Quote-o-rama:
The Twelfth Miscellaneous File
"I personally am of the opinion that if people talked about their illnesses more then we'd have less stigma and therefore less fear about them. I can't NOT talk about my illness." -Amber C. "I'm a woman of simple, if rather specific and obscure and weird, needs." monkeycrackmary.livejournal.com "The sexpot routine can be fruitful when you're young, but once you hit age thirty, you need to dial down the cleavage and start displaying some chops; for every Goldie Hawn, there are a hundred Loni Andersons." -Fametracker.com "The president announced today new budget slashes. And he's slashing education. It is a genius plan - when the kids graduate they won't have the math skills to calculate how much debt they're actually in." -Craig Ferguson "A cruel story runs on wheels, and every hand oils the wheels as they run." -Ouida (Marie Louise de la Ramee) "...One of my fondest wishes is to mix it up with Ms. Coulter on the political front. She bullies most of her wimpy liberal counterparts on TV by resorting to insults they're unwilling to return. God knows that that wouldn't be the case with me. Could that be why we've never crossed paths on the airwaves?" -Ted Rall "Attorney General Alberto Gonzales started his first week on the job. Remember those two naked statues that John Ashcroft had covered up when he took the job? Well they're naked again but now they just have leashes around their necks." -Jay Leno "Proust has pointed out that the predisposition to love creates its own objects: Is this not true of fear?" -Elizabeth Bowen "Whatever their orientation, journalists are the last line of defense against public deception. If they fail to challenge distortions by politicians, they might as well join the stenography pool." -Howard Kurtz, WashingtonPost.com "In much wisdom is much grief; and he that increaseth knowledge increaseth sorrow." -Ecclesiastes 1:18 "So at the risk of being too simple, I will say write only what you care about, not what you think will sell. And be persistent. Those are the only things that will lead toward getting a film made sooner or later." -Alexander Payne "Politics in America is the binding secular religion." -Theodore H. White "I don't write to a market, but I'm talking to somebody when I write. I guess you might say I'm like the Ancient Mariner: I've got a story and I want to tell it to somebody. I don't sit down and say, 'There's a big market right now for mutants trashing each other, so I'm gonna do two mutants trashing each other.' None of my books are done for a market. I have a very small market when you come right down to it, compared to, say, X-Men or Spawn. I don't write for these people at all. It's very hard to talk to them about heartbreak." -Will Eisner, 2000 "Everything passes away - suffering, pain, blood, hunger, pestilence. The sword will pass away too, but the stars will still remain when the shadows of our presence and our deeds have vanished from the earth. There is no man who does not know that. Why, then, will we not turn our eyes towards the stars? Why?" -Mikhail Bulgakov "There are only two classes of mankind in the world - doctors and patients." -Rudyard Kipling "In his State of the Union Address, President Bush announced a new initiative to keep young people out of gangs, a new program called Do Right And Follow Through (D.R.A.F.T.)." -Tina Fey "As a former professional historian in training, I can assure you that the Vikings were a thoroughly nasty lot. They pillaged, destroyed, raped, maimed, enslaved, and looted their way across northern Europe for several centuries. There was a set prayer in the Irish church's prayer book that went, 'From the fury of the Norsemen, oh Lord, protect us.' Thus, I have to believe that the spirits of thousands of Viking warriors in Valhalla moan with disgust every day when they read _Hagar the Horrible_." -JoshReads.com "Inspired by American films of the 1970s as I am, I remember a time when leading men resembled ordinary men, much more than they do now. Think of Donald Sutherland, Elliot Gould, Dustin Hoffman, Al Pacino, even Jack Nicholson. All of them are a far cry from Cary Grant or Ben Affleck." -Alexander Payne "I was interested in the book until the main character became the main character." -Steph H. "As I see it, if God didn't want me to harass customer service reps, He wouldn't have put those toll-free numbers for 'comments or questions' on product packages." -Gene Weingarten, WashingtonPost.com "(Probably not work safe, maybe not home safe, either.)" -StraightDope.com "Over the past few years, it's been a pleasure to see some Marvel Comics characters get the big-screen treatments they deserve. The X-Men series, the Spider-Man films, and Ang Lee's underappreciated Hulk all found ways to transplant their iconic heroes to film while still staying true to comic-book tradition. But with other franchises, like The Punisher and Daredevil, Marvel has stayed true to another kind of tradition: The long stretch in the '70s and '80s when anyone with two nickels and a camera could license a Marvel character for a