The Last Word

By Daniel P. Killeen | Tuesday, November 28, 2006

Our individual lives cannot, generally, be works of art unless the social order is also.
—Charles Horton Cooley

Reporters thrive on the world’s misfortune. For this reason they often take an indecent pleasure in events that dismay the rest of humanity.
—Russell Baker

He who knows how to flatter also knows how to slander.
—Napoleon Bonaparte

Truth is a tendency.
—R. Buckminster Fuller

I would remind you that extremism in the defense of liberty is no vice! And let me remind you also that moderation in the pursuit of justice is no virtue.
—Barry Goldwater

Hell hath no fury like a bureaucrat scorned.
—Milton Friedman

The thing I enjoyed most were visits from children. They did not want public office.
—Herbert Hoover

When buying and selling are controlled by legislation, the first things to be bought and sold are legislators.
—P.J. O’Rourke

Principles have no real force except when one is well-fed.
—Mark Twain

It is not length of life, but depth of life.
—Ralph Waldo Emerson

Any American who is prepared to run for president should automatically, by definition, be disqualified from ever doing so.
—Gore Vidal

Justice, sir, is the great interest of man on earth. It is the ligament which holds civilized beings and civilized nations together.
—Daniel Webster

There are many men of principle in both parties in America, but there is no party of principle.
—Alexis DeTocqueville

Economics is extremely useful as a form of employment for economists.
—John Kenneth Galbraith

The danger is not that a particular class is unfit to govern. Every class is unfit to govern.
—Lord Acton

That government is best which governs the least, because its people discipline themselves.
—Thomas Jefferson

Democracy is the art and science of running the circus from the monkey cage.
—H.L. Mencken

The genius of our ruling class is that it has kept a majority of the people from ever questioning the inequity of a system where most people drudge along, paying heavy taxes for which they get nothing in return.
—Gore Vidal

The best minds are not in government. If any were, business would steal them away.
—Ronald Reagan

No one can earn a million dollars honestly.
—William Jennings Bryan

Aristotle, we greet you well.
—Thomas Elyot

I have no political ambitions for myself or my children.
—Joseph P. Kennedy

Our country is not the only thing to which we owe our allegiance. It is also owed to justice and to humanity.
—James Bryce

Dictators are rulers who always look good until the last ten minutes.
—Jan Masaryk

The measure of success is not whether you have a tough problem to deal with, but whether it is the same problem you had last year.
—John Foster Dulles

The Last Word

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