- “No matter what the greatest tyrant in the world, the greatest terrorist in the world, George W. Bush, says, we’re here to tell you. . .millions of the American people. . .support your revolution.”—Harry Belafonte, a Democrat, speaking to socialist president Hugo Chavez of Venezuela on January 8. Belafonte led a delegation of Americans, including actor Danny Glover and Princeton University leftist professor Cornel West, who were granted a six-hour audience with Chavez. (January 8, 2006)
- “Juanita Broaddrick, to be perfectly honest, I don’t remember all the details of Juanita Broaddrick. But I will say that—and you can castigate me if you like--when the charge has something to do with somebody’s private sex life, I would prefer not to run any part of it.”—Dan Rather, responding to a question from host Bill O’Reilly on The O’Reilly Factor on May 15, 2001. Broaddrick had accused President Clinton of raping her, and those accusations were corroborated by NBC News, but never reported by Rather on CBS, according to author Ann Coulter. (The quotation appears in Coulter’s book, How To Talk to A Liberal (If You Must).)
- “I think you can be an honest person and lie about any number of things.”—Dan Rather, on the May 15, 2001, O’Reilly Factor. Rather was referring to President Clinton and the Juanita Broaddrick Unpleasantness Unjustly Said to Have Involved Him.
- “You’re entitled to your own opinion, but not your own facts.”—Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan
- “Sitting on a sofa on a Sunday afternoon,
- Goin’ through the candidates to date,
- Laugh about it, shout about it,
- When you’ve got to choose,
- Any way you look at it, you lose. . .”
- “I’d rather hunt with Dick Cheney than ride with Ted Kennedy.”—unattributed quote circulating on the Internet in the aftermath of Cheney’s accidental shooting of a hunting partner. (February 15, 2006)
- "Every novelist writes primarily for approval, for praise, for honor, for love. But the world of readers is stingy with its esteem, fickle with its favor, and short with its memory. The shelves of the guestroom, as well as the shelves of the public library and the secondhand bookshop become a mausoleum, waiting for your breath upon the open page to resurrect the defunct author.”—Donald Harington, professor of art history at the University of Arkansas in Fayetteville. He is the author of 13 books, most recently “The Pitcher Shower.” A March, 2006 Wall Street Journal review described Harington’s work as “powerfully imaginative” and showered with critical acclaim but meager sales. Some of Harington’s other titles are “The Cockroaches of Stay More” (1989), “With” (2004), “Ekaterina,” (1993), and “Some Other Place.” Many of his works are set in the fictional town of Stay More, Arkansas. (March 12, 2006)
- “There is no weapon in the armory of nothingness more lethal than TV.”—Roger Scuton, English philosopher, author, and opera composer, in his memoir, Gentle Regrets: Thoughts From A Life (April, 2006)
- “He annoys the (Republican) establishment because he, unlike it, believes things.”—George Will, columnist, referring to Ken Blackwell, who is a strong candidate to win the Republican nomination for governor of Ohio in its primary election in May, 2006.
- “In the traditional world of the nomadic tribes, one departs and returns. The journey is not linear and permanent. . .but circular and. . .continuous. And no essential journey is complete until the return is made. Often the return is physical, as it was with the tribes that moved with the seasons, spiritually and in pursuit of game, returning always to their origin places, to their native grounds. One returns to one’s native landscape whenever possible to renew oneself.”—Charles Woodward, 1989, quoted in North American Indian Jewelry and Adornment (Concise Edition) by Lois Sherr Dubin (April, 2006)
- “. . .a largely left-wing faculty that has about as much intellectual diversity as the Pyongyang parliament.”—Wall Street Journal, describing the Harvard University faculty in an editorial following the forced resignation last year of the school’s president, Lawrence Summers. (May 10, 2006)
- “Many Soviets, viewing the current chaos and national unrest under Gorbachev, look back almost longingly to the era of brutal order under Stalin.”—Mike Wallace, 1986, on CBS Television’s 60 Minutes program.
- “Despite what many Americans think, most Soviets do not yearn for capitalism or Western-style democracy.” –Dan Rather, quoted in Mona Charen’s 2003 book, Useful Idiots: How Liberals Got it Wrong In The Cold War And Still Blame America First.
- “Stalin is giving the Russian people—the Russian masses, not Westernized landlords, industrialists, bankers, and intellectuals, but Russia’s 150,000,000 peasants and workers—what they really want, namely joint effort, communal effort.” –Walter Duranty, famous New York Times foreign correspondent, writing from his station in Moscow in the 1920s, quoted in Mona Charen’s book, Useful Idiots.
- “We’re dirtbags, like 99 percent of the world. Maybe worse, because we are baseball players.”—Todd Helton, first baseman for the Colorado Rockies, quoted in the June 12 issue of Newsweek magazine.
- “All God’s children are not beautiful. Most of God’s children are, in fact, barely presentable.”—Fran Lebowitz
- “Call it what you will, America is still the greatest force for good in the world, as it has been since 1942. That may seem obvious, but there is no truth so basic that it cannot be denied by most intellectuals.”—Max Boot, senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations, in his review of The Case for Goliath, a book by Michael Mandelbaum. The review appeared in the April 10, 2006, issue of The Weekly Standard magazine.
- “Kerry and Clark now represent the two major wings of the Democratic Party—the Kennedy wing and the Clinton wing. One drowns you after the extramarital affair; the other calls you a stalker.”—Ann Coulter, writing in January, 2004, of presidential hopefuls John Kerry and Wesley Clark, from page 106 of her book. How To Talk To A Liberal (If You Must).
