 "We are what we pretend to be, so we must be careful about what we pretend to be." 
Kurt Vonnegut
Mother Night
I am voting for George W. Bush, because I don't want Johnny Cochran appointed to the Supreme Court.
P. J. O'Rourke
Reason
We hang the petty thieves and appoint the great ones to public office.
Aesop (ca. 550 BC)
While I see many hoof marks going in, I see none coming out. It is easier to get into the enemy's toils than out again.
Aesop (ca. 550 BC)
The Lion, the Fox, and the Beasts
If Tyranny and Oppression come to this land, it will be in the guise of fighting a foreign enemy.
James Madison
There are...only three possible political and economic conditions: liberty, tyranny or chaos. All systems are variants of these three...Washington's grand strategy in this 'war on terrorism.' Remove the tyranny, then call the chaos victory.
Richard Maybury
Richard Maybury's U.S. & World Early Warning Report, May 3, 2003
Samuel Bailey writes of Kant: 'No one, after reading the extracts, etc., can be surpised to hear of a declaration of men of eminent abilities, that, after years of study, they have not succeeded in gathering one clear idea from the speculations of Kant . I should have been almost surprised if they had. In or about 1818, Lord Grenville, observed to Professor Wilson, that, after five years' study of Kant's philosophy, he had not gathered form it one clear idea. Wilberforce made the same confession to another friend of my own. "I am endeavoring" exclaims Sir James Mackintosh, in the irritation of baffled efforts, "to understand this accursed german (sic) philosophy."'
William James
The Types of Philosophical Thinking
Men are the only animals that devote themselves, day in and day out, to making one another unhappy. It is an art like any other. Its virtuosi are called altruists.
H. L. Mencken
www.theagitator.com
Man is a rational animal who always loses his temper when he is called upon to act in accordance with the dictates of reason.
Oscar Wilde
Remember men, we are fighting for this woman's honor, which is more than she ever did.
Groucho Marx
From one of the Marx Brother's movies in which he is referring to the Statue of Liberty.
I read in the newspapers they're gonna have 30 minutes of intellectual stuff on television every Monday from 7:30 to eight, to educate America.... They couldn't educate America if they started at 6:30.
Groucho Marx
The Boston Globe (January 22, 1960)
The Federal Government's Motto: If It Ain't Broke, Fix It Until It Is.
Unknown Author
A Random Bumper Sticker
Books are the quietest and most constant of friends... they are the most accessible and the wisest of counselors, and the most patient of teachers.
Charles W. Eliot (1834-1926)
The Happy Life (1896)
I think they're going to regret doing this, and they better hope we don't win.
Chad Clayton
Kerry '04 spokesman, commenting on Sinclair Broadcasting's production of a documentary critical of Kerry's Vietnam anti-war activism.
The essense of capitalism's foreign policy is free trade--i.e., the abolition of trade barriers, of protective tariffs, of special privileges--the opening of the world's trade routes to free international exchange and competition among the private citizens of all countries dealing directly with one another. During the nineteenth century, it was free trade that liberated the world, undercutting and wrecking the remnants of feudalism and the statist tyranny of absolute monarchies.
Ayn Rand
"The Roots of War", Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal
Never was so much false arithmetic employed on any subject, as that which has been employed to persuade nations that it is in their interest to go to war.
Thomas Jefferson
Commerce with all nations, alliance with none, should be our motto.
Thomas Jefferson
The great rule of conduct for us, in regard to foreign nations, is, in extending our comercial relations, to have with them as little political connection as possible.
George Washington
I made my fortune on the seas, and in the mines, and in the cattle wars of the old frontier... I made it by being tougher than the toughies, and smarter than the smarties. And I made it SQUARE!
Scrooge McDuck
I'm one tough gazookus which hates all palookas wot ain't on the up and square. I biffs 'em and buffs 'em an' always outroughs 'em an' none of 'em gets nowhere. If anyone dasses to risk me fisk, it's "boff" and its "wham", un'erstand. So, keep good behavior, that's your one lifesaver with Popeye the Sailor Man.
Popeye the Sailor Man
Kant's 'Critique of Pure Reason' is six-hundred pages of technical, crow-blowing verbiage, that enshrines whim worship and wraps it in a cloak of reason.
