Tag: quote

Standing strong

Ken Livingstone, Mayor of London:

This was not a terrorist attack against the mighty and the powerful. It was not aimed at Presidents or Prime Ministers. It was aimed at ordinary, working-class Londoners, black and white, Muslim and Christian, Hindu and Jew, young and old. It was an indiscriminate attempt to slaughter, irrespective of any considerations for age, for class, for religion, or whatever.

That isn’t an ideology, it isn’t even a perverted faith – it is just an indiscriminate attempt at mass murder and we know what the objective is. They seek to divide Londoners. They seek to turn Londoners against each other. I said yesterday to the International Olympic Committee, that the city of London is the greatest in the world, because everybody lives side by side in harmony. Londoners will not be divided by this cowardly attack. They will stand together in solidarity alongside those who have been injured and those who have been bereaved and that is why I’m proud to be the mayor of that city.
Our thoughts and prayers are with the families of those killed and wounded in London.

Apparently, I’m a dangerous citizen

“You need only reflect that one of the best ways to get yourself a reputation as a dangerous citizen these days is to go about repeating the very phrases which our founding fathers used in the struggle for independence.” —Charles Beard

A Brit on Bush

“In person Mr. Bush is so far removed from the caricature of the dim, war-mongering Texas cowboy of global popular repute that it shakes one’s faith in the reliability of the modern media” — Gerard Baker, U.S. editor of the London Times, after meeting last week in the Oval Office with President Bush. (Via Political Diary.)

A Founding Father on property

“The moment the idea is admitted into society that property is not as sacred as the laws of God, and that there is not a force of law and public justice to protect it, anarchy and tyranny commence.” –John Adams
I’ve said it once, and I’ll say it again: the prescience exhibited by the Founding Fathers never ceases to amaze me.

What laws should be

Politicians of all stripes, take note:

“Laws are made for men of ordinary understanding and should, therefore, be construed by the ordinary rules of common sense. Their meaning is not to be sought for in metaphysical subtleties which may make anything mean everything or nothing at pleasure.” –Thomas Jefferson

Absolutely brilliant

Well, we might as well go for the trifecta:

Yesterday we wondered what David French’s “brilliant answer” was when a Cornell Law School job interviewer asked him, how, in light of his evangelical background, “is it possible for you to effectively teach gay students?” French e-mailed us with the answer:

I was surprised and pleased to see that you quoted from my talk to the American Enterprise Institute regarding intellectual diversity (or the lack thereof) and censorship on campus. I noted that you want to know my “absolutely brilliant answer” to the improper interview question. Before I tell you, I just want to make clear that the “absolutely brilliant” comment was made tongue-in-cheek in the speech and was played for laughs. I’m not really quite so full of myself. The truth is that I was fortunate to get the job perhaps in spite of my answer. I responded to the interviewer with the following statement:

“I believe that all human beings are created in the image of God and should be treated with dignity and respect, regardless of whether I agree with their personal conduct or beliefs. I will treat all my students well, but I can’t guarantee that they will treat me well when they learn that I’m a dreaded ‘Christian conservative.'”

She responded with a long silence and then said, “I never thought of things from that perspective.”

There are lot of perspectives from which those who run our institutions of higher learning have never thought of things.

Quote of the day

As seen on the Laura Ingraham web site this morning:

“At this point I would rather have a right-wing Christian decide my fate than an ACLU member.”

— Eleanor Smith, a disabled, self-described liberal agnostic lesbian

Looking at you, bureaucrats

“I think we have more machinery of government than is necessary, too many parasites living on the labor of the industrious.” –Thomas Jefferson

Grayism

I figured since so many people out there like to poke fun at George W.’s verbal blunders, turnabout was fair play:

“My vision is to make the most diverse state on earth, and we have people from every planet on the earth in this state.” –Gray Davis, California governor, at a press conference; quoted in Time magazine, Vol. 162, No. 13, September 29, 2003, p. 15

Regarding those intolerant, narrow-minded Christians…

“Being a lover of freedom, when the (Nazi) revolution came, I looked to the universities to defend it, knowing that they had always boasted of their devotion to the cause of truth; but no, the universities were immediately silenced. Then I looked to the great editors of the newspapers, whose flaming editorials in days gone by had proclaimed their love of freedom; but they, like the universities, were silenced in a few short weeks.
“…Only the Church stood squarely across the path of Hitler’s campaign for suppressing truth. I never had any special interest in the Church before, but now I feel a great affection and admiration for it because the Church alone has had the courage and persistence to stand for intellectual and moral freedom. I am forced to confess that what I once despised I now praise unreservedly.” –Albert Einstein, from Kampi und Zeugnis der bekennenden Kirche