The Last Word

Friday, January 20, 2006

It seems to me that, in every culture, I come across a chapter headed ‘Wisdom.’ And then I know exactly what is going to follow: ‘Vanity of vanities, all is vanity.’’
–Ludwig Wittgenstein

Everyone has a right to be stupid, but Comrade MacDonald abuses the privilege.
–Leon Trotsky

Talks, speeches, articles and resolutions should all be concise and to the point. Meetings also should not go on too long.
–Mao Zedong

There are no morals in politics; there is only expedience.
–Vladimir Lenin

You can’t understand totalitarianism without understanding that some of the totalitarian criticisms of liberalism were right. If that weren’t the case, totalitarian movements wouldn’t be as powerful as they have repeatedly proved themselves to be.
–Paul Berman

I’ve gotten letters—okay, perhaps only one, but where there’s smoke there’s fire—criticizing me for revealing too much about books. So I give you, as a kind of public service, all the endings: wedding bells ring; it turns out—too late—he was right all along; since we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past, the attempt to become someone you’re not ends disastrously; he can’t go on; he must go on; Huck leaves again; they kiss poison from one another’s lips and die together; turns out he was a prince all along; she jumps.
—Max Watman

I moved towards the right by talking to the alleged “beneficiaries” of liberal paternalism. I found that they were more scathing about many hand-out programs than any think-tank conservative. They could describe in great detail the corrosive effects of entitlements and the fraud and cheating endemic in welfare programs.
–Heather MacDonald

The difference between a moral man and a man of honor is that the latter regrets a discreditable act, even when it has worked and he has not been caught.
–H. L. Mencken

Surely the first obligation of a political thinker is to understand the nature of man
–Barry Goldwater

New York is a sucked orange.
–Ralph Waldo Emerson

No one should come to New York to live unless he is willing to be lucky.
–E. B. White

Voters quickly forget what a man says.
–Richard Nixon

Central heating, French rubber goods, and cookbooks are three amazing proofs of man’s ingenuity in transforming necessity into art, and of these, cookbooks are perhaps most lastingly delightful.
–M. F. K. Fisher

People with bad consciences always fear the judgment of children.
–Mary McCarthy

No hero is mortal till he dies.
–W. H. Auden

Those who set out to serve both God and Mammon soon discover there is no God.
–Logan Pearsall Smith

Courage without conscience is a wild beast.
–Robert G. Ingersoll

To a man who is afraid everything rustles.
–Sophocles

All political parties die of swallowing their own lies.
–Jonathan Swift

The louder he talked of his honor, the faster we counted our spoons.
–Ralph Waldo Emerson

Judge: A law student who marks his own examination papers.
–H. L. Mencken

Such is the human race, often it seems a pity that Noah…didn’t miss the boat.
–Mark Twain

The Last Word

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