Category Archives: quotes

I love quotes!

Politics Make Us Worse

Posted on by
Reply

Many believe greater political participation is the path to both prosperity and virtue. But they’re wrong. Increasing the sphere of politics instead leads to bad policy and increased vice.

So this is an excellent essay by Aaron Ross Powell from the Cato Institute. He couldn’t be more correct. Our nation–indeed, the world–is awash in political BS. So much so, that people in general and politicians in particular can’t even seem to see straight anymore.  Everything has to have a political dimension? Why in the hell? And shouldn’t politics be about more than which team wins, whatever the cost?

My favorite part is the final sentence:

The only way to better both our world and ourselves—to promote good policies and virtue—is to abandon, to the greatest extent possible, politics itself.

By extension, then, we need  less and not more government since politics is government’s stock-in-trade…

Today’s Quote: Krauthammer

Quote

Posted on by
Reply

“What does Dan Cathy stating his opposition to gay marriage that is different that is incongruent with the position that the president of the United States, Barack Obama, held six months ago on the same issue?  He was opposed to gay marriage.  Does that mean for the first three-fourths of the presidency, he was a bigot?”

— Charles Krauthammer

Exactly. If you’re a lefty Marxist like the president, you get a free pass. And why does everything have to be politicized anyway? I eat at Chick-fil-A because they have tasty food, excellent service and reasonable prices. Life is far too short for irrelevant BS like this.

Today’s Quote: Prinz Hans-Adam II of Liechtenstein

Quote

Posted on by
Reply

“[people] have to free the state from all the unnecessary tasks and burdens with which it has been loaded during the last hundred years, which have distracted it from its two main tasks: maintenance of the rule of law and foreign policy.”

–Prinz Hans-Adam II of Liechtenstein from his book The State in the Third Millennium

I came across this quote recently while rekindling my longtime interest in the Principality. I think it’s quite fascinating coming from one of the only remaining actual ruling monarchs in the world. More here from a Wikipedia article:

“Prince Hans-Adam II has written the political treatise The State in the Third Millennium (ISBN 9783905881042), which was published in late 2009. In it, he argues for the continued importance of the nation-state as a political actor. He makes the case for democracy as the best form of government, which he sees China and Russia as transitioning towards although the path will be difficult for these nations. He also declared his role in a royal family as something that has legitimacy only from the assent of the people. He stated that government should be limited to a small set of tasks and abilities…”

I’m seriously going to have to buy and read his book.

Today’s Quote: Madison

Quote

Posted on by
Reply

“A standing military force, with an overgrown Executive will not long be safe companions to liberty.”

–James Madison

Yet another prescient quote from one of the greatest of our founding fathers. Just wait and see if he was right or not when unmanned drones start being routinely flown over the US now that it seems OK for the President to have a “Kill List”…

The Moving Finger

Posted on by
Reply

The Moving Finger writes;
and, having writ, Moves on:
nor all thy Piety nor Wit
Shall lure it back to cancel half a Line,
Nor all thy Tears wash out a Word of it.

–From the Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyám, verse 51,  as translated by Edward Fitzgerald.

Believe it or not, I first read this in P.G. Wodehouse’s Thank You, Jeeves, where it was quoted in its entirely (by Jeeves, obviously). I particularly like the imagery invoked to describe how one cannot change the past.

Today’s Quote: Charlie Broadway

Posted on by
Reply

“I think freedom depends largely on morality. Without moral citizens, freedom is impossible. This is why Russia is a shithole even after the fall of communism. The cultural damage of atheism and vodka swilling makes Russia utterly unfit for liberty. This is why they get a guy like Putin. Similarly, if the USA becomes a nation of potheads addicted to videogames, it won’t be much better. There is no liberty without virtue.”

–From Charlie’s Blog

This is a very trenchant observation. Charlie’s Blog was always interesting to me primarily for his thoughts on government and a more Libertarian outlook–if one disregarded his incessant, pointless profanity and over-the-top anti-marriage and other rants.

But it seems he’s undergoing big changes: he actually got married and is in the process of going from Protestant-turned-Atheist to converting to Roman Catholicism. Not that any of those things are what I’m particularly interested in…

The really good stuff that bubbles up from time to time has to do with his observations on both Limited Government and Human Morality. This one comes from both those camps, really, and I couldn’t agree more. This is a pretty good explanation of what is happening all around us right now and nobody seems to care. This is why our country is falling apart and why people actually want to reelect our current president even as he actively works to drive us all over the cliff.

An increasing lack of freedom due to an increasing lack of virtue…