Some quotations never to be forgotten
 
An nescis, mi fili, quantilla sapientia regitur mundus? [Do you not know, my son, how ignorantly are we ruled?] - -JULIUS III, BISHOP OF ROME A.D. 1550-1555
 
I don't ask; I just do.  And when I meet my Maker, I'm going to insist upon a full explanation.  -BETH WOODBURY
 
Be the change you want to see in the world.  -MOHANDAS GHANDI
 
You have to give an editor something to change, or he gets fretful. After he pees in it, he likes the flavor better, so he buys it. -ROBERT A. HEINLEIN
 
The lowest common denominator of the universe is both low and common. -R. A. LAFFERTY
 
A pessimist sees the difficulty in every opportunity; an optimist sees the opportunity in every difficulty.  -SIR WINSTON CHURCHILL
 
Dorothy Parker on Dame Edith Evans: “To me, Edith looks like something that would eat its young.”
 
Modern art is like trying to follow the plot in alphabet soup.  -Anonymous
 
Asking a working writer what he feels about critics is like asking a lamppost what he feels about dogs.  -JOHN OSBORNE
 
Try not to write the parts that people skip. -ELMORE LEONARD
 
If builders built buildings the way programmers write programs, the first woodpecker to come along would destroy civilization. -author unknown
 
If we don’t know, have a definition of, what a satisfactorily-performing, promotable manager looks like then all variations are valid.  -CRAIG STENBERG
 
There is as much dignity in plowing a field as in writing a sonnet.  -BOOKER T. WASHINGTON
 
God made man in his own image, and man has returned the compliment.  -unattributed, quoted by Guy de Maupassant
 
Success is always relative.  The more success you have, the more relatives also. -unattributed
 
I’m somewhat of a teller of tall tales myself, but occasionally I enjoy listening to an expert.  Please carry on. -unattributed
 
Fanaticism – redoubling your effort when you’ve lost sight of the objective.  -GEORGE SANTAYANA
 
The mind is like a TV set – when it goes blank, it's a good idea to turn off the sound.  -COMMUNICATION BRIEFINGS
 
Those who agree with us may not be right, but we admire their astuteness.  -CULLEN HIGHTOWER
 
Music is enough for a lifetime, but a lifetime is not enough for music. -SERGEI RACHMANINOFF
 
The hardest thing in life to learn is which bridge to cross and which to burn.  -DAVID RUSSELL
 
Success has a simple formula: Do your best and people may like it.  -SAM EWING
 
It is the greatest of mistakes to do nothing because you can only do a little.  Do what you can.  -SYDNEY SMITH
 
What the world really needs is more love and less paperwork.  -PEARL BAILEY
 
No matter what happens, there's always somebody who knew it would.  -LONNY STARR
 
Springtime is the land awakening.  The March winds are the morning yawn.  -LEWIS GRIZZARD
 
Facts are stubborn things.  -ALAIN RENE LESAGE
 
A loving heart is the truest wisdom.  -CHARLES DICKENS
 
The greatest thing you'll ever learn is just to love and give love in return.  -EDEN AHBEZ
 
Man never made any material as resilient as the human spirit.  -BERN WILLIAMS
 
Praise does wonders for the sense of hearing.  -BITS & PIECES
 
Stubbornness does have its helpful features.  You always know what you are going to be thinking tomorrow.  -GLEN BEAMAN
 
If you're going to be able to look back on something and laugh about it, you might as well laugh about it now.  -MARIE OSMOND
 
If you want truly to understand something, try to change it.  -KURT LEWIN
 
It is wise to keep in mind that no success or failure is necessarily final.  -author unknown
 
A man can succeed at almost anything for which he has unlimited enthusiasm.  -CHARLES M. SCHWAB
 
All of us could take a lesson from the weather; it pays no attention to criticism.  -NORTH DEKALB KIWANIS CLUB BEACON
 
There are two kinds of people: those who do the work and those who take the credit.  Try to be in the first group; there is less competition there.  -INDIRA GANDHI
 
The only man who never makes a mistake is the man who never does anything.  -THEODORE ROOSEVELT
 
The more original a discovery, the more obvious it seems afterward.  -ARTHUR KOESTLER
 
Obstacles are things a person sees when he takes his eyes off his goal.  -E. JOSEPH COSSMAN
 
If at first you do succeed – try to hide your astonishment.  -LOS ANGELES TIMES-SYNDICATE
 
