Quotes

"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."

"… the notion that profit making is the essence of democracy, the notion that economics is divorced from ethics, the notion that the only obligation of citizenship is consumerism, the notion that the welfare state is a pathology, that any form of dependency basically is disreputable and needs to be attacked, I mean, this is a vicious set of assumptions"

"When I give food to the poor, they call me a saint. When I ask why the poor have no food, they call me a communist."

            --Brazilian Catholic Priest

In the Story of Al Smith, the great reformist governor of New York, who gradually turned into a narrow-minded economic conservative and bitter critic of F.D.R. H. L. Mencken explained it thusly: “His association with the rich has apparently wobbled him and changed him. He has become a golf player.”

"We must accept the other fellow's religion, but only in the sense and to the extent that we respect his theory that his wife is beautiful and his children smart."

"For every complex problem there's an answer which is clear, simple, and wrong."

"Politics is the art of looking for trouble, finding it everywhere, diagnosing it incorrectly and applying the wrong remedies."|Groucho Marx

"I've had a perfectly wonderful evening. But this wasn't it."

"None are more hopelessly enslaved than those who falsely believe they are free."

"First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win."

“The upper class keeps all of the money, pays none of the taxes. The middle class pays all of the taxes, does all of the work. The poor are there just to scare the shit out of the middle class. Keep ‘em showin’ up at those jobs.”

“I’ve begun worshipping the sun for a number of reasons. First of all, unlike some other gods I could mention, I can see the sun. It’s there for me every day. And the things it brings me are quite apparent all the time: heat, light, food, and a lovely day. There’s no mystery, no one asks for money, I don’t have to dress up, and there’s no boring pageantry. And interestingly enough, I have found that the prayers I offer to the sun and the prayers I formerly offered to ‘God’ are all answered at about the same 50% rate.”

“Power concedes nothing without demand. It never did and it never will.”

"Honest criticism is hard to take, particularly from a relative, a friend, an acquaintance, or a stranger."

"He loves nature in spite of what it did to him."

"I'm not trying to set the world on fire, I just want to keep my nuts warm."

"... Voting is the opiate of the masses."

             In response to a reference to a quoting of Marx.

“Why shouldn’t the American people take half of my money from me? I took ALL of it from them!”

            Founder of Filene Dept. Stores and the US Chamber of Commerce

"There is a theory which states that if ever anybody discovers exactly what the Universe is for and why it is here, it will instantly disappear and be replaced by something even more bizarre and inexplicable.

There is another theory which states that this has already happened."

"There's always more to it. This is what history consists of. It's the sum total of all the things they aren't telling us."

“If you see injustice and say nothing, you have taken the side of the oppressor."

"These guys aren’t choosing between a job in auto mechanics and beheading infidels. Yeah, they're discontented, and maybe they’ve got a good reason, too. Fair enough. The thing is, there are a lot of hard-luck cases in the world, and a lot of places on the losing side of history. But not all those places celebrate mass murder because they’re angry. See, little ]ohnny Hardluck might feel bad one day and say to his mommy, ‘Mommy, I feel so bad I'm going to cut somebody’s head off’ That could happen in Pittsburgh. We have`psychos, too. But how Mommy responds is kind of what makes one place different from another.

So if his mommy says, ‘That’s a good idea, Johnny, you slice them up real good, and if you die, we’ll be extra proud of you' then we know what kind of people we’re dealing with. Around here, you kill a hundred children with an exploding ice cream truck and your family gets a pension and its own website. That doesn’t happen in Pittsburgh. That is not a minor distinction. When we act badly, we at least feel really bad about it, and try to find ways to avoid it later. These people do exactly the opposite. That’s why we’re better than them. Got it?”

“They are being manipulated by the elites,” Jamal says. Atwood gently bangs the back of his head against the concrete cell. This is not the first time he’s had this conversation. But usually when he does have these conversations, he’s trying to get laid. At least this time he can speak his mind.

“Jamal, you can only manipulate ideas that make sense to people already. If an imam gets on his soapbox and tells all the Sunnis to go out and kill all the New York Yankee fans, they wouldn’t make much headway. Because it wouldn’t make any kind of sense. Go kill the Shiites? That makes sense. Unfortunately, everything happening down the mountain, and even up here, makes sense to people, whether they like it or not.

And these assholes? In there? They aren’t gonna stop. You see, it's all explained by Loggins’s Law. You know Loggins and Messina? No? Doesn’t matter. It's like this, Jamal: we will never get along with anyone - not now, not later, not ever - if their mamas don’t dance and their daddies don`t rock and roll. Because it`s mind over matter, my friend. And you cannot change people's minds about what matters.”

             -- "The Girl in the Green Dress"

"...Arrowood decided to call Veterans Affairs and see if he could get some help from them. He wasn't suicidal or anything, but he wanted to know what they could do to help him out, because he was lower than he’d ever been, felt more alone than he knew was possible, and the furthest into the future he could imagine was reaching for the door handle that led outside.

It was kind of interesting speaking with the Department of Veterans Affairs, because Arwood learned that the U.S. government considers eligibility for psychological counseling to be a reward for not really needing it. By excluding veterans with less-than-honorable discharges, they were excluding those who had acted the worst in a war - probably for psychological reasons - and, rather than assisting, set them loose instead on the general population, resulting in pretty predictable violence, wife-beating, alcoholism, criminality, family disintegration, long-term unemployment, welfare,emergency medical costs, unpaid medical bills, loan defaults, drug use, federal and state drug-enforcement costs, state legal fees for prosecuting criminals, prison costs, and appeal processes, not to mention all the traumatized children they beat the crap out of. But Atwood was told that he wasn’t necessarily excluded. His was an in between case - being other than honorable - that may or may not have been disqualifying, based on the standards set under Title 38 Code of Federal Regulations §3.12.

Now, as it was explained to Arwood one afternoon by phone in 1991, as he wiped potato chip crumbs from his AC/DC T-shirt, he still might retain eligibility for VA health-care benefits for service-incurred or service-aggravated disabilities, unless he was subject to one of the statutory bars to benefits set forth in Title 38 United States Code §5303(a), Authority: Section 2 of Public Law 95-126 (Get. 8, 1977).

“Uh-huh,” he’d said. He might be eligible for pending verification status. “You have to put in a request for an administrative decision regarding the character of service for VA health-care purposes, and that must be made to the local VA regional office or VARO. Do you know where your VARO is?”

“Um . .

“This request may be submitted using a VA Form 7131, Exchange of Beneficiary Information and Request for Administrative and Adjudicative Action. In making determinations of health-care eligibility, the same criteria will be used as are now applicable to determinations of service connection when there is no character-of-discharge bar.

"Sir! Are you there?"

     -- "The Girl in the Green Dress"