 - 05:35 PM

"History repeats itself because historians repeat each other."

(Can't recall who said that.)

Subject: RE: BS: Great Quotes - relevant to today's world
From: Amos
Date: 03 Oct 07 - 05:50 PM

"War is all Hell."

William Tecumseh Sherman

Subject: RE: BS: Great Quotes - relevant to today's world
From: katlaughing
Date: 03 Oct 07 - 06:39 PM

Trouble no one about his religion.
Respect others in their views and demand that they respect yours.
Love your life, perfect your life, beautify all things in your life.
Seek to make your life long and of service to your people.
- Tecumseh -

Subject: RE: BS: Great Quotes - relevant to today's world
From: Rapparee
Date: 03 Oct 07 - 07:37 PM

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

I am free, no matter what rules surround me. If I find them tolerable, I tolerate them; if I find them too obnoxious, I break them. I am free because I know that I alone am morally responsible for everything I do. - Professor Bernardo de la Paz

"People whose lives are barren and insecure seem to show a greater willingness to obey than people who are self-sufficient and self-confident. To the frustrated, freedom from responsibility is more attractive than freedom from restraint. They are eager to barter their independence for relief of the burdens of willing, deciding and being responsible for inevitable failure. They willingly abdicate the directing of their lives to those who want to plan, command and shoulder all responsibility." ~Eric Hoffer "The True Believer"

Never attribute to malice, that which can be reasonably explained by stupidity.
                                  -Spider Robinson

Subject: RE: BS: Great Quotes - relevant to today's world
From: Alba
Date: 03 Oct 07 - 08:43 PM

" The shitith hath hitith the fanith "
unknown :)

Subject: RE: BS: Great Quotes - relevant to today's world
From: katlaughing
Date: 03 Oct 07 - 11:27 PM

LOL, Alba!

Ah, good old Eric Hoffer and Spider Robinson! Great stuff!

Subject: RE: BS: Great Quotes - relevant to today's world
From: katlaughing
Date: 04 Oct 07 - 12:21 AM

I REALLY like the following:

To announce that there must be no criticism of the president, or that we are to stand by the president right or wrong, is not only unpatriotic and servile, but is morally treasonable to the American public.
Theodore Roosevelt

We must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist.
Dwight D. Eisenhower

People who don't vote have no line of credit with people who are elected and thus pose no threat to those who act against our interests.
Marian Wright Edelman

Subject: RE: BS: Great Quotes - relevant to today's world
From: Rapparee
Date: 04 Oct 07 - 11:00 AM

We are the people our parents warned us against. -- From the '60s.

Subject: RE: BS: Great Quotes - relevant to today's world
From: Donuel
Date: 04 Oct 07 - 11:57 AM

Childrens are learning.

Subject: RE: BS: Great Quotes - relevant to today's world
From: GUEST,Neil D
Date: 04 Oct 07 - 12:34 PM

Even a cat may look at a king.
                   John Heywood
   
   Rule #1: Don't sweat the small stuff.
   Rule #2: It's all small stuff.
       Graham Green's character in "Thunderheart" said this but I don't know who said it first.

   If I am not for myself who will be. If I am only for myself, of what good am I to God or Mankind.
             Rabbi Hilel (Many self serving people only quote the first part of this saying)

    Does anyone know who said the following:
    I turned to God with the world's despair
    and to make bad matters worse found that God wasn't there.

Subject: RE: BS: Great Quotes - relevant to today's world
From: Alba
Date: 04 Oct 07 - 12:45 PM

Robert Frost, Neil:)

"I turned to speak to God
About the world's despair
But to make bad matters worse
I found God wasn't there."

Best Wishes,
Jude

Subject: RE: BS: Great Quotes - relevant to today's world
From: Wesley S
Date: 04 Oct 07 - 04:21 PM

"Want what you have" - the protaganist in Jimmy Buffetts book "Where is Joe Merchant"

"640K ought to be enough for anybody" - attributed to Bill Gates 1981

"Never squat with your spurs on" - Texas cowboy era unknown

Subject: RE: BS: Great Quotes - relevant to today's world
From: katlaughing
Date: 04 Oct 07 - 04:51 PM

That last one is treasured as a old WYOMING cowboy saying, Wesley! LOL...got yer bumper stickers in today.

