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. . . SMOKING see: "CIGARETTES, CIGARS" see: "TOBACCO" see: "HEALTH" for other related links "I have been an idiot," he said. "I now accept that I am, in large part, paying the price for that stupidity. The message from me to everyone is please don't be a fool like me, don't keep smoking, try and give it up and if you are young and you haven't started, don't start." --Jim Bacon (19502004) Premier of Tasmania [19982004]. On resigning his position in February of 2004 after contracting lung cancer. Now that I'm gone, I tell you: don't smoke, whatever you do, don't smoke. --Yul Brynner (1920?1985) Actor born in Russia. (In a posthumous anti-smoking commercial.) It has been said that cigarettes are the only product that, if used according to the manufacturer's instructions, have a very high chance of killing you. --Michael Buerk (1946 ) British broadcaster and journalist. In "Sunday Times" [11 July 1999]. I must point out that my rule of life prescribed as an absolutely sacred rite smoking cigars and also the drinking of alcohol before, after, and if need be during all meals and in the intervals between them. --Winston Churchill (18741965) British Conservative statesman and Prime Minister [19401945, 19511955]. At lunch with the Arab leader Ibn Saud, when he heard that the king's religion forbade smoking and alcohol. - "When Worse Than A Woman Who Voted Was One Who Smoked" By Cynthia Crossen January 7, 2008 _The Wall Street Journal_ Mrs. William P. Orr was riding in a car on Fifth Avenue in New York City in 1904 when she lit up a cigarette. A policeman on a bicycle ordered her to put it out. "You can't do that on Fifth Avenue while I'm patrolling here," he told her. Until the late 1920s, a woman who smoked in public was not only considered vulgar, she risked a warning from the police. In 1922, a New York alderman, Peter McGuinness, proposed a city ordinance that would prohibit women from smoking in hotels, restaurants or other public places. "Young fellows go into our restaurants to find women folks sucking cigarettes," the alderman argued. "What happens? The young fellows lose all respect for the women, and the next thing you know the young fellows, vampired by these smoking women, desert their homes, their wives and children, rob their employers and even commit murder so that they can get money to lavish on these smoking women." A Washington Post editorial in 1914 declared, "A man may take out a woman who smokes for a good time, but he won't marry her, and if he does, he won't stay married." [...] Some men who disapproved of women smoking thought it might be the lesser of two evils. "If it were a question between their smoking and their voting, and they would promise to stay at home and smoke," Sen. Joseph Bailey of Texas said in 1918, "I would say let them smoke." - Nazi propaganda noted that while fascist leaders Hitler, Mussolini, and Franco were all non-smokers, their enemies Roosevelt and Churchill did smoke (as did Stalin). --Charles Freund, "Hitler Was Greedy" [8 August 2002] - If you won't give up smoking for the sake of the wife and kids, then at least give it up for the cat. American researchers claim to have discovered that passive smoking affects felines as much as it does human beings, and have expressed the hope that endangering the family pet might shame some addicts, immune to the effect they are having on their immediate family, into kicking the habit. Researchers at Tufts University, Massachusetts, reporting in the American Journal of Epidemiology, say that living in a household of smokers considerably increases a cat's risk of acquiring feline lymphoma, which kills three quarters of its victims within a year. --Alan Hamilton and Laura Peek, "Passive smoking can kill your cat." _The Times_ [1 August 2002] - Wilhelmus Kieft . . . had been greatly annoyed by the factious meetings of the good people of New Amsterdam, but, observing that on these occasions the pipe was ever in their mouth, he began to think that the pipe was at the bottom of the affair, and that there was some mysterious affinity between politics and tobacco smoke. Determined to strike at the root of the evil, he began forthwith to rail at tobacco as a noxious, nauseous weed, filthy in all its uses; and as to smoking, he denounced it as a heavy tax on the public pocket a vast consumer of time, a great encourager of idleness, and a deadly bane to the