Quotes by American Authors - Page 91

The things that come to us easily, our propensities, are carried on a deep subconscious level into our next life. There are no coincidences.
Raquel Cepeda
Whether we like it or not, we all come from someplace. And at some point in our lives, we have to make peace with that place.
Jeffrey Stepakoff
Seeing death as the end of life is like seeing the horizon as the end of the ocean.
David Searls
Our mission is not to impose our peculiar institutions upon other nations by physical force or diplomatic treachery but rather by internal peace and prosperity to solve the problem of self-government and reconcile democratic freedom with national stability.
Benjamin Harrison
I know the police cause you troubleThey cause trouble everywhereBut when you die and go to heavenYou find no policeman there
Woody Guthrie
In poor countries, officials receive explicit bribes; in D.C. they get the sophisticated, implicit, unspoken promise to work for large corporations
Nassim Nicholas Taleb
...they say if you don't vote, you get the government you deserve, and if you do, you never get the results you expected.
E.A. Bucchianeri
My biggest problem with modernity may lie in the growing separation of the ethical and the legal
Nassim Nicholas Taleb
What I tried to make clear in Good Calories, Bad Calories was that nutrition and obesity research lost its way after the Second World War with the evaporation of the European community of scientists and physicians that did pioneering work in those disciplines. It has since resisted all attempts to correct it. As a result, the individuals involved in this research have not only wasted decades of time, and effort, and money but have done incalculable damage along the way. Their beliefs have remained imperious to an ever-growing body of evidence that refutes them while being embraced by public-health authorities and translated into precisely the wrong advice about what to eat and, more important, what not to eat if we want to maintain a healthy weight and live a long and healthy life.
Gary Taubes
Even if these researchers do see the need to address the problem immediately, though they have obligations and legitimate interests elsewhere, including being funded for other research. With luck, the ideas discussed in Good Calories, Bad Calories may be rigorously tested in the next twenty years. If confirmed, it will be another decade or so after that, at least, before our public health authorities actively change their official explanation for why we get fat, how that leads to illness, and what we have to do to avoid or reverse those fates. As I was told by a professor of nutrition at New York University after on of my lectures, the kind of change I'm advocating could take a lifetime to be accepted.
Gary Taubes
This revolutionary idea of Western citizenship—replete with ever more rights and responsibilities—would provide superb manpower for growing legions and a legal framework that would guarantee that the men who fought felt that they themselves in a formal and contractual sense had ratified the conditions of their own battle service. The ancient Western world would soon come to define itself by culture rather than by race, skin color, or language. That idea alone would eventually bring enormous advantages to its armies on the battlefield. (p. 122)
Victor Davis Hanson
For an entire wing of the G.O.P., a dysfunctional government, whose only visible activity is mismanaging crises, is not an embarrassment but the vindication of a worldview.
Amy Davidson
Republican theory clearly stated that the people held all political power, and only they could delegate authority to a government. The people were free to change governments at will. They didn't need permission from incumbents.
James D. Best
What did “good government” really mean? Langlie and his brotherhood promised an end to political corruption. (There’s no evidence that Langlie ever even took a drink, much less a bribe.) The days of “honest graft” were over, at least for a while. But seen from another perspective—that of ordinary citizens without access to Langlie and Abram’s elite network—Langlie didn’t so much end corruption as legalize it. Langlie wasn’t opposed to a government organized around the interests of the greedy; he just didn’t want to have to break the law to serve them.
Jeff Sharlet
You know something is wrong when the government declares opening someone else’s mail is a felony but your internet activity is fair game for data collecting.
E.A. Bucchianeri
A less well known impact of immigrant populations is the increase that destination states gain in Congress where apportionment of seats in the House of Representatives is calculated on the basis of a state's entire adult population regardless of legal status. And, because each state's electoral college vote is the sum of the number of its representatives in the House and its two senators, high immigration states play a larger role in presidential elections than they might if only adult citizens and legal aliens were counted in population surveys.
Edward S. Greenberg
It's one thing to stick to your guns. It's quite another to hold those guns to the heads of your citizens.
Lori Goodwin
I may be Anti-Big Government, but only because I am Pro-Human.
Gary Hopkins
Housing is a human right. There can be no fairness or justice in a society in which some live in homelessness, or in the shadow of that risk, while others cannot even imagine it.
Jordan Flaherty
FORGET FERES DOCTRINE And the military has immunity! Yes! The feres doctrine! It states “the Government is not liable under the Federal Tort Claims Act for injuries to servicemen where injuries arise out of or are in the course of activity incident to service” (U.S. Supreme Court 1950). Federal law and our Supreme Court shield acts of rape and sexual brutality in the military as proven by its subsequent ruling on a 2001 case that denied a plaintiffs right to file a civil suit against her accusers. Yet when women report the crime, it is handled internally Commanders are given the discretion to resolve complaints. The report may not go beyond his office. Many times he's part of the problem or a sympathizer with the offender. This certainly was my case! Our Supreme Court ruled as recently as 2001 that rape is an injury incident to the course of activity in the service! THE HEINOUS CRIME OF RAPE IS ACCEPTABLE AND CONDONED BY OUR SUPREME COURT! WOMEN ARE FAIR GAME FOR RAPE AND HARRASSMENT, ACCORDING TO OUR SUPREME COURT! CONGRESS IS NO BETTER! NO LAWS ARE PASSED TO PROTECT US IN THE MILITARY AGAINST THE STATUTE OF LIMITATION FOR THE FELONY OF RAPE!