Subject: RE: BS: Great Quotes - relevant to today's world
From: Peace
Date: 04 Oct 07 - 04:55 PM

Politics, n. Strife of interests masquerading as a contest of principles.

Ambrose Bierce

Subject: RE: BS: Great Quotes - relevant to today's world
From: Bill D
Date: 04 Oct 07 - 05:15 PM

"Strive for simplicity, but learn to mistrust it."
      Alfred North Whitehead

"Don't look back, somethin' may be gainin' on you."
         Satchel Paige

Subject: RE: BS: Great Quotes - relevant to today's world
From: Wesley S
Date: 04 Oct 07 - 05:46 PM

Kat - Where in hell do you think those Wyoming cowboys came from? Those trails they were on started in TEXAS and went north.

Subject: RE: BS: Great Quotes - relevant to today's world
From: Peace
Date: 04 Oct 07 - 05:48 PM

Actually, the trails started in Alberta and moved south. But please don't let me interrupt . . . .

Subject: RE: BS: Great Quotes - relevant to today's world
From: Richard Bridge
Date: 04 Oct 07 - 06:46 PM

Once upon a time Heinlein was an interesting SF writer. Later he became a fascist wanker and idiot.

Subject: RE: BS: Great Quotes - relevant to today's world
From: Richard Bridge
Date: 04 Oct 07 - 06:47 PM

Make that self important idiot.

Subject: RE: BS: Great Quotes - relevant to today's world
From: Rapparee
Date: 04 Oct 07 - 06:52 PM

Richard, I recommend you read Spider Robinson's essay "Rah, Rah, RAH" -- and Heinlein.

Subject: RE: BS: Great Quotes - relevant to today's world
From: Midchuck
Date: 04 Oct 07 - 06:57 PM

Once upon a time Heinlein was an interesting SF writer. Later he became a fascist wanker and idiot.

Fascist? The man who created one of the major influences in starting the whole hippy thing?

You have it ass-backwards. He was educated in a way that put him in danger of being somewhat fascistic, or at least authoritarian (Naval Academy), but he outgrew it.

Peter

Subject: RE: BS: Great Quotes - relevant to today's world
From: Rapparee
Date: 04 Oct 07 - 07:11 PM

Yes, he was so Fascist that his peers honored him with the first every Grand Master Hugo award. So Fascist that he worked in the Philadephia Naval Yard on electronics that helped defeat Hitler and Mussolini.

Cite one passage from his works that demonstrate Fascism.

Conservative, yes, in the Goldwater mold. But not Fascist.

Subject: RE: BS: Great Quotes - relevant to today's world
From: Rapparee
Date: 04 Oct 07 - 07:17 PM

From Robinson's "Rah, rah, RAH!":

(Note: all these are most-brainless, as not one of the critics is in any position to know anything about Heinlein the man. The man they attack is the one they infer from his fiction: a mug's game.)

(1) "Heinlein is a fascist." This is the most popular Heinlein shibboleth in fandom, particularly among the young and, of course, exclusively among the ignorant. I seldom bother to reply, but in this instance I am being paid. Dear sir or madam: kindly go to the library, look up the dictionary definition of fascism. For good measure, read the history of fascism, asking the librarian to help you with any big words. Then read the works of Robert Heinlein, as you have plainly not done yet. If out of forty-two books you can produce one shred of evidence that Heinlein—or any of his protagonists—is a fascist, I'll eat my copy of Heinlein in Dimension.

If you don't own a copy of it, you can find the entire essay here.

Subject: RE: BS: Great Quotes - relevant to today's world
From: Amos
Date: 04 Oct 07 - 07:20 PM

Au contraire, he was purely a believer in ability, the rights of man, and the vigorous defense against bureaucratic encroachment, the stock-in-trade of Fascism. He didn't believe in free lunches (he coined TANSTAAFL), but he sure as hell was no Fascist.