Adam Mossoff
Immanuel Kant's Gimmick
Kant's system is the biggest and most intricate booby trap in the history of philosophy - but it's so full of holes that once you grasp its gimmick, you can defuse it without any trouble and walk forward over it in perfect safety. And once it is defused, the lesser Kantians ... will fall of their own weightlessness, by chain reaction.
Ayn Rand
'Philosophy: Who Needs It' (Address at West Point Military Academy, 1974)
"Attack someone's political opinions and risk being taken for a fool but assault someone's musical tastes and you may be taken as an enemy."
Robert Jourdain
MUSIC, THE BRAIN, AND ECSTASY, Robert Jourdain
"I am sure that there are Hamas members on the UNRWA payroll and I don't see that as a crime. Hamas as a political organization does not mean that every member is a militant and we do not do political vetting and exclude people from one persuasion as against another."
Peter Hansen, Commissioner-General of UNRWA in Gaza and the West Bank
CBS News Online, Oct 4
The knack of flying is learning how to throw yourself at the ground and miss.
Douglas Adams
The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy
Command-style economics is a little like steroids in athletics: You get a burst of rapid growth when the drugs first take hold, but after a while you realize that your national testicles are shrinking.
Glenn Reynolds
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/6168202/#041004
"When I tell you what a thing causes or suffers, then do not ask the further question: 'What is the thing?' When I tell you what concept you must form of a thing, then the other question 'What is the thing in itself?' does not make any sense."
Moses Mendelssohn
Morning Hours
The dictators in the United Nations are like diseases having veto power over the science of medicine.
Steve Ditko
The Comics, Vol. 15, No. 6, June 2004
...human institutions...arise as they do in light of certain facts about the world and human beings and how these all interconnect. If we get it wrong about all this, we mess the society up royally...
Tibor R. Machan
The only flag flying above my head that I am prepared to respect is not the flag that is draped over coffins but the tiny flag clutched by a little boy who looks up at the blue sky with shining eyes and feels that there is nothing more precious than his own life. That is the one flag I will never surrender.
Sami Michael
Op-Ed in HaAretz
“War itself, provided it is conducted with order and a sacred respect for the rights of civilians, has something sublime about it, and gives nations that carry it on in such a manner a stamp of mind only the more sublime the more numerous the dangers to which they are exposed, and which they are able to meet with fortitude. On the other hand, a prolonged peace favours the predominance of a mere commercial spirit, and with it a debasing self-interest, cowardice, and effeminacy, and tends to degrade the character of the nation.”
Kant
Politicians don't change things. Ideas do.
Jeremy Johnson
SOLO HQ Forum
In studying a philosopher, the right attitude is neither reverence nor contempt, but first a kind of hypothetical sympathy, until it is possible to know what it feels like to believe in his theories, and only then a revival of the critical attitude … Contempt interferes with the first part of this process, and reverence with the second. Two things are to be remembered: that a man whose opinions and theories are worth studying may be presumed to have had some intelligence, but that no man is likely to have arrived at complete and final truth on any subject whatever. When an intelligent man expresses a view which seems to us obviously absurd, we should not attempt to prove that it is somehow true, but we should try to understand how it ever came to seem true.
Bertrand Russell
A History of Western Philosophy
The products of a thought process (the content of thought) are not quite as crucial as the process itself (the mode of thought). In all unclear cases, the proper rule to follow is to allow mode to supercede content. If the mode of thought is correct, then the content of thought will be something which approaches the real (and context dictates the precision required to deal with reality productively). This is what is meant by the statement that: 'What you believe is not as important as how you believe.'
Edward D. Thompson
Ed Thompson
Is there a category for things that increase risk for a person but so fulfill them and bring them joy and make them feel alive, that it outweighs a statistical increase in risk? Sure. It's called "Things That Are Moral And Proper" But that is if, and only if, the individual himself makes that determination. That's because YOUR life is YOURS, and no one else's. That's also why you shouldn't give a shit about what other people think about who you fuck, or what you drink. The ultimate moral standard is man's life--not existence, but life and happiness.