Diane Chamberlain
The main objects of all science, the freedom and happiness of man. . . . [are] the sole objects of all legitimate government.(A plaque with this quotation, with the first phrase omitted, is in the stairwell of the pedestal of the Statue of Liberty.)
Thomas Jefferson
When a candidate for public office faces the voters he does not face men of sense; he faces a mob of men whose chief distinguishing mark is the fact that they are quite incapable of weighing ideas, or even of comprehending any save the most elemental — men whose whole thinking is done in terms of emotion, and whose dominant emotion is dread of what they cannot understand. So confronted, the candidate must either bark with the pack or be lost... All the odds are on the man who is, intrinsically, the most devious and mediocre — the man who can most adeptly disperse the notion that his mind is a virtual vacuum. The Presidency tends, year by year, to go to such men. As democracy is perfected, the office represents, more and more closely, the inner soul of the people. We move toward a lofty ideal. On some great and glorious day the plain folks of the land will reach their heart's desire at last, and the White House will be adorned by a downright moron.
H.L. Mencken
Let the warning of the tyrants of the past be recognized for it shall be the same one ringing out when the tyrants of the present are unleashed.
Sai Marie Johnson
There is also a trilogy of books out. I started reading right after Christmas Divergent. I went to read Insurgent after, and now I’m on the third one. I don’t know, it’s Detergent or whatever. But it’s written by a 26-year-old girl. It’s brilliant. But I’m about halfway through now on book number three. Wait until you get to book number three. Hello, Google genome project.Technology is advancing at a rapid pace, and yet, morality and ethics are afterthoughts. We’re excited about discovery and advancement, you know? We’re in fact so excited that we don’t even take the time to discuss or debate the moral dilemmas and implications of new technology. Sure, we’re still in control of technology now, but does there come a time when we’re not? Who will be the one that says turn it off? When do things go wrong?I don’t see anyone at Google or in the government or anyone at the forefront of technology boom that is contemplating the ethics and morality issues. Now that is a truly scary thought that doesn’t come in a movie.
Glenn Beck
We live in a time when to reject the idea of an all-seeing, all-knowing, all-powerful government is to be viewed by that government as being anti-government.
Dave Champion
All you need is the will and the skill
Stewart Liff
If no divine law is recognized above the law of the State, then the law of man has become absolute in men's eyes--there is then no logical barrier to totalitarianism.
Greg L. Bahnsen
Perhaps no skeptic has done more to obfuscate the issue of ritual abuse than Kenneth Lanning of the FBI, who for years has maintained that no substantive evidence exists for the reality of ritual abuse (Lanning, 1991). (As investigative journalist Civia Tamarkin has noted, for decades the FBI also told the American public that the Mafia did not exist in the United States (1991)). “No bodies…No adult witnesses,” as Parenting magazine put it so succinctly, and so erroneously in their March 1994 article “The Satanism Scare” (Ruben, 1994). And why do accounts like the ones given by the 37 ritually abused adults in the Young et al. (1991) study, and the 14 ritually abused families in the Kelly (1992a) study, of group sexual assaults, human sacrifice, forced cannibalism and the like not constitute eyewitness accounts to so-called experts like Lanning?"from Denying Ritual Abuse of ChildrenThe Journal of Psychohistory 22 (3) 1995
Catherine Gould
A man's natural rights are his own, against the whole world; and any infringement of them is equally a crime; whether committed by one man, or by millions; whether committed by one man, calling himself a robber, or by millions calling themselves a government.
Lysander Spooner
Taxation is theft, purely and simply even though it is theft on a grand and colossal scale which no acknowledged criminals could hope to match. It is a compulsory seizure of the property of the State’s inhabitants, or subjects.
Murray N. Rothbard
The government system we have now is set up just like that of Rome and is changing into a system I call Corpocracism (Babylon, United States). Corpocracism is a word derived from some entities of feudalism, democracy, capitalism, classism, and corporatism to form a government system into a dictatorship and police state. This system is being brought about by a group of people in our own government, corporations, financial institutions and foreign entities. It is an ideology of hypocrisy that is leading to an JerUSAlem (America) that will sale off every aspect of its nations people to be captive to foreign entities such as corporations, governments, lawyers, financial institutions, banks, individuals and groups of individuals.
Brian David Mattson
[I]t kind of terrified me to imagine myself spending the rest of my life tinkering on the margins of the small arguments.
