"In hindsight I wish I could have been more perceptive." -- Anon

"There are times when I think that a frighteningly large percentage of humanity treat their heads simply as a device of no more use than for keeping their ears apart and for attaching their nose and other sundry decorations to, and, of course, for conveniently locating that frontal orifice which itself is used for little more than receiving excessive nutrients and expelling large volumes of hot air." -- Anon

"The government consists of a gang of men exactly like you and me. They have, taking one with another, no special talent for the business of government; they have only a talent for getting and holding office. Their principal device to that end is to search out groups who pant and pine for something they can't get and to promise to give it to them. Nine times out of ten that promise is worth nothing. The tenth time is made good by looting A to satisfy B. In other words, government is a broker in pillage, and every election is sort of an advance auction sale of stolen goods." -- H.L. Mencken

"Life is not a journey to the grave with the intention of arriving safely in a pretty and well preserved body, but rather to skid in broadside, thoroughly used up, totally worn out, and loudly proclaiming... WOW! What a Ride!" -- Anon

"The state has grown used to treating its taxpayers as a farmer treats his cows, keeping them in a field to be milked. Soon however, in cyberspace, the cows will have wings......" -- Lord William Rees-Mogg

"Man was born free, and everywhere he is in chains." -- Jean-Jacques Rousseau

"A government which robs Peter to pay Paul can always count on the support of Paul." -- George Bernard Shaw

"The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace in a continual state of alarm (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by menacing them with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary." -- H.L. Mencken

"I see no ethical standard by which to measure the whole unethical conception of a state, except in the amount of time, of thought, of money, of effort and of obedience, which a society extorts from its every member. Its value and its civilisation are in inverse ratio to that extortion." -- Ayn Rand

He who says organisation says oligarchy - Robert Michells
You only live once but if you do it right it's enough. - Mae West
Don't be seduced into thinking that that which does not make a profit is without value. - Arthur Miller
It's not the man in your life its the life in your man - Mae West
Every exit is an entrance somewhere else - Tom Stoppard.
Be who you are and say what you feel because those who mind don't matter and those who matter don't mind - Dr Seuss
Fear is the path to the dark side. Fear leads to anger. Anger leads to hate. Hate leads to suffering. - Yoda
It is very easy to endure the difficulties of one's enemies. It is the successes of one's friends that are hard to bear.- Oscar Wilde

You have the intellect of a retarded chicken... Who's dead.

I think I'll write my tombstone - Here lies Edmund Blackadder, and he's bloody annoyed

"If we do happen to step on a mine, Sir, what do we do ?"
"Normal procedure, Lieutenant, is to jump 200 feet in the air and scatter oneself over a wide area somewhere in No Man's Land "

Well you've come to the right place, then. There hasn't been a war run this badly since Olaf the hairy, King of all the vikings, ordered 80,000 battle helmets with the horns on the inside

We're in a sticky situation all right. This is the stickiest situation since Sticky the Stick insect got caught on a sticky bu

Baldric, you have the intellectual capacity of a dirty potato

Believe me,Baldric, an eternity in the company of Beelzebub and all his hellish minions will be as nothing compared to five minutes alone with me...and this pencil

Baldric, you wouldn't recognize a subtle plan if it painted itself purple and danced naked on a harpsicord singing subtle plans are here again

I am minuspeptic, frasmotic, even compunctuous to have caused you such pericabobulations

Sir, you are one of the most foul, disgusting, immoral, perverted men that I have ever known. Have you considered a career in the church

When life hands you a lemon, squirt it in someones eye and run like hell


(yeah, i'm not sure either)

The problem with socialism is that eventually you run out of other people's money to spend - Margaret Thatcher

A man who, beyond the age of 26, finds himself on a bus can count himself as a failure - Margaret Thatcher

I have had a perfectly wonderful evening, but this wasn't it - Groucho Marx

Man does not control his own fate. The women in his life do that for him - Groucho Marx

Democracy will cease to exist when you take away from those who are willing to work and give to those who would not - Thomas Jefferson

The single most exciting thing you encounter in government is competence, because it's so rare - Daniel P. Moynihan

Of course you know what the problem is with heroin? It's so more-ish, isn't it.
- Harry Hill

It is said that power corrupts, but actually it's more true that
power attracts the corruptible. The sane are usually attracted by
other things than power - David Brin

Time flies like an arrow. Fruit flies like a banana.
- Groucho Marx

If you don't think drugs have done good things for us, then take all of your records, tapes and CD's and burn them.
- Bill Hicks

Our greatest glory is not in never failing, but in getting up every time we do.
- Confucious

Originally Posted by TellMeMore

A man who, beyond the age of 26, finds himself on a bus can count himself as a failure - Margaret Thatcher

great example of the narrow minded cow that is Thatcher

Its a fair point not narrow minded.