Money is better than poverty, if only for financial reasons.  -WOODY ALLEN
 
When patterns are broken, new worlds can emerge.  -TULI KUPFERBERG
 
The worst prison would be a closed heart.  -POPE JOHN PAUL II  
 
It is not true that nice guys finish last.  Nice guys are winners before the game ever starts.  -ADDISON WALKER
 
Everything is changing.  People are taking the comedians seriously and the politicians as a joke.  -WILL ROGERS
 
Use soft words and hard arguments.  -English proverb
 
When you aim for perfection, you discover it's a moving target.  -GEORGE FISHER
 
A person all wrapped up in himself generally makes a pretty small package.  -E. JOSEPH COSSMAN
 
A skeptic is a person who, when he sees the handwriting on the wall, claims it is a forgery.  -MORRIS BENDER  
 
The most important thing a father can do for his children is to love their mother.  -REV. HESBURGH
 
The best inheritance a parent can give to his children is a few minutes of his time each day.  -O. A. BATTISTA
 
The closest to perfection a person ever comes is when he fills out a job application form.  -STANLEY J. RANDALL
 
Useless laws weaken the necessary laws.  -MONTESQUIEU (see Make Lawyers Irrelevent)
 
Talent is a flame.  Genius is a fire.  -BERN WILLIAMS
 
Some folks pay a compliment like they went down in their pocket for it.  -KIM HUBBARD
 
We all admire the wisdom of people who come to us for advice.  -JACK HERBERT
 
Any child can tell you that the sole purpose of a middle name is so he can tell when he's really in trouble.  -DENNIS FAKES
 
If you haven't any charity in your heart, you have the worst kind of heart trouble.  -BOB HOPE
 
It is wise to keep in mind that no success or failure is necessarily final.  -author unknown
 
Nobody goes there anymore – it's too crowded.  -YOGI BERRA
 
Puritanism: The haunting fear that someone, somewhere, may be happy.  -H. L. MENCKEN
 
If someone gets ticket by doing tricky, Bodrum Airlines has rezerved the rights that there is no must to give a permation that passenger gets on the board.  -TURKISH AIRLINE RULE
 
Time is the thing that keeps everything from happening all at once.  -Anonymous
 
It's not that life is too short.  It's just that you're dead for such a long time.  -STEVE MOORE
 
The most remarkable thing about my mother is that for 30 years she served the family nothing but leftovers.  The original meal was never found.  -CALVIN TRILLIN
 
A hundred years from now it will not matter what my bank account was, the sort of house I lived in, or the kind of car I drove... but the world may be different because I was important in the life of a child.  -D.A.W.
 
Never say Oops!  Always say Ah, interesting!  -PETER STOWELL
 
Always do right.  This will gratify some and astonish the rest.  -MARK TWAIN
 
Voters decide nothing.  People who count votes decide everything.  -JOSEPH STALIN
 
Castro asked which of us was an economist.  I thought he'd said COMMUNIST, so I immediately said “I am.”  “Okay,” Castro said, “you handle the economy.”  -CHE GUEVARA
 
A government which robs Peter to pay Paul can always count on the support of Paul.  -GEORGE BERNARD SHAW
 
A government ought to know how to levy taxes.  But if it doesn't know how to collect them, then a man is a fool to pay them.  -J. P. MORGAN in what has been termed the indiscretion of a lifetime (see Make Lawyers Irrelevent)
 
I will not permit any man to narrow and degrade my soul by making me hate him.  -BOOKER T. WASHINGTON
 
Talking to politicians about the economy is like talking to eight-year-olds about sex.  They have heard all the words, but they haven't a clue.  -MICHAEL ARONSTEIN
 
If I don’t ask “Why me?” after my victories, I cannot ask “Why me?” after my setbacks and disasters.  -ARTHUR ASHE
 
Forgiving means pardoning the unpardonable.  Faith means believing the unbelievable, and hoping mean to hope when things are hopeless.  -G. K. CHESTERTON
 
I can complain because rosebushes have thorns or rejoice because thorn bushes have roses.  It’s all how you look at it.  -J. KENFIELD MORLEY
 
Wisdom is knowing what to do next; virtue is doing it.  -DAVID STARR JORDAN
 
Many a man’s tongue broke his nose.  -SEUMUS McMANUS
 
If God is here for us and not elsewhere, then in fact this place is holy and this moment is sacred.  -ISABEL ANDERS
 
