VCRs

I say to you that the VCR is to the American film producer and the American public as the Boston strangler is to the woman home alone.

Jack Valenti's (ex-MPAA president in a statement to a U.S. Congressional panel, 1982)

Adjusted to ill-fitting beliefs

If you're well-adjusted to ill-fitting beliefs that permeate society, you're going to have trouble

David Schnarch, Ph.D. (Passionate Marriage, 1997)

Taliban vs Current Afghan Gov't

The people of Afghanistan keep loosing their trust in the government because of the high amount of corrupted government officials. The general view of the Afghans is that the current government is worst than the Taliban. 

Paktya Provincial Council (Leaked by WikiLeaks, 2010)

US Foreign Policies and Drugs

The defective US policies of former US President George W. Bush are the basis of insecurity in the Mideast. The US forces marched into Afghanistan about eight years ago by means of grandiose schemes to establish security, eradicate radicalism and terrorism, and also combat drug production and smuggling ... Due to wrong policies, nonetheless, insecurity has mushroomed throughout the conflict-stricken country and production of illicit drugs has jumped from several hundred tons to nine thousand tons.

Iranian Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki, 6/10/2010

Aim of Education

[The aim of public education is not] to fill the young of the species with knowledge and awaken their intelligence. ... Nothing could be further from the truth. The aim ... is simply to reduce as many individuals as possible to the same safe level, to breed and train a standardized citizenry, to put down dissent and originality. That is its aim in the United States. 

H. L. Mencken (The American Mercury, April 1924)

Philosopher Kings

After some 2,400 years of worshiping at the feet of Plato’s “philosopher kings,” is it not time to shift to a new paradigm?  Why do any of us pay any more attention to such established drivel than we do to a woman with her tarot cards, or who claims to read the future by squeezing a goat’s testicles?

Butler Shaffer - LRC Blog, 07/22/2010

Life, Liberty, Property and Law

Life, liberty, and property do not exist because men have made laws. On the contrary, it was the fact that life, liberty, and property existed beforehand that caused men to make laws in the first place.

Frédéric Bastiat  (The Law par. L.34, 1850)

Heaven

Everybody wants to go to heaven, but nobody wants to die.

Peter Tosh quotes (Jamaican reggae Musician, 1944-1987)

Repetative Success

Here is how you will know when your idea has been a success. Someone will repeat it to you, and he will have no idea where it came from.

Leonard E. Read (Founder of Foundation for Economic Education)

Falling Apart

A Bible that's falling apart usually belongs to someone who isn't.

Charles Spurgeon

Spud

You can praise God by peeling a spud if you peel it to perfection

Reverend. J.D. Liddell (Chariots of Fire, 1981)

Wisdom of the ballotbox

'If of ten men nine are recognizable as fools, which is a common calculation,' says our Intermittent Friend, 'how, in the name of wonder, will you ever get a ballotbox to grind you out a wisdom from the votes of these ten men?  Never by any conceivable ballotbox, nor by all the machinery in Bromwicham or out of it, will you attain such a result.  Not by any method under Heaven, except by suppressing, and in some good way reducing to zero, nine of those votes, can wisdom ever issue from your ten.

Thomas Carlyle (Latter-Day Pamphlets,  Pg 303, 1855)

The Individual

What role did authority or government play in human endeavor for betterment, in invention and discovery?  None whatever, or at least none that was helpful. It has always been the individual that has accomplished every miracle in that sphere, usually in spite of the prohibition, persecution and interference by authority, human and divine. Similarly, in the political sphere, the road of progress lay in getting away more and more from the authority of the tribal chief or of the clan, of prince and king, of government, of the State.

Emma Goldman (1940, The Individual, Society, & the State)

Interests of State and the Individual

the interests of the State and those of the individual differ fundamentally and are antagonistic. The State and the political and economic institutions it supports can exist only by fashioning the individual to their particular purpose; training him to respect "law and order;" teaching him obedience, submission and unquestioning faith in the wisdom and justice of government; above all, loyal service and complete self-sacrifice when the State commands it, as in war.

