Quotations 5

The air was thick with the smell of burning, and the sky was a dull red smear, like blood seeping through a bandage. We’d killed the planet, and now it was coughing up its last rancid breaths while we scrabbled in the dirt for something to eat.

Cormac McCarthy in The Road

And are we to have a Censor whose imprimatur shall say what books may be sold, and what we may buy? Whose foot is to be the measure to which ours are all to be cut or stretched?

- Thomas Jefferson, 1814

{as quoted in "These Are the 381 {DEI} Books Removed From the Naval Academy Library" (NYT, 4 April 2025) https://www.nytimes.com/2025/04/04/us/politics/naval-academy-dei-books-removed.h... }

“ If gang affiliation is illegal, why isn’t every Proud Boy and Klan member in prison?”

Hope Wolfgram on Substack

The Anglo-American relies upon personal interest to accomplish his ends, and gives free scope to the ingrained strength and commonsense of the people; the Russian centers all authority of society on a single arm. The principal instrument of the former is freedom; of the latter, servitude. Their starting point is different, and the causes are not the same; yet each of them seems marked by the will of heaven to sway the destinies of half the globe.

— Alexis de Tocqueville Democracy in America, 1833.

“I couldn’t have spoken in front of these midshipmen about courage and about doing the right thing, and then remove, I think, a very reasonable objection to a very egregious concept.”

--Ryan Holiday, a writer and philosopher who has lectured at the US Naval Academy more than half a dozen times since 2019 on being told that his scheduled 14-Apr lecture on wisdom and stoicism could not take place unless he removed reference to the removal of 391 books from the Academy's library.

“ Producing something this stupid is not the work of a day; it is the achievement of a lifetime — relying on decades of incuriosity, decades of not cracking a book, decades of being impervious to evidence.”

-David Brooks on Trump’s tariff policy

https://www.nytimes.com/2025/04/10/opinion/education-smart-thinking-reading-tari...

I think they (the administration) realized that Bezos has a big red button in his office that says "press this button to erase five points from Trump's approval rating overnight." I don't think Bezos wants that button, and I don't think he wants to push it but they realize it's there. And in the process they called everyone's attention to the fact that it is there, which seems really stupid.

--Max Fisher, on Offline with Jon Favreau, on White House reaction to false news Amazon would place import tax information on products sold on Amazon.

"Censorship means never having to hear bad news again."

Me, today.

"Whoever would overthrow the liberty of a nation must begin by subduing the freeness of speech."
―Silence Dogood, likely pseudonym of Benjamin Franklin.

"The First Amendment is often inconvenient. But that is beside the point. Inconvenience does not absolve the government of its obligation to tolerate speech."
― Anthony Kennedy, United States Supreme Court.

"Free speech is the whole thing, the whole ball game. Free speech is life itself."
― Salman Rushdie, author.

18 Freedom of Speech Quotes You Should Know
https://www.freedomforum.org/freedom-of-speech-quotes/

"These debates – and it’s not even a debate, it’s a small clutch of people shouting very loudly, amplified by certain elements of the press – are not reflective of what most people feel. Things become ludicrously disproportionate, and end up being unnecessarily cruel."

David Tennant, former Dr Who actor, in the Guardian (link).

He's speaking about the debate over trans people, but I think this sentiment could be applied to many of the so-called "debates" which have become polarised along political, cultural, religious and other identity group lines.

"Throughout all these years I’ve tried to pass my words through three gates: 'Is it true? Is it loving? Is it necessary?'”

Fr Richard Rohr, circular e-mail, 29 April 2025.

"We’re going to be a tariff nation. It’s not going to be a cost to you. It’s going to be a cost to another country"--Candidate Trump, 9/2024.

"Between Walmart and China they should, as is said ‘EAT THE TARIFFS,’ and not charge valued customers ANYTHING. I’ll be watching, and so will your customers!"--President Trump 5/2025

"They are so afraid of everything. It is a society of cowards, egging each other on to cruelty to prove their bravery." -- me, yesterday.

>13 Cardboard_killer:

You're not alone:
Volodymyr Zelenskyy has courage. Pope Francis had it too. Why are there so many cowards? Alexander Hurst in The Guardian.

