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The urge to save humanity is almost always a false face for the urge to rule it.

- H.L. Mencken

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"Government provision in water has overseen millions of deaths through lack of sanitation and unsafe water. Bringing in private sector expertise and investment is needed, both to meet the UN’s Millennium Development Goals, but to actively contribute towards social justice the world over. In the vast majority of cases, where the private sector has been called upon, it has delivered the goods - even in cases decried by critics as 'failures'."

- Mischa Balen

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My experience of racists is that they are race based collectivists who are so utterly without anything to redeem them (and know it), that they pick out something they didn't have to earn (race) and claim that as their most valuable asset.

Regular commenter VeryRetired, skewering one of those rather sad individuals who are upset that libertarian bloggers do not devote more time to writing about inherited genetic characteristics or the supposed political implications thereof.

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This is a country in which dogs can get a hip replacement in under a week and in which humans can wait two to three years.

- Dr Brian Day, of Vancouver, explaining what happens if you make private health care illegal, but leave private veterinary clinics alone. (It's a shame about the picture of Dr Day and Fidel Castro though).

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Whoever said "there is no such thing as bad publicity" obviously never had their career "Dan Rather'ed" into tiny pieces by the twenty thousand bloggers.

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Commentator "rosignol" provides the knockout blow to those who want the whole world run one way, on the mistaken assumption it is always going to be their way:

With multiple governments, people have the possibility of moving to whatever nation suits them (with, admittedly, varying degrees of effort/risk).

With one government, if you object to how things are being run, your non-violent options are just about limited to "leave the planet entirely".

I'd add that with one world government your violent options are going to be be limited, too. Governmental violence will always be quantatively greater than any you can muster.

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"Chatting over a llama is certainly a novel way to meet people in a relaxed environment, and participants can enjoy a romantic picnic afterwards."

-Charity worker Mary Walker, providing Valentines Day advice that is more useful than most I have heard this year.

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"Almost every young libertarian I come in contact with these days is equally opposed not just to the sort of new copyright protections that the content providers seek, but even to traditional copyright laws and rules that pre-date the 76 Act. And not all of these people are wacko libertarian-anarchist types. Many respected young libertarian minds are turning against copyright. I don't believe that the best strategy is to ignore them. You guys should engage them in debate and defend your views before this extreme anti-IP position becomes more mainstream."

- Adam Thierer of the Progress and Freedom Foundation (many years ago, he worked at the Adam Smith Institute), quoted here.

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"The defence of a free society is the defence of its procedures, not its output."

- Oliver Kamm

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"They won’t publish cartoons, but they will run anything they can get out of Abu Ghraib. Both sets of images provoke Islamic anger; note how the media behaves when that anger is directed at them."

- Tim Blair, referring to the Australian media - although the same could be said of the British, in contrast to those papers in Europe that have showed solidarity with their Danish colleagues.

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The ever-rational, ever-eloquent, ever-humane Matthew Parris in The Times:

Many faiths and ideologies achieve and maintain their predominance partly through fear. They, of course, call it "respect".But whatever you call it, it intimidates. The reverence, the awe — even the dread — that their gods, their KGB or their priesthoods demand and inspire among the laity are vital to the authority they wield.

Against reverence and awe the best argument is sometimes not logic, but mockery. Structures of oppression that may not be susceptible to rational debate may in the end yield to derision.

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We have a free press and this freedom of expression is a vital and indispensable part of our democracy and this is the reason why I cannot control what is published in the media
- Danish Prime Minister Anders Fogh Rasmussen

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"The French government favours globalisation"

- Brian Micklethwait

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[W]hen we read our newspapers or turn on our TV screens, what we see and hear might well have been "researched" by searching for dirt on the internet. Of course, the mainstream media will never admit it; the pretence that they are above such things is too important to them. They rely on the impression that their reporters are out in the field, fearlessly digging for details on the major issues of the day, not sat in an air-conditioned office with a cup of coffee and an open Google window. But it's the truth, and for the sake of their own reputations, it might now be time for them to start admitting that they read the blogs just like the rest of us.

- Rob Knight writing at Liberal Review about blog and media reportage of recent Lib Dem scandals

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Once upon a time I would have felt awkward about quoting Mark Thomas's New Statesman column with approval, but we live in interesting times:

In Parliament Square recently, a banner reading "Parliament Square belongs to the people" was deemed a statement of fact and therefore not a protest. Barbara Tucker's banner, on the other hand, which declared "I am not the serious organised criminal", was deemed a protest and Tucker faces trial in February. Who knows, had she used the words "I am a flippant chaotic law-abider" the banner may have been legal. In August police arrested Mark Barrett for the crime of having a picnic in Parliament Square. Two weeks later five others were arrested in possession of cakes iced with the slogans such as "Peace " and "Love" in pink sugary letters. When the state is arresting people with iced cakes, it really is time either to change the law or for ministers to start incorporating khaki uniforms into their daywear.

[If I had a picture of the ever-changing parliamentary fortifications, I would insert it here. But I don't. And, as Brian found at the dca not so long ago, it would probably be illegal.]

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Understanding politicians and what they are likely to do is much easier once you realise that almost everyone in politics (even the 'nice guys' who wear sensible cardigans and remind you of Wallace and Gromit) have more in common psychologically and morally with your typical member of a street gang than with most of the people who actually vote for them
- Perry de Havilland

by request

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We all knew Galloway was a wanker before now anyway but by going onto Big Brother all he's managed to do is simply broadcast this to a public who previously didn't know who he was or thought he was that guy who told the American Senate a thing or two. The funniest thing has been the hard left loonies (and others) who applauded his cock sucking antics with Saddam, Assad, Hamas and the Al Aqsa Bastards Brigade but then decided that robotic manouvers in a leotard were beyond the pale.
- Blognor Regis

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No compromise with the main purpose, no peace till victory, no pact with unrepentant wrong
- Winston Churchill

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For decades, every school and university in the West has been teaching that the feelings of the protected classes trump rights of free expression.

The media are ruled by it, politics is in thrall to it, and each and every citizen of all these great, free, democratic societies knows in the back of his or her mind that if you dare say the wrong thing, you will be keel-hauled.

We've all watched it happen. We've complained and objected and had various hissy fits. The PC crowd just shrugged and found some more terms that were offensive, some more victims that needed to be protected, some more ideas that demonstrated a depraved, sexist, racist, whatever-ist mind and needed to be cast out.

I don't care who this guy is, or how ironic it all is. What difference does it make. The suppression many predicted, and so many others played down, is here.

Did you think they were kidding?

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Copy protection is guaranteed to fail because it’s a house of cards. No matter how sophisticated the software, it takes only one person to break it, once, and the music is free to roam and multiply on the peer-to-peer file-trading networks.

- Damian Kulash, lead singer of OK Go

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"I think this nanny state business, you know, is just nonsense."