prosperity and morals of the people. Finally he issued an edict, prohibiting the smoking of tobacco throughout the New Netherlands. Ill-fated Kieft! Had he lived in the present age and attempted to check the unbounded license of the press, he could not have struck more sorely upon the sensibilities of the [people]. The pipe, in fact, was the great organ of reflection and deliberation of the New Netherlander. It was his constant companion and solace: was he gay, he smoked; was he sad, he smoked; his pipe was never out of his mouth; it was part of his physiognomy; without it his best friends would not know him. Take away his pipe? You might as well take away his nose! --Washington Irving (17831859) American author, essayist, and travel book writer. _A Knickerbockers History of New York_ [1809] - Many people find smoking objectionable. I myself find many even more things objectionable. I do not like aftershave lotion, adults who roller- skate, children who speak French, or anyone who is unduly tanned. I do not, however, go around enacting legislation and putting up signs. --Fran Lebowitz (1946 ) American humorist. No, my sulky fear is that the Mayor's crusade, if successful, will raze the aesthetic of New York City's saloons the scent and scene that has made the city irresistible to poets, models, bon vivants, Bowery bums, pizza-makers, Eurotrash, painters, con men, newspapermen, torch singers, aspiring actors, and all those skinny kids from the hinterlands wanting to be one or two or all of the above. Banning saloon- smoking in New York is like banning lunch in Paris. You're taking a bite out of its soul. --Jonathan Miles "My Bar-Stool Blues: How Can a Saloon Be Smoke-Free?" _The New York Observer_ [10 November 2002] Something is happening to America, not something dangerous but something all too safe. I see it in my lifelong friends. I am a child of the "baby boom", a generation not known for its sane or cautious approach to things. Yet suddenly my peers are giving up drinking, giving up smoking, cutting down on coffee, sugar, and salt. They will not eat red meat and go now to restaurants whose menus have caused me to stand on a chair yelling, "Flopsy, Mopsy, Cottontail, dinner is served!" This from the generation of LSD, Weather Underground, and Altamont Rock Festival! And all in the name of safety! Our nation has withstood many divisions North and South, black and white, labor and management but I do not know if the country can survive division into smoking and non-smoking sections. --P.J. O'Rourke (1947- ) American political satirist. _The confessions, adventures, essays and (other) outrages of P.J. O'Rourke_, London (Picador), 60 Smoking . . . kills you, and if you are killed, you have lost a very important part of your life. --Brooke Shields (b. 1965) American actress. Testimony at the House of Representatives [25 June 1981]. I smoked my first cigarette and kissed my first woman on the same day. I have never had time for tobacco since. --Arturo Toscanini (18671957) Italian conductor. In "Observer" [30 June 1946]. Tobacco is a filthy weed, That from the devil does proceed; It drains your purse, it burns your clothes, And makes a chimney of your nose. --Benjamin Waterhouse (17541846) American physician and scientist, a pioneer in smallpox vaccination {EB}. From "Oliver Wendell Holmes." When celluloid and fags first embarked on their epic journey together, cigarettes signified all kinds of things. Sometimes they signified that you were cool (Katharine Hepburn in The Philadelphia Story); other times they implied that you were a red-hot she-cat (Rita Hayworth in Gilda). They were called upon to denote age, wisdom, rough and toughness, weary nonchalance (Humphrey Bogart), and simultaneously though not usually in the same film to bestow youthful, almost adolescent, innocence, naivety and elfin charm (Audrey Hepburn). In old movies, in other words, everyone with a personality smokes. Not smoking in a 1940s film is like being black in a 1990s film: it means you're evil, or you're not very important and you'll probably die halfway through. --Zoe Williams, "Fag End of Fashion" _The New Statesman_ [19 April 2004] ----- misocapnist (noun) [mi-sah-'kζp-nist ] A smoke-hater.  . . see: "MISANTHROPY" see: "NASTINESS" Though no man hates himself, the coldest among us having too much self-love for that, yet most men unconsciously judge the world from themselves, and it will be very generally found that those who sneer habitually at human nature, and affect to despise it, are among its worst and least pleasant samples. --Charles Dickens (18121870) English novelist. _Nicholas Nickleby_, ch. 44 [1839] My family pride is something inconceivable. I can't help it. I was born sneering. --W. S. Gilbert (18361911) English writer of comic and satirical verse. _The Mikado_, act I [1885] Who can refute a sneer? --William Paley (17431805) English theologian and philosopher. _Principles of Moral and Political Philosophy_, vol II, bk. V, ch. 9 [1785] Damn with faint praise, assent with civil leer, And, without sneering, teach the rest to sneer; Willing to wound, and yet afraid to strike, Just hint a fault, and hesitate dislike; Alike reserv'd to blame or to commend, A tim'rous foe, and a suspicious friend; Dreading e'en fools, by flatterers besieged, And so obliging that he ne'er oblig'd; Like Cato, give his little Senate laws, And sit attentive to his own applause. --Alexander Pope (16881744) English poet. "An Epistle to Dr Arbuthnot" [1735] The poorest way to face life is to face it with a sneer. --Theodore Roosevelt (18581919) American Republican statesman and President [19011909]. ----- snide (adj.) [snId] In speaking of what someone says or writes: condescendingly malicious, sneering, snooty. . . see: "ARROGANCE" see: "CONCEIT" see: "EGOTISM" see: "HUBRIS" see: "MORAL SUPERIORITY" see: "OVER-ESTIMATING OURSELVES" see: "VANITY" A spirit of national masochism prevails, encouraged by an effete corps of impudent snobs who characterize themselves as intellectuals. --Spiro Agnew (19181996) The 39th Vice President of the U.S.. Speech at Republican fund-raising dinner, New Orleans [19 October 1969]. My family pride is something inconceivable. I can't help it. I was born sneering. --W. S. Gilbert (18361911) English writer of comic and satirical verse. _The Mikado_, act I [1885] A highbrow is the kind of person who looks at a sausage and thinks of Picasso. --Sir A.P. (Alan Patrick) Herbert (18901971) English writer and humorist. _Uncommon Law_ [1935] Haughty people seem to me to have, like the dwarfs, the stature of a child and the face of a man. --Joseph Joubert (17541824) French philosopher. Attributed in A.N. Coleman _Proverbial Wisdom: Proverbs, Maxims and Ethical Sentences_, p. 226 [3rd ed. 1903]. I'm not a snob. Ask anybody. Well, anybody who matters. --Simon Le Bon He who meanly admires mean things is a Snob. --William Makepeace Thackeray (18111863) English novelist. _The Book of Snobs_, ch. 2 [1848] ----- haughty (adj.) ['haw-tee] Proud, self important, snobbish, arrogant. ;void(0)) SNOW . . see: "SKIING" see: "NATURE" for other related links A snowdrift is a beautiful thing if it doesn't lie across the path you have to shovel or block the road that leads to your destination. --Hal Borland [Harold Glen] (19001978) American author. _Sundial of the Seasons_ [1964], "SnowdriftsJanuary 26th" Over the river and through the wood, To grandfather's house we go; The horse knows the way To carry the sleigh, Through the white and drifted snow. --Lydia Marie Child (18021880) Amercan abolitionist and suffragist. _Flowers for Children_ [18441846], st. I "Thanksgiving Day" My gal was as pure as the driven snow but she drifted. --Thomas Aloysius "TAD" Dorgan (18771929) American cartoonist and sportswriter. "New York Evening Journal" [19 December 1923] The hard soil and four months of snow make the inhabitiant of the northern temperate zones wiser and abler than the fellow who enjoys the fixed smile of the tropics. --Ralph Waldo Emerson (18031882) American philosopher and poet. "Prudence" _Essays_, First Series [1841] Whose woods these are I think I know. His house is in the village, though; He will not see me stopping here To watch his woods fill up with snow. --Robert Frost (18741963) American poet. "Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening" l. I [1923] When I no longer thrill to the first snow of the season, I'll know I'm growing old. --Claudia "Lady Bird" Johnson (19122007) First Lady of the U.S. [19631969]. Quoted in "Reader's Digest" [1983]. A few light taps upon the pane made him turn to the window. It had begun to snow again. He watched sleepily the flakes, silver and dark, falling obliquely against the lamplight. The time had come for him to set out on his journey westward. Yes, the newspapers were right: snow was general all over Ireland. It was falling on every