"I went to Saudi Arabia and the King told me, he said, you've got the hottest, we've got the hottest country in the world right now."-- Donald Trump, yesterday, on his economic policy effects.

"We were very nice to China. I don't know if they're going to be nice to us, but we were very nice to China. And in many ways we really helped China tremendously because you know they were having great difficulty because we were basically going cold turkey with China. We were doing no business with China because of the tariff because it was so high."-- Donald Trump, yesterday, on why he lowered his import taxes.

“If we understand industrial CO2 as debt, then heat is the interest on that debt…we now find ourselves in the default zone.”

- John Vaillant
https://www.thestar.com/opinion/contributors/john-vaillant-mark-carney-should-un...

“They’ll say we are disturbing the peace, but there is no peace.
What really bothers them is that we are disturbing the war.”

- Howard Zinn

It is usually imagined that a thief, a murderer, a spy, a prostitute, acknowledging his or her profession as evil, is ashamed of it. But the contrary is true. People whom fate and their sin-mistakes have placed in a certain position, however false that position may be, form a view of life in general which makes their position seem good and admissible. In order to keep up their view of life, these people instinctively keep to the circle of those people who share their views of life and their own place in it. This surprises us, where the persons concerned are thieves, bragging about their dexterity, prostitutes vaunting their depravity, or murderers boasting of their cruelty. This surprises us only because the circle, the atmosphere in which these people live, is limited, and we are outside it. But can we not observe the same phenomenon when the rich boast of their wealth, i.e., robbery; the commanders in the army pride themselves on victories, i.e., murder; and those in high places vaunt their power, i.e., violence? We do not see the perversion in the views of life held by these people, only because the circle formed by them is more extensive, and we ourselves are moving inside of it... And Maslova prized this view of life more than anything; she could not but prize it, for, if she lost the importance that such a view of life gave her among men, she would lose the meaning of her life. And, in order not to lose the meaning of her life, she instinctively clung to the set that looked at life in the same way as she did.

From Resurrection by Leo Tolstoy, Chapter XLIV

Jon Stewart on the arc of moral history…
It doesn’t bend on its own…

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=piBWA5GUBBY

Not wanting to know means asking to be deceived.

Mother Jones Magazine

“The fundamental civic unit is neighbor”. Jelani Cobb

Speaking about how The Fugitive Slave Act moved us toward the Civil War

Pity the nation whose people are sheep
And whose shepherds mislead them
Pity the nation whose leaders are liars
Whose sages are silenced
And whose bigots haunt the airwaves
Pity the nation that raises not its voice
Except to praise conquerers
And acclaim the bully as hero
And aims to rule the world
By force and by torture
Pity the nation that knows
No other language but its own
And no other culture but its own
Pity the nation whose breath is money
And sleeps the sleep of the too well fed
Pity the nation oh pity the people
who allow their rights to erode
and their freedoms to be washed away

Lawrence Ferlinghetti. 2007

After being trashed numerous times by the Smothers Brothers, President Johnson wrote them:

"It is part of the price of leadership of this great and free nation to be the target of clever satirists. You have given the gift of laughter to our people. May we never grow so somber or self-important that we fail to appreciate the humor in our lives."

I don't know with what weapons World War III will be fought,
but World War IV will be fought with sticks and stones.

- Albert Einstein

You don't have to burn books to destroy a culture.
Just get people to stop reading them.

- Ray Bradbury

Someone asked if there was a comparable saying in other languages for “rightie-tightie, leftie-loosie” dealing with bolts

See what the Spanish saying is:

https://instagram.com/p/DN0-0Qa3AyT/

>26 2wonderY:
Very interesting. :-)

If a child is to keep alive his inborn sense of wonder, he needs the companionship of at least one adult who can share it, rediscovering with him the joy excitement and mystery of the world we live in.

- Rachael Carson

>28 margd:

Do you know when that quote was published? It strikes me as odd that it refers only to a male child, but as she died in 1964 it must be well over sixty years old so using masculine language was still the norm then.

>29 John5918: The Sense of Wonder, ~1955.