A

Subject: RE: BS: Great Quotes - relevant to today's world
From: Midchuck
Date: 04 Oct 07 - 10:33 PM

He didn't coin the phrase. He certainly was responsible for its wide popularization.

Peter

Subject: RE: BS: Great Quotes - relevant to today's world
From: Bill D
Date: 05 Oct 07 - 10:25 AM

"There are many men of principle in both parties in America, but there is no party of principle." ~Alexis de Tocqueville

"Under democracy one party always devotes its chief energies to trying to prove that the other party is unfit to rule - and both commonly succeed, and are right." ~H.L. Mencken, 1956

Subject: RE: BS: Great Quotes - relevant to today's world
From: Bill D
Date: 05 Oct 07 - 10:38 AM

"The modern conservative is engaged in one of man's oldest exercises in moral philosophy; that is, the search for a superior moral justification for selfishness." ~John Kenneth Galbraith

"Conservative, n: A statesman who is enamored of existing evils, as distinguished from the Liberal who wishes to replace them with others." ~Ambrose Bierce, The Devil's Dictionary

"Politics is 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

"He didn't say that. He was reading what was given to him in a speech." ~Richard Darman, director of the Office of Management and Budget, (explaining why President Bush wasn't following up on his campaign pledge that there would be no loss of wetlands)


"Conservatives are not necessarily stupid, but most stupid people are conservatives." ~John Stuart Mill

Subject: RE: BS: Great Quotes - relevant to today's world
From: Bill D
Date: 05 Oct 07 - 10:41 AM

"Conservatives define themselves in terms of what they oppose." ~George Will

Subject: RE: BS: Great Quotes - relevant to today's world
From: Stilly River Sage
Date: 05 Oct 07 - 11:33 AM

"What stuns me most about contemporary politics is not even that the system has been so badly corrupted by money. It is that so few people get the connection between their lives and what the bozos do in Washington and our state capitols." - Molly Ivins

Subject: RE: BS: Great Quotes - relevant to today's world
From: Rapparee
Date: 05 Oct 07 - 12:36 PM

Allow the president to invade a neighboring nation, whenever he shall deem it necessary to repel an invasion, and you allow him to do so whenever he may choose to say he deems it necessary for such a purpose - and you allow him to make war at pleasure.    -- A. Lincoln

Am I not destroying my enemies when I make friends of them? -- A. Lincoln

Look at the tyranny of party--at what is called party allegiance, party loyalty--a snare invented by designing men for selfish purposes--and which turns voters into chattles, slaves, rabbits, and all the while their masters, and they themselves are shouting rubbish about liberty, independence, freedom of opinion, freedom of speech, honestly unconscious of the fantastic contradiction; and forgetting or ignoring that their fathers and the churches shouted the same blasphemies a generation earlier when they were closing their doors against the hunted slave, beating his handful of humane defenders with Bible texts and billies, and pocketing the insults and licking the shoes of his Southern master. -- Sam Clemens

In religion and politics people's beliefs and convictions are in almost every case gotten at second-hand, and without examination, from authorities who have not themselves examined the questions at issue but have taken them at second-hand from other non-examiners, whose opinions about them were not worth a brass farthing. -- Mark Twain

Subject: RE: BS: Great Quotes - relevant to today's world
From: Emma B
Date: 05 Oct 07 - 12:51 PM

"Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities"

Voltaire

Subject: RE: BS: Great Quotes - relevant to today's world
From: Bill D
Date: 05 Oct 07 - 02:05 PM

"The hardest thing about any political campaign is how to win without proving that you are unworthy of winning." ~Adlai E. Stevenson

Subject: RE: BS: Great Quotes - relevant to today's world
From: Kent Davis
Date: 06 Oct 07 - 12:29 AM

A subordinate position does not imply an inferior nature.

Kent

P.S. As far as I know, I originated the phrase above. However, if you know of another source, please let me know. I could have internalized it and then have forgotten its origin.