Scott DeSalvo
SOLO
Indeed, not all attacks—especially the bitter and ridiculing kind leveled at Darwin—are offered in good faith, but for practical purposes it is good policy to assume that they are.
Hans Selye
From Dream to Discovery: On Being a Scientist
It’s man’s nature to adapt the “standard” or the “regular”, the “natural” for his own gain and happiness. He can take the unexceptional or the average and enhance it to make his life better. Observe how animals mate. It’s functional and quite unexceptional. Observe how humans are capable of making love. It can be a complex, nuanced, conceptual, sublime experience, incorporating the sophisticated “ritual” of courting, romancing, flirting, ad then kissing, foreplay, etc. None of these were intended by nature, these are man’s creations, transforming a functional act of procreation into something much greater.
Glenn Lamont
Contrary to the claim by the 9/11 commission chairman, the failure to prevent 9/11 was not "a failure of imagination." It was a failure of cognition.
David Holcberg
July 27th issue of Capitalism Magazine at http://www.capmag.com/article.asp?ID=3813
I have many objections to the philosophy of Christ. I do not believe in returning good for evil. I believe in returning justice for evil. I do not believe that I can put a man under a moral obligation to do me a favor by doing him a wrong. The doctrine of non-resistance is to me absurd. The right should be defended and the wrong resisted. Goodness should have the right to protect itself. Neither do I believe in decrying this world. We should not say, "Thou fool," to the man who works for those he loves. Poverty is not a virtue, nor is wealth a crime.
Robert Ingersoll
No one has a moral right to tell us to talk to child killers. Why don't you meet Osama Bin Laden, invite him to Brussels or to the White House and engage in talks, ask him what he wants and give it to him so he leaves you in peace? You find it possible to set some limitations in your dealings with these bastards, so why should we talk to people who are child-killers?
Vladimir Putin
When you have enough air to breathe, you don't yearn for air. But when breathable air gets to be in short supply, you quickly start noticing how important it is. (Freedom's like that, too.)
Salman Rushdie
Step Across this Line, p. 368
The reason I choose this vineyard and this group of grape stompers is that we all understand that just as important as a great wine is a great party where you can savor it.
James Kilbourne
SOLOHQ
The first panacea for a mismanaged nation is inflation of the currency; the second is war. Both bring a temporary prosperity; both bring a permanent ruin. But both are the refuge of political and economic opportunists.
Ernest Hemingway
http://www.tradersclub.com/dollarsign/quotes.shtml
"Lenin is said to have declared that the best way to destroy the Capitalistic System was to debauch the currency ... Lenin was certainly right. There is no subtler, no surer means of overturning the existing basis of society than to debauch the currency. The process engages all the hidden forces of economic law on the side of destruction, and does it in a manner which not one man in a million can diagnose."
John Maynard Keynes
The Economic Consequences of the Peace, 1920, page 235ff
Getting laid is the motivation for a very large percentage of what I do, and I would have to say that the percentage only seems to be getting larger as time goes by and other things seem less important.
Ashley Frazier
SOLO HQ
All passions, rationalized and controlled, become an art: gastronomy, more than any other passion, is sensitive to rationalism and direction.
Charles Pierre Monselet
The weakness of men is the facade of strength; the strength of women is the facade of weakness.
Attorney Ronald K. Henry
THE MYTH OF MALE POWER, by Warren Farrell, Ph.D.
Some time ago, a questionnaire on “Intellectual Immoralities” was circulated by a well-known institution. “Intellectual Immorality No. 4” read: “Generalizing beyond one’s data.” [Wilder Dwight] Bancroft asked whether it would not be more correct to word question No. 4 “Not generalizing beyond one’s data.”
Hans Selye
From Dream to Discovery: On Being a Scientist
Indeed, not all attacks—especially the bitter and ridiculing kind leveled at Darwin—are offered in good faith, but for practical purposes it is good policy to assume that they are.
Hans Selye
From Dream to Discovery: On Being a Scientist
Plunder, which plays such an important role in the affairs of the world, has but two instruments: force and fraud, and two impediments: courage and knowledge.
Frederic Bastiat
Economic Sophisms
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