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]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]] QUOTES [[[[[[[[[[[[[[[[[[[[
Collected and uploaded by Freeman 10602PANC (9/10/88)
"[I]n order to transform the face of history, ideas must
necessarily become trivial, lose their precision and difficulty,
become superficial images of themselves."
Julian Marias, History of Philosophy (New York: Dover
Publications, Inc., 1967), pp. 261-262.
* * *
The real lesson of Vietnam is that weaker forces with
determination win over stronger forces that vacillate.
Thomas Sowell, Compassion Versus Guilt and Other Essays (New
York: William Morrow and Company, Inc., 1987), p. 71.
* * *
"A man can no more possess a private religion than he can
possess a private sun or moon."
G.K. Chesterton (1874-1936),
quoted in Omni, December 1987, p. 50:4.
* * *
"The U.S. government won't interfere in the internal affairs
of Ethiopia or Cambodia to prevent economic policies that cause
starvation or mass murder, so why the passion about Japanese
quotas on oranges and beef? The answer is venal: nobody in the
United States profits by saving Ethiopian or Cambodian lives, but
some Americans would profit from more open foreign markets."
Joe Cobb, "Tradespeak", Reason, October 1988, p. 31:3.
* * *
"All the extravagance and incompetence of our present
Government is due, in the main, to lawyers, and, in part at
least, to good ones. They are responsible for nine-tenths of
the useless and vicious laws that now clutter the statute-books,
and for all the evils that go with the vain attempt to enforce
them. Every Federal judge is a lawyer. So are most Congressmen.
Every invasion of the plain rights of the citizens has a lawyer
behind it. If all lawyers were hanged tomorrow, and their bones
sold to a mah jong factory, we'd be freer and safer, and our
taxes would be reduced by almost a half."
H.L. Mencken, Baltimore Evening Sun, 1924(?).
* * *
[For the "he or she"-obsessed feminists.]
A peculiarity of Turkish is a lack of grammatical gender even
more complete than in English: the same pronoun o does duty for
"he," "she," and "it." [Same goes for Hunbgarian, P.B.]
Encyclopedia Britannica (1963), s.v. Turkish Language.
Because language reflects reality and not vice versa, universal
adoption of feminist usages will do nothing to "upgrade" women.
Indeed, there is an inconsistency between the claim that such
coinages will beneficially raise consciousness and the demand
that these coinages become the unconscious standard, for if "he
or she" comes to be used as "he" now is (or was until very
recently), namely as an indexical device, it will prompt no
thoughts of sexual equality.
Michael Levin, Feminism and Freedom (New Brunswick, NJ:
Transaction Books, 1987), p. 259.
* * *
The sole function of government is to protect life, liberty,
and property and anything more that this is usurpation and
oppression.
Ezra Taft Benson, president of the Mormons, An Enemy Hath Done
This (1969) [unverified]
* * *
[I]t makes not he smallest difference to the motives of the
thrifty and industrious part of mankind whether their fiscal
oppressor be an Eastern despot, or a feudal baron, or a
democratic legislature, and whether they are taxed for the
benefit of a corporation called Society of for the advantage of
an individual styles King or Lord.
Henry Sumner Maine, Popular Government (Indianapolis: Liberty
Classics, 1976 [reprint of 1885 London ed.]), p. 69.
* * *
It is a mistake to assume that the Negro, who has been a slave
for two hundred and fifty years, gained his freedom by the
signing, on a certain date, of a certain paper by the President
of the United States. It is a mistake to assume that one man
can, in any true sense, give freedom to another. Freedom, in the
larger and higher sense, every man must gain for himself.
Booker T. Washington (1856-1915)
* * *
[From Benjamin Franklin's speech on the last day of the
Constitutional Convention of 1787, read for him by James Wilson:]
[The new government] is likely to be well administered for a
course of years, and can only end in despotism, as other forms
have done before, when the people shall become so corrupted as to
need despotic government, being incapable of any other."
Encyclopedia Britannica (1963), s.v. Franklin, Benjamin.
* * *
[The ignoramus is eternal.]
[London has] ten thousand stout fellows that would spend the
last drop of their blood against Popery that do not know whether
it be a man or a horse.
Daniel Defoe (1660-1731), The Behaviour of Servants (1726).
* * *
Professor Frank H. Knight [an economist] has often posed the
question: When should an individual rationally stop considering
the pros and cons of an issue and reach a decision?
James M. Buchanan and Gordon Tullock, The Calculus of Consent
(University of Michigan Press, 1962), p. 97.
* * *
Botanically the tomato is a fruit but in the U.S. it is
considered a vegetable ... It was so classified in a decision of
the U.S. Supreme Court in 1893 ...
Encyclopedia Britannica (1963), s.v. Tomato.
* * *
You are not to inquire how your trade may be increased, nor
how you are to become a great and powerful people, but how your
liberties can be secured; for liberty ought to be the direct end
of your Government.
Patrick Henry, speech before the Virginia Ratifying
Convention, 5 June 1788. (Ralph Ketcham, ed., The
Anti-Federalist Papers and the Constitutional Convention
Debates (New York: Mentor Books, 1986), p. 200)
* * *
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