some great quotes ... pile 'em on ...

"This is what you should do, love the Earth and the Sun and the animals, despise riches, give alms to everyone that asks. Stand up for the stupid and crazy, devote income and labor to others. Hate tyrants, argue not concerning God."- Walt Whitman

"There is no flag large enough to cover the shame of killing innocent people."- Howard Zinn

"Oh Beautiful for smoggy skies, insecticided grain, For strip-mined mountain's majesty above the asphalt plain. America, America, man sheds his waste on thee, And hides the pines with billboard signs, from sea to oily sea." - George Carlin

"Once again, we come to the Holiday Season, a deeply religious time that each of us observes, in his own way, by going to the mall of his choice." ~Unknown

"We are so obsessed with doing that we have no time and no imagination left for being. As a result, men are valued not for what they are but for what they do or what they have - for their usefulness."- Thomas Merton

"Death has a tendency to encourage a depressing view of war."- Donald Rumsfeld, Sec. of Defense

"There is no more fatal blunder'er than he who consumes the greater part of his life getting his living."- Henry David Thoreau

"Poverty is the worst form of violence"- Gandhi

"Heroism on command, senseless violence, and all the loathsome nonsense that goes by the name of patriotism - how passionately I hate them." -Albert Einstein

"No system in history (capitalism) has been more relentless in battering down ancient and fragile cultures, devouring the resources of whole regions, pulverizing centuries-old practices in a matter of years, and standardizing the varieties of human experience."- Michael Parenti

"Osama bin Laden and George Bush are both terrorists. They are both building international networks that perpetrate terror and devastate people's life. Bush, with the Pentagon, the WTO, the IMF, and the World Bank. Bin Laden with Al Qaeda. The difference is that nobody elected bin Laden."- Arundhati Roy

Advice for the day: If you have a lot of tension and you get a headache, do what it says on the aspirin bottle: "Take two aspirin" and "Keep away from children."

--Author Unknown



"Oh, you hate your job? Why didn't you say so? There's a support group for that It's called EVERYBODY, and they meet at the bar."

--Drew Carey



"The problem with the designated driver program, it's not a desirable job, but if you ever get sucked into doing it, have fun with it. At the end of the night, drop them off at the wrong house."

--Jeff Foxworthy



"If a woman has to choose between catching a fly ball and saving an infant's life, she will choose to save the infant's life without even considering if there is a man on base."

--Dave Barry



"Relationships are hard. It's like a full time job, and we should treat it like one. If your boyfriend or girlfriend wants to leave you, they should give you two weeks' notice. There should be severance pay, the day before they leave you, they should have to find you a temp."

--Bob Ettinger



"My Mom said she learned how to swim when someone took her out in the lake and threw her off the boat. I said, 'Mom, they weren't trying to teach you how to swim.'"

--Paula Poundstone



"A study in the Washington Post says that women have better verbal skills than men. I just want to say to the authors of that study: "Duh."

--Conan O'Brien



"Why does Sea World have a seafood restaurant?? I'm halfway through my fish burger and I realize, Oh my God... I could be eating a slow learner."

--Lynda Montgomery



"I think that's how Chicago got started. Bunch of people in New York said, 'Gee, I'm enjoying the crime and the poverty, but it just isn't cold enough. Let's go west.'"

--Richard Jeni



"If life were fair, Elvis would be alive and all the impersonators would be dead."

--Johnny Carson



"Sometimes I think war is God's way of teaching us geography."

--Paul Rodriguez



"My parents didn't want to move to Florida, but they turned sixty and that's the law."

--Jerry Seinfeld



"Remember in elementary school, you were told that in case of fire you have to line up quietly in a single file line from smallest to tallest. What is the logic in that? What, do tall people burn slower?"

--Warren Hutcherson



"Bigamy is having one wife/husband too many. Monogamy is the same."

--Oscar Wilde



"Suppose you were an idiot .. And suppose you were a member of Congress... But I repeat myself."

--Mark Twain



"Our bombs are smarter than the average high school student. At least they can find Afghanistan."

--A. Whitney Brown



"You can say any foolish thing to a dog, and the dog will give you a look that says, 'My God, you're right! I never would've thought of that!'"

--Dave Barry



Do you know why they call it "PMS"? Because "Mad Cow Disease" was taken.

--Unknown, presumed deceased

The preznit described in one simple, prescient sentence...

there you are." - attributed to Buckaroo Bonzai

“The price of apathy towards public affairs is to be ruled by evil men”
Plato

Sell not virtue to purchase wealth, nor Liberty to purchase power.
- Benjamin Franklin

We cannot defend freedom abroad by deserting it at home.
-Edward R. Murrow

“There may be times when we are powerless to prevent injustice, but there must never be a time when we fail to protest.”
- Elie Weisel

“The responsibility of ministers for the public safety is absolute, and requires no mandate. It is in fact prime object for which governments come into existence.”
- Winston Churchill

“Dissent is the highest form of patriotism.”
- Thomas Jefferson

An avidity to punish is always dangerous to liberty. It leads men to stretch, to misinterpret, and to misapply even the best of laws. He who would make his own liberty secure, must guard even his enemy from oppression, for if he violates his duty he establishes a precedent that will reach to himself.
-Thomas Paine
- Dissertation on First Principles of Government, 7 July 1795

“We can have a democracy in this country or we can have great wealth concentrated in the hands of a few, but we cannot have both."
-Justice Louis D. Brandeis

Throughout history, it has been the inaction of those who could have acted; the indifference of those who should have known better; the silence of the voice of justice when it mattered most; that has made it possible for evil to triumph
-Haile Selassie

"The test of our progress is not whether we add more to the abundance of those who have much it is whether we provide enough for those who have little."
-FDR

"During times of universal deceit telling the truth becomes a revolutionary act."
-George Orwell

"Our lives begin to end when we fall silent about the things that matter."
-Martin Luther King Jr.

