Favorite Quotations

The future belongs to those who show up for it.

— Mark Steyn

If you don’t like barbecue, you’re not one of us.

— Rush Limbaugh

Taxes are not levied for the benefit of the taxed.

— Robert A. Heinlein

Caedite eos! Novit enim Dominus qui sunt eius.

— Arnaud-Amaury, Abbot of Cîteaux (A.D. 1209)
(who would have made a great Republican Senator)

I don’t care if it makes their butts pucker from here to the Potomac, the Founding Fathers understood that the guys with the guns make the rules.

— Wayne LaPierre

[B]ipartisanship means tarring and feathering politicans from both major parties.

— Glenn Reynolds, Instapundit

Just remember — you’re only Thrice Potent Master down at the Scottish Rite.

–She Who Must Be Obeyed

No public servant should ever be able to threaten a citizen with anything other than a poor shoe shine.

–Velociman

Things that can’t go on forever, won’t. Debts that can’t be paid, won’t be.

–Glenn Reynolds, Instapundit

You’re our servants. We’re the masters. Do what you’re supposed to do, adhere to the Constitution or we’ll fire you.

–Greg Fettig

It is a general popular error to suppose the loudest complainers for the public to be the most anxious for its welfare.

–Edmund Burke

We own this country . . . Politicians are employees of ours . . . And when somebody does not do the job, we’ve got to let them go.

–Clint Eastwood

[T]he notion that a belief in self-reliance cannot coexist with a spirit of generosity is crap. In fact, one is far less likely to find a spirit of generosity among the advocates of governmentally-required “compassion.”

–Glenn Reynolds, Instapundit

You can’t be halfhearted in a revolution. Values that serve well in a civil society don’t work in a state of nature.

— Glenn Reynolds, Instapundit

[I]t is more than slightly ironic that Democrats, the fiercely pro-choice party, reserve free choice for aborting a fetus, while denying it for such matters as choosing your child’s school or joining a union.

When people say things like “don’t let this moment pass without acting on gun control,” what they’re really saying is our arguments are so unpersuasive that they can only succeed when people aren’t thinking clearly.

–Glenn Reynolds, Instapundit

Euros have a proven zero-to-jackboots time lower than just about anybody on the planet.

The American way of war is to build an army, then another, then a third, while building fleets. If the war is still on at that point we smash.

Eventually it will occur to lefties that if they really want an end to massacres, then they should stop committing them.

It’s really hard to talk about morality and war in the same sentence.

–Dutch Van Kirk, last surviving crew member of the Enola Gay, d. 2014

[W]hen you align yourself exclusively with one party, and weaponize yourself in that party’s cause, you’re going to pay the price when the other party is in power. That’s the price you pay for whoring yourself out.

–Glenn Reynolds, Instapundit

If you only stand up for speech you approve of, you’re a hack. If you only stand up for speech that everyone approves of, you’re a coward.

–Glenn Reynolds, Instapundit

Violence has a history of solving things. That it does not is the biggest lie ever perpetrated.

It turned out those practicing their First Amendment rights were protected by those practicing their Second Amendment rights.

[You can’t have] the Stalinist situation we have in America right now, where any neurotic woman can make any stupid charge and destroy a man’s reputation. If there is evidence of false accusation, the accuser should be expelled. Similarly, a woman who falsely accuses a man of rape should be sent to jail.

–Camille Paglia, 1995 Playboy interview, via Instapundit

The genius of our system is that you are as free to reject [your opponent’s] position as they are free to reject yours. Free country, free expression, freedom of religion and association — all guaranteed by the Constitution and the Bill of Rights since 1789 and 1791.

–Me

Words no longer have meaning if an Exchange that is not established by a State is “established by the State.”

–Justice Antonin Scalia, in dissent, King v. Burwell

Understanding the past requires pretending that you don’t know the present. It requires feeling its own pressure on your pulses without any ex post facto illumination.

–Paul Fussell

“That wasn’t murder. He just killed a politician.”

–“Gail Hickock”, in Lone Star Planet (1958) by H. Beam Piper

Many liberals have concluded from the fact that America gets the most criticism that America deserves the most criticism, apparently not considering that America gets the most criticism because it’s one of the safest countries to criticize.

Guys: Learn to take a hint. Learn to walk away.
If a woman tells you she is a feminist, say nothing and walk away.
No feminist wants to hear what a man has to say, and life is too short to waste your time taking to feminists. Just walk away.
Leave feminists alone, and then they can complain about that.

The people despise us all.

Arm Race [Bannon] with only a piano tuning fork and throw him in a room with a bunch of two legged mutant Brahma bulls with uzi’s and in the next scene he’ll be grilling burgers.

If the Constitution doesn’t mean anything, well, then, maybe it’s time to go long on pitchforks. Because without the Constitution the angry mob is just as legitimate as the perfumed princes of the state.

What’s true for lawyers is also true for newspapers: When you’re shouting and pounding the table, it’s probably because you’re losing the argument.

Leftism is a religion. It’s just a shitty one that promises heaven on earth, while always yielding something closer to hell.

The people cannot look to legislation generally for success. Industry, thrift, character, are not conferred by act or resolve. Government cannot relieve from toil. It can provide no substitute for the rewards of service. It can, of course, care for the defective and recognize distinguished merit. The normal must care for themselves. Self-government means self-support.