- Tony Blair, today's BBC2 Newsnight, responding to the allegation that he is creating a nanny state

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And another thing - the argument that we can all support Cameron's leftward lurch because it's all an act and he doesn't really mean it - he is lying pretty low. I might be prepared to give someone the benefit of the doubt on the grounds that they are telling the truth, but to give someone the benefit of the doubt in the hope that they are lying through their teeth?
- Wolfie

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Veisalgia- the medical term for the common or garden hangover. I suspect that there has been a slight epidemic of veisalgia in the ranks of Samizdata's contributors and editors lately. A useful word to know when filling out sick leave application forms for work.

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Last century over 170 million people were murdered by their own governments, and your government doesn't want you to have a gun. Doesn't that bother you just a little?
- Unknown

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Oh, um, oh God, um, yes, um, I can't believe that you said that. I can't believe that you, um, said that, um, all that stuff about, um, oh no, about that stuff... Oh God, you guys at, um, Samizdata, are, um, naughty.

- Boris Johnson MP

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Now that they have a fairly sensible and popular sceptic policy on Europe, the Conservatives react with wounded surprise when polls say that the public still do not respect them on the subject. But the reason is very simple: again and again, their actions have belied their words.
- Charles Moore

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But, whatever the crimes of our forefathers, this is the country of Drake, Clive and Kitchener, not of Tipu Sultan, Shaka Zulu or the Mahdi.
- Max Hastings

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These whiners are the same people who complain of American cultural imperialism because people like Coke and Starbucks. [Yet] there is no more rigid, aggressive, ignorant bunch of cultural imperialists in the world than Muslims who, as a group, are intent on forcing their preposterous beliefs on the rest of the world. Give me Starbucks any day.
- Commenter Verity on the 'Satanic Cartoons' controversy.

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Are you uncomfortable enough? Good. Welcome to my world.

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Tony Blair showed just how courageous he is... he chose to face up to an internal battle based on one idea - the European Union - rather than just doing his job as just Britain's prime minister.

Pity Samizdata.net does not have a catagory for articles called "Treason & Betrayal".

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Protectionism does not aid development. Developing countries with open economies are catching up with rich ones; those with closed economies are falling further behind.

- Andrew Mitchell, the UK's Shadow Secretary of State for International Development

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My least favourite radical chic interviewee: the talented but humourless Ute Lemper. Ensconced in a luxury suite at the Savoy, she embarked on a lecture about the downtrodden masses, and was so busy talking about how East German workers were exploited that she forgot to even acknowledge the existence of the maid who'd put a tray of tea in front of her.

- Clive Davis commenting on this.

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I admit to feeling a little uneasy at the sight of a Muslim woman shrouded not simply in a headscarf but a face-concealing, head-to-toe chador, and wonder just how much choice she has had in deciding her lifestyle. I am not hugely sympathetic to a Muslim seeking asylum because he claims to have been discriminated against because of his support for sharia law.

I cannot celebrate such culture in the way that I celebrate Italian National Day in Leichhardt or the Tet festival in Cabramatta or Greek Orthodox Easter or a Seder at Passover or a service of Eritrean Orthodox Church, such as the one I attended a couple of years ago in a borrowed Church of England in London, or lunch with a couple of Palestinian intellectuals.

Some multicultural theorists will squawk and say that I prefer only a soft multiculturalism (if they insist on calling it that) that does not offend western liberal values. They would be spot on. My acceptance ends when the assault on the liberality of society itself begins.

- Andrew West, writing in the Sydney Morning Herald. (Link via Tim Blair)

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Society is something emergent that occurs when people interact with each other, you cannot point at it and you cannot owe it anything. When any politician says the word 'society', you can be damn sure what he really means is 'the state'.
- Perry de Havilland

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An unfunded pension is like a university education. If everyone has one, you can't expect it to be worth anything.

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Mr Drucker says that modern government can do only two things well: wage war and inflate the currency. It's the aim of my administration to prove Mr Drucker wrong.

- Richard Nixon

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Actually, I have had some very good experiences with extra large prawns.

- Michael Jennings

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"Only the arms industry relies on taxpayers for its profits more than the pharmaceutical industry."

- The Pharmopoly Campaign

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"If the French social model is so great, why is the country in flames?"
- Peter Mendelson in an off the cuff remark before talks with Philippe Douste-Blazy, French foreign minister.

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Among a fringe community of paranoids, aluminum helmets serve as the protective measure of choice against invasive radio signals. We investigate the efficacy of three aluminum helmet designs on a sample group of four individuals. Using a $250,000 network analyser, we find that although on average all helmets attenuate invasive radio frequencies in either directions (either emanating from an outside source, or emanating from the cranium of the subject), certain frequencies are in fact greatly amplified. These amplified frequencies coincide with radio bands reserved for government use according to the Federal Communication Commission (FCC). Statistical evidence suggests the use of helmets may in fact enhance the government's invasive abilities. We speculate that the government may in fact have started the helmet craze for this reason.

- Ali Rahimi, Ben Recht, Jason Taylor, and Noah Vawter of MIT, getting down to the really important research. I wonder what they think of lampshades? (Link from Scott Wickstein).

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"No man in the country is under the smallest obligation, moral or other, so to arrange his legal relations to his business or property as to enable the Inland Revenue to put the largest possible shovel in his stores. The Inland Revenue is not slow - and quite rightly - to take every advantage which is open to it under the taxing statutes for the purpose of depleting the taxpayer's pocket. And the taxpayer is in like manner entitled to be astute to prevent, so far as he honestly can, the depletion of his means by the Inland Revenue."

- The Lord President Clyde, 1929

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"We are not living in a police state"

Tony Blair, asking MPs to support police detention without charge for up to 90 days.

Never believe anything until it has been officially denied.

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"So promoting wealth creation - at home and abroad - means changing the climate of opinion so that politicians and bureaucrats who argue for measures that damage business and economic competitiveness are less likely to succeed. In short, we need to campaign for capitalism. To promote profit. To fight for free trade. To remind, indeed to educate our citizens about the facts of economic life. The message is simple - you cannot win the battle against red tape unless you win the intellectual and cultural battle for open markets."

- David Cameron MP

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As masters of their estates, the rioters cock their legs and piss molotovs to provide the reek of burnt plastic that serves as their territorial marker.
- Philip Chaston

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With hindsight it can be stated that the outcome of the Industrial Revolution was that human beings no longer needed to go out and grab other people's possessions by force, but merely to settle down, work hard and exchange the considerable surplus they produced for something they wanted from the surplus someone else produced. How simple it all seems! Yet how hard to put into practice.

- Findlay Dunachie (1928-2005 – his funeral is today) in The Success of the Industrial Revolution and the Failure of Political Revolutions: How Britain Got Lucky, page 6, published in 1996 by the Libertarian Alliance.