Nothing splendid has ever been achieved except by those who dared believe that something inside them was superior to circumstance.  -BRUCE BARTON
 
No one would remember the good Samaritan if he had only had good intentions.  -MARGARET THATCHER
 
Success is going from failure to failure without loss of enthusiasm.  -SIR WINSTON CHURCHILL
 
It’s the start that stops most people.  -BITS & PIECES
 
Don’t point a finger – lend a hand.  -BITS & PIECES
 
I never knew I could until I was told I couldn’t.  -BITS & PIECES
 
Not to know is bad.  Not to want to know is worse.  -AFRICAN PROVERB
 
The best way to escape from a problem is to solve it.  -BRENDAN FRANCIS
 
It’s easier to fight for one’s principles than to live up to them.  -ALFRED ADLER
 
Ever run out of month at the end of your money?  -TOM HOPKINS  
 
Whales are mammals.  Mammals have hair.  SHAVE THE WHALES!
 
People who love sausage and respect the law should never watch either being made.  -attributed to MARK TWAIN
 
When two people are under the influence of the most violent, most insane, most delusive, and most transient of passions, they are required to swear that they will remain in that excited, abnormal, and exhausting condition continuously until death do them part. -GEORGE BERNARD SHAW (see Marriage)
 
Fear less, hope more.
Eat less, chew more.
Whine less, breathe more.
Hate less, love more.
And all good things are yours.  -SWEDISH PROVERB
 
Thunder is good, thunder is impressive, but it is the lightening that does the work.  -MARK TWAIN
 
“I must do something” will always solve more problems than “Something must be done.”  -BITS & PIECES
 
Besides the noble art of getting things done, master the noble art of leaving things undone.  The wisdom of life consists in the elimination of nonessentials.  -LIN YUTANG
 
The mediocre teacher tells.  The good teacher explains.  The superior teacher demonstrates.  The great teacher inspires.  -WILLIAM ARTHUR WARD
 
We can easily forgive a child who is afraid of the dark; the real tragedy of life is adults who are afraid of the light.  -PLATO
 
Leadership is the ability to hide your panic from others.  -BITS & PIECES
 
One of the advantages of being disorderly is that one is constantly making exciting discoveries.  -A. A. MILNE
 
If we settle for good enough – will things ever be good enough?  -BITS & PIECES
 
A single twig breaks, but the bundle of twigs is strong.  -TECUMSEH
 
One thing that we were all taught in school is that double negatives are a complete no-no.  -BITS & PIECES
 
Life is a journey, not a guided tour.  -BITS & PIECES
 
Sometimes I feel as though I’m standing at the corner of WALK and DON’T WALK.  -author unknown
 
I don’t care to be involved in the crash landing unless I can be in on the takeoff.  -HAROLD STASSEN
 
The best mind-altering drug is truth.  -LILY TOMLIN
 
Be nice to people on your way up.  You might need them on the way down.  -JIMMY DURANTE
 
The best executive is the one who has enough sense to pick good people to do what he wants done, and self-restraint enough to keep from meddling with them while they do it.  -THEODORE ROOSEVELT
 
The best managers make decisions on the basis of what is fair and equitable, not what is popular – bearing in mind that not everyone will be pleased with these decisions.  -PRISCILLA GROSS
 
If I had done everything I’m credited with, I’d be speaking to you from a laboratory jar at Harvard University.  -FRANK SINATRA
 
By working faithfully eight hours a day, you may eventually get to be boss and work twelve hours a day.  -ROBERT FROST
 
Cicero, the Roman statesman and philosopher of 2000 years ago, wrote:
The Six Mistakes of Man
1) The delusion that personal gain is made by crushing others.
2) The tendency to worry about things that cannot be changed or corrected.
3) Insisting that a thing is impossible because we cannot accomplish it right away.
4) Refusing to set aside trivial preferences.
5) Neglecting development and refinement of the mind, and not acquiring the habit of reading and studying.
6) Attempting to compel others to believe and live as we do.
 
From the Creed for Optimists, by Christian D. Larsen:
Be so strong that nothing can disturb your peace of mind.
Talk health, happiness, and prosperity to every person you meet.
Make all your friends feel there is something special in them.
Look at the sunny side of everything.
Think only the best, work only for the best, and expect only the best.
Be as enthusiastic about the success of others as you are about your own.
Forget the mistakes of the past and press on to the greater achievements of the future.
Give everyone a smile.
Spend so much time improving yourself that you have no time left to criticize others.
Be too big for worry and too noble for anger.
 