movie." -TheOnionAVClub.com "Other cities claim to be melting pots, but this is the original melting pot." -Salah Abdel Jalil, on Mecca "I lived in Austin briefly and everyone there goes around 'throwing horns.' I thought it was the most metal town ever until I realized they were all just supporting their local football heroes." -Amber C. "The only thing I regret about my past life is the length of it. If I had my past life over again I'd make all the same mistakes - only sooner." -Tallulah Bankhead "All Americans, not just social conservatives, are 'values' voters. We have different values, that's all. Some of us rank values like personal freedom, a clean environment and economic fairness so highly that we're willing to give up some of what we have to promote them. Other people see those values as unimportant or even harmful. But they're willing to sacrifice for their opposing principles of traditional piety, free markets and personal security." -Ted Rall "Ethics are a luxury for people who can afford new pants." -Pete, DieselSweeties.com "With Dick Cheney, Mother Nature and Liza Minnelli running loose in the world, about the most one can hope for is mere survival, if that." -Tom Shales, WashingtonPost.com "When you're sure you're being judged or pried into, the best answer is a nondefensive non-answer - anything from, 'I'm not having this conversation anymore,' to, 'Hey, isn't that a tufted titmouse?,' depending on your panache (and/or proximity to tufted titmice)." -Carolyn Hax, WashingtonPost.com "You do not have to be Laurence Olivier to play an anonymous citizen of the living dead." -Rob Winder, BBC "Is it me, or does it seem strange that the United States is responding to the tsunami by sending warplanes, aircraft carriers and a strike group? If this keeps up, we'll go the way of Pakistan, where the military takes care of every government function from guarding borders to collecting garbage." -Ted Rall "In hip-hop culture, men traveled in packs, in camps where group loyalty meant everything. This all-together-now mentality has its roots in the South Bronx, where rap was born in 1974: There, what began as party music came to serve a greater good, a place where ex-gangbangers could find a little peace. Instead of battling over turf, they would battle over the 'four elements' of hip-hop culture: dancing, rapping, graffiti-ing and DJ-ing." -Teresa Wiltz, WashingtonPost.com "Sit there with your pop-tart slot shut and let me finish belittling you." -Lil' Sis, DieselSweeties.com "No matter how you look at it, the new year is not going to be as blank a slate as you hope. It never is. The starting over is always figurative, a moral effort rather than an actual fresh start. In fact, a new year like this one feels very much like the revenge of the old year." -New York Times editorial, 1 Jan. 2005 "The larger the mob, the harder the test. In small areas, before small electorates, a first-rate man occasionally fights his way through, carrying even the mob with him by force of his personality. But when the field is nationwide, and the fight must be waged chiefly at second and third hand, and the force of personality cannot so readily make itself felt, then all the odds are on the man who is, intrinsically, the most devious and mediocre - the man who can most easily adeptly disperse the notion that his mind is a virtual vacuum. The Presidency tends, year by year, to go to such men. As democracy is perfected, the office represents, more and more closely, the inner soul of the people. We move toward a lofty ideal. On some great and glorious day the plain folks of the land will reach their heart's desire at last, and the White House will be adorned by a downright moron." -H. L. Mencken, 1920 "I think Rumsfeld may be not too long for this world... Let's dump him." -President Richard M. Nixon, April 7, 1971 "It makes no difference if I burn my bridges behind me - I never retreat." -Fiorello LaGuardia "At his annual physical last week, the president found out he has gained six pounds over the last year and he has pledged to loose the weight as soon as possible. So, finding Osama bin Laden gets pushed even further down the to-do list." -Tina Fey, _Saturday Night Live_ "It's the friends you can call up at 4 am that matter." -Marlene Dietrich "Watching this film is like being rolled down a marble staircase in an oil drum: loud, dark, bumpy and not even a little fun." -Washington Post "History is the record of an encounter between character and circumstances." -Donald Creighton "Politics is the art of preventing people from taking part in affairs which properly concern them." -Paul Valery "It is easier to live through someone else than to become complete yourself." -Betty Friedan "One half of the world cannot understand the pleasures of the other." -Jane Austen "If there is any fixed star in our constitutional constellation, it is that no official, high or petty, can prescribe what shall be orthodox in politics, nationalism, religion, or other matters of opinion, or force citizens to confess by word or act their faith therein." -Robert H. Jackson, "Donald