Originally Posted by Liberal Authoritarian

Its a fair point not narrow minded.

It's a matter of ideological position. For example, someone in the green party might have said...

A man who finds himself owning two cars can count himself as a parasite on the worlds resources

Originally Posted by JAMC

It's a matter of ideological position. For example, someone in the green party might have said...

A man who finds himself owning two cars can count himself as a parasite on the worlds resources

That too is not narrow minded, it is a fair point.
It's actually a very interesting point, that I am sure could have a nice debate along with it.

Thatcher suggests, by saying that, that the object of life is to have as high paying a job and own as many material possessions as possible.

Originally Posted by Citizen Smith

Thatcher suggests, by saying that, that the object of life is to have as high paying a job and own as many material possessions as possible.

That's your interpretation.

My interpretation is, you should be successful, the object of life is to be successful. I would agree with that claim.

Not to be happy?

Originally Posted by Citizen Smith

Not to be happy?

Being successful would make me exceptionally happy.
Do you not find happiness in success?

Also, what does one define as successful?
You are applying the meaning you want, to make Thatcher sound bad.

Well, if you are agreeing with what she said about success, in the quote, then i would say that just having a big salary and a lot of expensive stuff doesn't constitute a good life, necessarily. Not that people shouldn't enjoy success, but if I was a high earning solicitor or shareholder i could never feel happy with that side of my life. And not all important jobs pay well- many vital to our society pay comparatively poorly next to the huge amounts of lawyers that we don't need- but the people can still feel they have led a good life.
I guess it IS and individual thing, but thats not how Thatcher presented it, and usually, the more money someone makes, the more time and effort they take to get more, and often the less happy they are.
Always wanting something extra, always chasing more money, more things, "the rat race."
Has no appeal to me.

Originally Posted by Citizen Smith

Well, if you are agreeing with what she said about success, in the quote, then i would say that just having a big salary and a lot of expensive stuff doesn't constitute a good life, necessarily. Not that people shouldn't enjoy success, but if I was a high earning solicitor or shareholder i could never feel happy with that side of my life. And not all important jobs pay well- many vital to our society pay comparatively poorly next to the huge amounts of lawyers that we don't need- but the people can still feel they have led a good life.
I guess it IS and individual thing, but thats not how Thatcher presented it, and usually, the more money someone makes, the more time and effort they take to get more, and often the less happy they are.
Always wanting something extra, always chasing more money, more things, "the rat race."
Has no appeal to me.

You have a totally opposite outlook to me.
If I were a very high earning solicitor, banker etc I would be bloody happy.

With that sort of money, I could undertake all the pet projects I want.


Oh well, each to their own. As an individual it is your choice - something she believed in very much.

Yeah, I guess we have to agree to disagree.
( Although my commy nature demands you agree with my economic values)

Originally Posted by Liberal Authoritarian

You have a totally opposite outlook to me.
If I were a very high earning solicitor, banker etc I would be bloody happy.

With that sort of money, I could undertake all the pet projects I want.


Oh well, each to their own. As an individual it is your choice - something she believed in very much.

I would suggest that the recipe for happyness would be something like

Doing what you're good at for a living + Enjoying what you're good at + Recognition of your contribution from society.

LA sees the high earning occupation as a doorway to the [Enjoy what you're good at] side of the equation. CS is looking at it from the "I can control 2 of the three elements, but the value society places on my best efforts is beyond my control" angle.

My favourite quotes right now:

A weak currency is the sign of a weak Government - Gordon Brown
Boom and Bust has been abolished - Gordon Brown

With thanks to Winston Churchill:-

"A lie gets halfway around the world before the truth has a chance to get its pants on."

I know it's not from this site, but I don't care, this made my day.

"Why does the singer guy keep yelling at the midget?"

From the Safety Dance video on Youtube, home of the retarded quotations.