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"The Bush administration is the most dangerous force that has ever existed. It is more dangerous than Nazi Germany because of the range and depth of its activities and intentions worldwide."

2005 Nobel Prize winner Harold Pinter, displaying an interesting sense of historical perspective.

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"When government does, occasionally, work, it it works in an elitist fashion. That is, government is most easily manipulated by people who have money and power already. This is why government benefits usually go to people who don't need benefits from government. Government may make some environmental improvements, but these will be improvements for rich bird-watchers. And no one in government will remember that when poor people go bird-watching they do it at Kentucky Fried Chicken."

P.J. O'Rourke, All the Trouble in the World (page 199).

I love the punchline.

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"We must have faith in the social and economic benefits of the free market. A real programme for prosperity will progressively remove the barriers to wealth creation in Britain today. We need to open ourselves to risk and treat adults like adults. The stock of regulations must be reduced: we should trust people to make their own mistakes and learn from them. And the flow of new regulation from the EU must also be reduced: our aim should be to take back control of employment and social regulation...

"We must reduce and simplify taxes so we can take on with confidence the long term challenge of competing with China and India for jobs. This means not only proper control of public spending, but also a thoughtful and long-term strategy for tax reduction."

- David Cameron MP

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"IPN is the bastard child of the Institute of Economic Affairs."

- Indymedia

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"On sighting an elephant Selous would instantly remove his trousers as he found it easier to pursue them in his underpants."

As one does.

The quote is from Tom Quinn, Shooting's Strangest Days.

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Against the Government's position, I can see no purpose in disputing that our helping to overthrow Saddam Hussein has inflamed Islamist totalitarian groups. Why deny what we should take pride in?
- Oliver Kamm

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We embrace these concepts of the private sector, the marketplace and freedom of expression. So the contrast is stark and the choice is clear.
- Michael D. Gallagher, U.S. assistant secretary of commerce for communications and information

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Actually it was a much cheerier gathering than I expected: usually the Tories have a leader who embarrasses them, but this year they have no leader and everyone's full of beans.

- Eamonn Butler at the Conservative Party Conference

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The political system tends to lag behind technological change, which is often a good thing. I remember attending a House subcommittee hearing in the 1980s on whether the U.S. should create a phone-computer system modeled on the state-funded French Minitel, a text-only network being promoted as the wave of the future. Fortunately, the Internet exploded – making Minitel obsolete – before Congress could fund such a project.

- Glenn Harlan Reynolds reviewing this book

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If Nazi Germany was fascism by radio, New Labour is the corporate state by television.

Colin MacCabe, writing in the Observer, on why he has left the Labour Party.

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Meanwhile, you've got how many (admittedly very stupid) Australians in Indonesian prisons for something like 20 years on drug charges? So I guess the message here is kill some infidels and you'll get two years with time off for good behavior, have a couple tabs of ecstasy on you and you'll do 20 years in a third world prison.
- Hank Scorpio

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Take my love, take my land, take me where I cannot stand.
I don't care, I'm still free. You can't take the sky from me.
Take me out to the black. Tell 'em I ain't comin' back.
Burn the land and boil the sea. You can't take the sky from me.
Have no place I can be since I found Serenity
But you can't take the sky from me.

- Joss Whedon

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What does this, have in common with this,
and this?

What's different is also interesting. The police being used as as an instrument to suppress peaceful political dissent is one thing, but their doing it on their own initiative is if anything more worrying.

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One cannot say, in general, that there should be more or less legislation: that is for governments to decide. If the present volume of legislation is causing problems at the various stages of the legislative process - and all our evidence confirms that this is so - the first requirement is not a reduction in that volume, but improvements in the process at those stages where it is under strain. The kitchen should be big enough and properly equipped to satisfy the legislative appetite.

- Making the Law, Hansard Society, 1993.

So much for separation of powers in the view of serious British parliamentarians.

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I pledge allegiance to the curve
Of supply and demand in equilibrium
And to the principle for which it stands
Market pricing, with low transaction costs
Yields utility and profit for all

- Commenter thoreau, at Hit and Run.

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For centuries, philosophers and poets have tried to understand what happiness is, and what might contribute to it. In recent decades, scientists have started to come up with the answers. Happiness is electrical activity in the left front part of the brain, and it comes from getting married, getting friends, getting rich, and avoiding communism.

- Johan Norberg

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In an interview for the New York Daily News in 1997, the actor and entertainer Clint Eastwood explained how the world would change if politicians adopted a flat tax:

"All of a sudden, what do you have? You have the whole tax system run by a little old lady on a home computer, doing the work of all these thousands of bureaucrats and accountants. Passing that would be amazing, wouldn't it?"

Go ahead, Gordon. Make our day.

- Matthew Elliott

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In fact, the only fun and spontaneous bit was booing Livingstone, but I assume that was edited out. If those feet in ancient times really did walk upon England's mountains green, they'd have found themselves with Sue Barker sticking a microphone in their countenance divine...
- Pete

For our Trans-Atlantic brethren who do not get the reference, the words of the hymn Jerusalem can he found here or hear it here (Real Audio required).

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I could not tread these perilous paths in safety, if I did not keep a saving sense of humour
- Horatio Nelson

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In, you know, the first year in law school we all read the decision in Calder against Bull, which has the famous statement that the government may not take the property of A and give it to B
- Judge John G. Roberts, discussing the Kelo ruling.

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"Thanks to corporations, instead of democracy we get Baywatch"

- George Monbiot, in today's Guardian

Sounds good to me. When do we start?

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Totalitarian systems are not sustained at the top, but at the bottom, where a system of mutual surveillance prevails. The influence of Desert Islam on the region has engendered just such a totalitarian system, whereby a woman who refuses to wear the hijab is stigmatised, and possibly threatened with violence. Even in liberal Lebanon, where women have historically been highly expressive in their dress, the present generation is increasingly adopting the hijab and shaming those who don't. Some people see this trend as a reaction to the West and modernity. It is anything but. It is merely a succumbing to the encroaching influence of Saudi-funded Desert Islam, a totalitarian system expounded by highly rational modern means.
- William G. Ridgeway, Those Drunken, Whoring Saudis: Desert Islam's problem with women

Note: This article was published on Social Affairs Unit blog and someone (we do not know who) redirected the url of www.islamchannel.com to point at it, to much consternation of the Islam Channel and bafflament and bemusement of the Social Affairs Unit. It also attracted some atypical commenters...

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And another thing to think about when we start pointing fingers is this. The government is never equipped to handle a crisis like this. There's too much bureaucracy - initiative-stifling bureaucracy which prevents swift, effective action. I would like to hear from government employees on this. The nature of that bureaucracy is such that you have very specific guidelines to follow for even the most minute tasks. You need approval for just about everything, and the person you need approval from usually needs approval to give you the approval.

