What are some of your favorite quotes?

"Having a smoking section in a restaurant is like having a peeing section in a pool."

"Every man dies. Not every really lives" - the movie Braveheart

"Never appeal to a man's better nature; he may not have one. Invoking his self interest give you more leverage."

and for a movie quote...

"Let me be frank from the commencement; you will not like me. The men will be jealous and the ladies will be repelled. You will not like me and you'll like me a good deal less as we go on."

and last but not least; when a woman accused Winston Churchill of being drunk:

"And you Madam are ugly. But in the morning I shall be sober."

"The budget should be balanced, the Treasury should be refilled, public debt should be reduced, the arrogance of officialdom should be tempered and controlled, and the assistance to foreign lands should be curtailed lest Rome become bankrupt. People must again learn to work, instead of living on public assistance."

Cicero, 55 B.C.

"A bureaucrat is the most despicable of men, though he is needed as vultures are needed, but one hardly admires vultures whom bureaucrats so strangely resemble. I have yet to meet a bureaucrat who was not petty, dull, almost witless, crafty or stupid, an oppressor or a thief, a holder of little authority in which he delights, as a boy delights in possessing a vicious dog. Who can trust such creatures?"

"A government big enough to give you everything you want, is strong enough to take everything you have"

-Thomas Jefferson

If at first you don't succeed, Fu* it!

If you love something, let it go. If it comes back, kill it.

Oh what a tangled web we weave when first we practice to deceive.

Sent to me, sources unconfirmed:

When we get piled upon one another in large cities, as in Europe, we shall become as corrupt as Europe .

The democracy will cease to exist when you take away from those who are willing to work and give to those who would not.

It is incumbent on every generation to pay its own debts as it goes. A principle which if acted on would save one-half the wars of the world.

I predict future happiness for Americans if they can prevent the government from wasting the labors of the people under the pretense of taking care of them.

My reading of history convinces me that most bad government results from too much government.

No free man shall ever be debarred the use of arms.

The strongest reason for the people to retain the right to keep and bear arms is, as a last resort, to protect themselves against tyranny in government.

The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants.

To compel a man to subsidize with his taxes the propagation of ideas which he disbelieves and abhors is sinful and tyrannical.

"I believe that banking institutions are more dangerous to our liberties than standing armies. If the American people ever allow private banks to control the issue of their currency, first by inflation, then by deflation, the banks and corporations that will grow up around the banks will deprive the people of all property until their children wake-up homeless on the continent their fathers conquered."

Norman Mattoon Thomas (November 20, 1884 - December 19, 1968) was
a leading American socialist, pacifist, and six-time presidential
candidate for the Socialist Party of America.

The Socialist Party candidate for President of the US , Norman
Thomas, said this in a 1944 speech:

"The American people will never knowingly adopt socialism. But,
under the name of "liberalism," they will adopt every fragment of
the socialist program, until one day America will be a socialist
nation, without knowing how it happened." He went on to say: "I
no longer need to run as a Presidential Candidate for the
Socialist Party. The Democrat Party has adopted our platform.

Men will never be free until the last king is strangled with the entrails of the last priest - Denis Diderot

I like to have a martini, Two at the very most. After three I'm under the table, After four I'm under my host! - Dorothy Parker

Just two quotes which have never failed to entertain me.

"The problem with socialism is that eventually you run out of other peoples' money".

"Helen Keller graduated from college with honors. She was blind and deaf. So what's your problem?"

"I tell you if there is one instinct I just can't get with at all, it's the urge to kill something beautiful, just to hang it on your wall." --Ani Difranco

People are always blaming their circumstances for what they are. I don't believe in circumstances. The people who get on in this world are the people who get up and look for the circumstances they want, and, if they can't find them, make them.

-- George Bernard Shaw

"Banking institutions are more dangerous to our liberties than standing armies. If the American people ever allow private banks to control the issue of their currency, first by inflation, then by deflation, the banks and corporations that will grow up around the banks will deprive the people of all property until their children wake-up homeless on the continent their fathers conquered."

"Perhaps the most valuable result of all education is
the ability to make yourself do the thing you have to do, when it ought to
be done, whether you like it or not. This is the first lesson to be
learned."

Thomas Henry Huxley

"I've learn a few lessons growing older. Never waist a hard-on, Never stray to far from the bathroom, and Never trust a fart." jack nicholson

One of the few good things about modern times: If you die horribly on television, you will not have died in vain. You will have entertained us.

Kurt Vonnegut

"Those who hammer their guns into plows will plow for those who do not." ~Thomas Jefferson

comprehensive, but I doubt he said half of the things you've attributed to him, and almost certainly not the last quote. Making up Jefferson quotes seems to have become a cottage industry.