"I gave up drugs when the doctor told me I had 6 months to live" Keith Richards

Monaghan sky, ''says stunt''.


Then we say you want to dig it, come on then ?

Coffee keeps the world going; tea keeps it civilised.

Capitalism has grown out of society and society has outgrown capitalism.

This is a quote of the day thread isn't it?

there was a bear, a lion and a pig.
-the bear said: that when he growls the whole forest gets frightened
-the lion said: that when he growls the whole jungle gets frightened
-the pig said: so what, all i have to do is sneeze and the whole world ****s its self!

Laugh and the world laughs with you.

a)
Religion is the thief of choice and responsibility.

b)
The big guy has a very bad temper and a quite peculiar sense of humour... piss him off and you might just find yourself on the business end of a mighty and humongous meteor.
DON'T DROP LITTER

c)
It's an odd superbeing who collects foreskins.

d)
My God's better than yours.

e)
Many Gods make light work.

f)
Religion is organised servitude.


I quite like b) but overall 'Religion is poison'.

You never make any of the goals you dont take on
(Streetwalker)

I know what you're thinking punk. You're thinking did he fire six shots or only five. And to tell you the truth I forgot myself in all this excitement. But being this is a 44 Magnum, the most powerful handgun in the world and will blow your head clean off, you've got to ask yourself a question. Do I feel lucky? Well do you, punk?

David Cameron raised this issue at Prime Minister's Questions

Buddha
Even death is not to be feared by one who has lived wisely.

With all their faults, trade-unions have done more for humanity than any other organization of men that ever existed. They have done more for decency, for honesty, for education, for the beterment of the race, for the developing of
character in man, than any other association of men.
- Clarence Darrow, Nov 1909

Originally Posted by Citizen Smith

With all their faults, trade-unions have done more for humanity than any other organization of men that ever existed. They have done more for decency, for honesty, for education, for the beterment of the race, for the developing of
character in man, than any other association of men.
- Clarence Darrow, Nov 1909

I suspect had he still been alive today he would have reached a very different conclusion!

Any 20 year old who isn't a liberal doesn't have a heart, and any 40 year old who isn't a conservative doesn't have a brain.
------------------------------------------------------------------

wow I found a quote that truly describes Cameron and the Lisbon Treaty:
"Politics is th art of postponing decisions until they are no longer relevant"
- Henri Queuille

Many quotes are misquotes and lots of them are lies.
(Barry, 7th November 2009)

Francis Elroy Duffy, Prisoner: You're now looking, for the last time, at the mortal body of Francis Elroy Duffy, born to John and Edna Duffy, good, God-fearing folk. Who raised me up to be a good man and a good Christian, and I was a good Christian, a good husband to my beloved wife, good father to my children, who I leave behind, hoping that they, and all you, will learn this here lesson which I leave you with. When you take the devil into your mouth, you're doomed! For he is lying there in wait for you inside that bottle of whiskey. Waiting for you to take him into your mouth. Waiting to get down into your guts where he can do his devil's work. Liquor is the most foul, evil thing in this here world. It destroyed good men like myself. It'll destroy you too. Beer is not much better - it's slower, cheaper. So take these words of advice. And remember, you heard them from a poor sinner, got no more cause to lie, 'cause he's going to meet his Maker. Now he's ready. Well that's all I've got to say.

Originally Posted by Liberal Authoritarian

My favourite quotes right now:

A weak currency is the sign of a weak Government - Gordon Brown
Boom and Bust has been abolished - Gordon Brown

Speaks for itself.

What's in a name? that which we call a rose
By any other name would smell as sweet;

- Romeo and Juliet, W.Shakespeare

"Just because I don't care doesn't mean I don't understand." ~ Homer Simpson

**** it. I'll do it tomorrow.

Now that's a philosophy to live by.

Live your life not celebrating victories, but overcoming defeats.

One must endure without losing tenderness.

The laws of capitalism, blind and invisible to the majority, act upon the individual without his thinking about it. He sees only the vastness of a seemingly infinite horizon before him. That is how it is painted by capitalist propagandists, who purport to draw a lesson from the example of Rockefeller — whether or not it is true — about the possibilities of success. The amount of poverty and suffering required for the emergence of a Rockefeller, and the amount of depravity that the accumulation of a fortune of such magnitude entails, are left out of the picture, and it is not always possible to make the people in general see this.

