Tag: QOTD

Quote of the Day: Rich

Seawriter
Seawriter
3116948
 

“I am indeed rich, since my income is superior to my expenses, and my expense is equal to my wishes.” – Edward Gibbon

This year — or maybe last — I became rich. Not Bill Gates rich or Jeff Bezos rich, but rich by my definition of rich: If you can maintain the lifestyle you desire without having to work, you are rich. If not, whether you are earning $15,000 or $400,000 a year you are still among the working poor.

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Quote of the Day: Truth and Fiction

Seawriter
Seawriter
910465
 

“Truth is stranger than fiction, but it is because Fiction is obliged to stick to possibilities; Truth isn’t.” — Pudd’nhead Wilson’s New Calendar, Mark Twain

Ain’t it the truth. All you have to do is look at the news today. If in 1960 someone had written a science fiction novel about the 2020s with even half the things that are going on today his editors would have laughed at the draft when they encountered it on the slush pile. The world would lock down for a respiratory virus with a 1% fatality rate? Get outta here!  That will never happen. The FBI would be colluding with a major political party and the New York Times to subvert justice? That’s wacko conspiracy theory territory. Big Brother would not come from the government but rather from public sector technology companies? That idea’s kinda out there, isn’t it?

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Quote of the Day: Political Conversations

Seawriter
Seawriter
69
 

“You can’t hold political conversations with people that are calling you evil.” – Ben Shapiro

We saw this in the run-up to the November 2 elections. Oppose CRT in the classroom? “Racist! Evil,” cry the Democrats. Oppose vaccine mandates? “Racism! Only evil people oppose vaccine mandates,” cry the Democrats (despite the fact the most vaccine-hesitant groups are minorities). Think daughters should be protected from predatory males who will dress up in women’s clothing to gain access to them?” “Racist! Homophobia! You are EEEEVIL,” cry the Democrats (again despite the fact the rapist was white and very obviously heterosexual, since he was going after members of the opposite sex – wolf in sheep’s clothing anyone?).

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Member Post

Seawriter
Seawriter
46177
 

There is one and only one social responsibility of business–to use it resources and engage in activities designed to increase its profits so long as it stays within the rules of the game, which is to say, engages in open and free competition without deception or fraud. – Milton Friedman Many companies today neglect this […]
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Quote of the Day: Capitalism and Socialism

Seawriter
Seawriter
6517
 

“Under capitalism, the rich grow powerful. Under socialism, the powerful grow rich — and everyone else grows poor.” – Glenn Reynolds (Instapundit)

Why is socialism growing more powerful in the United States? Because it directly benefits the gentry class: those running the country and those supporting them. This includes not just the political elite, but also the upper-middle-class, credentialed workers who work white-collar jobs – management and technology. The folks who can work remotely and get all their wants and needs delivered to their door.

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Quote of the Day: Problems

Seawriter
Seawriter
79576
 

 “A clever person solves a problem. A wise person avoids it.” – Albert Einstein

I remembered this quote as a result of the current supply chain problem we are experiencing.  We have a problem: we cannot get containers unloaded from ships fast enough, so goods are piling up – in ships, on wharves, in assembly yards. No doubt the problem will get solved, eventually, by clever people. Yet there is the issue of why the problem arose in the first place. Enough container ships awaiting unloading to spell out “Let’s Go Brandon” did not appear off the California coast overnight. The overflow has been building for months. It simply became bad enough to become noticeable this month.

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Quote of the Day: Distrust of Government

Seawriter
Seawriter
1213592
 

“Distrust of government isn’t baseless cynicism. It’s realism.” – Ben Shapiro

We have seen the truth of this aphorism made clear many times over the past year. Lawlessness on the part of the national government is virtually institutionalized. The latest example occurred earlier this week as the Justice Department declared parents protesting the institution of Critical Racism Race Theory being taught to their children as “domestic terrorists.” It is a clear attempt to criminalize political dissent, a process that began with the treatment of the January 6 protestors.

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Member Post

Lilly B
Lilly B
147
 

“I don’t think parents should be telling schools what they should teach.” – Terry McAuliffe, September 28, 2021 “He hated his own family and never tired of weaning his gifted students from their families. His students…had to be cured of the disastrous misconceptions, the “standardized unrealities” imposed on them by their mindless parents.” – Ravelstein, […]
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Quote of the Day: Courage

Seawriter
Seawriter
612453
 

“Courage is what it takes to stand up and speak; courage is also what it takes to sit down and listen.” – Winston Churchill

Churchill is right on both counts. It takes courage to stand up and speak, especially when your words go counter to today’s conventional and delivered wisdom. That goes double, or maybe triple in today’s cancel culture, when speaking the truth could cost you your job and your fortune, and turn you into an outcast.  There is too little of that going on today, although there is beginning to be more of it.