I fear that we have awakened a sleeping giant and filled him with a terrible resolve.  -Admiral ISOROKU YAMAMOTO of Japan, 7 December 1941
 
I never did give anybody hell.  I just told the truth and they thought it was hell.  -HARRY TRUMAN
 
For peace of mind, resign as general manager of the universe.  -LARRY EISENBERG
 
DESIDERATA
Go placidly amid the noise and haste, and remember what peace there may be in silence. As far as possible, without surrender, be on good terms with all persons. Speak your truth quietly and clearly; and listen to others, even to the dull and ignorant; they too have their story. Avoid loud and aggressive persons; they are vexations to the spirit. If you compare yourself with others, you may become vain or bitter, for always there will be greater and lesser persons than yourself. Enjoy your achievements as well as your plans. Keep interested in your own career, however humble, it's a real possession in the changing fortunes of time. Exercise caution in your business affairs, for the world is full of trickery. But let this not blind you to what virtue there is; many persons strive for high ideals, and everywhere life is full of heroism. Be yourself. Especially do not feign affection. Neither be cynical about love; for in the face of all aridity and disenchantment, it is as perennial as the grass. Take kindly the counsel of the years, gracefully surrendering the things of youth. Nurture strength of spirit to shield you in sudden misfortune. But do not distress yourself with dark imaginings. Many fears are born of fatigue and loneliness. Beyond a wholesome discipline, be gentle with yourself. You are a child of the universe no less than the trees and the stars; you have a right to be here. And whether or not it is clear to you, no doubt the universe is unfolding as it should. Therefore be at peace with God, whatever you conceive him to be. And whatever your labors and aspirations, in the noisy confusion of life, keep peace in your soul. With all its sham, drudgery and broken dreams, it is still a beautiful world. Be cheerful. Strive to be happy.
 
From the Alt.Usage.English FAQ: "Desiderata" was written in 1927 by Max Ehrmann (1872-1945). In 1956, the rector of St. Paul's Church in Baltimore, Maryland, used the poem in a collection of mimeographed inspirational material for his congregation. Someone who subsequently printed it asserted that it was found in Old St. Paul's Church, dated 1692. The year 1692 was the founding date of the church and has nothing to do with the poem.
 
Compare Desiderata with Paul’s letter to his Roman mission (Romans 12:9-21): “Let love be genuine; hate what is evil, hold fast to what is good; love one another with mutual affection; outdo one another in showing honor.  Do not lag in zeal, be ardent in spirit, serve the Lord.  Rejoice in hope, be patient in suffering, persevere in prayer.  Contribute to the needs of the saints; extend hospitality to strangers.  Bless those who persecute you; bless and do not curse them.  Rejoice with those who rejoice, weep with those who weep.  Live in harmony with one another; do not be haughty, but associate with the lowly; do not claim to be wiser than you are.  Do not repay anyone evil for evil, but take thought for what is noble in the sight of all.  If it is possible, so far as it depends on you, live peaceably with all.  Beloved, never avenge yourselves, but leave room for the wrath of God; for it is written ‘Vengeance is mine, I will repay, says the Lord.’  Do not avenge, but, ‘if your enemies are hungry, feed them; if they are thirsty, give them something to drink; for by doing this you will heap burning coals upon their heads.’  Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good.”
 
FACTOIDS
(A factoid is an undisputable observation or statement of, well, fact, but which might not be obvious to the unobservant.)
1. A day without sunshine is like, well, night.
2. I wonder how much higher sea level would be if it weren’t for sponges.
3. Honk if you love peace and quiet.
4. Remember, half the people we know are below average.
5. Nothing is fool-proof to a determined fool.
6. Eagles may soar, but weasels don’t get sucked into jet engines.
7. The first bird gets the worm, but the second mouse gets the cheese.
8. Borrow money from a pessimist.  He won’t expect it back.
9. If Barbie is so popular, why do you have to buy her friends?
10. A conclusion is the place where you became tired of thinking.
11. Experience is something you don’t get until just after you need it.
12. For every action there is an equal and opposite criticism.
13. Bills travel through the mail at twice the speed of checks.
14. Never do card tricks for the group you play poker with.
15. Success is most likely to occur in private, failure in full public view.
16. The hardness of the butter is inversely proportional to the softness of the bread.
17. The severity of the itch is inversely proportional to the ability to scratch it publicly.
18. To steal ideas from one person is plagiarism, to steal from many is research.
19. Two wrongs are only a beginning.
20. The sooner you fall behind, the more time you’ll have to catch up.
21. A clear conscience may be a sign of a bad memory.
22. Anyone who believes in telekinesis, raise my hand...
 