It's not as easy as say rounding up 4 of your co-workers and saying, "We've got someone at such and such an address, let's go grab her and get her out of there." Now add a destroyed or disabled command and control center to that bureaucracy and you've got a total and complete mess.

You (as a civilian) don't need "Approved" stamped on 3 different forms before you can run into your neighbor's house and pull them out. I hope this makes sense.

Anyway, I'm sure there's been human error in this catastrophe. How could there not be? But what I'm saying is that I've come to expect poor decision making and a total lack of initiative from government. They can't even balance a budget, at the federal, state, or local levels. I could balance my checkbook and spend within my means when I was a teenager. But I'm not gonna point fingers and get into the blame game. If you want me to blame something besides the storm herself, I blame the nature of government in the first place. It's too big, it's too slow, it's too inefficient, it's too bloated, and it's too intiative-stifling to be effective in normal circumstances, much less in a disaster. It's a systemic issue, more than an issue of individual people in government.

- The Interdictor writing yesterday

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...the only way to use (teleportation) as a secret weapon is to allow our enemies to bankrupt themselves thinking they can produce a teleportation machine.

The Air Force is to be applauded for investigating technologies that may have value for national security...But wormholes, negative energies, warped space-time, etc., require futuristic technologies centuries to millions of years ahead of ours. The only thing going down the wormhole is taxpayers' money.

Michio Kaku

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What an exciting time it is to be alive: ours still is the golden age of scientific discovery, creationists and other ignoramuses notwithstanding.

-Abiola Lapite, commenting on yet more advances in genetics.

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I had never heard the word blogger until May 25 . But now I know them well because of all the amazing coverage they had of the protests. My friends overseas all followed what happened through the blogs, because they have more credibility than the mainstream media.
- Rabab al-Mahdi, a political science professor at the American University in Cairo, and an opposition activist.

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We spent all this money to do things legally and right, and all the sudden it becomes illegal to do something legal
- Nick Mari

The state is not your friend, Nick.

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There is no "tolerance", there are only changing fashions in intolerance.
- Mark Steyn

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"I do not really think the House of Commons is 'My Cup of Tea', I am too much of an individualist, and also, too self-centred and set in my ways. Enough if I remain a mute, just adequate back-bencher, but frankly most of the problems that so excite 'the Hon. Members' leave me quite cold and indifferent."

- Sir Henry "Chips" Channon in his diary entry for December 5th 1935.

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"No part of my job involves stopping people from fornicating"

- Elena Procopiu

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A minority of musicians not only dislike the capitalist world, but they believe they can eschew it. Some of them have set up the sort of micro-firms that capitalism makes so easy to do. So they have spurned being sub-contractors or suppliers to large firms, and have become entrepreneurs instead - and think of it as rebellion.

- Richard D. North in Rich is Beautiful

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GR: Do you think our technological civilization *is* fragile?

SS: On the contrary, I think it's immensely resilient. Note that famines generally occur in countries where peasant farmers are still the majority! It's precisely the complexity that makes it so hard to damage; economies are like ecosystems, they're more stable as they grow more complex. They work around damage.

- Science Fiction writer S.M. Stirling (interviewed by Glenn Reynolds), stating something that is pretty obvious when you think about it. I think I would also argue that the global communications and global supply chains that have come into existence in the last few years make it dramatically more resilient rather than less. There are vastly more brains linked together and these supply chains actually contain massive redundancy.

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"The Government uses a false dichotomy that liberty and security have to be traded off against each other. But you can indeed have both life and liberty. The freedom to express yourself short of inciting violence does not threaten security but bolsters it: I want to know exactly who my enemies are by reading their freely spoken words. And when they cross the line and incite people to terrorism, I want the Government to do the one thing with my tax money of which I approve: protect me from these nutters by throwing them in jail or out of the country."

- Perry de Havilland writing in today's Times of London.

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"So what can Britain learn from Pakistan about fighting home-grown terrorists? Newsnight interviews President Musharraf"

Let us hope Gordon Brown was not watching, eh?

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"The Central American Free Trade Agreement is just at the beginning of a century of trade liberalisation, more significant and powerful than any previous wave of liberalisation. Europe and Britain can either choose to follow the path of America, Asia and China, or it should prepare for a century of decline. If the EU is to avoid long-term economic stagnation, it has to welcome globalisation - not fight it."

- Alex Singleton writing in The Business newspaper.

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Lords Chancellors are political appointees, and certainly should not be idealised. But our Dear Leader is widely believed not to know or care about the past. So that the following dialogue is fiction should not be a problem.

...

More: Yes. What would you do? Cut a great road through the law to get after the Devil?

Roper: I'd cut down every law in England to do that.

More: Oh? And when the last law was down--and the Devil turned round on you--where would you hide? Yes, I'd give the Devil benefit of law, for my own safety's sake.

-- Robert Bolt, A Man for All Seasons

Or is it more important to look tough and caution be damned?

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"The key to the intricate and massive system of thought created by Karl Marx is at bottom a simple one: Karl Marx was a communist."

- Murray Rothbard (via Mises Economics Blog)

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Economic freedom begets political freedom. Democracy alone, a la elections are not enough, we need a liberal democracy that circumscribe the domain of government to what Martin Wolf says "Under liberty, the state protects everybody from predators, not excluding itself". Property rights begets individual ownership and that in turn promotes individual as well as economic freedom
- Franklin Cudjoe discussing what Africa really need.

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If anything, it is the failure of multiculturalism to generate real reciprocal respect and provide legitimate avenues to social participation that provides the psychotic self-justification the murderers indulge in as part of their vision of nirvana.

- Andrew Jakubowicz, a sociology professor, explains to Australian newspaper readers that suicide bombers have nothing to do with Islam.

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We maintain that the 'Clash of Civilisations' is not only inevitable but imperative.
- Hizb Ut Tahrir (as quoted by the Daily Ablution)

And there we have it: something that a radical Islamic group has said that I totally agree with.

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"...my great grandparents who were Manchester free-trade liberals who read the Manchester Guardian, which was a liberal free trade newspaper, would I think be astonished to pick up the modern version of the Manchester Guardian to find that it has leapt the fence from being a free trade newspaper to being a luddite newspaper."

- Alan Beattie, World Trade Editor of the Financial Times, in this speech.

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The journalist who is determined to give proof of his objectivity often succumbs to the temptation of maintaining silence with regard to concrete facts, because these facts are in themselves so crude that he is afraid of appearing biased.

- Arthur Koestler

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The troublesome [American] underclass is not huge, but its influence is much greater than its numbers. It is a visible problem if one goes to the wrong part of any city. It is much more in people's minds than it is present in their lives. Indeed, it may be the lack of everyday acquaintance with the underclass that makes it all the more threatening.

