The Musician's Room - Cool Quotes
A little more flotsam across the transom of your mind...
"The world have achieved brilliance without conscience. Ours is a world of nuclear giants and ethical infants. We have grasped the mystery of the atom and rejected the Sermon on the Mount." - Omar Bradley
"A human being should be able to change a diaper, plan an invasion, butcher a hog, conn a ship, design a building, write a sonnet, balance accounts, build a wall, set a bone, comfort the dying, take orders, give orders, cooperate, act alone, solve equations, analyze a new problem, pitch manure, program a computer, cook a tasty meal, fight efficiently, die gallantly. Specialization is for insects." - Robert Heinlein
"There is a great deal of talk about loyalty from the bottom to the top. Loyalty from the top down is even more necessary and is much less prevalent. One of the most frequently noted characteristics of great men who have remained great is loyalty to their subordinates." - George Patton
"Democracy is two wolves and one lamb voting on who is for dinner." - Ben Franklin
"Men never do evil so completely and cheerfully as when they do it from religious conviction." - Blaise Pascal
"Day by day, case by case, the Supreme Court is busy designing a Constitution for a country I do not recognize." - Justice Antonin Scalia, United States Supreme Court, from Board of County Commissioners v. Umbehr
"The poet called Miss Liberty's torch, "the lamp beside the golden door." Well, that was the entrance to America, and it still is. And now you really know why we're here tonight. The glistening hope of that lamp is still ours. Every promise every opportunity is still golden in this land. And through that golden door our children can walk into tomorrow with the knowledge that no one can be denied the promise that is America. Her heart is full; her door is still golden, her future bright. She has arms big enough to comfort and strong enough to support, for the strength in her arms is the strength of her people. She will carry on in the eighties unafraid, unashamed, and unsurpassed. In this springtime of hope, some lights seem eternal; America's is." - Ronald Reagan (RNC speech, August 23, 1984 )
"No provision in our Constitution ought to be dearer to man than that which protects the rights of conscience against the enterprises of the civil authority" - Thomas Jefferson
“It is unfortunately true that the great body of our citizens shoot less and less as time goes on…. To meet this we should encourage rifle practice among schoolboys, and indeed among all classes, as well as in the military services, by every means in our power. Thus, and not otherwise, may we be able to assist in preserving the peace of the world…. Unprepared, and therefore unfit, we must sit dumb and helpless to defend ourselves, protect others or preserve peace. The first step – in the direction to avert war, if possible, and to be fit for war if it should come – is to teach our men to shoot.” - President Theodore Roosevelt in his last address to congress, 1909
"A nation of sheep begets a government of wolves". - Edward R. Murrow
"They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety." - Benjamin Franklin, Historical Review of Pennsylvania, 1759.
"Journalists were never intended to be the cheerleaders of a society, the conductors of applause, the sycophants. Tragically, that is their assigned role in authoritarian societies, but not here -- not yet." - Chet Huntley
“Just because the microphone in front of you amplifies your voice around the world is no reason to think we have any more wisdom than we had when our voices could reach only from one end of the bar to the other.” - Edward R. Murrow
"All that is required for evil to triumph is that good people remain silent and do nothing." - Edmund Burke
"The problem with socialism is that eventually you run out of other people's money." - Margaret Thatcher
"Rock journalism is people who can't write, interviewing people who can't talk, for people who can't read." - Frank Zappa
"Of all the dispositions and habits, which lead to political prosperity, Religion and Morality are indispensable supports. In vain would that man claim the tribute of Patriotism, who should labor to subvert these great pillars of human happiness, these firmest props of the duties of Men and Citizens. The mere Politician, equally with the pious man, ought to respect and to cherish them. A volume could not trace all their connexions with private and public felicity. Let it simply be asked, Where is the security for property, for reputation, for life, if the sense of religious obligation desert the oaths, which are the instruments of investigation in Courts of Justice? And let us with caution indulge the supposition, that morality can be maintained without religion. Whatever may be conceded to the influence of refined education on minds of peculiar structure, reason and experience both forbid us to expect, that national morality can prevail in exclusion of religious principle." - George Washington, Farewell Address, September, 1796
"Americans need not fear the federal government because they enjoy the advantage of being armed, which you possess over the people of almost every other nation." - James Madison
"I ask, sir, what is the militia? It is the whole people. To disarm the people is the best and most effectual way to enslave them." - George Mason, during Virginia's Convention to Ratify the Constitution (1788)
"On every question of construction (of the Constitution) let us carry ourselves back to the time when the Constitution was adopted, recollect the spirit manifested in the debates, and instead of trying what meaning may be squeezed out of the text, or invented against it, conform to the probable one in which it was passed." - Thomas Jefferson
"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
"Are we at last brought to such humiliating and debasing degradation, that we cannot be trusted with arms for our defense? Where is the difference between having our arms in possession and under our direction, and having them under the management of Congress? If our defense be the real object of having those arms, in whose hands can they be trusted with more propriety, or equal safety to us, as in our own hands?" - Patrick Henry
"The great object is that every man be armed. Everyone who is able may have a gun." - Patrick Henry
"No free man shall be debarred the use of arms." - Thomas Jefferson
"[Even if there would be] few tears shed if and when the Second Amendment is held to guarantee nothing more than the state National Guard, this would simply show that the Founders were right when they feared that some future generation might wish to abandon liberties that they considered essential, and so sought to protect those liberties in a Bill of Rights. We may tolerate the abridgement of property rights and the elimination of a right to bear arms; but we should not pretend that these are not reductions of rights." - Justice Antonin Scalia 1998
"If we and our posterity reject religious instruction and authority, violate the rules of eternal justice, trifle with the injunctions of morality, and recklessly destroy the political constitution which holds us together, no man can tell how sudden a catastrophe may overwhelm us, that shall bury all our glory in profound obscurity." - Daniel Webster
"No arsenal or no weapon in the arsenals of the world is so formidable as the will and moral courage of free men and women." - Ronald Reagan (First Inaugural Address, January 20, 1981 )
"As nightfall does not come at once, neither does oppression.
In both instances there is a twilight when everything remains
seemingly unchanged. And it is in such twilight that we all
must be most aware of change in the air - however slight -
lest we become unwitting victims of the darkness."
- Supreme Court Justice William O. Douglas
"I want to know God's thoughts; the rest are details."
"I am convinced that He (God) does not play dice with the cosmos."
"Science without religion is lame. Religion without science is blind."
"Education is what remains after one has forgotten everything he
learned in school."
"Put your hand on a hot stove for a minute, and it seems like an hour.
Sit with a pretty girl for an hour, and it seems like a minute.
THAT'S relativity."
- Albert Einstein
"There's a feeling I get when I look to the sky, as if someone is watching, someone hears every word." - Joe Walsh
"Now we've got them where they want us!" - Joe Walsh
"Never try to teach a pig to dance, it wastes your time and annoys the pig." - unknown
"Tell Lord Privy Seal that I am sealed in my privy -- And I can only deal with one $-it at a time!" - Winston Churchill, when bothered for a signature while otherwise occupied...
"No one will ever win the battle of the sexes. There's just too much fraternizing with the enemy." - Henry Kissinger
"In a time of universal deceit, telling the truth is a revolutionary act." - George Orwell
"Corrupt the young, get them away from religion. Get them interested in sex. Make them superficial, and destroy their ruggedness.
Get control of all means of publicity, and thereby get the peoples' mind off their government by focusing their attention on athletics, sexy books and plays, and other trivialities.
Divide the people into hostile groups by constantly harping on controversial matters of no importance." - Vladimir Ilich Lenin, former leader of USSR
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