Spandex Guy

What Bode Miller is to Olympic triumph, George Bush is to Presidential history, flopping off the slick course of national politics like James Buchanan in Team USA spandex.

--Tom Watson

Ready To Learn

Personally I'm always ready to learn, although I do not always like being taught.

--Winston Churchill

The Object Is The Object

Power is not a means, it is an end. One does not establish a dictatorship in order to safeguard a revolution; one makes the revolution in order to establish the dictatorship. The object of persecution is persecution. The object of torture is torture. The object of power is power.

--George Orwell

It Crumbles

If cruelty is no longer declared unlawful, but instead is applied as a matter of policy, it alters the fundamental relationship of man to government. It destroys the whole notion of individual rights. The Constitution recognizes that man has an inherent right, not bestowed by the state or laws, to personal dignity, including the right to be free of cruelty. It applies to all human beings, not just in America--even those designated as "unlawful enemy combatants." If you make this exception, the whole Constitution crumbles.

--Alberto J. Mora (former general counsel, United States Navy)

Complete and Total

My faith in the Constitution is whole, it is complete, it is total. And I am not going to sit here and be an idle spectator to the diminution, the subversion, the destruction of the Constitution.

--Barbara Jordan (D, TX; 1972 - 1978)

Nor Cruel...

Excessive bail shall not be required, nor excessive fines imposed, nor cruel and unusual punishments inflicted.

--Amendment VIII, the U.S. Constitution

One Never Regrets...

Most people die of a sort of creeping common sense, and discover when it is too late that the only things one never regrets are one's mistakes.

--Oscar Wilde

Mystery At The Heart

Most people still treat matters of money, capital, finance, the stock market, and even simple banking matters as if they were essential mystical or at least magical. The math makes it scary. What remains of the hauteur of the capital markets makes it intimidating. But there is a mystery at the very heart of money.

--Grant McCracken

The World Tends...

If one devalues rationality, the world tends to fall apart.

--Lars von Trier

Really Is...

He may look like an idiot and talk like an idiot but don't let that fool you. He really is an idiot.

--Groucho Marx

Things Unreasonable

Homo sapiens, the only creature endowed with reason, is also the only creature to pin its existence on things unreasonable.

--Henri Louis Bergson

Allow No Man

I shall allow no man to belittle my soul by making me hate him.

--Booker T. Washington

The Enemy

The enemy of creativity is fear. The enemy of fear, in the short run anyway, is not creativity. It's the fetal position. The fetal position doesn't work. It feels like it ought to, but it just gives you more room for your fear. In the long run, the enemy of fear is creativity. I'm sure of it.

--Seth Godin

Not How It Works

I can't call a newspaper and tell them what to put in it. That's not how our society works.

--Anders Fogh Rasmussen (prime minister of Denmark)

No vs. Yes

A "no" uttered from deepest conviction is better and greater than a "yes" merely uttered to please, or what is worse, to avoid trouble.

--Mahatma Gandhi

Enjoy the Right

In all criminal prosecutions, the accused shall enjoy the right to a speedy and public trial, by an impartial jury of the state and district wherein the crime shall have been committed, which district shall have been previously ascertained by law, and to be informed of the nature and cause of the accusation; to be confronted with the witnesses against him; to have compulsory process for obtaining witnesses in his favor, and to have the assistance of counsel for his defense.

--Amendment VI, the U.S. Constitution

Enthusiasm

We act as though comfort and luxury were the chief requirements of life, when all that we need to make us really happy is something to be enthusiastic about.

--Charles Kingsley

Excellence...

We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act, but a habit.

--Aristotle

Bounded in a Nutshell

O God, I could be bounded in a nutshell and count myself a king of infinite space, were it not that I have bad dreams.

--William Shakespeare (Hamlet)