It's a little like terrorism. The British have lived with it for thirty years. It hasn't touched many of us very directly, but we have always known that it might, and have always seen evidence of it out of the corner of our eye, as it were. We are, to that extent, ready for it when it comes much closer.
- Richard D. North, Rich is Beautiful

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Some supposedly independent think tanks now receive over 50% of their funds from drug companies. They simultaneously publish study after study attacking free trade in drugs and otherwise supporting the interests of their pharmaceutical donors. There is a distinct stench of what policy wonks call "donor capture". Lobbying for drug companies is becoming so apparent that it threatens to bring the whole think tank community into disrepute.

- Alex Singleton in The statism of the pharmaceutical industry

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Burning in fear??!!? Ha!! Not this Brit. With my upper lip fixed stiff, I hoot and mock these jihadis. Wankers one and all. I'd like to see 'em on Celebrity Terrorist Island, the IRA'd make mincemeat of them.
- comment number 9 of these ones at Crooked Timber, spotted there by Tim Worstall yesterday

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Two decades ago, Sir Bob was at least demanding we give him our own fokkin' money. This time round, all he was asking was that we join him into bullying the G8 blokes to give us their taxpayers' fokkin' money.
- Mark Steyn

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You know we have a greedy government. Even if they cancel the debt, it will not help if the government is greedy. Senior government officials should cut their salaries first.
- Phillip Khisa

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You know what, I've finally understood what this whole "live 8" nonsense is about. I twigged when I heard a quote on the news, something like "this is all about you, the leaders of the G8, because you make the decisions". Recognise the instinctual pattern: singing and dancing, mass ecstatic rallies, high moral cause, loud appeals for attention and for aid from on high - they're praying, to the only gods they know.
- Julian Morrison

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"If there ever IS an armed rebellion against the Federal government, I do hope the bastards at LEAST have the decency not to act surprised."

Commenter independent worm, in a Hit & Run post concerning some idiocy or other by members of Congress.

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"It seems to be the general opinion, fortified by a strong current of judicial opinion, that since the American revolution no state government can be presumed to possess the transcendental sovereignty to take away vested rights of property; to take the property of A. and transfer it to B. by a mere legislative act. A government can scarcely be deemed to be free, where the rights of property are left solely dependent upon a legislative body, without any restraint. The fundamental maxims of a free government seem to require, that the rights of personal liberty, and private property should be held sacred. At least, no court of justice, in this country, would be warranted in assuming, that any state legislature possessed a power to violate and disregard them; or that such a power, so repugnant to the common principles of justice and civil liberty, lurked under any general grant of legislative authority, or ought to be implied from any general expression of the will of the people, in the usual forms of the constitutional delegation of power. The people ought not to be presumed to part with rights, so vital to their security and well-being, without very strong, and positive declarations to that effect."

-Supreme Court Justice Joseph Story. (With thanks to Professor Reynolds.)

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"Paul Wolfowitz's nomination to lead the World Bank could turn out to be the right and inspired choice, following on the heels of John Bolton's nomination as US ambassador to the UN. Both are political realists who appreciate the power of the USA to provide the global Pax and promote a liberal international economic order. Both are sceptics of international organisations and have no time for global-governance chatter. Now Mr Wolfowitz should marry his political realism with economic liberalism. The World Bank should promote markets and economic freedom in the developing world, but with more modest, pared-down means and ends. It should emphasise information-sharing, the exchange of ideas, policy surveillance and technical assistance. But its power of the purse through project and programme lending should be overhauled and kept within strict limits. And global-governance fantasists should be told where to get off."

- Dr Razeen Sally of the London School of Economics in the report 2005 and Beyond: The Future of Trade, Development & International Institutions (PDF)

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There is nothing certain but taxes.

- Marvin Minsky

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The Right to Bear Arms. It's not just for Americans any more.
- Joe Katzman

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Comment is free but facts are sacred.

C.P. Scott, who knew about running newspapers in the 20th century. The New York Times has decided to reverse this maxim.

(Via Ann Althouse)

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A nice analogy from the inestimable Tim Blair, posting temporarily on Tim Dunlop's blog due to an outage at his own.

High-income earners pay a higher rate of tax than people on low incomes. So why is it unfair, as Kim Beazley argues, that high-income earners receive a larger tax cut?

An analogy: your house and your neighbour’s house are both burgled. You lose a television. He loses a DVD player, microwave, his collection of Chomsky memorabilia (it’s an inner-city house), and a unique framed Leunig depicting Mr Curly’s pedophilia arrest. Would it be unfair if police were to return all of this fellow’s belongings, and you were only to get back your 24-inch Sony?

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Show me a cultural relativist at 30,000 feet and I'll show you a hypocrite...If you are flying to an international congress of anthropologists or literary critics, the reason you will probably get there - the reason you don't plummet into a ploughed field - is that a lot of Western scientifically trained engineers have got their sums right.

- Richard Dawkins, from a collection of brilliant essays, "The Devil's Chaplain", crushing all manner of shoddy thinking.

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9.30am BST Yes, Labour's 60-65 majority was achieved with only 36% of the vote - an all-time low for a winning party in Britain. That reflects an election in which the traditional party labels didn't quite capture the real divisions in the electorate. Nonetheless, I'd say it's worse news for the Tories - not just because it's an unprecedented third consecutive loss for the party but because such recovery as there was was so pathetic. In the days before the election, a lot of Tories told me that the real measure of their success was whether and by how much they'd break the 200-seat barrier. And even that was a conscious effort to lower expectations. The Conservatives are presently on 195 seats. That would have been regarded as a disaster for Thatcher, Major or even William Hague, and swift resignation would have followed. The Tory leadership's ability to spin this as a great "improvement" is confirmation of just how shrivelled the modern British Conservative Party really is.

- Mark Steyn

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"Whom do I lobby to if I want to change international law? Whom do I vote for? If anyone knocks on your door between now and Thursday, ask 'em that. If they can come up with anything remotely within their jurusdiction, vote for 'em."

- a Biased BBC commenter known as 'Alton Benes'

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Weapons of mass destruction are a great force for human fellowship.

- Brian Micklethwait

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Without any disturbance to the process of modern government, the House of Commons could easily be filled with people resembling the extras in one of Mr Romero’s zombie films.
- Dr. Sean Gabb

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The various left-wing ninnies who are running around bleating about theocracy are, in effect, hoist on their own petard. Having spent generations destroying the idea of limited government and creating an all-powerful national state, it ill becomes them to complain now that their tool is being turned to different ends.
- Robert Clayton Dean

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"America's militant agnostic minority has totally distorted the meaning of separation of church and state. It doesn't mean banning religion and religious values from the public square. It doesn't mean Howard Stern's off-color (and frequently off-the-wall) 'humor' is protected speech, while the free _expression of religion is banned. It means the United States will establish no official religion, while remaining equally hospitable to all religions -- and to those who practice none. Religious principle is not something to fear and loathe and banish from the public square; it is a code of conduct on which we can and should rely to guide our personal and civic behavior"
- singer Pat Boone, writing in the San Diego Union-Tribune.

