Quotables
“…the Japanese were ready to surrender and it wasn’t necessary to hit them with that awful thing.”
-Dwight Eisenhower – Ike on Ike, Newsweek, 11/11/63“…in [July] 1945… Secretary of War Stimson, visiting my headquarters in Germany, informed me that our government was preparing to drop an atomic bomb on Japan. … I had been conscious of a feeling of depression and so I voiced to him my grave misgivings, first on the basis of my belief that Japan was already defeated and that dropping the bomb was completely unnecessary, and secondly because I thought that our country should avoid shocking world opinion by the use of a weapon whose employment was, I thought, no longer mandatory as a measure to save American lives. It was my belief that Japan was, at that very moment, seeking some way to surrender with a minimum loss of ‘face’. The Secretary was deeply perturbed by my attitude…”
-Dwight Eisenhower, Mandate For Change, pg. 380“We have shot an amazing number of people, but to my knowledge, none has ever proven to be a threat.”
-Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal, senior American and NATO commander in Afghanistan (and self-admitted war criminal)“Their questions hit home, and I knew that I could never again raise my voice against the violence of the oppressed in the ghettos without having first spoken clearly to the greatest purveyor of violence in the world today — my own government.”
-Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., Beyond Vietnam: A Time to Break Silence“If that direct action, we think that direct action will involve killing an American, we get specific permission to do that.”
-Director of National Intelligence Dennis C. Blair, February 4, 2010, Washington Post“A society not alert to signs of its own decay, because its ideology is a continuing myth of progress, separates itself from reality and envelops illusion.”
-Ralph Nader, When the Banks Own the Congress“International affairs is very much like the mafia, and the small storekeeper doesn’t offend the Godfather.”
-Noam Chomsky“Huge financial institutions simply took advantage of taxpayers by getting insurance without having to pay for it.”
-Dean Baker“Throwing even more money at the banks is a way to ensure that they don’t suffer from the consequence of their own greed and stupidity. It is not a way to restore the economy to health.”
-Dean Baker“It’s great to know that there are good-paying jobs for people with no discernible skills. But do those jobs have to involve running the economy?”
-Dean Baker“If these prove to be junk mortgages for which the Fed has given good US Treasury bonds, at the proverbial taxpayer expense, then the Fed and Treasury administrators should have criminal charges brought against them, the accounting firms of the companies pledging these junk mortgages and other financial junk should be closed down and RICO charges brought, and the banks themselves should be wiped out.”
-Michael Hudson“All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing.”
-Edmumd Burke“Let us in the name of the Holy Trinity go on sending all the slaves that can be sold.”
-Christopher Columbus“The tragedy of modern war is not so much that young men die but that they die fighting each other, instead of their real enemies back home in the capitals.”
-Edward Abbey“If you’re going to tell people the truth, be funny or they’ll kill you.”
-Billy Wilder“Because, reality is something that none of us can really stand, at any time.”
-Alfred Hitchcock“The only difference between the Republican and Democratic parties is the velocities with which their knees hit the floor when corporations knock on their door.”
-Ralph Nader“It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends upon his not understanding it.”
-Upton Sinclair“Fascism is capitalism plus murder.”
-Upton Sinclair“You don’t have to be satisfied with America as you find it. You can change it. I didn’t like the way I found America some sixty years ago, and I’ve been trying to change it ever since.”
-Upton Sinclair“When the doctrine of allegiance to party can utterly up-end a man’s moral constitution and make a temporary fool of him besides, what excuse are you going to offer for preaching it, teaching it, extending it, perpetuating it? Shall you say, the best good of the country demands allegiance to party? Shall you also say it demands that a man kick his truth and his conscience into the gutter, and become a mouthing lunatic, besides?”
-Mark Twain“History is strewn thick with evidence that a truth is not hard to kill, but a lie, well told, is immortal.”
-Mark Twain“It could probably be shown by facts and figures that there is no distinctly native American criminal class except Congress.”
-Mark Twain“Sometimes I wonder whether the world is being run by smart people who are putting us on or by imbeciles who really mean it.”
-Mark Twain“Many public-school children seem to know only two dates–1492 and 4th of July; and as a rule they don’t know what happened on either occasion.”
-Mark Twain“Nations do not think, they only feel. They get their feelings at second hand through their temperaments, not their brains. A nation can be brought — by force of circumstances, not argument — to reconcile itself to any kind of government or religion that can be devised; in time it will fit itself to the required conditions; later it will prefer them and will fiercely fight for them.”
-Mark Twain”He that would make his own liberty secure must guard even his enemy from oppression; for if he violates this duty he establishes a precedent that will reach to himself.”
-Thomas Paine“A long habit of not thinking a thing wrong gives it a superficial appearance of being right. “
-Thomas Paine“Belief in a cruel God makes a cruel man. “
-Thomas Paine“But such is the irresistable nature of truth, that all it asks, and all it wants is the liberty of appearing. “
-Thomas Paine“Government, even in its best state, is but a necessary evil; in its worst state, an intolerable one. “
-Thomas Paine“It is an affront to treat falsehood with complaisance.”
-Thomas Paine“Of all the tyrannies that affect mankind, tyranny in religion is the worst.”
-Thomas Paine“I’ve just completed Mike’s [Mann] Nature trick of adding in the real temps to each series for the last 20 years (ie from 1981 onwards) amd from 1961 for Keith’s [Briffa] to hide the decline.”
-Prof. Phil Jones, Climatic Research Unit, School of Environmental Sciences, University of East Anglia“I don’t care about the Constitution!”
-Bill O’Reilly, FOX “News”“If that direct action, we think that direct action will involve killing an American, we get specific permission to do that.”
-Director of National Intelligence Dennis C. Blair, February 4, 2010, Washington Post“Blair told members of the House intelligence committee that he was speaking publicly about the issue to reassure Americans that intelligence agencies and the Department of Defense “follow a set of defined policy and legal procedures that are very carefully observed” in the use of lethal force against U.S. citizens.”
February 4, 2010, Washington Post“In order to make people bear the burden we have to create an emotional atmosphere akin to a wartime psychology. We must create the idea of a threat from without.”
-John Foster Dulles“I don’t think anyone questions, Mr. Kashkari, that you’re working hard. Our question is who you’re working for.”
-Rep. Dennis Kucinich“The Federal Reserve is no more Federal than Federal Express.”
-Rep. Dennis Kucinich“If Michael Bay was a director on Broadway, and wanted to do a quick polish of the play where Lady MacBeth was a widow from the start of of the story and did all the killing, he wouldn’t get anywhere. In Hollywood those sorts of decisions lead you all the way to the top.”
-Terry Rossio