THE SIX PHASES OF A PROJECT
1. Enthusiasm
2. Disillusionment
3. Panic
4. Search for the guilty
5. Punishment of the innocent
6. Praise and honors for the non-participants
 
HOW TO KEEP A HEALTHY LEVEL OF INSANITY
1. At lunch time, sit in your parked car with sunglasses on and point a black hair dryer at passing cars.  See whether they slow down.
2. Page yourself over the intercom.  Don’t disguise your voice.
3. Every time someone asks for something, ask him if he wants fries with that.
4. In the memo line of all your checks, write “For sexual favors.”
5. As often as possible, skip rather than walk.
6. Specify that your drive-through order is “to go.”
7. Call the psychic hotline and don’t say anything.
8. Tell your doctor: “It’s not the voices in my head that bother me, it’s the voices in yours.”
9. Wrap a wide rubber band around the tow of each shoe and color it with a yellow highlighter.  tell people that you haven’t lost your shoes since you did this.
10. Tell people you’re saving on disk space by using smaller fonts.  Suggest that they use semi-colons instead of colons for the same reason.
11. Put up notices about free donuts in the lunchroom starting at 10:00.  Be sitting there at 10:00 and when people come in and start complaining, lean back, pat your belly, and say, “Oh, you have to be faster than that!”  
 
*************************
One of the most astute and accurate of modern observers of the world is P.J. O’Rourke.  He is not (apparently) religious, but he is principled.  He is irreverent toward human institutions filled with folly.  He has traveled the world as a reporter and reported what has become obvious to him.  Herewith, some observations from P.J. O’Rourke:
 
Daniel Patrick Moynihan is the archetypical extremely smart person who went into politics anyway instead of doing something worthwhile for his country. So maybe he owes all of us an apology.
 
You say we [reporters] are distracting from the business of government. Well, I hope so. Distracting a politician from governing is like distracting a bear from eating your baby.
 
The whole idea of our government is this: If enough people get together and act in concert, they can take something and not pay for it.
 
At the core of liberalism is the spoiled child - miserable, as all spoiled children are, unsatisfied, demanding, ill-disciplined, despotic and useless. Liberalism is a philosophy of sniveling brats.
 
These were people who believed everything about the Soviet Union was perfect, but they were bringing their own toilet paper.
 
Poverty is hard, wretched and humiliating.  Poverty is schoolgirl prostitutes trying to feed their parents in Cuba. Poverty is John driving around in the Tanzanian night looking for the doctor while his daughter dies.  It's grandmothers begging on the streets of Moscow.  But what poverty is not is sad. Poverty is infuriating. These things don't have to happen. These conditions don't need to exist.
 
The real slums are another matter. The bad parts of Tondo are as bad as any place I've seen, ancient, filthy houses swarmed with the poor and stinking of sewage and trash.  But there are worse parts – squatter areas where people live under cardboard, in shipping crates, behind tacked-up newspapers.  Dad would march you straight to the basement with a hairbrush in his hand if he caught you keeping your hamster cage like this.
 
Freedom is not empowerment.  Empowerment is what the Serbs have in Bosnia.  Anybody can grab a gun and be empowered.  It's not entitlement.  An entitlement is what people on welfare get, and how free are they?  It's not an endlessly expanding list of rights – the "right" to education, the "right" to food and housing.  That's not freedom, that's dependency.  Those aren't rights, those are the rations of slavery – hay and a barn for human cattle.  There is only one basic human right, the right to do as you damn well please.  And with it comes the only basic human duty, the duty to take the consequences.
 
Giving government money and power is like giving car keys and whiskey to a teenage boy.
 
Health care is too expensive, so the Clinton administration is putting a high-powered corporate lawyer – Hillary – in charge of making it cheaper.  (This is what I always do when I want to spend less money – hire a lawyer from Yale.)  If you think health care is expensive now, wait until you see what it costs when it's free.
 
