“No matter what happens, somebody will find a way to take it too seriously.” – Dave Barry, “25 Things I Have Learned in 50 Years,” Dave Barry Turns 50 “An endless vista of false teeth with nothing to bite.” – Comment attributed to Tory MP Robert “Bob” Boothby during the debate over establishment of Britain’s National Health Service “He is a good and a great man: but he forgets, pitilessly, the feelings and claims of little people, in pursuit of his own large views. It is better, therefore, for the insignificant to keep out of his way; lest in his progress he should trample them down.” – Charlotte Bronte, Jane Eyre “I should sooner live in a society governed by the first 2,000 names in the Boston telephone directory than in a society governed by the 2,000 faculty members of Harvard University.” – William F. Buckley (Yale class of 1950 by the way), Rumbles Left and Right “Marijuana is a very dangerous drug. Some people smoke it just once and go directly into politics.” – Comedian Barry Crimmins “I experimented with marijuana a time or two, and I didn’t like it. I didn’t inhale.” – Bill Clinton, CBS TV Candidates Forum , Sunday March 29, 1992 “That’s the trouble with Democrats. Even when they do something wrong, they don’t do it right.” – Johnny Carson, The Tonight Show , Monday March 30, 1992
Wilson told the committee almost the opposite. When asked if he could make a decision that would adversely affect GM, Wilson said yes but that it was hard for him to imagine that situation “because for years I thought what was good for our country was good for General Motors, and vice versa.” (Wilson was confirmed by a vote of 77 to 6.) I’ve also tried to leave out the quotations that everybody knows already. Thus there is no... “I don’t belong to an organized political party. I am a Democrat.” – Will Rogers Or... “There is no distinctly native American criminal class except Congress.” – Mark Twain Not that these aren’t clever and insightful. But no one wants used food, even when it’s food for thought. Nonetheless I’m sure some of the following will be familiar, especially to longtime American Consequences readers who will note that I myself have, in the past, at one time or another, cited almost all of these quotes. But don’t think of them as pre-digested. Think of them as the kind of leftovers that – like a good beef stew – get better with reheating. “If worthless men are sometimes at the head of affairs, it is, I believe, because worthless men are at the tail and in the middle.” – John Adams, letter to Benjamin Rush
American Consequences
65
Made with FlippingBook - professional solution for displaying marketing and sales documents online