Per amazon.ca, "First published a half-century ago, Rachel Carson's award-winning The Sense of Wonder remains the classic guide to introducing children to the marvels of nature."

"In 1955, acclaimed conservationist Rachel Carson—author of Silent Spring—began work on an essay that she would come to consider one of her life’s most important projects. Her grandnephew, Roger Christie, had visited Carson that summer at her cottage in Maine, and together they had wandered the surrounding woods and tide pools. Teaching Roger about the natural wonders around them, Carson began to see them anew herself, and wanted to relate that same magical feeling to others who might hope to introduce a child to the beauty of nature."

"The President is merely the most important among a large number of public servants. He should be supported or opposed exactly to the degree which is warranted by his good conduct or bad conduct, his efficiency or inefficiency in rendering loyal, able, and disinterested service to the Nation as a whole. Therefore it is absolutely necessary that there should be full liberty to tell the truth about his acts, and this means that it is exactly necessary to blame him when he does wrong as to praise him when he does right. Any other attitude in an American citizen is both base and servile. 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. Nothing but the truth should be spoken about him or any one else. But it is even more important to tell the truth, pleasant or unpleasant, about him than about any one else."

- Theodore Roosevelt
Excerpt of editorial, Kansas City Star, May 7, 1918.
https://www.theodoreroosevelt.org/content.aspx

Jimmy Kimmel collected presidential quotes on the subject of Immigrants and Immigration.

Inspiring to listen

https://www.tiktok.com/t/ZTMdTuxCy/

This show is not important. What is important is that we get to live in a country that allows us to have a show like this.

- Jimmy Kimmel

>32 2wonderY: I'm guessing the clip is interesting - so much so that according to tiktok it may be "uncomfortable for some" so in order to see it you have to have an account and log in. Oh well, such is life.

>34 alco261: That’s too bad! It was very inspiring.

“Behold. The festering carcass of American rot shoved into an ill-fitting suit: the sleaze of a conman, the cowardice of a draft dodger, the gluttony of a parasite, the racism of a Klansman, the sexism of a back-alley creep, the ignorance of a bar-stool drunk, and the greed of a hedge-fund ghoul - all spray-painted orange and paraded like a prize hog at a county fair. Not a president. Not even a man. Just the diseased distillation of everything this country swears it isn't but always has been - arrogance dressed up as exceptionalism, stupidity passed off as common sense, cruelty sold as toughness, greed exalted as ambition, and corruption worshipped like gospel. It is America's shadow made flesh, a rotting pumpkin idol proving that when a nation kneels before money, power, and spite, it doesn't just lose its soul - it shits out this bloated obscenity and calls it a leader.”

Oliver Kornetzke

“I was an Indian in Uganda. I was a Muslim in India. And I was all of these things in New York City ... {and} ... to be a minority is also to see the truth of the place amidst the promise of it.”

- Mahmood Mamdani, father of Zohran Mamdani
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Inside the Improbable, Audacious and (So Far) Unstoppable Rise of Zohran Mamdani
NYT | 14 Oct 2025

"The story of the man most likely to be the next mayor of New York City — and the promise and peril his ascent poses for the Democratic Party..."

PAYWALL https://www.nytimes.com/2025/10/14/magazine/zohran-mamdani-mayor-new-york.html

“When it gets down to having to use violence, then you are playing the system’s game. The establishment will irritate you – pull your beard, flick your face – to make you fight. Because once they’ve got you violent, then they know how to handle you. The only thing they don’t know how to handle is non-violence and humor.”

― John Lennon

Do not get lost in a sea of despair. Be hopeful, be optimistic. Our struggle is not the struggle of a day, a week, a month, or a year, it is the struggle of a lifetime. Never, ever be afraid to make some noise and get in good trouble, necessary trouble.

– John Lewis (tweet from June 2018)

Today nearly everything is made in China. Except for courage. Courage is made in Palestine.

- Anthony Bourdain

The more things change, the more they stay the same. From The Sleepwalkers: How Europe Went to War in 1914:

"The Kaiser picked up ideas, enthused over them, grew bored or discouraged and dropped them. again. He was angry with the Russian Tsar on week, but infatuated with him the next. . . .

