Posted here for 2-22-10

"Why not?"
. . . -- A National Science Foundation official, when confronted by investigators about whether he took a taxpayer-funded trip to facilitate a liaison with a woman.

Source: "Taxpayers' Bucks Spent on Trysts, Golf, Skiing," by Jim McElhatton, The Washington Times National Weekly Edition, January 25, 2010, page 10. Address: 3600 New York Avenue, NE, Washington, DC 20002. E-mail. Website.

Posted here for 2-15-10

"I want you people to organize and keep on organizing until you are able to overthrow the [. . . ] rotten, capitalistic government of this country."
. . . -- Leon Trotsky.

Source: "A Pathetic End for a Founder of the World Revolution," by Joseph C. Goulden, The Washington Times National Weekly Edition, January 4, 2010, page 28. Address: 3600 New York Avenue, NE, Washington, DC 20002. E-mail. Website.

Posted here for 2-1-10

"While in China, President Obama gave a speech. He said, 'Open criticism makes democracy stronger and it makes me a better leader because its forces me to hear opinions I don't want to hear.' Then he went back to trashing Fox News."
. . . -- Jay Leno, on his TV show.

Source: "Quote of the Week," Human Events, November 23, 2009, page 1. Address: 1 Massachusetts Avenue, NW, Washington, DC 20001. Phone: 202-216-0600. Website.

Posted here for 1-25-10

"Frankly, I don't know what it is about California, but we seem to have a strange urge to elect really obnoxious women to high office. I'm not bragging, you understand, but no other state, including Maine, even comes close. When it comes to sending left-wing dingbats to Washington, we're number one. There's no getting around the fact that the last time anyone saw the likes of Barbara Boxer, Dianne Feinstein and Nancy Pelosi, they were stirring a cauldron when the curtain went up on 'Macbeth'. The three of them are like jackasses who happen to possess the gift of speech. You don't know if you should condemn them for their stupidity or simply marvel at their ability to form words."
. . . -- Columnist Burt Prelutsky.

Source: From an email dated 1-12-10. Thanks, FS.

Posted here for 1-18-10

"We are on the cusp of the most volatile and most dynamic political moment in our lifetime. The surging forces, I think, are now clearly discernible. What is not discernible is how they will be manifested, for the outcome itself remains to be determined. The issue, indeed, is this nation's future. [. . .] [I]t is in genuine doubt. It is a moment potentially of fantastic renewal -- a national restoration; but it is also potentially [a] dark and even dangerous, destructive moment that could seal the descent of the last, best hope of mankind."
. . . -- Pat Caddell, Democrat, liberal, who worked for Democratic presidential candidates George McGovern in 1972, Jimmy Carter in 1976 and 1980, Gary Hart in 1984, Joe Biden in 1988, and Jerry Brown in 1992.

Source: Written in a letter to Glenn Beck, as quoted on the Glenn Beck TV show, January 11, 2010.

Posted here for 1-11-10

"I quit when medicine was placed under State control, some years ago. Do you know what it takes to perform a brain operation? Do you know the kind of skill it demands, and the years of passionate, merciless, excruciating devotion that go to acquire that skill? That was what I would not place at the disposal of men whose sole qualification to rule me was their capacity to spout the fraudulent generalities that got them elected to the privilege of enforcing their wishes at the point of a gun. I would not let them dictate the purpose for which my years of study had been spent, or the conditions of my work, or my choice of patients, or the amount of my reward. I observed that in all the discussions that preceded the enslavement of medicine, men discussed everything -- except the desires of the doctors. Men considered only the 'welfare' of the patients, with no thought for those who were to provide it. That a doctor should have any right, desire or choice in the matter was regarded as irrelevant selfishness; his is not to choose, they said, only 'to serve.' That a man who's willing to work under compulsion is too dangerous a brute to entrust with a job in the stockyards -- never occurred to those who proposed to help the sick by making life impossible for the healthy. I have often wondered at the smugness with which people assert their right to enslave me, to control my work, to force my will, to violate my conscience, to stifle my mind -- yet what is it that they expect to depend on, when they lie on an operating table under my hands? Their moral code has taught them to believe that it is safe to rely on the virtue of their victims. Well, that is the virtue I have withdrawn. Let them discover the kind of doctors that their system will now produce. Let them discover, in their operating rooms and hospital wards, that it is not safe to place their lives in the hands of a man whose life they have throttled. It is not safe, if he is the sort of a man who resents it -- and still less safe, if he is the sort who doesn't."
. . . -- Dr. Hendricks, in Ayn Rand's book, Atlas Shrugged.

Source: From an email dated 1-3-10. Thanks FS.

Posted here for 1-4-10

"It is natural to man to indulge in the illusions of hope. We are apt to shut our eyes against a painful truth -- and listen to the song of that syren, till she transforms us into beasts. ... Are we disposed to be of the number of those, who having eyes, see not, and having ears, hear not . . . ?"
. . . -- Patrick Henry.

Source: The History Place.