Emma Goldman (1940, The Individual, Society, & the State)

Rise and Fall

The best instituted governments, carry in them the seeds of their destruction: and, though they grow and improve for a time, they will soon tend visibly to their dissolution. Every hour they live is an hour the less that they have to live.

Henry St. John, First Viscount Bolingbroke, 1738

  A British political philosopher who was very influential for the US Founding Fathers and Voltaire

Property and Society

The moment the idea is admitted into society that property is not as sacred as the laws of G0d, and that there is not a force of law and public justice to protect it, anarchy and tyranny commence. If 'Thou shalt not covet' and 'Thou shalt not steal' were not commandments of Heaven, they must be made inviolable precepts in every society before it can be civilized or made free.

John Adams 

Vote for the End

When the people find they can vote themselves money, that will herald the end of the republic.

Benjamin Franklin

Democratic Demise

Remember democracy never lasts long. It soon wastes, exhausts, and murders itself. There never was a democracy yet that did not commit suicide

John Adams

Oppressive Majority

The majority, oppressing an individual, is guilty of a crime, abuses its strength, and by acting on the law of the strongest breaks up the foundations of society.

Thomas Jefferson to Pierre Samuel Dupont de Nemours, 1816. ME 14:490

A 'Nutter Tax

We want our damn money, you owe it, we want it, and I plan to collect it.

 Mayor Michael Nutter (July 2010)

the Law and Morality

When law and morality contradict each other, the citizen has the cruel alternative of either losing his moral sense or losing his respect for the law.

Frédéric Bastiat  (The Law par. L.34, 1850)

Law and Plunder

It is impossible to introduce into society a greater change and a greater evil than this: the conversion of the law into an instrument of plunder.

Frédéric Bastiat (The Law par. L.31, 1850)

Compulsury Education

Who besides a degraded rabble would voluntarily present itself to be graded and classified like meat? No wonder school is compulsory.

John Taylor Gatto (The Underground History of American Education, 2000)

The Man of the System

The man of system, on the contrary, is apt to be very wise in his own conceit; and is often so enamoured with the supposed beauty of his own ideal plan of government, that he cannot suffer the smallest deviation from any part of it. He goes on to establish it completely and in all its parts, without any regard either to the great interests, or to the strong prejudices which may oppose it. He seems to imagine that he can arrange the different members of a great society with as much ease as the hand arranges the different pieces upon a chess-board. He does not consider that the pieces upon the chess-board have no other principle of motion besides that which the hand impresses upon them; but that, in the great chess-board of human society, every single piece has a principle of motion of its own, altogether different from that which the legislature might chuse to impress upon it. If those two principles coincide and act in the same direction, the game of human society will go on easily and harmoniously, and is very likely to be happy and successful. If they are opposite or different, the game will go on miserably, and the society must be at all times in the highest degree of disorder.

Adam Smith (Theory of Moral Sentiments, Paragraph VI.II.42, 1759)

Banks v People

The issue which has swept down the centuries and which will have to be fought sooner or later is the people versus the banks.

Lord Acton

Complusive Educational anti-structures

Growth and mastery come only to those who vigorously self-direct. Initiating, creating, doing, reflecting, freely associating, enjoying privacy – these are precisely what the structures of schooling are set up to prevent, on one pretext or another.

 John Taylor Gatto (The Underground History of American Education, 2000)

Personal Responsibility and 'the system'

[The statist/corporatist system's] very premise is that one should be able, without any personal responsibility, to purchase products or services in blind faith, confident that someone is looking out for them.

Aaron Everitt (June 9th, 2010)

Party's Over

For nations living the good life, the party's over, IMF says

Washington Post, 4/24/2010

Spending is not growth

As I have said many times, GDP largely measures spending, and spending is not growth.

Peter Schiff (June 8th, 2010 - The Phantom Recovery)