Too often he spoke not like a monarch, but like an over-excited teenager giving free rein to his current preoccupations. He was an extreme exemplar of that Edwardian social category, the club bore who is forever explaining some pet project to the man in the next chair. . . .

These were the blue-sky scenarios of an inveterate geopolitical fantasist, not policies as such."

The Democrats don’t matter. The real opposition is the media. And the way to deal with them is to flood the zone with shit.

- Steve Bannon

John Adams
Letter to Hezekiah Niles

“ But what do We mean by the American Revolution? Do We mean the American War? The Revolution was effected before the War commenced. The Revolution was in the Minds and Hearts of the People. A Change in their Religious Sentiments of their Duties and Obligations. While the King, and all in Authority under him, were believed to govern, in Justice and Mercy according to the Laws and Constitutions derived to them from the God of Nature, and transmitted to them by their Ancestors— they thought themselves bound to pray for the King and Queen and all the Royal Family, and all the Authority under them, as Ministers ordained of God for their good. But when they Saw those Powers renouncing all the Principles of Authority, and bent up on the destruction of all the Securities of their Lives, Liberties and Properties, they thought it their Duty to pray for the Continental Congress and all the thirteen State Congresses, &c.”

https://founders.archives.gov/documents/Adams/99-02-02-6854

(My emphasis)

“Anarchists did not try to carry out genocide against the Armenians in Turkey; they did not deliberately starve millions of Ukrainians; they did not create a system of death camps to kill Jews, gypsies, and Slavs in Europe; they did not fire-bomb scores of large German and Japanese cities and drop nuclear bombs on two of them; they did not carry out a ‘Great Leap Forward’ that killed scores of millions of Chinese; they did not attempt to kill everybody with any appreciable education in Cambodia; they did not launch one aggressive war after another; they did not implement trade sanctions that killed perhaps 500,000 Iraqi children.

In debates between anarchists and statists, the burden of proof clearly should rest on those who place their trust in the state. Anarchy’s mayhem is wholly conjectural; the state’s mayhem is undeniably, factually horrendous.”

― Robert Higgs
________________________________

"...Daniel McCarthy praised Robert Higgs and summarized his ratchet effect theory in a review of Against Leviathan that appeared in The American Conservative. In the review , McCarthy remarked that

"What made Crisis and Leviathan a milestone was the rigor with which it elaborated upon the logic of James Madison's 1794 warning against "the old trick of turning every contingency into a resource for accumulating force in government." Other political economists had studied the growth of state power during times of war, depression, and general upheaval before, but none had done so as thoughtfully and thoroughly as Higgs. He took special care in describing the "ratchet effect", once a crisis has passed state power usually recedes again, but it rarely returns to its original levels. Thus each emergency leaves the scope of government at least a little wider than before."...

(Wikipedia)

"Men are afraid that women will laugh at them. Women are afraid that men will kill them."

- Margaret Atwood
(simplified essencee of 'Writing The Male Character' (1982), p. 413 in "Second Words – Selected Critical Prose 1960-1982" (2018)")

“Democracy doesn’t wait for permission.”

- Vic Meyers (Resister Vic)

https://www.tiktok.com/t/ZTMttqNr1/

“ Socialism is a scare word they have hurled at every advance the people have made in the last 20 years.

Socialism is what they called public power. Socialism is what they called social security.

Socialism is what they called farm price supports.

Socialism is what they called bank deposit insurance.

Socialism is what they called the growth of free and independent labor organizations.

Socialism is their name for almost anything that helps all the people.”

Harry Truman

>48 margd:

Interesting that a female senator should use non-inclusive language - "his" rather than "his or her", or simply "their". Mind you, I have no idea who Schroeder is, so maybe this pre-dates awareness about non-inclusive language?

>49 John5918: Mybad. I remembered her as a Senator but she represented Colorado in the US House of Representatives as a Democrat (1973-1997), so predated inclusive language. I wonder what she would have made of it?