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Member Post

Arahant
Arahant
1610190
 

Have you ever run across something and thought, “Man, I could use that in a lot of situations?” As I was perusing the PIT, I ran across this gem from Matt Balzer: And people would probably respond “that’s not the point.” To which I would respond, “make better points.” Preview Open
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Quote of the Day: California Elections

Seawriter
Seawriter
189616
 

California continually elects the kind of people who want to change the world but can’t even change a tire. – Bryan Preston

And they did it again this Tuesday, retaining rather than recalling Gavin Newsom. What do I take from that? That California is doomed. The four horsemen of socialism, environmentalism, tribalism, and wokeness will continue riding over California ravaging the productive and rewarding the rent-seekers and takers. They are going to have to hit bottom before sanity returns.

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Quote of the Day: Frank Herbert on Government and Bureaucracy

Clavius
Clavius
35171202
 

Most think of Frank Herbert’s Dune series as stories of prescience and the spice, of waring Fremen charging out of the desert.  The second trilogy, however, has some interesting perspectives on government and its excesses.  These quotes on bureaucracy are from the final Dune novel, Chapterhouse Dune.*

“Surely you know bureaucracies always become voracious aristocracies after they attain commanding power.”

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Quote of the Day: Plans

Seawriter
Seawriter
3212552
 

“If you want to make God laugh, tell him about your plans.” ― Woody Allen

I am working on a book. (I know, I always am.) It is due in mid-October. The week before last, everything came together. I wrote 19,000 words in seven days. What makes that more remarkable was I did that on top of working 40 hours at a day job. Good stuff, too.  I still had the captions and the plate dialog to write, plus the instructions to the artist and map makers and a few other things, but with the main body of the text done, I was actually ahead of schedule. I could get it done on time. Maybe early.

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Quote of the Day: Never Yield to Force

Seawriter
Seawriter
1112
 

“Never give in. Never, never, never, never! Never yield in any way, great or small…Never yield to force and the apparently overwhelming might of the enemy.” – Winston Churchill

My grandparents came from Greece. They have a saying there: “It’s better to die on your feet than live on your knees.” It is the way Greeks live. They fought the Turks for nearly 400 years before gaining independence.

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Quote of the Day: Force

Seawriter
Seawriter
78
 

“Force, he believed, was the last resort of incompetence; he had said so frequently enough since this operation had begun. Of course, he was absolutely right, though not in the way he meant. Only the incompetent wait until the last extremity to use force, and by then, it is usually too late to use anything, even prayer.” – H. Beam Piper, A Slave Is a Slave

H. B. Piper* was a science-fiction writer of the 1940s through 1960s. He wrote these words in 1960, for a story first published in 1961. It was his response to Asimov’s more famous “Violence is the last refuge of the incompetent,” explaining why this is so.

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QotD: Courage, Liberty, and Happiness

Seawriter
Seawriter
77474
 

Those who won our independence . . . believed liberty to be the secret of happiness, and courage to be the secret of liberty. They believed that freedom to think as you will and to speak as you think are means indispensable to the discovery and spread of political truth; that, without free speech and assembly, discussion would be futile; that, with them, discussion affords ordinarily adequate protection against the dissemination of noxious doctrine; that the greatest menace to freedom is an inert people; that public discussion is a political duty, and that this should be a fundamental principle of the American government. – Justice Louis Brandeis

If any single quote summarizes the cause of our present unhappiness, it is this one. Without liberty, one cannot be happy. Without courage, one cannot be free. Today far too many lack the courage required for liberty. They lack the courage to speak freely, to take the consequences of defying absurd edicts and to disregard specious arguments made by so-called experts. They fear to go their own way and defy the mob. It is easier to go along, to not make waves.

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Quote of the Day: The Law

Seawriter
Seawriter
1110
 

“Did you really think we want those laws observed?” said Dr. Ferris. “We want them to be broken. You’d better get it straight that it’s not a bunch of boy scouts you’re up against… We’re after power and we mean it… There’s no way to rule innocent men. The only power any government has is the power to crack down on criminals. Well, when there aren’t enough criminals one makes them. One declares so many things to be a crime that it becomes impossible for men to live without breaking laws. Who wants a nation of law-abiding citizens? What’s there in that for anyone? But just pass the kind of laws that can neither be observed nor enforced or objectively interpreted – and you create a nation of law-breakers – and then you cash in on guilt. Now that’s the system, Mr. Reardon, that’s the game, and once you understand it, you’ll be much easier to deal with.”
– Ayn Rand, Atlas Shrugged

We have seen this in action throughout 2020 and 2021. The difference between the treatment of  Antifa and BLM rioters and the treatment of the January 6 protestors is perhaps the most obvious example. DAs across the country are exercising prosecutorial discretion to go after their political opponents while ignoring the crimes of their political allies. Municipalities using complex codes and regulations to operate shakedown rackets at a magnitude organized crime of the twentieth century never attempted and can only envy.

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Quote of the Day: What are Women?

Lilly B
Lilly B
288
 

“Words have meaning. And their meaning doesn’t change.” – Antonin Scalia

“Feminists have convinced themselves that any difference between men and women is oppression and that women in the United States are an oppressed minority. This is such a lie. American women are the most fortunate class of people who ever lived on the face of the earth.” – Phyllis Schlafly
“Most retronyms are gleaned from high-technology and scientific advances that bring about a modification of an original item. Think of it as a backward glance that signifies progress (film camera, broadcast network, propeller airplane).” – Lyrysa Smith

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