"May the force be with you." - Thomas Jefferson

hammering guns into plows anyway?

"A sin [Original Sin] without volition is a slap at morality and an insolent contradiction in terms: that which is outside the possibility of choice is outside the province of morality. If a man is evil by birth, he has no will, no power to change it; if he has no will, he can be neither good nor evil; a robot is amoral. To hold, as man's sin, a fact not open to his choice is a mockery of morality. To hold man's nature as his sin is a mockery of nature. To punish him for a crime he committed before he was born is a mockery of justice. To hold him guilty in a matter where no innocence exists is a mockery of reason. To destroy morality, nature, justice and reason by means of a single concept is a feat of evil hardly to be matched. Yet that is the root of your code." - Ayn Rand

Yale's Top 10 quotes of the year:

http://www.startribune.com/entertainment/79412512.html?elr=KArks

(Jesse Ventura landed one!)

“People ask me what I do in the winter when there's no baseball. I'll tell you what I do. I stare out the window and wait for spring.”
—Rogers Hornsby

Remember that the government cannot give anything to anyone unless they take it away from someone else first. [Simple logic]

-author unk

"Remember that the government cannot give anything to anyone unless they take it away from someone else first. [Simple logic]"

Who does the estate tax take from?

Heirs, perhaps?

" The estate tax is payable by your estate - it is usually paid by the estate of the decedent before property is distributed to the beneficiaries of the estate."

http://law.freeadvice.com/tax_law/estate_tax_law/estate_tax.htm

In short, the estate tax takes from no one.

And then there's the people without heirs who leave their estates to various govt orgs - police depts, fire depts, libraries, etc., or who die without a will and heir(s). Who does govt take money from in those instances?

Maybe this question needs to be reverse engineered then, Odin. In the absence of the tax, who would the money go to? To suggest that they have lost nothing would be the equivalent of saying that the victim of an armored car robbery is the driver, and not the bank whose money they were carrying.

Who knows? Maybe the deceased would leave some to the govt anyway. Or to heirs. Or to his or her favorite hooker(s). The point is that you can't take from someone something that was never his or hers.

The money in the armored car belongs to somebody, the money taxed from the estate of the deceased doesn't. The estate tax doesn't take from the heirs because it's not their money, wasn't their money and never becomes their money.

If I send you ten bucks I owe you and it gets lost in the mail, do I still owe you or did you lose the money?

And then there's the share of lottery proceeds received by the govt. Who is that "taken" from? How about Post Office and patent filings revenue, park and license fees, mineral sales, etc.?

Robert Deniro, in "Meet The Parents"...

Jack Byrnes:" I will be watching you and if I find that you are trying to corrupt my first born child, I will bring you down, baby. I will bring you down to Chinatown!"

"The money in the armored car belongs to somebody, the money taxed from the estate of the deceased doesn't. The estate tax doesn't take from the heirs because it's not their money, wasn't their money and never becomes their money."

I guess this would be a legal question, Odin. As I understand it, one's "estate" is an inanimate collection of assets and/or liability. The executor of one's estate is someone who was appointed by you while you were alive to act as your agent with power of attorney after your death.

I suppose the same question might arise about your paycheck. You agree to work for X dollars per hour, and your employer agrees to pay you X dollars per hour. But he is also required to withhold income tax on your wages, which he then duly delivers to the Feds, and then delivers what remains to you. There's little doubt that the entire sum of your wages was yours originally, since the Feds were no party to the agreement reached between you and your employer when you were hired and had nothing to do with earning the income. It would then follow logically that the money was taken from you, albiet indirectly, voluntarily or not.

The govt takes a portion of money owed me in your example. That is a taking, voluntary or involuntary.

In most instances heirs aren't owed their inheritances. Estates are apportioned, the govt receives what it deems its share and heirs receive the remainder. That isn't a taking because the govt's share of the estate is never owed to the heirs.

"The most beautiful paintings and sculptures, the greatest poetry, have not always been born from torment or bitterness. Often they have sprung from contemplation, from joy, from an instinct or wonder toward all things. To create from joy, to create from wonder, demands a continual discipline, a great compassion.... With time and sincerity, you will discover a way to work and write that does not harm you spiritually, that does not tempt you to vanity, that is the deepest expression of your spirituality. You will find a voice that is not your voice only, but the voice of Reality itself.... If you can be empty enough, that voice can speak through you. If you can be humble enough, that voice can inhabit you and use you." --Thuskey Rinpoche

"There ain't many troubles a feller can't fix with a quart of Jim Beam and a .30-06." --A friend

reads like a comic routine. "I have such great compassion, sincerity, discipline and . . . humility that my voice speaks for Reality itself."