According to Wikipedia, "The Washington Post remarked that Schroeder was "known for her barbed wit", and many of her comments and quips were singled out for media attention during her career. She recalls that "John Wayne gave me a silver cigarette lighter during the Vietnam War that said 'Fuck Communism' on it. I didn't know how to do that. I still don't." She coined the phrase "Teflon President" to describe Ronald Reagan and his popularity even amid scandal; the idea came to her when she was frying eggs in a Teflon pan. Author Rebecca Traister has recalled that Schroeder responded to concerns about balancing political life with motherhood by saying "I have a brain and a uterus, and they both work." In a 1995 exchange, after Rep. Duke Cunningham told Rep. Bernie Sanders to "sit down, you socialist", during a debate in which Sanders and Schroeder both objected to homophobic comments Cunningham made, Schroeder asked, "Parliamentary inquiry, Mr. Chairman—do we have to call the Gentleman a gentleman if he's not one?""

"... we ... most humbly ... beseech him ... to render our national government a blessing to all the people, by constantly being a government of wise, just, and constitutional laws, discreetly and faithfully executed and obeyed ..."

— George Washington, First Thanksgiving Proclamation (1789)
https://www.mountvernon.org/education/primary-source-collections/primary-source-...
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ETA, 236 years later (12:10 AM · Nov 28, 2025), President Donald J. Trump tweeted:

"A very Happy Thanksgiving salutation to all of our Great American Citizens and Patriots who have been so nice in allowing our Country to be divided, disrupted, carved up, murdered, beaten, mugged, and laughed at, along with certain other foolish countries throughout the World, for being “Politically Correct,” and just plain STUPID, when it comes to Immigration. The official United States Foreign population stands at 53 million people (Census), most of which are on welfare, from failed nations, or from prisons, mental institutions, gangs, or drug cartels. They and their children are supported through massive payments from Patriotic American Citizens who, because of their beautiful hearts, do not want to openly complain or cause trouble in any way, shape, or form. They put up with what has happened to our Country, but it’s eating them alive to do so! A migrant earning $30,000 with a green card will get roughly $50,000 in yearly benefits for their family. The real migrant population is much higher. This refugee burden is the leading cause of social dysfunction in America, something that did not exist after World War II (Failed schools, high crime, urban decay, overcrowded hospitals, housing shortages, and large deficits, etc.). As an example, hundreds of thousands of refugees from Somalia are completely taking over the once great State of Minnesota. Somalian gangs are roving the streets looking for “prey” as our wonderful people stay locked in their apartments and houses hoping against hope that they will be left alone. The seriously retarded Governor of Minnesota, Tim Walz, does nothing, either through fear, incompetence, or both, while the worst “Congressman/woman” in our Country, Ilhan Omar, always wrapped in her swaddling hijab, and who probably came into the U.S.A. illegally in that you are not allowed to marry your brother, does nothing but hatefully complain about our Country, its Constitution, and how “badly” she is treated, when her place of origin is a decadent, backward, and crime ridden nation, which is essentially not even a country for lack of Government, Military, Police, schools, etc. Even as we have progressed technologically, Immigration Policy has eroded those gains and living conditions for many. I will permanently pause migration from all Third World Countries to allow the U.S. system to fully recover, terminate all of the millions of Biden illegal admissions, including those signed by Sleepy Joe Biden’s Autopen, and remove anyone who is not a net asset to the United States, or is incapable of loving our Country, end all Federal benefits and subsidies to noncitizens of our Country, denaturalize migrants who undermine domestic tranquility, and deport any Foreign National who is a public charge, security risk, or non-compatible with Western Civilization. These goals will be pursued with the aim of achieving a major reduction in illegal and disruptive populations, including those admitted through an unauthorized and illegal Autopen approval process. Only REVERSE MIGRATION can fully cure this situation. Other than that, HAPPY THANKSGIVING TO ALL, except those that hate, steal, murder, and destroy everything that America stands for — You won’t be here for long!"

https://x.com/realdonaldtrump/status/1994272683387687053

“Men understand consent the second they walk into the locker room.”

https://www.tiktok.com/t/ZTrMWrAAE/

>48 margd: Books are brain food. If every American would purchase the equivalent of his weight in books each year, this country would be a different place.