–Calvin Coolidge

A Hillary Administration will do for gender what Obama has done for race relations.

[I]mmigration, legal or not, without the intent of assimilation is invasion.

[T]he food-crank is by definition a person willing to cut himself off from human society in hopes of adding five years on to the life of his carcase; that is, a person out of touch with common humanity.

–George Orwell, The Road to Wigan Pier (1937)

If you think that black lives matter, then you know that all lives matter – and that blue lives matter. Can you honor and celebrate those officers who protect us every day? … If you stand with those who are criticized, you will get closer to God.

The trouble with wind power, like solar, is that it comes when it wants to, not when you want it.

Not long after Andy [Ferguson] and I met, we were driving down Pennsylvania Avenue and encountered some or another noisy pinko demonstration. “How come,” I asked Andy, “whenever something upsets the Left, you see immediate marches and parades and rallies with signs already printed and rhyming slogans already composed, whereas whenever something upsets the Right, you see two members of the Young Americans for Freedom waving a six-inch American flag?”

“We have jobs,” said Andy.

–PJ O’Rourke, Parliament of Whores (1991), pg. vii.

Hillary ran her campaign with the demonstrated competence she displayed as Secretary of State.

Obama is the Loki of presidential politics.

Borking may be the Democrats’ invention, but the Republicans are better at it.

Negotiate? What is to negotiate? All of it began the first time some of you who know better and are old enough to know better let young people think that they have the right to choose the laws they would obey as long as they were doing it in the name of social protest.

I recall my shock the year the government collected a trillion dollars. (Fortunately, most of it was wasted.)

–Robert A. Heinlein, To Sail Beyond The Sunset

There is more than one way to burn a book. And the world is full of people running around with lit matches.

–Ray Bradbury, “Afterword” to the 50th Anniversary Edition of Fahrenheit 451

There is a phrase in Vulcan for “the particular moment when you understand what the word fuck is for”.

You can get more with a kind word and a gun than with just a kind word.

If liberty means anything at all, it means the right to tell people what they do not want to hear.

–George Orwell, original preface to Animal Farm

Political science and sociology are the basket-weaving degrees of the liberal arts.

–Me

Some have made the argument, bordering on the frivolous, that only those arms in existence in the 18th century are protected by the Second Amendment. We do not interpret constitutional rights that way. Just as the First Amendment protects modern forms of communications, e.g., Reno v. American Civil Liberties Union, 521 U. S. 844, 849 (1997), and the Fourth Amendment applies to modern forms of search, e.g., Kyllo v. United States, 533 U. S. 27, 35–36 (2001), the Second Amendment extends, prima facie, to all instruments that constitute bearable arms, even those that were not in existence at the time of the founding.

–Antonin Scalia, Opinion of the Court, District of Columbia v. Heller, 554 U.S. 570 (2008)

Washington’s writings occasionally give the impression of a man who’d like to use bad language and put his fist through a wall, but is too aware of the critical gaze of History to do so.

Part of the tension right now is that we’re flying by instruments and the instruments are broken.

A plant-based diet will shorten your life span. Because if I don’t get my bacon and ribeye, I will kill you.

–Michael Z. Williamson, on Facebook

A president who loves America is better than the one who hates it.

In the search for truth, it is an unfortunate consequence that some people may feel denigrated, offended, hurt or upset.

That is why intellectual freedom is so important. It allows academics to express their opinions without fear of reprisals. It allows a Charles Darwin to break free of the constraints of creationism. It allows an Albert Einstein to break free of the constraints of Newtonian physics. It allows the human race to question conventional wisdom in the neverending search for knowledge and truth. And that, at its core, is what higher learning is about. To suggest otherwise is to ignore why universities were created and why critically focussed academics remain central to all that university teaching claims to offer.

Anybody who mandates you be disarmed in a country full of guns does not have your best interests at heart.

When you’ve won the culture war but you still feel like being confrontational, you’re no longer a victim. You’re just an asshole.

–SF author Brad Torgerson, in a comment on Facebook 13 Jun 2019

Crazy and mean is no way to go through life, but it’s the approach the Democrats have chosen.

I can only explain it to you. I can’t understand it for you.

–White House Press Secretary Kayleigh McEnany (alleged quote seen on FB; if she didn’t say it in so many words, she’s said it in other ways)

The first rule of America Club is, you don’t ever say you’re ashamed to be a member of America Club.

The second rule of America Club is it’s OK to be ashamed of your government representatives — but only as long as you do something about them. Preferably permanent; behind bars in a SuperMax prison for life would be acceptable.

–Me

TRUNALIMUNUMAPRZURE!

– Some dumbass currently residing in the White House

So much communism to tear down, so little time to do the tearing.

–Me, in a MeWe comment

You can’t get rid of poverty by giving people money.

–P.J. O’Rourke

Anybody who doesn’t know what’s wrong with America’s educational system never screwed an el-ed major.

–P.J. O’Rourke

And, of course, where would we be without:
The human race divides politically into those who want people to be controlled and those who have no such desire. The former are idealists acting from highest motives for the greatest good of the greatest number. The latter are surly curmudgeons, suspicious and lacking in altruism. But they are more comfortable neighbors than the other sort.

— Robert A. Heinlein