Rumsfeld held a question and answer session with soldiers on their way to Iraq and one soldier asked why a lot of their vehicles still don't have the proper armor and Rumsfeld said, 'You go to war with the army you have. Not the army your wish for.' And then he got into his armored car and drove away." -Jay Leno "You can close your eyes to reality but not to memories." -Stanislaw J. Lec Adam: In TV, 85% of the people involved in the entertainment business are unnecessary. And when you're unecessary, you don't go around flapping your wings and telling people stuff because they'll just cut you, because they'll realize you're unecessary. I think that's a part of TV people's reluctance to speak out. Dr. Drew: It's a little more refined than that. You may be necessary, but there's no special talent required, so they could easily replace you with someone else. Adam: Yeah. Like, as soon as some guy's nephew graduates from junior college, you could be out of a gig. _Loveline_ "I have never known a man who died from overwork, but many who died from doubt." -Charles Horace Mayo "I live on Earth at present, and I don't know what I am. I know that I am not a category. I am not a thing - a noun. I seem to be a verb, an evolutionary process - an integral function of the universe." -Buckminster Fuller, 1970 "Note to Donald Rumsfeld, you might want to cancel the next question and answer session with the troops. Unlike our media, they ask real questions apparently." -Jay Leno "If the human body's obscene, complain to the manufacturer, not to me." -Larry Flynt "I actually had this idea to do a remake of The Magnificent Seven. I wanted to set it in a world where sexual roles were inexplicably reversed... women were cowhands while men waited tables and hung out the wash. I suggested that we call our principals, seven female gunfighters, 'The Magnificent Fourteen.' I was driven out of the Polo Lounge by activists who threw bottles of Evian and shouted things like 'You sexist bastard!' Luckily, no one in Hollywood recognized my face, so I've been able to return, which I have frequently done, to pitch less controversial concepts." -George Romero, Wizard magazine #157 "No nation ever had an army large enough to guarantee it against attack in time of peace or insure it victory in time of war." -President Calvin Coolidge "Keep away from people who try to belittle your ambitions. Small people always do that, but the really great make you feel that you, too, can become great." -Mark Twain "You wouldn't think that starring in a huge blockbuster sequel to the most beloved sci-fi films of all time would wind up as a bad career move. Actually, maybe you would. After all, starring in the original most beloved sci-fi films of all time didn't exactly do wonders for the careers of... well, everyone except Harrison Ford." -Fametracker.com "A man is known by the silence he keeps." -Oliver Herford "There is a way to look at the past. Don't hide from it. It will not catch you if you don't repeat it." -Pearl Bailey "A fellow who is always declaring he's no fool usually has his suspicions." -Wilson Mizner "I am not sure that God always knows who are His great men; He is so very careless of what happens to them while they live." -Mary Hunter Austin "Trust your own instinct. Your mistakes might as well be your own, instead of someone else's." -Billy Wilder "If she makes any more muck along the lines of _Gothica_ and _Catwoman_, the Academy should send [Halle Berry] a self-addressed stamped envelope and a letter requesting the return of her Oscar." -FilmThreat.com "It is the absolute right of the state to supervise the formation of public opinion." -Joseph Goebbels "President Bush has asked for a 50 percent increase in the number of spies and intelligence at the CIA. Apparently he's not getting enough memos to ignore." -David Letterman "Whether or not the standard of living made possible by mass production and in turn by mass circulation, is supported by and filled with the work of us hucksters, I guess is something that only history can decide." -Leo Burnett, ad executive "Hard work is damn near as overrated as monogamy." -Huey P. Long "By the time a person has achieved years adequate for choosing a direction, the die is cast and the moment has long passed which determined the future." -Zelda Sayre Fitzgerald "A free society is one where it is safe to be unpopular." -Adlai Stevenson "Hope is definitely not the same thing as optimism. It is not the conviction that something will turn out well, but the certainty that something makes sense, regardless of how it turns out." -Vaclav Havel "What counts is not necessarily the size of the dog in the fight - it's the size of the fight in the dog." -Gen. Dwight D. Eisenhower, 1958 "Why hasn't your mom cranked out some more kids? Usually, insane drug addicts have a whole brood. What happened?" -Adam Carolla, _Loveline_ "Television bathes us all in the moral and cultural drains from which there is no escape." -Fred Reed "Part of the inhumanity of the computer is that, once it is competently programmed and working smoothly, it is completely