[PenultimateManStanding]

"Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar" Sigmund Freud (or was that Bill Clinton who said that?)

[Agren]

Parafrased (and maybe not even accurate)

"If the meaning of life is not suffering, then our existence is the most meaningless in the universe"
Sören Kirkegaard

[k_semler]

"God forbid we should ever be 20 years without such a rebellion. The people cannot be all, & always, well informed. The part which is wrong will be discontented in proportion to the importance of facts they misconceive. If they remain quiet under such misconceptions it is a lethargy, the forerunner of death to the public liberty. We have had 13 states independent 11 years. There has been one rebellion. That comes to one rebellion in a century & a half for each state. What country before ever existed a century & half without a rebellion? & what country can preserve it's liberties if their rulers are not
warned from time to time that their people preserve the spirit of resistance? Let them take arms. The remedy is to set them right as to facts, pardon & pacify them. What signify a few lives lost in a century or two? The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots & tyrants. It is it's natural manure."

- Thomas Jefferson on the American revolution in his letter to William S. Smith Paris, Nov. 13, 1787

[k_semler]

"A free people ought not only to be armed and disciplined,
but they should have sufficient arms and ammunition to maintain a
status of independence from any who might attempt to abuse them,
which would include their own government."

--George Washington

[k_semler]

"Those who are willing to sacrifice essential liberty,
for the promise of a little temporary security, deserve
neither."

--Benjamin Franklin

[k_semler]

"Experience should teach us to be most on our guard to protect liberty when the government's purposes are beneficient...The greatest dangers to liberty lurk in insidious encroachment by men of zeal, well meaning but without understanding."

--Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis

[smallpoxgirl]

War Maker plans for war on stars.
Pretending we aren't stars too
isn't very bright.
Earth stars.
With jailbreak in our hearts

I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived.

...

I left the woods for as good a reason as I went there. Perhaps it seemed to me
that I had several more lives to live, and could not spare any more time for that one.

Those people will wander this way... they will be looking for a certain stone... They will be people who do not get tired, but who will keep pushing forward, going all the time. They will keep coming, coming... They will travel everywhere, looking for this stone which our great-grandfather put on the earth in many places... These people will not listen to what you say; what they are going to do they will do. You people will change: in the end of your life in those days you will not get up early in the morning, you will not know when day comes... They will try to change you from your way of living to theirs... They will tear up the earth, and at last you will do it with them. When you do, you will become crazy, and you will forget all that I am teaching you.

If the Great Spirit had desired me to be a white man he would have made me so in the first place. He put in your heart certain wishes and plans, and in my heart he put other and different desires. It is not necessary for eagles to be crows.

Now that we are poor, we are free. No white man controls our footsteps. If we must die, we die defending our rights.

What white man can say I never stole his land or a penny of his money? Yet they say that I am a thief. What white woman, however lonely, was ever captive or insulted by me? Yet they say I am a bad Indian.

What white man has ever seen me drunk? Who has ever come to me hungry and left me unfed? Who has seen me beat my wives or abuse my children? What law have I broken?

Is it wrong for me to love my own? Is it wicked for me because my skin is red? Because I am Sioux? Because I was born where my father lived? Because I would die for my people and my country? God made me an Indian

To us the ashes of our ancestors are sacred and their resting place is hallowed ground. You wander far from the graves of your ancestors and seemingly without regret. Your religion was written upon tablets of stone by the iron finger of your God so that you could not forget. The Red Man could never comprehend or remember it. Our religion is the traditions of our ancestors -- the dreams of our old men, given them in solemn hours of the night by the Great Spirit; and the visions of our sachems, and is written in the hearts of our people.

Your dead cease to love you and the land of their nativity as soon as they pass the portals of the tomb and wander away beyond the stars. They are soon forgotten and never return. Our dead never forget this beautiful world that gave them being. They still love its verdant valleys, its murmuring rivers, its magnificent mountains, sequestered vales and verdant lined lakes and bays, and ever yearn in tender fond affection over the lonely hearted living, and often return from the happy hunting ground to visit, guide, console, and comfort them.