Contrary to popular belief, "separation of church and state" is not found in the US Constitution. What is found in the Constitution is a prohibition on the establishment of a state church (which is why it is known as the Establishment Clause) reading thusly "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion..." The 'separation' meme comes from correspondence between Jefferson and Madison, but was never enacted in Constitutional language.

A nice, fairly even-handed intro can be found here.

Personally, I think that the issue of impending theocracy and separation of church and state evaporates, once you take seriously the US Constitution's limited grant of power to the national government. If the national government is held to its enumerated powers, then it lacks the power to implement into civil law most behavioral controls that various religions might promote. Since the federal government restricted to its enumerated powers has no Constitutional basis to, for example, ban abortions, it simply cannot be used for that purpose by the purported theocrats among us.

The various left-wing ninnies who are running around bleating about theocracy are, in effect, hoist on their own petard. Having spent generations destroying the idea of limited government and creating an all-powerful national state, it ill becomes them to complain now that their tool is being turned to different ends. Even so, it is astonishing that virtually none of them realize that the uses to which the Republicans want to put federal power are inevitable, once you establish an all-powerful state in a country that is actually quite Christian and conservative, all told. It is sad but unsurprising that none of them are willing to attack the problem at its root by calling for limited government. No, the only solution the statists can imagine is seizing power again, themselves.

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"If you really want to improve the lives of the poorest, forget all this 'kumbaya socialism' - which is a cocktail of bad economics and bad theology, held together by self-righteous candle-waving."
- Dr. Sean Gabb.

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WHEREAS, any members of the House of Representatives or the Senate of the Legislature of the State of Idaho who choose to vote "Nay" on this concurrent resolution are "FREAKIN' IDIOTS!" and run the risk of having the "Worst Day of Their Lives!"

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"The East Coast Forestry scheme should be abolished"
"Why?"
"Because it is a scheme"

- A conversation that took place between a senior minister of the government of New Zealand and an adviser who had been sent to "evaluate" said scheme, back in the glorious days of yore when New Zealand had been taken over by rabid free-marketers. (Sadly, New Zealand is these days once again run by some of the world's squishiest leftists).

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Is the Pope still Catholic?

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At Australian wineries it is possible to buy port in ten litre containers.

Alas, I found the prospect of getting this onto the plane and through British customs a little daunting, so I did not buy one. Which is a shame, as I would have been delighted to have been able to serve port out of a plastic container that looked more suitable for engine oil at my next dinner party.

- Michael Jennings

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And yes, it is eternally annoying that statists can't tell the difference between introducing competition and outsourcing a monopoly.

- Squander Two comments on this and it is then copied into a further Blognor Regis posting

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We are bloggers. Venetian blinds do not scare us.

- Scott Wickstein earlier this (Australian) evening.

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To hear conservatives indicate that a husband is not the person best qualified to decide what his wife would have wanted indicates a view of what marriage constitutes that seems rather at odds with the usual conservative obsession with the importance and gravity of that institution.
- Perry de Havilland

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I had intended to make the following excerpt from an essay by George Reisman, Education and the Racist Road to Barbarism, a Samizdata Quote of the Day:

Today, the critics of "Eurocentrism" rightly refuse to accept any form of condemnation for their racial membership. They claim to hold that race is irrelevant to morality and that therefore people of every race are as good as people of every other race. But then they assume that if people of all races are equally good, all civilizations and cultures must be equally good. They derive civilization and culture from race, just as the European racists did. And this is why they too must be called racists. They differ from the European racists only in that while the latter started with the judgment of an inferior civilization or culture and proceeded backwards to the conclusion of an inferior race, the former begin with the judgment of an equally good race and proceed forwards to the conclusion of an equally good civilization or culture. The error of both sets of racists is the same: the belief that civilization and culture are racially determined.

Here is another memorable passage:

For the case of a Westernized individual, I must think of myself. I am not of West European descent. All four of my grandparents came to the United States from Russia, about a century ago. Modern Western civilization did not originate in Russia and hardly touched it. The only connection my more remote ancestors had with the civilization of Greece and Rome was probably to help in looting and plundering it. Nevertheless, I am thoroughly a Westerner. I am a Westerner because of the ideas and values I hold. I have thoroughly internalized all of the leading features of Western civilization. They are now my ideas and my values. Holding these ideas and values as I do, I would be a Westerner wherever I lived and whenever I was born.

I believe that the decline in education is probably responsible for the widespread use of drugs. To live in the midst of a civilized society with a level of knowledge closer perhaps to that of primitive man than to what a civilized adult requires (which, regrettably, is the intellectual state of many of today's students and graduates) must be a terrifying experience, urgently calling for some kind of relief, and drugs may appear to many to be the solution.

I believe that this also accounts for the relatively recent phenomenon of the public's fear of science and technology. Science and technology are increasingly viewed in reality as they used to be humorously depicted in Boris Karloff or Bela Lugosi movies, namely, as frightening "experiments" going on in Frankenstein's castle, with large numbers of present-day American citizens casting themselves in a real-life role of terrified and angry Transylvanian peasants seeking to smash whatever emerges from such laboratories. This attitude is the result not only of lack of education in science, but more fundamentally, loss of the ability to think critically--an ability which contemporary education provides little or no basis for developing. Because of their growing lack of knowledge and ability to think, people are becoming increasingly credulous and quick to panic.

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It was so much easier to blame it on Them. It was bleakly depressing to think that They were Us. If it was Them, then nothing was anyone's fault. If it was us, what did that make Me? After all, I'm one of Us. I must be. I've certainly never thought of myself as one of Them. No one ever thinks of themselves as one of Them. We're always one of Us. It's Them that do the bad things.
- Terry Pratchett, Jingo

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I'm all for equality. I am. That's why I let my female staff work longer than the men so they can earn the same.

- the Pub Landlord on telly last night

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I always thought that NGO meant Non Governmental Organisation. How come any of them get money from the state?

- thanks to Natalie Solent for spotting a good point made at The Road to Euro Serfdom

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Visiting London without a camera is like visiting the Lake District without climbing boots.

- said to me by this northern lady yesterday in Parliament Square

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I was tired of being poor.
-Paul Rutherford, a sales associate at Fry's Electronics in Burbank, California, when I asked what prompted him to emigrate from the UK to the US

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If anything is evident it should be that, while nations might abide by formal rules on which they have agreed, they will never submit to the direction which international economic planning involves - that while they may agree on the rules of the game, they will never agree on the order of preference in which the rank of their own needs and the rate at which they are allowed to advance is fixed by majority vote. Even if, at first, the peoples should, under some illusion about the meaning of such proposals, agree to transfer such powers to an international authority, they would soon find out that what they have delegated is not merely a technical task, but the most comprehensive power over their very lives.