honest." -Isaac Asimov "Superman never made any money savin' the world from Solomon Grundy, And sometimes I despair, the world will never see another man, like him." -Crash Test Dummies, "Superman's Song" "Love has a hem to her garment that reaches to the very dust. It sweeps the stains from the streets and lanes, and because it can, it must." -Mother Teresa "'I must've seen it in a USENET posting;' that's sort of like hearsay evidence from Richard Nixon..." -Blair Houghton "And the reason why I'm so strong on democracy is democracies don't go to war with each other." -George W. Bush, 12 Nov 2004 "Everything in the universe has rhythm. Everything dances." -Maya Angelou "I tell you, first Ashcroft retires, now Arafat dies. This has not been a good week for religious radicals." -Jay Leno "If you look at the [abortion] issue, you'll see that this isn't about the children. There are children starving in the sewers of Persia. There are babies in the AIDS wards, chucked out into the streets like . cabbage. If this were really about the children, they'd be doing something about the children that are already here. I don't play that game." -Tori Amos "In the time of Galileo it was argued that the texts, 'And the sun stood still ... and hasted not to go down about a whole day' (Joshua x. 13) and 'He laid the foundations of the earth, that it should not move at any time' (Psalm cv. 5) were an adequate refutation of the Copernican theory." -Alan Turing "When the power of love overcomes the love of power the world will know peace." -Jimi Hendrix "A pre-emptive war in 'defense' of freedom would surely destroy freedom, because one simply cannot engage in barbarous action without becoming a barbarian, because one cannot defend human values by calculated and unprovoked violence without doing mortal damage to the values one is trying to defend." -J. William Fulbright "Remember that as a teenager you are in the last stage of your life when you will be happy to hear the phone is for you." -Fran Liebowitz "And after researching books on the White House, the Supreme Court and the Capitol, I can honestly say that Disney keeps its secrets better than all of them combined. No lie. You wanna know who should be the head of Homeland Security? Michael Eisner." -Brad Meltzer, Wizard magazine #157 "In _Wild at Heart,_ Sailor turns to Lula at one point and says 'Peanut, how your mind works is God's own private mystery.' I say that to myself sometimes. Except I don't call myself 'Peanut.'" -Amber C. "Vanity is as ill at ease under indifference, as tenderness is under the love which it cannot return." -George Eliot "As I'm sure you've heard, Operation Phantom Fury is now underway in Iraq. You know, where are we coming up with the names for these missions? Phantom Fury? What is President Bush dipping into his comic book collection now? What's next Operation Green Hornet?" -Jay Leno "Good taste is the worst vice ever invented." -Dame Edith Sitwell "Democrats and liberals, stop saying you're going to move because Bush won. Real liberals should be pledging to stay because Bush won. Trust me, you can't get away from Bush by moving to France because that's where we're invading next." -Bill Maher "Either you repeat the same conventional doctrines everybody is saying, or else you say something true, and it will sound like it's from Neptune." -Noam Chomsky "I know nothing grander, better exercise, better digestion, more positive proof of the past, the triumphant result of faith in human kind, than a well-contested American national election." -Walt Whitman "Today President Bush thanked those that worked the hardest for his reelection: Ralph Nader and Osama bin Laden." -Jay Leno "I guess you get the voice you deserve." -Tom Waits, "Fresh Air" interview, NPR 1988 "You must be true to yourself. Strong enough to be true to yourself. Brave enough to be strong enough to be true to yourself. Wise enough to be brave enough, to be strong enough to shape yourself from what you actually are." -Sylvia Constance Ashton-Warner "The objective of securing the safety of Americans from crime and terror has been achieved." -John Ashcroft, resignation letter, 11/9/04 "I'm an idealist - I don't know where I'm going but I'm on my way." -Carl Sandburg "Mutant Enemy filled an episode [of Firefly] with hookers, sex, and gunplay, and yet the show still got cancelled by Fox. They just couldn't win, could they?" -TelevisionWithoutPity.com "To walk into history is to be free at once, to be at large among people." -Elizabeth Bowen "I don't see how they could pick more centrist candidates than they have. Both Bush and Kerry agree that free trade and high levels of immigration are good, that we should "stay the course" in Iraq, even that Roe v. Wade ought to remain law. In other words, they agree on far too many things for my taste. Debate is good. We need more. Howard Dean, the only semi-plausible non-centrist candidate on either side, probably would have lost to Bush, but at least he would have forced an argument on the issues we need to argue about." -Tucker Carlson, from LiveOnline at WashingtonPost.com