You can't get good Chinese takeout in China and Cuban cigars are rationed in Cuba.  That's all you need to know about communism.
 
A little government and a little luck are necessary in life, but only a fool trusts either of them.
 
One nice thing about the Third World, you don't have to fasten your seat belt.  (Or stop smoking.  Or cut down on saturated fats.)  It takes a lot off your mind when average life expectancy is forty-five minutes.
 
Guns are always the best method for private suicide. Drugs are too chancy. You might just miscalculate the dosage and just have a good time.
 
The mystery of government is not how Washington works but how to make it stop.
 
[T]he Clinton administration launched an attack on people in Texas because those people were religious nuts with guns.  Hell, this country was founded by religious nuts with guns.  Who does Bill Clinton think stepped ashore on Plymouth Rock?  Peace Corps volunteers?  Or maybe the people in Texas were attacked because of child abuse.  But, if child abuse was the issue, why didn't Janet Reno tear-gas Woody Allen?
 
The Democrats are the party that says government will make you smarter, taller, richer, and remove the crabgrass on your lawn.  The Republicans are the party that says government doesn't work and then they get elected and prove it.
 
The interesting thing about staring down a gun barrel is how small the hole is where the bullet comes out, yet what a big difference it would make in your social schedule.
 
How did an allegedly free people spawn a vast, rampant cuttlefish of dominion with its tentacles in every orifice of the body politic?
 
One of the annoying things about believing in free will and individual responsibility is the difficulty of finding somebody to blame your problems on.  And when you do find somebody, it's remarkable how often his picture turns up on your driver's license.
 
I can understand why mankind hasn't given up war.  During a war you get to drive tanks through the sides of buildings and shoot foreigners – two things that are usually frowned on during peacetime.
 
In comparative terms, there's no poverty in America by a long shot.  Heritage Foundation political scientist Robert Rector has worked up figures showing that when the official U.S. measure of poverty was developed in 1963, a poor American family had an income twenty-nine times greater than the average per capita income in the rest of the world.  An individual American could make more money than 93 percent of the other people on the planet and still be considered poor.
 
When I was growing up, we never knew we were living in poverty.  All I knew was that we didn’t have much.
 
It takes a lot of weapons to do good works (as Richard the Lionhearted could have told us).  And this is not just a Somali problem.  We have poverty and deprivation in our own country.  Try standing unarmed on a street corner in Compton handing out twenty-dollar bills and see how long you last.
 
The free market is ugly and stupid, like going to the mall; the unfree market is just as ugly and just as stupid, except there is nothing in the mall and if you don't go there they shoot you.
 
Some earnest souls have gone so far as to aver that impeachment has distracted President Clinton from ... raising taxes, destroying health care, appointing 1960s bakeheads to high political office, soliciting felonious campaign contributions, hanging friends out to dry for Arkansas real estate frauds, giving missile secrets to the Chinese, taking credit for the benefits of a free market about which he knows little and cares less, using U.S. military forces as fig leaves for domestic scandals and au pairs for the U.N., leading foreign policy back into the flea circus of Jimmy Carterism, having phone sex, groping patronage seekers, and snapping the elastic on the underpants of psychologically disturbed school-age White House interns entrusted with the task of delivering high-level government pizza.
 
Very little is known of the Canadian country since it is rarely visited by anyone but the Queen and illiterate sport fishermen.
 
Imagine a weight-loss program at the end of which, instead of better health, good looks, and hot romantic prospects, you die.  Somalia had become just this kind of spa.
 
There is no virtue in compulsory government charity, and there is no virtue in advocating it.  A politician who portrays himself as "caring" and "sensitive" because he wants to expand the government's charitable programs is merely saying that he's willing to try to do good with other people's money.  Well, who isn't?  And a voter who takes pride in supporting such programs is telling us that he'll do good with his own money – if a gun is held to his head.
 
The second item in the liberal creed, after self-righteousness, is unaccountability.  Liberals have invented whole college majors – psychology, sociology, women's studies – to prove that nothing is anybody's fault.  No one is fond of taking responsibility for his actions, but consider how much you'd have to hate free will to come up with a political platform that advocates killing unborn babies but not convicted murderers.  A callous pragmatist might favor abortion and capital punishment.  A devout Christian would sanction neither.  But it takes years of therapy to arrive at the liberal view.
 