- “The common wisdom holds that “both parties” have to appeal to the extremes during the primary and then move to the center for the general election. To the contrary, both parties run for office as conservatives. Once they have fooled the voters and are safely in office, Republicans sometimes double-cross the voters. Democrats always do.”—Ann Coulter, in a November, 2003, column reprinted in her 2005 book, How To Talk To A Liberal (If You Must).
- “Men commit evil within the scope available to them. . .They do what they can get away with. . .When the barriers to evil are brought down, it flourishes; and never again will I be tempted to believe in the fundamental goodness of man, or that evil is something exceptional or alien to human nature. . .In 1921, the year of my mother’s birth, there was 1 crime for every 370 inhabitants of England and Wales; 80 years later it was 1 for every 10 inhabitants.”—Theodore Dalrymple, a British doctor and writer, who has practiced medicine on four continents, remarking on what his work, travels, and life experience have taught him about humankind, in a 2004 essay titled “The Frivolity of Evil,” published in his 2005 book, Our Culture: What’s Left of It—The Mandarins And The Masses. (August 29, 2006)
-
“(human beings want to believe) that we have some special relationship to the universe, that human life is not just a farcical outcome of a chain of accidents, . . .but that we were somehow built in from the beginning. . . .It is very hard for us to believe that (the entire Earth) is just a tiny part of an overwhelmingly hostile universe. . .The more the universe seems comprehensible, the more it also seems pointless.”—Steven Weinberg, a particle physicist, quoted in a book review of Doubts About Darwin: A History of Intelligent Design by Thomas Woodward. The review summarized research and arguments about Darwinism and intelligent design, and appeared in the Winter 2004 issue of Claremont Review of Books.
-
“(the universe we observe has precisely the properties we should expect if there is at bottom, no design, no purpose, no evil, no good, nothing but blind, pitiless indifference.”—Richard Dawkins, biologist, reflecting on Darwin’s great discovery of natural selection, quoted in a Claremont Review of Books review (see above quotation) of the intelligent design-Darwinism debate.
-
“Human life must be some kind of mistake.”—ArthurSchopenhauer, who went on to suggest that the best strategy for the pessimistic person was retreat (into “a small fireproof room”) and resignation. (Quote and comment offered by Joseph Epstein in his Wall Street Journal review of a new book titled Pessimism: Philosophy, Ethic, Spirit by Joshua Foa Dienstag.) (September 15, 2006)
At Least Our Dads And Grand-Dads Didn’t Live To See This
-
“I’ll tell you this: our fathers would never have stood for this. Nor would our grandfathers have stood for this.”—Bob Bennett, author, political pundit, gadfly, playing house pariah on The Larry King Show in February 1999, addressing his fellow guests who’d spent the entire show ardently defending the impeached Sick Willie’s behavior.
-
“The Left has very little interest in the wider world these days except as a vast cast of extras for the moral vanity of their bumper stickers (“Free Tibet,” etc.)” --Mark Steyn, columnist, National Review,October 23, 2006 edition.
-
“The future belongs to the fecund and the confident. And the Islamists are both, while the West—wedded to a multiculturalism that undercuts its own confidence, a welfare state that nudges it toward sloth and self-indulgence, and a childlessness that consigns it to oblivion—is looking ever more like the ruins of a civilization.”—Mark Steyn, in his new book, America Alone: The End Of The World As We Know it. (October, 2006)
Yeah, And That Means All Your Relatives, Cats, Dogs, Goldfish, Handlers, Agents, Dermatologists, Personal Trainers, And Cockroach-Eating Friends, Too!!
-
Notice: To Thieves, Thugs, Fakirs or Bunko Steerers--Among Whom Are: J.J. Harlin alias “The Wheeler,” Sawdust Charlie, William Hedges, Billy The Kid, Billy Mullin, Little Jack, The Cuter Pock-Marked Kid and about Twenty Others: If found within the limits of the city after 10 o’clock P.M. this night, you will be invited to attend a Grand Neck Tie Party, the expense of which will be borne by 100 substantial citizens.”—Sign dated March 14, 1882, on exhibit in the New Mexico History Museum in Santa Fe. It had been originally posted in nearby Las Vegas, New Mexico.
-
“People don’t get angry when lies are told about them; they get angry when the truth is told about them.”—Ann Coulter, commenting on how to agitate liberals, in her 2006 best-selling book, How To Talk To A Liberal (If You Must).
-
“The entire Kurdish region—one-third of the country—is patrolled by about three hundred American troops, which is fewer than it takes to patrol the Kennedy compound in Palm Beach on Easter weekends.”—Ann Coulter, from a 2004 column reprinted in her book, How To Talk To A Liberal (If You Must).
-
“(Naomi Wolf urged Gore to). . .”become an alpha male like Bill Clinton—who is virile in the sense that a filthy, rabid stray dog humping your ankle is virile.”—Ann Coulter, writing early in the 2000 election campaign, about Al Gore’s hiring of “controversial feminist author” Naomi Wolf to help him craft an effective public image for his campaign for president, from her book, How To Talk To A Liberal (If You Must).
-
“On April 22, 2000 at 5:10 in the morning, Attorney General Janet Reno ordered about two dozen INS agents to stage a commando raid on the home of Elian Gonzalez’s Miami relatives in a preemptive attack without approval from France or Germany.”—Ann Coulter, page 260 of her book, How To Talk To A Liberal (If You Must).
Not All Of Us Love It
-
“We love government because it enables us to accomplish things that if done privately would lead to arrest and imprisonment.”—Walter Williams, author and syndicated columnist (December 4, 2006)
-
“The lesson of the 20th century, in my view, is that humanity, even with religious restraints, is a force for horror as well as progress. Without them, its turpitude knows no bounds.”—Paul Johnson, historian and author, in a review of Niall Ferguson’s new book, The War of The World: Twentieth-Century Conflict and the Descent of the West, review printed in the September 25, 2006, issue of National Review.