Fascism should more appropriately be called corporatism because it is the merger of state and corporate power.

The future is an infinite succession of presents, and to live now as we think human beings should live, in defiance of all that is bad around us, is itself a marvelous victory

Now that the longhouses breed superstition
You force us to send our toddlers away
To your schools where they're taught to despise their traditions.
You forbid them their languages, then further say
That American history really began
When Columbus set sail out of Europe, then stress
That the nation of leeches that conquered this land
Are the biggest and bravest and boldest and best.
And yet where in your history books is the tale
Of the genocide basic to this country's birth,
Of the preachers who lied, how the Bill of Rights failed,
How a nation of patriots returned to their earth?
And where will it tell of the Liberty Bell
As it rang with a thud
O'er Kinzua mud,
And of brave Uncle Sam in Alaska this year?

My country 'tis of thy people you're dying.

Hear how the bargain was made for the West:
With her shivering children in zero degrees,
Blankets for your land, so the treaties attest,
Oh well, blankets for land is a bargain indeed,
And the blankets were those Uncle Sam had collected
From smallpox-diseased dying soldiers that day.
And the tribes were wiped out and the history books censored,
A hundred years of your statesmen have felt it's better this way.
And yet a few of the conquered have somehow survived,
Their blood runs the redder though genes have paled.
From the Gran Canyon's caverns to Craven's sad hills
The wounded, the losers, the robbed sing their tale.
From Los Angeles County to upstate New York
The white nation fattens while others grow lean;
Oh the tricked and evicted they know what I mean.

My country 'tis of thy people you're dying.

The past it just crumbled, the future just threatens;
Our life blood shut up in your chemical tanks.
And now here you come, bill of sale in your hands
And surprise in your eyes that we're lacking in thanks
For the blessings of civilization you've brought us,
The lessons you've taught us, the ruin you've wrought us --
Oh see what our trust in America's brought us.

My country 'tis of thy people you're dying.

The hottest places in hell are reserved for those who, in time of great moral crisis, maintain their neutrality

Ohhh my god, the bomb has just dropped
and every body climbed right on top
screaming "What a wonderful country."
but The Man, he's tearing it down

[BabyPeanut]

http://www.conelrad.com/atomicsecrets/s ... ecrets=e18

He reminded the Cabinet that in a real situation these will not be normal people – they will be scared, will be hysterical, will be "absolutely nuts". We are simply going to have to be prepared to operate with people who are "nuts". (Mr. Wilson at this point commented humorously that he could say he was used to working with people who were nuts.)

Alice felt that this could not be denied, so she tried another
question. `What sort of people live about here?'

`In THAT direction,' the Cat said, waving its right paw round, `lives
a Hatter: and in THAT direction,' waving the other paw, `lives a March
Hare. Visit either you like: they're both mad.'

`But I don't want to go among mad people,' Alice remarked.

`Oh, you can't help that,' said the Cat: `we're all mad here. I'm
mad. You're mad.'

`How do you know I'm mad?' said Alice.

`You must be,' said the Cat, `or you wouldn't have come here.'

[k_semler]

"Are we at last brought to such umiliating and debasing degradationm that we cannot be trusted with arms for our defense?"
--Patrick Henry

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

"I ask, sir, what is the militia? It is the whole people, except for a few public officials."
--George Mason

"Laws that forbid the carrying of arms...disarm only those who are neither inclined nor determined to commit crimes...Such laws make things worse for the assaulted and better for the assailants; they serve rather to encourage than to prevent homicides, for an unarmed man may be attacked with greater confidence than an armed man."
--Thomas Jefferson

"Experience hath shewn, that even under the best forms [of government] those entrusted with power have, in time, and by slow operations, perverted it into tyranny."
--Thomas Jefferson

"To disarm the people (is) the best and most effectual way to enslave them..."
--George Mason

"A militia, when properly formed, are in fact the people themselves...and include all men capable of bearing arms."
--Richard Henry Lee