Worshiping the earth is more fun than going to church.  It's also closer.  We can just step off the sidewalk.  And sometimes we can get impressionable members of the opposite sex to perform sacramental rites with us.  "Every drop of water wasted is a drop less of a wild and scenic river, Jennifer. We'd better double up in the shower."
 
The morning meal was served in traditional socialist fashion – very slowly, with the courses out of order so that the jelly arrived half an hour after the toast and the coffee didn't come until we'd called for the check.  However, it was hard to be angry at a place that had ice cream, beer, and cigarettes on its breakfast menu.
 
The people who believe that, as a result of industrial development, life is about to become a hell, or may be one already, are guilty, at least, of sloppy pronouncements.  On page 8 of Earth in the Balance, Al Gore claims that his study of the arms race gave him "a deeper appreciation for the most horrifying fact in all our lives: civilization is now capable of destroying itself."  In the first place, the most horrifying fact in many of our lives is that our ex-spouse has gotten ahold of our ATM card.  And civilization has always been able to destroy itself.  The Greeks of ancient Athens, who had a civilization remarkable for lack of technological progress during its period of greatest knowledge and power, managed to destroy them fine.
 
When buying and selling are controlled by legislation, the first things to be bought and sold are legislators.
 
It's better to spend money like there's no tomorrow than to spend tonight like there's no money.
 
When government does, occasionally, work, it works in an elitist fashion.  That is, government is most easily manipulated by people who have money and power already.  This is why government benefits usually go to people who don't need benefits from government.  Government may make some environmental improvements, but these will be improvements for rich bird-watchers.  And no one in government will remember that when poor people go bird-watching they do it at Kentucky Fried Chicken.
 
Never Refuse Wine. It is an odd but universally held opinion that anyone who doesn't drink must be an alcoholic.
 
If we're going to improve the environment, the first thing we should do is duck the government.  The second thing we should do is quit being moral.  Screw the rights of nature.  Nature will have rights as soon as it get duties.  The minute we see birds, trees, bugs, and squirrels picking up litter, giving money to charity, and keeping an eye on our kids at the park, we'll let them vote.
 
The founding fathers, in their wisdom, devised a method by which our republic can take one hundred of its most prominent numbskulls and keep them out of the private sector where they might do actual harm.
 
There's a lot of debate on this subject – about what kind of car handles best.  Some say a front-engined car, some say a rear-engined car.  I say a rented car.  Nothing handles better than a rented car.  You can go faster, turn corners sharper, and put the transmission into reverse while going forward at a higher rate of speed in a rented car than in any other kind.
 
The college idealists who fill the ranks of the environmental movement seem willing to do absolutely anything to save the biosphere, except take science courses and learn something about it.
 
You can say anything you want, make any sort of joke you want, as long as your target is folly.  And the real definition of folly is ‘persistence in error.’  It’s not just making a mistake – everybody makes mistakes – folly is persistence in that mistake...  As long as your target is folly rather than suffering, you can make the darkest, most horrible jokes in the world.  On the other hand, the moment you start laughing at people for suffering, you’re out on thin ice.  -P.J. O’ROURKE
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When the only tool you have is a hammer, everything begins to look like a nail.  -ABRAHAM MASLOW
 
Maslow’s hierarchy of needs – those on the top are not achieved unless those below are met:
Self-actualization
Esteem
Belonging and Love
Safety
Physical
 
Every man takes the limits of his own field of vision for the limits of the world.  -ARTHUR SCHOPENHAUER
 
Professionals built the Titanic.  Amateurs built the Ark.  -Anonymous
 
We’re all in this alone.  -LILY TOMLIN
 
It is better to debate a question without settling it than to settle a question without debating it.  -JOSEPH JOUBERT  
 
To believe in God is impossible; not to believe in him is absurd.  -VOLTAIRE (see Experts, Faith, Heaven)
 
It were better to have no opinion of God at all than such a one as is unworthy of him; for the one is only belief – the other contempt.  -PLUTARCH
 
I have said what I have said, not to have the last word about it, but because I cannot remain silent in the face of so great a mystery.  -SAINT AUGUSTINE?  (TREATISE ON TRINITY?)
 
The role of government is not to manage or control the economy ... but to remove obstacles standing in the way. -GEORGE W. BUSH ["... deliver the mail, defend the shores, and get out of the way." -RONALD REAGAN]