Nuggets

compiled by Diane Alden

nVictory over modern liberalism will reacquire a robust self-confidence about the worth of traditional values that the relativism of modern liberalism has already seriously damaged. When the barbarians struck in the ‘60s, America did not show confidence in its own worth and values. We were taken by surprise, but we have had time to recover and form a new center that just may hold...We will shed our guilt and speak and act on the understanding that....traditional values will produce a far better society than the nihilism of the Left.

— Slouching Towards Gomorrah, Robert Bork

nWashoe County schools have halted a two-year-old nutrition program of ordering classroom pizzas for teachers—after teachers discovered they were paying 75 percent above cost through service charges levied by nutrition administrators.

— Reno Gazette-Journal, Feb. 22, 1998

nThe truth is not always the same as the majority decision.

— Pope John Paul II

nTo say that in a planned society the Rule of Law cannot hold, therefore, is not to say that the actions of the government will not be legal...it only means that the use of government’s coercive powers will no longer be limited and determined by pre-established rules...By giving the government unlimited powers, the most arbitrary rule can be made legal...in this way a democracy may set up the most complete despotism imaginable.

— The Road to Serfdom, F.A. Hayek

nNo man ever quite believes in any other man. One may believe in an idea absolutely, but not in a man. In the highest confidence there is always a flavor of doubt—a feeling, half instinctive and half logical, that after all, the scoundrel may have something up his sleeve. This doubt...is always more than justified, for no man is worthy of unlimited reliance—his treason, at best, only waits for sufficient temptation.

— The Skeptic, H.L Mencken, May 1919

n"You have made great speeches," said the stranger. "You’ll make more...But the last great speech you make will turn many of your own against you...they will call you names...and their voices will be loud against you till you die."

"So if it is an honest speech, it does not matter what men say," said Daniel Webster.

—Stephen Vincent Benet, The Devil and Daniel Webster

nSuccess is the size of the hole a man leaves when he dies.

— The Texas Rangers

nA cowboy was urging his buddy to go with him to a traveling stage show to see a concert singer.

"Is she any good?" he was asked.

"Good, why man she’s a virtuouso!"

"To heck with her morals," the cowboy snorted. "I just want to know if she can sing."

— Cowboy Humor

nGovernment cannot make us equal; it can only recognize, respect, and protect us as equal before the law.

— Clarence Thomas

nThe paycheck-protection brigade seeks to inoculate voters—especially loyal union members of who a third are conservative—against a seal pup attack. The plan is to define workers’ free-speech issue early and warn of last-minute smears orchestrated by desperate union bosses in D.C....backed by a Clinton veto promise, (they) can block federal legislation to carry out the Supreme Court decision to protect the individual worker.

— William Safire, The New York Times

nIn Minnesota a jogger was spotted running along the banks of Long Lake garbed in a life jacket and wearing a "running" helmet. Apparently, the safety conscious people of Minnesota want to make sure that every activity has its required safety gear. Therefore, while running around the lakes in Minnesota, a citizen doesn’t have to worry about drowning or falling on his head. The good people of that state seem to be addicted to keeping everyone healthy and safe—must be so they can survive to pay the high state taxes.

— A Minnesota to Nevada transplant

n Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
are full of passionate intensity.

—The Second Coming, W.B. Yeats

Join NPRI

Journal front | Search | Comment | Sponsors