Gabe: Try and figure out my code. Tycho: Oh yeah, I'm going to be up all night. You're like the Goddamn Riddler. -Penny-Arcade.com "The thinking of a genius does not proceed logically. It leaps with great ellipses. It pulls knowledge from God knows where." -Dorothy Thompson "I guess I like beautiful melodies telling me terrible things." -Tom Waits, "Fresh Air" interview, NPR 2002 "Three passions, simple but overwhelmingly strong, have governed my life: the longing for love, the search for knowledge and unbearable pity for the suffering of mankind." -Bertrand Russell "I've got a million ideas, most of them revolving around reanimated corpses. Such ideas usually come to be when I am in the shower or when I am tossing in bed, unable to sleep because of fears, which, for the most part, revolve around reanimated corpses." -George Romero, Wizard magazine #157 "Moral indignation is in most cases two percent moral, 48 percent indignation, and 50 percent envy." -Vittorio De Sica "Your true nature is not lost in moments of delusion, nor is it gained at the moment of enlightenment. It was never born and can never die. It shines through the whole universe, filling emptiness, one with emptiness. It is without time or space, and has no passions, no people, and no buddhas; it contains not the smallest hairbreadth of anything that exists objectively; it depends on nothing and is attached to nothing. It is all-pervading, radiant beauty: absolute reality, self-existent and uncreated. How then can you doubt that the Buddha has no mouth to speak with and nothing to teach, or that the truth is learned without learning, for who is there to learn? It is a jewel beyond all price." -Huang-po "Nothing in life is to be feared. It is only to be understood." -Marie Curie "The Democrats really are missing the boat. Kerry keeps talking about Bush's record on the war and the economy and stem cells and flu shots, but he never brings up the fact that, in high school, President Bush was a cheerleader. The President wore a sweater with a big letter 'A' on it and jumped around kicking his feet up over his head while the guys who went to the school played football. If I'm John Kerry - and Bush starts talking about how tough he is on terrorism -- I just say, 'How? Weren't you a cheerleader? You gonna strangle 'em with your skirt? What terrorist are you gonna capture, Paula Abdul?" -Jimmy Kimmel "War is a come-as-you-are party. The way a unit was resourced when someone rang the bell is the way it showed up." -Lt. Gen. C. V. Christianson, Army deputy chief of staff for logistics, Oct. 2004 "Earlier today, John Kerry went hunting for geese in Ohio, but President Bush says Kerry only did it for the photo op. The weird part is that Bush said this while wearing a flight suit and standing on the deck of an aircraft carrier." -Conan O'Brien "These past couple of years have been about learning to not sabotage myself in a subtler way - for instance, even just by putting moisturiser on when I get out of the shower. Learning to honour myself and believing that I'm worth taking care of." -Maggie Gyllenhaal "There are two kinds of statistics, the kind you look up and the kind you make up." -Rex Stout "Propaganda is to a democracy what the bludgeon is to a totalitarian state." -Noam Chomsky "The worst disease in the world is the plague of vengeance." -Dr. Karl Menninger "Even if you don't [win the war on terror,] you won't have trouble surpassing my generation. If you end up getting your picture taken next to a naked pile of enemy prisoners and *don't* give the thumbs up, you outdid us." -Jon Stewart, 2004 College of William and Mary commencement speech http://www.wm.edu/news/index.php?id=3650 "Each child comes with the message that God is not yet discouraged of man." -Sir Rabindranath Tagore "He who confers a favor should at once forget it, if he is not to show a sordid, ungenerous spirit." -Demosthenes, Greek statesman (384 B.C.-322 B.C.) "I think I like songs with weather in them. And something to eat." -Tom Waits, "Fresh Air" interview, NPR 2002 "This scene proves that you can come to agreement much faster in conversation than you can on an internet message board." -TelevisionWithoutPity.com "Character consists of what you do on the third and fourth tries." -James Michener "And it is only now, when the cold war is history, that many of our accomplishments can finally be revealed, and I can stop playing mute, much like the star-crossed rabbi who hit a hole in one on the Sabbath." _Skunk Works_ by Ben Rich "The truth (is) that there is only one terminal dignity - love. And the story of a love is not important - what is important is that one is capable of love. It is perhaps the only glimpse we are permitted of eternity." -Helen Hayes "It's the last minute of the campaign and both candidates are using fear tactics. And honest to God, my fear is that one of them will actually get elected." -David Letterman "Because there's no way we can look at Africa - a continent bursting into flames - and if we're honest conclude that it would ever be allowed to happen anywhere else. Anywhere