"Capitalize the gains, socialize the losses"
--some guy who works on Wall St. (or in DC)
"There is a Providence
that protects idiots, drunkards, children and the United States of America."
--Otto von Bismarck, German statesman
“and then what?"
-- Robert Gates, former secretary of defense on the three
words most infrequently uttered in Washington
"If you live long enough, you’ll see your heroes become
villains.”
--Unknown
“To him, a lie is not a lie. It’s just what he thinks. He
doesn’t know the difference between the truth and a lie.”
--Dan Coats, Trump’s former director of national
intelligence
"Never argue with stupid people, they will drag you
down to their level and then beat you with experience."
-- Mark Twain
"Delusion will last until it is about to become fatal,
at which point an onset of sanity is certain."
--American economist John Kenneth Galbraith
"History doesn’t repeat itself but it does often
rhyme"
-- Mark Twain
“When everything becomes political, that is the end of
politics.”
-- Hebrew
University religious
philosopher Moshe Halbertal
“If conservatives become convinced that they can not win
democratically, they will not abandon conservatism. The will reject democracy.”
--David Frum, former speechwriter for President George W.
Bush
“Problems have solutions, but dilemmas have horns.”
--old saying among foreign affairs specialists
"You may have the watches, but we have the time."
--Afghan proverb
"It is a luxury to be irresponsible in a society where
others would be responsible for you..."
--Charles Blow NY Times regarding the anti vax movement
"Me and my brother against my cousin. Me and my brother
and my cousin against the outsider."
--an old Arab
Bedouin saying (loosely translated)
“It ain’t what you don’t know that gets you into trouble.
It’s what you know for sure that just ain’t so.”
--possibly Mark
Twain but not clear
Scientific method “Here are the facts. What conclusions can
we draw from them?” Political method: “Here’s the conclusion. What facts can we
find to support it?”
--not attributed
"If liberty means anything at all it means the right to
tell people what they do not want to hear,"
--George Orwell
"The best way to get the right answer on the Internet
is not to ask a question, it's to post the wrong answer."
--Cunningham's law.
“I’ve never seen a tax I didn’t like.”
-- Long beach
Mayor Robert Garcia at the LB Convention Center following the passage of
Measure M (passed June 2018; ruled unconstitutional March 2022)
"The whole problem with the world is that fools and
fanatics are always so certain of themselves, but wiser people are so full of
doubts."
--Bertrand Russell
“For every complex problem, there is a solution that is
clear, simple, and wrong.”
--H. L. Mencken
“The problem is that we all too often have socialism for the
rich and rugged free enterprise capitalism for the poor.”
--Dr Martin Luther King Jr
“If I’ve learned anything recently, it’s that humans are
really reluctant to give things up to prevent a catastrophe..They’re willing to
hang on to the very end and risk a calamity.”
--Brad Udall, a water and climate scientist at Colorado State University
“Everyone can’t get everything that they want,”
--Thomas Tebb,
WA state Department of Ecology re
water
"If you see a snake, just kill it - don't appoint a
committee on snakes."
--Ross Perot 1994 Presidential Candidate
"The activist is not the man who says the river is
dirty. The activist is the man who cleans up the river."
--Ross Perot 1994 Presidential Candidate
"The budget should be balanced, the treasury should be
refilled, the public debt should be reduced and the arrogance of public
officials should be controlled."
--Ross Perot 1994 Presidential Candidate
"Expect disappointment and you’ll never get
disappointed"
--by the character Michelle Jones-Watson in the film
Spiderman: No Way Home (2021).
"The people in our democracy are not uncommonly wise,
but their experience tends to make them uncommonly sensible.”
--Irving Kristol
"To the victor [victim] go the spoils"
--LAAG; a commentary on how the victim mentality/state is
paying off for victims
“I am not a member of any organized political party. I am a
Democrat.”
--Will Rogers
"Politics is the entertainment division of the military
industrial complex"
--Frank Zappa
“Thanks to our evolutionary history, we’re programmed to
deal with the lion coming from the woods, not to strategize how to save our
civilization over the next hundred years,”
--Jeff Goodell, author of "The Heat Will Kill You
First"
“Civilization asks whether law is so laggard as to be
utterly helpless to deal with crimes of this magnitude by criminals of this
order of importance.”
--Robert H. Jackson, the eloquent Supreme Court justice who
served as the U.S. chief
prosecutor at Nuremberg,
in his opening address there
"Life is like
riding a bicycle. To keep your balance, you must keep moving."
— Albert Einstein
"You are never
too old to set a new goal or to dream a new dream."
— CS Lewis
"It is often the
small steps, not the giant leaps, that bring about the most lasting
change."
— Queen Elizabeth II
"Few people have the wisdom to prefer the criticism that would do them good, to the praise that deceives them."
--Francois de La Rochefoucauld
"Everything that irritates us about others can lead us to an understanding of ourselves."
--Carl Jung
"Only the narcissists have the fortitude to persist in
politics."
--Unknown
"America did not invent human rights. In a very real sense, it is the other way round. Human rights invented America."
--Pres. Carter's Farewell address January 14, 1981
A fact is “a piece of information presented as having objective reality”
--Merriam-Webster
“You can pardon most anything in a man who will tell the truth, if anyone lies, if he has the habit of untruthfulness, you cannot deal with him, because there is nothing to depend on.”.
--President Teddy Roosevelt 1903 speech in California
"Those who cannot learn from history are doomed to repeat it."
-- George Santayana
"history doesn't repeat itself, but it often rhymes"
-- Mark Twain
“Incompetent people overestimate their ability because they lack the metacognitive skill to recognize their own incompetence.”
--A paraphrase of Dunning–Kruger Research Language
“The conventional army loses if it does not win. The guerrilla wins if he does not lose.”
-- Henry Kissinger, the former U.S. Secretary of State during the Vietnam War.
"The poor and middle pay taxes, the rich pay accountants, the very rich pay lawyers – and the ultra-rich pay politicians"
--Unknown
“It takes 20 years to build a reputation and five minutes to ruin it.”
--billionaire Warren Buffett