“Liberties are not given, they are taken."
- Aldous Huxley

"True individual freedom cannot exist without economic security and independence. People who are hungry and out of a job are the stuff of which dictatorships are made."
-FDR

Those who make peaceful change impossible will make violent revolution inevitable.
John F. Kennedy

Democracy is two wolves and a lamb voting on what to have for lunch. Liberty is a well-armed lamb contesting the vote!
- Benjamin Franklin (non-verified)

There is danger from all men. The only maxim of a free government ought to be to trust no man living with power to endanger the public liberty.
-John Adams

If we do not believe in freedom of speech for those we despise we do not believe in it at all.
-Noam Chomsky

The only sure bulwark of continuing liberty is a government strong enough to protect the interests of the people, and a people strong enough and well enough informed to maintain its sovereign control over the government.
-Franklin Delano Roosevelt

We seek peace, knowing that peace is the climate of freedom.
-Dwight D. Eisenhower

Democracy is not something you believe in or a place to hang your hat, but it's something you do. You participate. If you stop doing it, democracy crumbles.
-Abbie Hoffman

"The People are the only sure reliance for the preservation of our liberty"
-Thomas Jefferson

"Those who begin by burning books, will end by burning people."
-Heinrich Heine 1821

All that is necessary for evil to succeed is that good men do nothing.
Edmund Burke


"A little patience, and we shall see the reign of witches pass over, their spells dissolve, and the people, recovering their true sight, restore their government to its true principles. It is true that in the meantime we are suffering deeply in spirit, and incurring the horrors of a war and long oppressions of enormous public debt......If the game runs sometimes against
us at home we must have patience till luck turns, and then we shall have an opportunity of winning back the principles we have lost, for this is a game where principles are at stake."
From a letter sent by Thomas Jefferson in 1798, after the passage of the Sedition Act

"Never doubt that a small group of committed citizens can change the world. "Indeed, it's the only thing that ever has."
Margaret Meade

"The ultimate measure of a man is not where he stands in moments of comfort, but where he stands at times of challenge and controversy."
Martin Luther King Jr.

"Whenever the people are well-informed, they can be trusted with their own government. Whenever things get so far wrong as to attract their notice, they may be relied on to set them
to rights."
- Thomas Jefferson

"Voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger. It works the same way in any country."
Herman Goering
Nuremburg War Crimes Trial 1945

"I urge you to learn the harsh facts that lurk behind the mask of official illusion with which we have concealed our true circumstances, even from ourselves. Our country is in danger: Not just from foreign enemies; but above all, from our own misguided policies, and what they can do to this country. There is a contest, not for the rule of America, but for the heart of America."
Robert F. Kennedy

"Americanism means the virtues of courage, honor, justice, truth, sincerity, and hardihood-the virtues that made America. The things that will destroy America are prosperity-at-any-price, peace-at-any-price, safety-first instead of duty-first, the love of soft living and the get-rich-quick theory of life."
Theodore Roosevelt (January 10, 1917)

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."
-Theodore Roosevelt

It was once said that the moral test of Government is how that Government treats those who
are in the dawn of life, the children; those who are in the twilight of life, the elderly;
and those who are in the shadows of life, the sick, the needy and the handicapped.
Hubert H. Humphrey

"Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired, signifies in the final
sense a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed."
President Dwight D. Eisenhower
April 16, 1953

Necessity is the plea for every infringement of human freedom It is the argument of tyrants; it is the creed of slaves.
William Pitt (1759-1806)

Knowledge will forever govern ignorance; and a people who mean to be their own governors must arm themselves with the power which knowledge gives.
James Madison

They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety.
Benjamin Franklin

A nation of sheep will beget a government of wolves.
Edward R. Murrow

that Brandeis quote is a killer ... see my thread from earlier today about "capping wealth" if the abuses of the super-wealthy on our democratic institutions cannot be adequately restrained: http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=132&topic_id=2557254&mesg_id=2557254

and that Jefferson quote on the Sedition Act gets me every time ... it's as relevant today as when he wrote it ...

thanks for your input!!

about economists: "Human reason is a weak and paltry thing so long as it is not wholly free reason."

from the same essay: "Always it is safer and more hygienic for him to think one way than to think another way, and in that bald fact there is excuse enough to hold his whole chain of syllogisms in suspicion. He may be earnest, he may be honest, but he is not free, and if he is not free, he is not anything."

patience and stupidity.

Shraby