by benji on Wed Dec 08, 2010 11:56 pm
"The doctrine of regulation and legislation by "master minds" in whose judgment and will all the people may gladly and quietly acquiesce has been too glaringly apparent at Washington during these last ten years. Were it possible to find "master minds" so unselfish, so willing to decide unhesitatingly against their own personal interests or private prejudices, men almost god-like in their ability to hold the scales of Justice with an even hand, such a government might be to the interest of the country, but there are none such on our political horizon, and we cannot expect a complete reversal of all the teachings of history." - FDR, March 2, 1930. (Maybe my favorite quote ever since I found the speech until I find another. If you don't know why then I contend that you're the boring one.)
"Pessimists are not only the only realists; they have all the best jokes." - Theodore Dalrymple
“The urge to save humanity is almost always a false-face for the urge to rule it.” - H. L. Mencken
"The most costly of all follies is to believe passionately in the palpably not true. It is the chief occupation of mankind." - H. L. Mencken
"If you're going to be a good and faithful judge, you have to resign yourself to the fact that you're not always going to like the conclusions you reach. If you like them all the time, you're probably doing something wrong." - Antonin Scalia
“What it lies in our power to do, it lies in our power not to do.” - Aristotle
"There are two kinds of people in the world: Those that divide everybody into groups, and those that overgeneralize." - Ben Pershing
"We shall never prevent the abuse of power if we are not prepared to limit power in a way which occasionally may prevent its use for desirable purposes." - Friedrich Hayek
"Who imagines that there exist any common ideals of distributive justice such as will make the Norwegian fisherman consent to forego the prospect of economic improvement in order to help his Portuguese fellow, or the Dutch worker to pay more for his bicycle to help the Coventry mechanic, or the French peasant to pay more taxes to assist the industrialization of Italy? If most people are not willing to see the difficulty, this is mainly because, consciously or unconsciously, they assume that it will be they who will settle these questions for the others, and because they are convinced of their own capacity to do this justly and equitably." - Friedrich Hayek
"Everything fails by irrevelant standards." - Thomas Sowell
"Each new generation born is in effect an invasion of civilization by little barbarians, who must be civilized before it is too late." - Thomas Sowell
“[Last Wednesday] I was with the vice president. I was asking him what [Halloween] costume he was planning. He said, ‘Well, I’m already wearing it.’ Then he mumbled something about the dark side of the Force.” - President George W. Bush
I'm quoting this one only because it was just on:
"You'll fight, and you'll shag, and you'll hate each other till it makes you quiver, but you'll never be friends. I may be love's bitch, but at least I'm man enough to admit it."
And just because:
"Just because something has appeared in a newspaper does not mean that is entirely accurate." - Washington Post
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I'll have to remember that one.