Hayek 'The Road to Serfdom' (Routledge edition: Page 236)

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The gods of Samizdata decree that linking to The Times of London is discouraged. But I am going to at least quote from it. Twice.

First, here is William Rees-Mogg on the EU Constitution, but stating a general rule:

So long as our Government takes us for fools, we have every reason to take them for liars.

Meanwhile, my former neighbour Mr George Thomas, on the letters page, demonstrates an application of the rule:

Tony Blair claims that "there is no greater civil liberty than to live free from terrorist attack".

He is wrong. If the 20th century teaches us anything it is that the greatest threat to civil liberty comes from governments that have been allowed to exercise excessive power over their own people. The greatest civil liberty is to live securely protected from government intrusion. We have seen that, while terrorists can threaten the lives of hundreds and maybe thousands, governments can oppress and maltreat entire peoples and can do this for decades.

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I bought a DVD of Nabucco the other day. It's the usual story: boy meets girl; girl's father attacks Jerusalem; Hebrews carted off to Babylon. "Sack, burn the temple," says the King of the Babylonians. "This cursed race shall be wiped from the earth." But first, let's all have a sing-song.

I saw it in Hong Kong a couple of years ago. It was the Latvian National Opera, so I was watching Latvians, in China, pretending to be Jews in Babylon, and singing in Italian. Well that's all right. I can take a joke.

- Harry Hutton last Friday. More about Nabucco here.

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It’s one thing to have people looking at your sex tapes, but having people reading your personal e-mails is a real invasion of privacy.
-The anonymous source who took the story of Paris Hilton's hacked BlackBerry to the press

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We bit off more than we could chew. They were just Cockney barrow boy spivs. Total thugs. I’ve never seen anyone less amenable to listening to our point of view.

- An unnamed member of a group of Greenpeace activists, who failed to stop trading on the International Petroleum Exchange yesterday, but who did succeed in having the crap beaten out of them by traders.

(Link via Tim Blair)

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Freedom of speech makes it much easier to spot the idiots.

- Jay Lessig, quoted in the Wall Street Journal's Best of the Web.

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As an ugly woman, I totally agree with everything that Brian is saying. However, Pynksparx, you are a bitchass and me and my posse are coming to kick your ass. I may be ugly as sin, hairy and around 200lbs, but at least I own my own corporation, have a cushy 6 figure job at another corporation, am rich, and YOU'RE NOT.

- Brian's Culture Blog (and Brian's Education Blog come to that) is still non-functioning for new postings, but old postings can still be reached via the archives and can still receive comments. That, from "Tali", concerning an August 23rd 2003 posting tactfully entitled Why expensive clothes rescue ugly men but not ugly women is the Culture Blog's most recent comment.

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People love to demonize greedy bosses who don't care for their workers. However, after going through this bout of downsizing my company, I know that my surviving employees are not unhappy about the change, because it was accompanied by a renewed sense of discipline and focus. Employees – or, at least, my employees – have understood and responded positively to their boss' determination to succeed financially. A boss who tolerates low financial returns will not deliver the wherewithal to provide raises and job security. In retrospect, my biggest sin was not in laying people off during my bout of downsizing – despite the pain involved – but in not demanding enough of them or myself previously. In short, I should have been more greedy ... I would have been more socially useful.

- Friedrich Blowhard last Saturday, in the course of explaining why he has been obliged to stop blogging for a while

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Funny that the same people to whom diversity is a holy word so often bemoan diversity of opinion as divisive. But in a democracy, politics are naturally divisive: you vote for this candidate and someone else votes for that one; you vote yes (or no) on a proposition and other citizens disagree. What's not divisive? Saddam and his 99.96% of the vote. That's how it went during the previous Iraqi election -- an illustration of the Latin roots of the word fascism, which actually means a bunch of sticks all tied together in one big unhappy unified bunch, and not (despite what many assume) any variation from p.c. received-wisdom regarding gay rights, affirmative action, bilingual education, etc. This election was different because it was divisive, which means it was better.
-Cathy Seipp

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By all means, wear pyjamas in the privacy of your own bedroom. Wear them round your own house, even. But I am frankly disturbed that the art of dressing oneself has transmogrified these days into a competition to see who looks most like they got their clothes out of a recycling bin. We don't all have to look like the poor and starving in order to persuade others that we care. It's a big lefty trend, and now is the time to reclaim the clothing-sphere as something capable of expressing more valuable ideas than, "I wouldn't wear a Gucci suit if you paid me." Improving your style isn't about getting different writing on your t-shirt. It's about conveying who you really are. You are not a sack of potatoes.

- Alice Bachini last Sunday (good to see she still knows how to spell pyjamas)

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For you to ask advice on the rules of love is no better than to ask advice on the rules of madness
- Terence

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"We're reckless arrogant stupid dicks. And the Film Actors Guild are pussies. And Kim Jong Il is an asshole. Pussies don't like dicks because pussies get fucked by dicks, but dicks also fuck assholes. Assholes who just wanna shit on everything. Pussies may think that they can deal with assholes their way, but the only thing that can fuck an asshole is a dick, with some balls. The problem with dicks is that sometimes they fuck too much, or fuck when it isn't appropriate, and it takes a pussy to show 'em that. But sometimes pussies get so full of shit that they become assholes themselves. Because pussies are only an inch and a half away from assholes. I don't know much in this crazy crazy world. But I do know that if you don't let us fuck this asshole, we're gonna have our dicks and our pussies all covered in shit"

- said by a member of Team America in the movie of that name. Says Christopher Price, who posted this in a comment here this morning: "Its got one of the best explanations of US foreign policy that I've seen in a long time. Kind of like what Condaleezza Rice was saying yesterday, but more succinct."

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"Down with Kim Jong-il. Let's all rise to drive out the dictatorial regime.''

- written on a Kim Jong-il poster in a North Korean factory

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Winner libertarianism is about how to make the world better, and how the world is, at least in some ways, actually getting better. Winner libertarianism explains how I can make my life a success. I am free. Yes, governments do bad things, as do others, but they can be confronted, resisted, criticised, and sometimes - quite often actually - defeated.

- Brian Micklethwait (PDF)

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We have said it before, but it bears repetition, that the coming EU referendum campaign will be the first internet campaign in our history and I remain convinced that the material on the net will have a decisive impact on the course of the campaign.

- Richard North, already quoted and linked to by Patrick Crozier as a response to my gloomier posting here

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In these State of the State speeches, other governors often begin by listing their accomplishments of the past year. Well, I will do the same.

The year before I took office as governor, California had 300 days of sunshine. Last year, under my administration, we had 312 days of sunshine. That's what true leadership is all about.

Governor of California, Arnold Schwarzenegger, showing some political leadership in his "State of the State" address.

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[T]here is not much future in being a gatekeeper when the walls are down.

