I think computer viruses should count as life.
Maybe it says something about human nature,
that the only form of life we have created so far
is purely destructive. Talk about creating some-
thing in our own image.
--Stephen Hawking, Life in the Universe
Ninety-five percent of human knowledge is the
names of things and how long they are.
--David Wingert, c 1963
I have an enormous collection of sea shells. I
keep them on beaches all over the world.
--Stephen Wright
The last American to die in what might be truth-
fully called the defense of his country did so in
1945. Those who have perished since have died
to promote the agendas of lying politicians.
--Edna McAlexander, The Nation, 23 June 2003
The difference [between natural and manmade
death as a public health issue] is that one area of
public death has been tackled and secured by
the forces of reason; the other has not.
--Gil Elliot, Twentieth Century Book of the Dead, 1972
But the death machine had only sampled a vast
new source of raw material: the civilians behind
the lines. ... That is why, despite its sickening
squalor and brutality, the Great War looks so
innocent to modern eyes.
--Richard Rhodes, The Making of the Atomic Bomb, 1986
Let us not dream that reason can ever be popu-
lar. Passions, emotions, may be made popular,
but reason remains ever the property of the few.
-- Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749-1832)
The preeminent transnational community in our
culture is science.
--Richard Rhodes, The Making of the Atomic Bomb, 1986
Men are actually praised as self-sacrificing for
leaving their families to fight for what they
believe in—no matter how distant or arcane
their cause—but women are called selfish if we
fail to sacrifice almost everything for our fami-
lies, or even if we speak up for ourselves.
--Gloria Steinem, at Smith College, 1995
Joseph Farah -- "America is not slouching toward totalitarianism, it is rushing headlong toward it. "
"Basically National Socialism and Marxism are the same." —Nobel laureate Friedrich A. Hayek
"At first the claims of the propaganda were so impudent that people thought it insane; later, it got on people's nerves; and in the end, it was believed." —Adolf Hitler, Mein Kampf
Fascism: Any program for setting up and centralizing an autocratic regime with severely authoritarian politics exercising regulation of industry, commerce and finance, rigid censorship, and forcible oppression of opposition.
-- Webster's Unabridged Dictionary
The world has achieved brilliance without conscience.
Ours is a world of nuclear giants and ethical infants.
General Omar Bradley
"A lie gets halfway around the world before the truth has a chance to get its pants on."
Winston Churchill
"We may congratulate ourselves that this cruel war is nearing its end. It has cost a vast amount of treasure and blood ... It has indeed been a trying hour for the Republic; but I see in the near future a crisis approaching that unnerves me and causes me to tremble for the safety of my country. As a result of war, corporations have been enthroned and an era of corruption in high places will follow, and the money power of the country will endeavor to prolong its reign by working upon the prejudices of the people until all wealth is aggregated in a few hands and the Republic is destroyed. I feel at this moment more anxiety for the safety of my country than ever before, even in the midst of war. God grant that my suspicions may prove groundless."
President Abraham Lincoln
The passage appears in a letter from Lincoln to Col. William F. Elkins, Nov. 21, 1864.
Our government has kept us in a perpetual state of fear -- kept us in a continuous stampede of patriotic fervor -- with the cry of grave national emergency ... Always there has been some terrible evil to gobble us up if we did not blindly rally behind it by furnishing the exorbitant sums demanded. Yet, in retrospect, these disasters seem never to have happened, seem never to have been quite real.
General Douglas MacArthur, 1957
The government is extremely fond of amassing great quantities of statistics. These are raised to the nth degree, the cube roots are extracted, and the results are arranged into elaborate and impressive displays. What must be kept ever in mind, however, is that in every case, the figures are first put down by a village watchman, and he puts down anything he damn well pleases.
Sir Josiah Stamp
"They made it a desert and called it peace."
Tacitus
.
"The President, in every possible instance, shall consult with Congress before introducing U.S. Armed Forces into hostilities or into situations where imminent involvement in hostilities is clearly indicated by the circumstances."
- U.S. War Powers Act, 1973.
http://www.fas.org/man/dod-101/ops/docs/war-powers.htm
"The U.S. must carry out some act somewhere in the world which shows its determination to continue to be a world power."
--Henry Kissinger, U.S. Secretary of State (1973-1976)
Source: Washington Post, April 1975.
"With proper tactics, nuclear war need not be as destructive as it appears."
--Henry Kissinger, U.S. Secretary of State (1973-1976)
Source: Kissinger, Nuclear Weapons and Foreign Policy, 1957.
.
"By God, we've kicked the Vietnam Syndrome once and for all!"
--U.S. President George Bush, on the success of shaping public opinion for the U.S.-Iraq war.
Source: Newsweek, March 11, 1991.
"The demonization of Milosevic is necessary to maintain the air attacks."
Source: U.S. State Department, New York Times, March 30, 1999, p A10.
