Category: Quote of the Day

“When you left London, the East India was a trading company. Now it is God Almighty. The Prince Regent fears it. No government in the world dares to stand up to it. It owns the land, the ocean, the fucking sky above our heads. It has more men and weapons and ships than all the Christian nations combined. You think all who submit are evil. No. We are submitting to the way the world has become. All the good men in London who fight them are washed up at Tilbury.”

– Nicholas Woodeson as
“Robert Thoyt” in Taboo

“No man is so foolish but he may sometimes give another good counsel, and no man so wise that he may not easily err if he takes no other counsel than his own. He that is taught only by himself has a fool for a master.”

– Hunter S. Thompson

“Civilization, in fact, grows more and more maudlin and hysterical; especially under democracy it tends to degenerate into a mere combat of crazes; the whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, most of them imaginary.”

– H.L. Mencken

“Mr. Head awakened to discover that the room was full of moonlight. He sat up and stared at the floor boards – the color of silver – and then at the ticking on his pillow, which might have been brocade, and after a second, he saw half of the moon five feet away in his shaving mirror, paused as if it were waiting for his permission to enter. It rolled forward and cast a dignifying light on everything. The straight chair against the wall looked stiff and attentive as if it were awaiting an order and Mr. Head’s trousers, hanging to the back of it, had an almost noble air, like the garment some great man had just flung to his servant; but the face on the moon was a grave one. It gazed across the room and out the window where it floated over the horse stall and appeared to contemplate itself with the look of a young man who sees his old age before him.”

– Flannery O’Connor
“The Artificial Nigger”

American political commentator and humorist P. J. O’Rourke is one of my all-time favorite authors. I’m sure I’ve posted some of his quotes before, but here are many more to enjoy:

“Anyway, no drug, not even alcohol, causes the fundamental ills of society. If we’re looking for the source of our troubles, we shouldn’t test people for drugs, we should test them for stupidity, ignorance, greed and love of power.”

“There is only one basic human right, the right to do as you damn well please. And with it comes the only basic human duty, the duty to take the consequences.”

“When buying and selling are controlled by legislation, the first things to be bought and sold are legislators.”

“Seriousness is stupidity sent to college.”

“Feeling good about government is like looking on the bright side of any catastrophe. When you quit looking on the bright side, the catastrophe is still there.”

“Giving money and power to government is like giving whiskey and car keys to teenage boys.”

“The good news is that, according to the Obama administration, the rich will pay for everything. The bad news is that, according to the Obama administration, you’re rich.”

“The Democrats are the party that says government will make you smarter, taller, richer, and remove the crabgrass on your lawn. The Republicans are the party that says government doesn’t work and then they get elected and prove it.”

“Everybody wants to save the earth; nobody wants to help Mom do the dishes.”

“The second item in the liberal creed, after self-righteousness, is unaccountability. Liberals have invented whole college majors — psychology, sociology, women’s studies — to prove that nothing is anybody’s fault. No one is fond of taking responsibility for his actions, but consider how much you’d have to hate free will to come up with a political platform that
advocates killing unborn babies but not convicted murderers. A callous pragmatist might favor abortion and capital punishment. A devout Christian would sanction neither. But it takes years of therapy to arrive at the liberal view.”

“The whole idea of our government is this: If enough people get together and act in concert, they can take something and not pay for it.”

Continue reading “Quotes of the Day”

Seriously, folks… Justified has the BEST dialogue of any show on TV, period:

“Disposing of murder victims for money, why that leaves a bad taste in a Christian’s mouth. A small town don’t run on a 24-hour news cycle… a small town NEVER forgets. Now word’s goin’ burn through these hills and hollers like a wildfire. People o’ Harlan County, rich and poor, will marvel at your debasement and venality. They will spit venom when they speak your name and they will take your suicide as the last act of a coward. Now your reputation is ruined, your good word worthless, but death will not be the end of your suffering. For generations, your children and your children’s’ children will have a mark against their name, and THAT will be your legacy.”

– Walton Goggins as Boyd Crowder
in Justified, “Shot All To Hell”

“I am not turning down the money! I’m turning down you! You get it?! I want nothing to do with you! Ever since I met you, everything I ever cared about is gone! Ruined, turned to shit, dead, ever since I hooked up with the great Heisenberg! I have never been more alone! I have NOTHING! NO ONE! ALL RIGHT, IT’S ALL GONE, GET IT? No, no, no, why…why would you get it? What do you even care, as long as you get what you want, right? You don’t give a shit about me! You said I was no good. I’m nothing! Why would you want me, huh? You said my meth is inferior, right? Right? Hey! You said my cook was GARBAGE! Hey, screw you, man! Screw you!”

– Aaron Paul as Jesse Pinkman
Breaking Bad, “One Minute”

“I DO NOT KNOW whether Martin Luther invented mustard gas, or George Fox manufactured tear-shells, or St. Thomas Aquinas devised a stink-bomb producing suffocation. If wars are the horrid fruits of a thing called Christianity, they are also the horrid fruits of everything called citizenship and democracy and liberty and national independence, and are we to judge all these and condemn them by their fruits? Anyhow such a modern war is much greater than any of the wars that can be referred to religious motives, or even religious epochs. The broad truth about the matter is that wars have become more organised, and more ghastly in the particular period of Materialism.”

– G.K. Chesterton
Illustrated London News
July 26, 1930

“One of the effects of modern liberal Protestantism has been gradually to turn religion into poetry and therapy, to make truth vaguer and vaguer and more and more relative, to banish intellectual distinctions, to depend on feeling instead of thought, and gradually to come to believe that God has no power, that he cannot communicate with us, cannot reveal himself to us, indeed has not done so, and that religion is our own sweet invention. This seems to be about where you find yourself now. Of course, I am a Catholic and I believe the opposite of all this.”

– Flannery O’Connor
Letter to Alfred Corn
June 16, 1962