OdinofAzgard wrote:

reads like a comic routine. "I have such great compassion, sincerity, discipline and . . . humility that my voice speaks for Reality itself."

huh. I don't think you read it right. Better luck next time!

Which reminds me of a movie quote I think of from time to time....

"You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means."

Inigo Montoya, The Princess Bride

“Inside every older person is
a younger person wondering,
what the fuck happened.”

The hardest step any woman will take, will be that first one,
when she rises to her feet, against all the protests of her inter-self,
and proceeds to do NOW, not tomorrow, or in the Spring or in the Fall,
but NOW, that which she knows she ought to do.
For if a women lacks the courage to act now, she’s probably lacked it in the past,
and she will lack it in the future.
But if she does act now, she will be acting the part of a woman who has the strength of her convictions.
And unlike her weak sister, who always has a myriad of excuses,
she will be a success.
Norman Vincent Peal

When we get piled
upon one another in large cities, as in Europe,
we shall become as corrupt as Europe ...


The strongest reason for the
people to retain the right to keep and bear arms
is, as a last resort, to protect themselves
against tyranny in government.


To compel a man to subsidize with
his taxes the propagation of ideas which he
disbelieves and abhors is sinful and tyrannical.

-Thomas Jefferson

"When fascism comes to America, it will be draped in the flag and carrying a cross." --Sinclair Lewis

dorajar wrote:

"When fascism comes to America, it will be draped in the flag and carrying a cross." --Sinclair Lewis

Ugh. Neo-cons. The worst.

“In other countries, art and literature are left to a lot of shabby bums living in attics and feeding on booze and spaghetti, but in America the successful writer or picture-painter is indistinguishable from any other decent businessman”

-Sinclair Lewis

sounds remarkably like artistic Darwinism...

dorajar wrote:

"When fascism comes to America, it will be draped in the flag and carrying a cross." --Sinclair Lewis

As opposed to being draped in a burkha and carrying a suicide bomb belt and a Q'ran.

thrice wrote:

dorajar wrote:

"When fascism comes to America, it will be draped in the flag and carrying a cross." --Sinclair Lewis

As opposed to being draped in a burkha and carrying a suicide bomb belt and a Q'ran.

Who's the last burkha-wearing, Koran-reading person we've elected to Federal office in this country, thrice? Last I checked we have one Muslim in Congress--one. And he's not exactly the suicide bombing type.

Sinclair Lewis is apt.

That's exactly the point, Dora. The suicide bombers who are bullying their way to ruling their fellow citizens in the unfortunate countries to which I refer aren't being elected either. In fact they especially target for death those who have the temerity to believe that their nations should be ruled by the democratic process and not religious dictatorships. Seems to me that the dreaded "cross bearers" who arguably ran this country during the Bush years were voted out of office just as routinely as they were voted in, so to conclude that they heralded an era of Fascism is just a bit absurd.

Ironically in this instance Lewis, for all his merits, was ignorant of the history which had unfolded in his lifetime, considering that virtually every major Fascist movement of the 20th Century was led by dictators and their stooges who were atheists and vigorously persecuted religion, particularly Catholics and Jews, because they stood as rivals to the State for the loyalty of the people. Not to be confused, of course, with the atheist dictatorships of the Left in China, Russia, Cuba and many other countries who banned religion, slaughtered clergymembers, and butchered millions of their countrymen under the banner of social and economic justice.

John Stuart Mill:

Conservatives are not necessarily stupid, but most stupid people are conservatives.

It's usually the people with the lowest understanding of the English language who push the hardest to make it the U.S. standard language.

"A nation of sheep begets a government of wolves"

"If we were to do the Second Coming of Christ in color for a full hour, there would be a considerable number of stations which would decline to carry it on the grounds that a Western or a quiz show would be more profitable."

"Just because your voice reaches halfway around the world doesn't mean you are wiser than when it reached only to the end of the bar."

"The speed of communications is wondrous to behold. It is also true that speed can multiply the distribution of information that we know to be untrue."

Edward R. Murrow

"Nearly all men can stand adversity, but if you want to test a man's character, give him power."

-Abe Lincoln

"If you cannot read all your books, fondle them, peer into them, let them fall open where they will, read from the first sentence that arrests the eye, set them back on their shelves with your own hands, arrange them on your own plan so that if you do not know what is in them, you will at least know where they are. Let them be your friends; let them at any rate be your acquaintances."--Winston Churchill