If I had her wit, I would say:

Books are brain food. If every American would read the equivalent of his weight in books each year, this country would be a different place.

The problem with science denial is that once you start, you just can't stop.
When you deny any science, you switch on an overrule function in your brain that you can use on any information you dislike.
The more you use it, the more effective it becomes.

- tern @1goodtern | 5:02 AM · Dec 2, 2025
https://x.com/1goodtern/status/1995795731815321666

“To be called woke in a world that sleeps through suffering is no insult.”

Pope Leo

“We have fought hard and long for integration, as I believe we should have, and I believe that we will win, but I have come to believe that we are integrating into a burning house. I’m afraid that America has lost the moral vision she may have had,” as the nation is not deeply concerned “with the plight of the poor and disenfranchised.”

Martin Luther King, Jr.

“The first lesson of economics is scarcity: There is never enough of anything to satisfy all those who want it. The first lesson of politics is to disregard the first lesson of economics.”
Thomas Sowell

“The system's power comes not from its truth but from everyone's willingness to perform as if it were true. And its fragility comes from the same source: when even one person stops performing."

Mark Carney at Davos

“Revolutionaries didn't choose armed struggle as the best path, it's the path the oppressors imposed on the people. And so the people only have two choices: to suffer, or to fight."

Fidel Castro

Much as I admire Fidel Castro, he is absolutely wrong there, as are most people who are shaped by the militaristic myth which is so prominent in our world. As Gandhi, Martin Luther King, Desmond Tutu and many others (not least Buddha and Jesus) demonstrated, there is a third path, that of active nonviolent resistance.

"I can say I love London, I can say I love England. I can’t say I love my country because I don’t know what that means".

Alan Bennett, link

"You know what's a war crime? Allowing a sick country with demented leadership to have a nuclear weapon."

- President Donald J Trump, 6 April 2026

>62 margd:

Hm. Then by his definition it must be a war crime to allow the US under Trump to have nuclear weapons.

>63 John5918: I don't think there was any self-reflection or irony in Trump's remark. It's getting scary.

It's frightening to realize that he is so unselfaware.

>65 librorumamans: Speaking of total lack of self-awareness, I keep wishing that the next time he calls someone low IQ someone would finally tell him he's the dumbest public official of any kind to ever have held an office in our lifetime. Even chickens would probably know not to look directly at the Sun, but not the stable genius, haha. It infuriates me to no end that this peabrain gets to insult intelligent people over and over again.

>62 margd: "You know what's a war crime? Allowing a sick country with demented leadership to have a nuclear weapon."


Can you provide a source for this?

“It was once written that America is great because America is good, and if America ever ceases to be good, America will cease to be great." --Ronald Reagan
One to share with any exceptionalist relatives.

>67 librorumamans: I saw it as a news clip from White House lawn after Monday's Easter egg roll (Fox, I think). Here are a couple of other accounts:

Aaron Rupar ‪@atrupar.com‬ | 12:17 PM · Apr 6, 2026:
Independent journalist, SnapStream brand ambassador, and publisher of the Public Notice newsletter ...

"Q: Is hitting power plants is a war crime?
TRUMP: I'm not worried about it. You know what's a war crime? Allowing a sick country w/demented leaders to have a nuclear weapon. If I allowed that to happen like 7 other presidents- many of them say off the record they should've done this a long time ago"
(Video, 0:57) https://bsky.app/profile/atrupar.com/post/3mitnzqck4s23
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Pressed on possible war crimes, Trump peddled 3 answers. They were all unacceptable.
Steve Benen | Apr. 7, 2026

"... Trump was asked whether he considered hitting civilian infrastructure to be a war crime. “You know what’s a war crime?” he responded. “Having a nuclear weapon, allowing a sick country with demented leaders to have a nuclear weapon. That’s a war crime.” ..."

https://www.ms.now/rachel-maddow-show/maddowblog/pressed-on-possible-war-crimes-...

>69 margd:

It's also quoted in BBC reports.

It must be a great disappointment to God if we are not dazzled at least ten times a day.

― Mary Oliver, Blue Horses