masterwordsmith-unplugged

"If it looks like a duck, and quacks like a duck, we have at least to consider the possibility that we have a small aquatic bird of the family anatidae on our hands."
Douglas Noel Adams - Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency, 1987

"Human beings, who are almost unique in having the ability to learn from the experience of others, are also remarkable for their apparent disinclination to do so." Douglas Noel Adams




"Until lions have their historians, tales of the hunt will always glorify the hunters."
African proverb

"I cannot afford to waste my time making money."
Jean Louis Rodolphe Agassiz (1807-73), Swiss-American zoologist, geologist

"What man has done to man is the saddest chapter in the history of the world. The story of the peoples of the earth is in large measure the tale of how the world whipped the nonconformist with its displeasure and visited upon him dishonor and ignominy, torture and death."
George K. Anderson, from The Legend of the Wandering Jew

"I distrust those people who know so well what God wants them to do because I notice it always coincides with their own desires."
Susan B. Anthony (1820-1906)

“The quest for riches darkens the sense of right and wrong.”
Antiphanes, ancient Greek dramatist

"The 10 Commandments contain 297 words. The Bill of Rights is stated in 463 words. Lincoln's Gettysburg Address contains 266 words. A recent federal directive to regulate the price of cabbage contains 26,911 words."
The Atlanta Journal

"Practicing the Golden Rule is not a sacrifice, it's an investment."
Byllye Avery

“Only religion can prevent democratic rule from developing into mob rule. A nation can prosper only as its citizens are religious, intelligent, capable of service and eager to render it.”
Roger Babson, economist

“Every great panic we have ever had has been foreshadowed by a general decline in observance of religious principles.”
Roger Babson, economist, predicted the 1929 stock market crash

"Nothing doth more hurt in a state than that cunning men pass for wise."
Francis Bacon

"A caged canary is secure; but it is not free. It is easier for free men to resist terrorism from afar than tyranny from within."
Chuck Baldwin

"For the past two centuries, those who do not prize freedom have chipped away at every major clause of our Constitution until today we face a crisis of great dimensions."
Ezra Taft Benson

"The God of heaven sent some of His choicest spirits to lay the foundation of this government. And he has sent other choice spirits to preserve it."
Ezra Taft Benson

"Could many of our ills today have resulted from our failure to train a strong citizenry from the only source we have -- the boys and girls of each community? Have they grown up to believe in politics without principle, pleasure without conscience, knowledge without effort, wealth without work, business without morality, science without humanity, worship without sacrifice?"
Ezra Taft Benson

"When they give a person a Bachelors degree, they take away their mouth, when they give them a Masters degree, they take away their brains, and when they give them a PhD, they give them back their mouth."
Helen K. Billings, PhD (1901-1995)

["In Robert Bolt’s "A Man for All Seasons," Richard Rich offers the perjured testimony that would send Sir Thomas More to the executioner. As Rich passed by the defendant’s dock, More noticed a new chain of office around Rich’s neck, and asked what it was. Thomas Cromwell answered that Rich was now Attorney General for Wales. Looking at his false accuser with a mixture of pain and amusement, More said:"]
"For Wales? Why, Richard, it profits a man nothing to give his soul for the whole world ... but for Wales!"
Robert Bolt in "A Man for All Seasons"

"Never interrupt your enemy when he is making a mistake."
Napoleon Bonaparte

"We have grasped the mystery of the atom and rejected the Sermon on the Mount. Ours is a world of nuclear giants and ethical infants. We know more about war than we know about peace, more about killing than we know about living."
General Omar Bradley, U.S. Army

"If you think we are free today, you know nothing about tyranny and even less about freedom."
Tom Braun, Radio Show, Spirit of '76 -- Voice of Warning

"The government is good at one thing...it knows how to break your legs, and then hand you a crutch and say 'see if it weren't for the government you wouldn't be able to walk.'"
Harry Browne

"It is proof of a base and low mind for one to wish to think with the masses or majority, merely because the majority is the majority. Truth does not change because it is, or is not, believed by a majority of the people."
Giordano Bruno

"In looking for people to hire, you look for three qualities: integrity, intelligence, and energy. And if they don't have the first, the other two will kill you."
Warren Buffet, CEO, Berkshire Hathaway

"No one understood better than Stalin that the true object of propaganda is neither to convince nor even to persuade, but to produce a uniform pattern of public utterance in which the first trace of unorthodox thought immediately reveals itself as a jarring dissonance."
Alan Bullock, in Hitler and Stalin: Parallel Lives

"First they burn books, then they burn people."
Bumper Sticker

"It is necessary only for the good man to do nothing for evil to triumph."
Edmund Burke

"Man is the only animal that can remain on friendly terms with the victims he intends to eat until he eats them."
Samuel Butler

"In such a world of conflict, a world of victims and executioners, it is the job of thinking people, not to be on the side of the executioners."
Albert Camus

"Integrity has no need of rules."
Albert Camus

"I'll tell you a big secret, my friend: Don't wait for the Last Judgment. It happens every day."
Albert Camus (1913-1960) The Fall, 1956

"The welfare of humanity is always the alibi of tyrants."
Albert Camus

"Throughout history government has served as a vehicle for the organization of hatred and oppression, benefiting no one except those who are ambitious and ruthless enough to gain control of it."
Doug Casey

"Ah yes, truth. Funny how everyone is always asking for it but when they get it they don't believe it because it's not the truth they want to hear."
Helena Cassadine

"Those who steal from private individuals spend their lives in stocks and chains; those who steal from the public treasury go dressed in gold and purple."
Marcus Porcius Cato - (Roman Statesman - 190 B.C.)

"When morality comes up against profit, it is seldom that profit loses."
Shirley Chisholm

"If you will not fight for right when you can easily win without bloodshed; if you will not fight when your victory is sure and not too costly; you may come to the moment when you will have to fight with all the odds against you and only a precarious chance of survival. There may even be a worse case. You may have to fight when there is no hope of victory, because it is better to perish than to live as slaves."
Winston Churchill