else. Certainly not here. In Europe. Or America. Or Australia, or Canada. There's just no chance. You see, deep down, if we really accepted that Africans were equal to us, we would all do more to put the fire out. We've got watering cans; when what we really need are the fire brigades. That's the first tough truth. The second is that to fight AIDS, and its root cause, the extreme poverty in which it thrives, it's not just development policy. It's a security strategy. The war against terror is bound up in the war against poverty, I didn't say that, Colin Powell said that. And when a military man from the right starts talking like that maybe we should listen!" -Bono, Sept. 2004, at a Labour party conference "We finally have a scandal in this election: Lesbogate. Bob Schieffer asked a question about is homosexuality a choice, and Kerry mention Cheney's daughter. The Cheneys are now furious at him. They say they are very proud of her daughter. They are so proud, she should never, ever be mentioned in public." -Bill Maher Adam: For those folks who don't know Aaron Spelling, Aaron Spelling is probably in his mid-seventies, he has more money than God, and he is revered in this town as one of the greats of television. But he really is just a crap merchant. I mean, he cranks out crap. That's what he does. Dr. Drew: And the rest of television is... Adam: Unsuccessful crap merchants. He is the most prolific of the crap merchants. It's tantamount to a guy being an artist, and being very prolific, but he only paints dogs playing poker. Dr. Drew: You're just jealous. Adam: No, I just wish he would get out of the business! All you old people that are rich and still hell-bent on cranking out junk, just get out! Get on a boat and do some deep-sea fishing, for Christ's sake! You know, it's funny, and we always get back to this, but I say to them, "Look, why are you doing it?" Like when we were talking to Alexandra Paul about David Hasselhoff, I said, "Listen, this guy owns a chunk of the biggest money-making show in the world; he doesn't have to work anymore. Why is he still working?" And she says, "Love of the craft!" And I said, "He did _Baywatch Nights_! _Baywatch Nights_ is him walking around in a tank top and Dockers, trying to flush out the Sasquatch that's hiding underneath the pier in Santa Monica! That's craft? That's art? _Loveline_ "I believe we ought to love our neighbor like we love ourself, as manifested in public policy through the faith-based initiative where we've unleashed the armies of compassion to help heal people who hurt." -President George W. Bush, third debate, 13 Oct 2004 "Three quarters of the American population literally believe in religious miracles. The numbers who believe in the devil, in resurrection, in God doing this and that - it's astonishing. These numbers aren't duplicated anywhere else in the industrial world. You'd have to maybe go to mosques in Iran or do a poll among old ladies in Sicily to get numbers like this. Yet this is the American population." -Noam Chomsky "Conventionality is not morality. Self-righteousness is not religion. To attack the first is not to assail the last." -Charlotte Bronte "What's really worrying is when the sight of a tank rolling by your car is just normal. It doesn't freak you out anymore, or frighten you. It's just another tank. That's scary, but that's our daily life. But that's just not what normal should look like." -'Salam Pax,' Iraqi blogger "The soul has more diseases than the body." -Henry Wheeler Shaw "Tonight was the 2nd presidential debate, which was in a town hall format. That's where everyday Americans and not just journalists get a chance to have their questions avoided." -Jay Leno "Two dangers constantly threaten the world: order and disorder." -Paul Valery "It is only the savage, whether of the African bush or the American gospel tent, who pretends to know the will and intent of God exactly and completely." -H.L. Mencken "It is easier to love humanity as a whole than to love one's neighbor." -Eric Hoffer "Ideas won't keep; something must be done about them." -Alfred North Whitehead "But those who live by Fox News can die by Fox News. If you limit your diet to Fox and its talk-radio and blogging satellites, you may think that the only pressing non-Laci Peterson, non-Kobe, non-hurricane stories are "Rathergate" and the antics of the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth. Your diet of bad news from Iraq is restricted, and Abu Ghraib becomes an over-the-top frat hazing. You are certain that John Kerry can't score in the debates because everyone knows he's an overtanned, overmanicured metrosexual. You reside in such an isolated echo chamber that you aren't aware that even the third-rated network news broadcast, that anchored by the boogeyman Dan Rather, draws 50 percent more viewers on a bad night than 'The O'Reilly Factor' does on a great one (the Bush interview)." -Frank Rich, NYTimes.com "Today's shocks are tomorrow's conventions." -Carolyn Heilbrun "Forgetfulness is a form of freedom." -Khalil Gibran "New rule: Florida has to sit this election out. You