- the final words of this article by Jack Kelly about the travails of old school journalism

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Environmentalism is the banging shithouse door that the socialists are finally going to find themselves able to barge through and screw us all.
-Anonymous

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How I feel about Africans is not relevant. Even if I hate them, it is not relevant. Trade barriers are relevant, and removing them is crucial.
-David Carr

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The goose is nothing, but man has made it an instrument for the output of a marvellous product, a kind of living hothouse in which there grows the supreme fruit of gastronomy.
-Charles Gerard, L'Ancienne Alsace À Table

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These exciting and unexplained cleaning events have kept Opportunity in really great shape.

- Mars rover team leader Jim Erickson at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, explaining that "something" has been cleaning the solar panels of the rover Opportunity while it was parked during the Martian night, and that as a consequence its power levels are much higher than was expected at this stage of the mission. Two observations. (a) It looks like the Martians are friendly. (b) I wish I could have "exciting and unexplained cleaning events" in my bathroom.

(Link via slashdot).

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Self defence, wrote William Blackstone, the 18th-century jurist, is a "natural right that no government can deprive people of, since no government can protect the individual in his moment of need". This Government insists upon having a monopoly on the use of force, but can only impose it upon law-abiding people. By practically eliminating self defence, it has removed the greatest deterrent to crime: a people able to defend themselves.
- Joyce Lee Malcolm

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This is depressing. Especially when I think that I survived communism without ever being fingerprinted...
- Adriana Cronin

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Next time I'm at a party and I meet someone who works for a publishing company, I'm going to get him in a headlock and push his face into a cake.

- Some consumer feedback from Harry Hutton – something about British books being made with the wrong sort of paper.

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Some people will forever be chasing the chimera of better government. This shields them from the idea that the only option is less government
- Peter Gordon

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There are many men of principle in both parties in America, but there is no party of principle.
- Alexis de Tocqueville

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I said that the power of detention [without charge or trial] is at present confined to foreigners and I would not like to give the impression that all that was necessary was to extend the power to United Kingdom citizens as well. In my opinion, such a power in any form is not compatible with our constitution. The real threat to the life of the nation, in the sense of a people living in accordance with its traditional laws and political values, comes not from terrorism but from laws such as these. That is the true measure of what terrorism may achieve. It is for Parliament to decide whether to give the terrorists such a victory.

Lord Hoffman's opinion in A(FC) and others (FC) (Appellants) v. Secretary of State for the Home Department (Respondent), also reported by the BBC.

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"It is outrageous, and amazing, that the first free and general elections in the history of the Arab nation are to take place in January: in Iraq, under the auspices of American occupation, and in Palestine, under the auspices of the Israeli occupation. . . ."

- Salameh Nematt
Washington bureau chief for the London-based daily Al Hayat November 25

Quoted by Bill Kristol in the Weekly Standard,

[Thanks to Instapundit for the pointer]

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A friendship founded on business is a good deal better than a business founded on friendship.
- John D. Rockefeller

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Two years ago a South Korean woman reportedly asked a North Korean why President Kim Jong Il was the only fat man in the country, and was detained for several days as a result.

- from a Christian Science Monitor report about a small tourist enclave in North Korea, run by the Hyundai Coporation of South Korea and visited mainly by South Koreans.

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Yeah. I just realized something. Something that really never occurred to me before. We’re going to win.

- Buffy the Vampire Slayer. (Probably really Joss Whedon).

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One senior administration official said Treasury Secretary John W. Snow can stay as long as he wants, provided it is not very long.

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Do you really think that if this were a symbol for a man's most sensitive organ, we would cut one end and set the other end on fire?
- Ray, a character from Blowing Smoke movie, talking about cigars...

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'Consultancy' is the middle class word for unemployment.
-Richard Samuel, highly paid consultant, as related to me by former Daily Telegraph city editor and current business commentator Michael Becket

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No interrupting when I am interrupting!
- Adriana Cronin

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Style is usually all that matters, when you have no control over the substance.
- Adriana Cronin, in conversation about French culture

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What makes dictators dictators is not that they don't believe in the power of the majority but that they don't believe in the rights of the individual.
- Adriana Cronin

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Blogs are the c[e]rebrum of the Net.
- Doc Searls

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If Moses had turned right instead of left, the Jews could have had the oil, and the Arabs would have got the oranges.
- Harry Hutton

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Grown men, he told himself, in flat contradiction of centuries of accumulated evidence about the way grown men behave, do not behave like this.

- from So Long, and Thanks for all the Fsh by Douglas Adams.

(We miss you Douglas)

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If this bothers you, please sod off and go read Atrios or Kos
- Instapundit

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Because she'd never heard of me, she made the quite reasonable assumption that I was a Dante writer - one so new or obscure that she'd never seen me mentioned in a journal of literary criticism, and never bumped into me at a conference. Therefore, I couldn't be making any money at it. Therefore, I was most likely teaching somewhere. All perfectly logical. In order to set her straight, I had to let her know that the reason she'd never heard of me was because I was famous.

- Neal Stephenson, describing an encounter with a "literary" writer in a quite wonderful interview over at slashdot. His answer to the question "In a fight between you and William Gibson, who would win?" is so magnificent that it would make me go and buy all his books if I didn't own them already.

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The Mesopotamian writes about the US Presidential Election. This quote is also quoted by Alice in Texas (also of Samizdata). It is, you might say, another letter to voters in America (see immediately below)..

So, I have been, personally very attentive to the debates and positions of both candidates, and I have some thoughts which I would like to share with you, my American friends. To start with, Senator Kerry may be a very good man and quite patriotic. Also we have to respect the almost 50% of the American people who lean towards the democrats. I don't know much about domestic issues in the States so naturally, as might be expected, the position of any Iraqi would be mainly influenced by the issue that most concerns him. Thus, regardless of all the arguments of both candidates the main problem is that President Bush now represents a symbol of defiance against the terrorists and it is a fact, that all the enemies of America, with the terrorists foremost, are hoping for him to be deposed in the upcoming elections. That is not to say that they like the democrats, but that they will take such an outcome as retreat by the American people, and will consequently be greatly encouraged to intensify their assault. The outcome here on the ground in Iraq seems to be almost obvious. In case President Bush loses the election there would be a massive upsurge of violence, in the belief, rightly or wrongly, by the enemy, that the new leadership is more likely to "cut and run" to use the phrase frequently used by some of my readers. And they would try to inflict as heavy casualties as possible on the American forces to bring about a retreat and withdrawal. It is crucial for them to remove this insurmountable obstacle which stands in their way. They fully realize that with continued American and allies' commitment, they have no hope of achieving anything.

On the other hand if President Bush is reelected, this will prove to them that the American people are not intimidated despite all their brutality, and that their cause is quite futile. Yes there is little doubt that an election victory by President Bush would be a severe blow and a great disappointment for all the terrorists in the World and all the enemies of America.