Ernesto "Che" Guevara, 1928 – 1967

"...a society too squeamish to call evil by its right name has destroyed its first, best defense against cutthroats."
--David Gelernter (Unabomber victim)

"It takes a lot of brains to enjoy satire, humor and wit but none to be offended by them."
~The Midnight Skulker (B.C. by Johnny Hart, 6/26/2000)

Half the harm that is done in this world
Is due to people who want to feel important
They don’t mean to do harm ­
But the harm does not interest them.
Or they do not see it, or they justify it
Because they are absorbed in the endless struggle
To think well of themselves.

~T. S. Eliot

Originally Posted by Citizen Smith

Live your life not celebrating victories, but overcoming defeats.

One must endure without losing tenderness.

The laws of capitalism, blind and invisible to the majority, act upon the individual without his thinking about it. He sees only the vastness of a seemingly infinite horizon before him. That is how it is painted by capitalist propagandists, who purport to draw a lesson from the example of Rockefeller — whether or not it is true — about the possibilities of success. The amount of poverty and suffering required for the emergence of a Rockefeller, and the amount of depravity that the accumulation of a fortune of such magnitude entails, are left out of the picture, and it is not always possible to make the people in general see this.

Ernesto "Che" Guevara, 1928 – 1967

Che... Isn't he that arse hole that get kicks from torturing kids?

I'm doing an article on the politics of The Re-Imagined Battlestar Galactica at the moment (yes, I know, someone is paying me to watch TV, brilliant) anyway...here a few gems from that piece of awe-inspiring TV, perhaps not as high-brow or prevalent as others offered thus far, but nonetheless enlightening in their own way:

There's a reason you separate military and the police. One fights the enemies of the state, the other serves and protects the people. When the military becomes both, then the enemies of the state tend to become the people.

-William Adama on Afghanistan, no...on martial law

There is no God. Supernatural divinities are the primitive's answer for why the sun goes down at night...

-Brother Cavil (Number 1) on God

But there comes a time when you realize that the engine you've built with your blood and your sweat and your tears is being used for something so foul, so perverted that it makes you sick in your heart. And it's then that you must throw your body on the gears and on the levers and on the machine itself and make it stop. And you have to show the people who run it, the people who control it, that unless we're free, that machine will be prevented from working at all.

-Chief Tyrol on Unions (although this is taken almost verbatim from Mario Savio at the University of California, Berkeley as part of the Free Speech Movement in 1964)

The mob is not usually in the habit of electing ungodly apostates who denigrate people of faith.

-Gaius Baltar on religion in politics

I'm a scientist. And as a scientist, I believe if God exists, our knowledge of him is imperfect. Why? Because the stories and myths we have are the products of men, the passage of time. The religion you practice is based on a theory, impossible to prove. Yet you bestow it with absolutes like, "There is no such thing as coincidence."

Absolute belief in God's will means there's a reason for everything. Everything! And yet you can't help ask yourself how God can allow death and destruction and then despise yourself for asking. But the truth is, if we knew God's will, we'd all be Gods, wouldn't we? I can see it in your eyes. You're frustrated. You're conflicted. Let me help you. Let me help you change. Find a way to reconcile your faith with fact. Find a way towards a rational universe.

- Gaius Baltar on faith




Anyway, if anyone has actually read all this...bravo, thanks for tolerating my fanwank.

If it's clear and yella', you've got juice there, fella! If it's tangy and brown, you're in cider town. - Ned Flanders

Originally Posted by DTE

I'm doing an article on the politics of The Re-Imagined Battlestar Galactica at the moment

There's a reason you separate military and the police. One fights the enemies of the state, the other serves and protects the people. When the military becomes both, then the enemies of the state tend to become the people.
-William Adama on Afghanistan, no...on martial law

Interesting quote and one I can agree with. It is also interesting to note that our (U.S.) Supreme Court have ruled that the police have no specific duty to protect the individual, rather it is a duty to protect society as a whole. Presumably, if they had a duty to the individual, we each would have three of them assigned to us full time. Might help with the unemployment problem

Anyway, if anyone has actually read all this...bravo, thanks for tolerating my fanwank.

Actually I did read the entire thing. Don't agree with it all, but read it nonetheless.

When life hands you a lemon....... squirt it in someones eye and run like hell.