"Before a standing army can rule, the people must be disarmed; as they are in almost every kingdom of Europe. the supreme power in America cannot enforce unjust laws by the sword; because the whole body of the people are armed, and constitute a force superior to any bands of regular troops that can be, on any pretense, raised in the United States."
--Noah Webster

EDIT:
"If the representatives of the people betray their constituents, there is then no recourse left but in the exertion of that original right of self defense which is paramount to all positive forms of government..."
--Alexander Hamilton

[k_semler]

"Government begins at the end of the gun barrel."
-- Chaiman Mao

"One man with a gun can control 100 without one. ... Make mass searches and hold executions for found arms."
--V.I. Lenin.

"If the opposition disarms, well and good. If it refuses to disarm, we shall disarm it ourselves."
--Joseph Stalin.

"Of course the people don't want war. But after all, it's the leaders of the country who determine the policy, and it's always a simple matter to drag the people along whether it's a democracy, a fascist dictatorship, or a parliament, or a communist dictatorship. Voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked, and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism, and exposing the country to greater danger."
--Herman Goering

"We are taking the law and bending it as far as we can to capture a whole new class of guns."
--Jose Cerada

"We can't be so fixated on our desire to preserve the rights of ordinary Americans ..."
--Bill Clinton, (USA TODAY, 11 March 1993, page 2A)

"You must govern well. To govern well you need good propaganda. Good government without propaganda is unthinkable , as is good propaganda without good government."
--Dr. Joseph Goebells

[GD]

This one's a classic:
"That's the spirit, George. If nothing else works, then a total pig-headed unwillingness to look facts in the face will see us through."
General Sir Anthony Cecil Hogmanay Melchett (Blackadder Goes Forth).

I don't think he's famous, but I thought this was a classic anyhow:
"Getting involved in anything Middle Eastern politics, is like trying to step in and fix a totally dysfunctional family: various factions sink their hooks into you, and you're done for."
GG3

[k_semler]

Research had been done to determine the longevity of many of the great civilizations, which have existed in world history. The conclusion was that those great civilizations had endured for an average close to two hundred years.

The historical cycle of great civilizations first progressed, then regressed as follows:

All civilizations began in bondage, then proceeded;
from bondage to great spiritual strength,
from great spiritual strength to freedom,
from freedom to abundance,
from abundance to complacency,
from complacency to apathy,
from apathy to dependence,
from dependence back to bondage

--Bound to be Free, L. Arthur Womer, Jr., Ph.D

Where is America in this cycle? Where is the EU in this cycle?

[EnviroEngr]

It is better to light a candle than to curse the darkness.

Attributed for now to:
Michael_Allison


{Trace to: http://www.everything2.com/index.pl?node_id=1473538}

[maverickdoc]

Rome was built in a day

-unknown

[PenultimateManStanding]

Rome was built in a day
-unknown

Didn't you mean to write 'Rome wasn't built in a day'?

[RiverRat]

Some ridiculous quotes from the maniacal dictator himself …

The death of one man is a tragedy. The death of millions is a statistic. – Joseph Stalin

Death solves all problems - no man, no problem. – Joseph Stalin

[maverickdoc]

Rome was built in a day
-unknown

Didn't you mean to write 'Rome wasn't built in a day'?

Can’t get anything past you PMS

just seeing what I could get away with

[PenultimateManStanding]

How about this, maverick, 'no roads lead to Rome'? Or how about 'a stitch in time saves not a goddam thing' or 'it really does help to cry over spilt milk'. 'The early bird should have slept in, screw the worm',
or 'early to bed, early to rise make a man a square'. or 'blessed be the meat, for it shall inherit the Earth.'

[maverickdoc]

How about this, maverick, 'no roads lead to Rome'?

nice

Its going to be funny when people start quoting us.

[Kaminyu]

" To announce that there must be no criticism of the president, or that we are to stand by the president, right or wrong, is not only unpatriotic and servile, but is morally treasonable to the American public." --Theodore Roosevelt

"The last official act of any government is to loot the nation." -- Michael Rivero