know, you'd think after the year 2000, they would have made sure to get it right this time. But, no, even Jimmy Carter - a man who has seen more Third World hellholes than a lesbian couple trying to adopt - even he says Florida is not ready for an election. So, sorry, Florida, you're going to have to take that Tuesday off and just treat yourself to an extra hurricane." -Bill Maher "Even the merest gesture is holy if it is filled with faith." -Franz Kafka "There is no escape - man drags man down, or man lifts man up." -Booker T. Washington "For [Jessica Simpson,] we can't see things getting better; she's built her fame on being (a) pretty and (b) dumb, and she's not going to get any prettier nor, we assume, any dumber." -Fametracker.com "Civilization is a movement and not a condition, a voyage and not a harbor." -Arnold Toynbee "The American public gets most of its news from television, and it doesn't get enough. The evening news is 20 minutes long - nowhere near long enough to tell Americans what's going on in their own country, let alone anywhere else. One of the reasons America is hated around the world is because we're ignorant of everyone else's problems, and that's partly our fault. Television provides too little foreign news." -Andy Rooney, October 2004 "Heresy is another word for freedom of thought." -Graham Greene "Sometimes I think we Americans are the loneliest people in the world. To be sure, we hunger for the power of affection, the self-acceptance that gives life. It is the oldest and strongest hunger in the world. But hungering is not enough." -Sherwood Anderson "If there's a child on the south side of Chicago who can't read, that matters to me, even if it's not my child. If there's a senior citizen somewhere who can't pay for their prescription, who has to choose between medicine and the rent, that makes my life poorer - even if it's not my grandparent. If there's an Arab-American or Mexican-American family being rounded up by John Ashcroft without benefit of an attorney or due process, I know that that threatens my civil liberties. And I don't have to be a woman to be concerned that the Supreme Court is trying to take away a woman's right, because I know that my rights are next. It is that fundamental belief - I am my brother's keeper, I am my sister's keeper - that makes this country work." -Barack Obama, 2004 "There are only two distinct classes of people on this earth: those who espouse enthusiasm and those who despise it." -Germaine de Stael "We are creatures of the moment; we live from one little space to another; and only one interest at a time fills these." -William Dean Howells "As a matter of fact, I have a message for the 100 million Americans who didn't care enough about our democracy to vote last time. Good! And, please, do us all a favor. Don't vote next time, either. If you don't care enough about the issues, I don't want you canceling out my vote with your vote." -Andy Rooney, September 2004 "There would never be a moment, in war or in peace, when I wouldn't trade all the patriots in the country for one tolerant man. Or when I wouldn't swap the vitamins in a child's lunchbox for a jelly glass of magnanimity." -E. B. White "Bush bragged that more Iraqis say their country is on the right track than American say our country is on the right track. Boy, there.s a campaign slogan for you: 'America: More Fucked Up Than Fallujah!'" -Bill Maher "Nothing strengthens the judgment and quickens the conscience like individual responsibility." -Elizabeth Cady Stanton "We laughed so hard making those movies, it's hard not to. Obviously, I don't want anyone to think we didn't take it seriously and we didn't understand the intent of what you're doing. But at the same time, when you realize that you're a grown-up working with a big giant worm, some monkey people, a couple of, you know, people with bat wings, it's pretty hard to take yourself seriously." -Mark Hamill "I venture to suggest that patriotism is not a short and frenzied outburst of emotion but the tranquil and steady dedication of a lifetime." -Adlai E. Stevenson "The nine most terrifying words in the English language are, 'I'm from the government and I'm here to help.'" -Ronald Reagan "Governments exist to protect the rights of minorities. The loved and the rich need no protection - they have many friends and few enemies." -Wendell Phillips "Republicans are now saying that Dan Rather should lose his job because he misled the country with bogus information. Which is odd because the Democrats are saying the exact same thing about President Bush." -Jay Leno "There is no such thing as conversation. It is an illusion. There are intersecting monologues, that is all." -Dame Rebecca West "Terror is not a new weapon. Throughout history it has been used by those who could not prevail, either by persuasion or example. But inevitably they fail, either because men are not afraid to die for a life worth living, or because the terrorists themselves came to realize that free men cannot be frightened by threats, and that aggression would meet its own response. And it is in the light