"In many cases, the support for human rights will have to be balanced against other important goals of world order."
- U.S. Presidential-appointed Trilateral Commission: Triangle Paper 14, 1977, p. 30, "Towards a Renovated International System."
.
.
"There are only two governments in Europe capable of being a real victor. One is Germany, and the other is Russia . . . I shudder to think of a Russian domination of Europe. While a German domination would be hard and cruel, at least in the beginning, it would be an intensification of a culture which is more akin to ours than that of Russia. Further than that, if Germany should be dominant throughout the greater part of Europe, she would act as a bulwark against the westward progression of Russia."
--U.S. Ambassador to Italy, Breckinridge Long, 1935
Source: Letter, Long to Roosevelt, 19 April 1935, Italy: Long, President’s Secretary File, FDR Papers, Roosevelt Library. Cited in David Schmitz, the United States and Fascist Italy, 1988, p. 156.
"Once Mussolini and the Fascists are gone, I will deal with any Italian authority which can deliver the goods. I am not in the least afraid for this purpose of seeming to recognize the House of Savoy or Badoglio, provided they can make the Italians do what we need for our purposes."
--Winston Churchill, 1943, on the succession of Marshall Pietro Badoglio, commander of the 1935 Fascist invasion of Ethiopia.
Source: Letter to F.D. Roosevelt, collected in Kimball, ed., "Churchill and Roosevelt," 2:347.
"We look to Henry Ford as the leader of the growing Fascist party in America."
--Adolf Hitler, 1923
Source: Interview, Chicago Tribune, 8 March 1923.
"I regard Henry Ford as my inspiration."
--Adolf Hitler, 1931
Source: Interview, Detroit News, 31 December 1931.
"The government of the world must be entrusted to satisfied nations, who wished nothing more for themselves than what they had. . . our power placed us above the rest. We were like rich men dwelling at peace within their habitations."
--Winston Churchill, 1951
Source: Churchill, The Second World War, Vol. 5 (1951), 382.
.
"No scenario has been written then, nor has it been written since, to explain why the Russians would want to conquer Western Europe by force or to bomb the United States. Neither action would have contributed in any tangible way to the Soviet national interest and would have hazarded the destruction of the Soviet state. The basic question was never raised, for the Cold War prism created in the minds of the diplomatic and military strategists a clear-cut world of black and white; there were no grays."
--Harry Rositzke, CIA Analyst, Eastern Europe, 1977
Source: Rositzke, The CIA’s Secret Operations (1977), p. 15.
"Lay waste all the settlements around . . . that the country may not be merely overrun but destroyed. You will not, by any means, listen to any overture of peace before the total ruin of their settlements is effected . . . Our future security will be in their inability to injure us . . . and in the terror with which the severity of the chastisement they receive will inspire them."
--George Washington, letter to Major General John Sullivan, 31 May 1779
Source: Fitzpatrick, ed., Writings of George Washington (1936), XV, 189-93.
"Foreign policy is or should be based primarily upon one consideration; that consideration is the need for the U.S. to obtain certain raw materials to sustain its economy and when possible, to preserve profitable markets for our surpluses. Out of this need grows the necessity for making certain that those areas of the world in which essential raw materials are produced are not only accessible to us, but their population and governments are willing to trade with us on a friendly basis."
---US President Dwight Eisenhower, 1951
Source: Letter to Earl Schaefer, President of Boeing Aircraft, 27 December 1951; Dwight D. Eisenhower Personal Papers, Box 98, Eisenhower Library, Abilene; cited in Cook, the Declassified Eisenhower, pp. 112-3.
"If we see that Germany is winning, we ought to help Russia, and if Russia is winning, we ought to help Germany, and that way let them kills as many as possible, although I don't want to see Hitler victorious in any circumstances."
--U.S. Vice President Harry Truman, 1941
Source: New York Times, 24 June 1941
War does not determine who is right...only who is left.
America is the only country where it takes more brains to fill out the income tax return then it does to make the income.
The reason people have accountants doing their tax returns is that it saves them time...sometimes up to 20 years.
You've got to hand it to the tax people. If you don't, they'll come and get it.
Where's the capital of the U.S.A.? Spread all over the world.
Let's hope they never find anybody on Mars. Think of what it would cost us in foreign aid.
A woman president wouldn't spend billions for atomic weapons and stuff. She'd shop around until she found them on sale.
Candidates' debates are just sneaky ways to get folks to listen to several political speeches instead of just one.
There is nothing wrong with a good political joke...until it gets elected.
Voting is free...but not voting can be very costly.
The government and a blood bank have one things in common; they're both after the same thing.
Every child born in the U.S.A. is endowed with life, liberty, and a share of the government debt.
The most efficient size for a committee is two...particularly when one of them does not attend meetings.
Old soldiers never die. Young ones do.
War is God's way of teaching us geography. |