Lawrence Lessig
The Fourth Amendment to the United States Constitution, intact for over 200 years, guaranteed that the right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by oath of affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized. After September 11th, 2001, those were just words on an old piece of paper, no longer a restriction of the Government’s overreaching power to shake down its subjects.
Kenneth Eade
…so that’s why I’m pleased to announce my endorsement of Sarah Palin for President in 2016: because you know that whoever gets elected is going to fuck you over. So why not vote for somebody that you actually want to get fucked by?
Phillip Andrew Bennett Low
The history of our country has taught us, above all, the virtue of patience. It will be many generations before we can have the conditions we seek.
Warren Eyster
The country he had left thirty years ago had been a realistic place. There were political realities there, then and now, that precluded blind faith, that discouraged one from thinking that everything, always, would work out fairly and equitably. But he had come to believe such things in the United States. Things had worked out. Difficulties had been overcome. He had worked hard and achieved success. The machinery of government functioned.
Dave Eggers
Not only is democracy mystical nonsense, it is also immoral. If one man has no right to impose his wishes on another, then ten million men have no right to impose their wishes on the one, since the initiation of force is wrong (and the assent of even the most overwhelming majority can never make it morally permissible). Opinions—even majority opinions—neither create truth nor alter facts. A lynch mob is democracy in action. So much for mob rule.
Morris Tannehill
The USA government states that the New Mexico Trinity nuclear bomb site is still highly radioactive and 'harmless'. It is interesting to note in the era of Electromagnetic Hypersensitivity (EHS) that it is USA government policy that radio frequency (RF) and electricity are also 'harmless'.
Steven Magee
On a basic level, he had seen first-hand how his government used the element of fear to accomplish its objectives; the same element of fear that had been used as an excuse to engage its huge war machine in conflicts for the profits of America’s oligarchy.
Kenneth Eade
Of course, no government official will ever tell you that the cities may be making the people in them ill.
Steven Magee
The USA government sure do like their propaganda feeds! Unfortunately, too much propaganda does create the scenario where no one believes anything that they say. It's just like Pinocchio.
Steven Magee
If any man's money can be taken by a so-called government, without his own personal consent, all his other rights are taken with it; for with his money the government can, and will, hire soldiers to stand over him, compel him to submit to its arbitrary will, and kill him if he resists.
Lysander Spooner
USA corporations are legally regulated by laws which their managers know are rarely enforced. This criminal activity is what the USA government calls: Deregulation.
Steven Magee
The biggest criminals that I have met in life are working for the government. They make mass murderers look like amateurs.
Steven Magee
The big question about the American depression is not whether war with Germany and Japan ended it. It is why the Depression lasted until that war. From 1929 to 1940, from Hoover to Roosevelt, government intervention helped to make the Depression Great.
Amity Shlaes
The USA legal system is designed to enrich lawyers, protect the government and corporations, and shaft the general public.
Steven Magee
Every step which leads from capitalism toward planning is necessarily a step nearer to absolutism and dictatorship.
Ludwig von Mises
The USA government encourages gun ownership at the same time as they have allowed environmental radiation levels to become ridiculously high powered and this continues to increase annually. It will be interesting to see where this government experiment eventually takes the USA!
Steven Magee
The Government goes after the little guys, not their own.
Kenneth Eade
I have no faith in the USA corporate government systems of protection of public health and safety.
Steven Magee
The demagogue is one who preaches doctrines he knows to be untrue to men he knows to be idiots.
H.L. Mencken
Human thought and human caring go on in one brain and one heart at a time. Groups are necessary. Regulations are necessary. Government, I would hope limited government, is necessary. But it all starts with the individual. Everything that is accomplished starts with one person, even if the group steps in and helps; it’s still one brain and one heart at a time.
Dan Groat
A libertarian is somebody who believes, of course, in personal liberty. And liberty is a personal thing; it is not collective. You don’t gain liberty because you belong to a group. So we don’t talk about women’s rights or gay rights or anything else. Everybody has an absolute equal right as an individual, and it comes to them naturally.
Ron Paul
The road to evil is paved with socialist intentions.
A.E. Samaan
The term "totalitarian" was derived from Adolf Hitler's "Total State", which was a "craddle to grave" solution that sought to micro-manage all aspects of humanity.
A.E. Samaan
Democracy is not a form of government. It is a tool of government. Case in point, Stalinist USSR was a "democracy".
A.E. Samaan
Enforcement isn’t about big government or small government. It’s about whether government works and who it works for.
Elizabeth Warren
Corporations and their government minions are capable of anything...just look at the frauds the recent wars became known as. Hundreds of thousands killed in the name of corporate "liberation".
Steven Magee
The legal system has been designed by governments and corporations to protect them from the common people.
Steven Magee
Computers are one of the products in the USA that appear to be unregulated by the government which leaves consumers unprotected from flawed devices.
Steven Magee