of that history that every nation today should know, be he friend or foe, that the United States has both the will and the weapons to join free men in standing up to their responsibilities." -John F. Kennedy 1961 "The easiest way to get a reputation is go outside the fold, shout around for a few years as a violent atheist or a dangerous radical, and then crawl back to the shelter." -F. Scott Fitzgerald "Of course, there are a lot of ways you can treat the blues, but it will still be the blues." -Count Basie "You probably wouldn't worry about what people think of you if you could know how seldom they do." -Olin Miller "If you want to be thought a liar, always tell the truth." -Logan Pearsall Smith "Over in Russia, Russian President Vladimir Putin is using terrorism to increase his power and erode his people's civil liberties. It's nice to see the American way of life catching up around the world." -Jay Leno "Integrity needs no rules." -Albert Camus "I was volunteered by HR to go to some diversity discussion group next thursday. Sigh. I don't work thursdays and I really don't feel like coming in on my day off to discuss 'diversity'. I mean look people. In my department we've got a Somalian, a Turkish guy, a black american, a korean, a chinese guy, a gay guy, a guy from some country in south america that I can't remember at the moment, and of course there is me. The lil jew. Aren't we fucking diverse enough for ya? Christ we're like a Benetton ad. Only with routers." -Michelle T. "If you board the wrong train, it is no use running along the corridor in the other direction." -Dietrich Bonhoeffer "Nothing has really happened until it has been recorded." -Virginia Woolf "[David] Cronenberg is to Toronto as John Hughes is to Chicago." -David Plant, Toronto Film Commissioner "Marriage is a great institution, but I'm not ready for an institution, yet." -Mae West "I've realised that the only way to make movies that you're proud of, that don't fall into the sentimental bullshit that so many movies fall into, is to fight. You have to fight. So many people are willing to sleepwalk through things and fall into the not human, not interesting choice." -Maggie Gyllenhaal "Whom the gods would make bigots, they first deprive of humor." -Rev. James M. Gillis "Whom the gods would destroy they first make mad." -Euripides "Whom the gods wish to destroy they first call promising." -Cyril Connolly "New opinions are always suspected, and usually opposed, without any other reason but because they are not already common." -John Locke "To be blunt, the mainstream media don't give my generation what we want. We want the news and we want it now, of course - we're spoiled that way. But more than anything, we want the entire story; not just the he said/she said, not just the latest factoid, but the truth." -Bryan Keefer, WashingtonPost.com "Whether women are better than men I cannot say - but I can say they are certainly no worse." -Golda Meir "It is the tragedy of the world that no one knows what he doesn't know - and the less a man knows, the more sure he is that he knows everything." -Joyce Cary "All history is modern history." -Wallace Stevens "Even we're tired of the C.S.I.: N'Awlins and Law & Order: Parking Meter jokes. You realize we have A&E to blame for all this - because it proved that, given a chance, people really will watch Law & Order three times a day, every day. (Hey, we've been there too.)" -Fametracker.com "Our civilization is still in a middle stage, no longer wholly guided by instinct, not yet wholly guided by reason." -Theodore Dreiser "The means by which we live have outdistanced the ends for which we live. Our scientific power has outrun our spiritual power. We have guided missiles and misguided men." -Martin Luther King, Jr. "The only tyrant I accept in this world is the 'still small voice' within me." -Mohandas Gandhi "If facts mattered in American politics, the Bush-Cheney ticket would not be basing its re-election campaign on the fear-mongering contention that the surest defense against future terrorist attacks lies in the badly discredited doctrine of preventive war." -NYTimes editorial, September 2004 "Reason has never failed men. Only force and oppression have made the wrecks of the world." -William Allen White "Happiness isn't something you experience; it's something you remember." -Oscar Levant "I think the internet is a good place to go for information you're not going to get anywhere else. And then I think for better or for worse, the internet is very good at allowing people to find places that reinforce their own point of view. So that the super duper right-wingers can hang out in message boards where it's just an echo chamber, and so can the super duper left-wingers. Because they're both convinced that the so-called mainstream media isn't going to tell the truth, they can enter these internet places where their truth is the only truth going. And I think that's how a lot of people use the internet." -David Rees, author of get your war on
Page by: Paul M. M. Jacobus (paul@otd.com)
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