part of the dark central plain, on the treeless hills, falling softly upon the Bog of Allen and, farther westward, softly falling into the dark mutinous Shannon waves. It was falling, too, upon every part of the lonely churchyard on the hill where Michael Furey lay buried. It lay thickly drifted on the crooked crosses and headstones, on the spears of the little gate, on the barren thorns. His soul swooned slowly as he heard the snow falling faintly through the universe and faintly falling, like the descent of their last end, upon all the living and the dead. --James Joyce (18821941) Irish novelist. "The Dead" The aging process has you firmly in its grasp if you never get the urge to throw a snowball. --attributed to Doug Larson. - One New Year's Eve I was at a party in a farmhouse on a hill above a small Vermont village. By midnight the snow had stopped and the moon had come out. It was one degree below zero. Almost everyone at the party had gone outside to look at the new snow. All around was a silence so total that the world seemed not merely cleansed but newly created. Nowhere was there the sound of a car in that hushed world, or so much as a dog barking. The clear moonlight revealed no mess either. Men live in Vermont: no doubt there were beer cans and even abandoned refrigerators within easy walking distance. They were nullified by the snow. To be outdoors on such a night is to experience that awe which modern man is said to have lost the capacity for, but which he has really just ceased to look for in the right places. --Noel Perrin _Vermont: In All Weathers_ - The first fall of snow is not only an event, it is a magical event. You go to bed in one kind of world and wake up in another quite different, and if this is not enchantment then where is it to be found? --J.B. [John Boynton] Priestley (18941984) English novelist, playwright and critic. _Apes and Angels_ [1928] "First Snow" I am younger each year at the first snow. When I see it, suddenly in the air, all little and white and moving; then I am in love again and very young and I believe everything. --Anne Sexton (19281974) American poet who won the 1966 Pulitzer Prize for poetry. In Anne Sexton, _A Self-Portrait in Letters_ [1977]. ----- niveous (adj.) ['niv-ee-κs] nivosity (noun) Resembling snow, snow-like.  SOCCER . . see: "SPORTS" for related links If God had wanted man to play soccer, He wouldn't have given us arms. --Mike Ditka (1939 ) American football player and coach. Football, wherein is nothing but beastly fury, and extreme violence, whereof proceedeth hurt, and conseqently rancour and malice do remain with them that be wounded. --Thomas Elyot (14991546) English diplomat and author. _Book of the Governor_ [1531] (On his controversial goal against England in the 1986 World Cup:) The goal was scored a little bit by the hand of God and another bit by the head of Maradona. --Diego Maradona (1960 ) Argentine football player. In "Guardian" [1 July 1986]. Oh, he football crazy, he's football mad And the football it has robbed him o'the wee bit sense he had. And it would take a dozen skivvies, his clothes to wash and scrub, Since our Jock became a member of that terrible football club. --Jimmie McGregor (1932 ) Scottish singer and songwriter. "Football Crazy" [1960 song] - You might accuse me of having to politicize everything, but, in my hometown, soccer was very definitely a project of the Left. Our teachers and betters thought it was good for us, like vegetables, and that it made us better world citizens. They were appalled that Americans didn't play it that we were out of step (literally, I guess) with the rest of the world. They repeatedly emphasized the political virtues of soccer: that you needed very little equipment to play it; that those of any size could play it; that the poor could play it; that you didn't get hurt in it (at least as much as in that terrible beef-eating football our football, that is); that the beloved masses of Latin America played it; that it promoted one world. It was sort of the athletic equivalent of vegetarianism. [...] I mentioned vegetarianism. More to the point, soccer was the athletic equivalent of the metric system. The metric system was another foreign thing that was forced on us against our will, by our teachers and betters. And the arguments for it were similar, not to say identical, to those in favor of soccer: The rest of the world was doing it, why not America? Stubborn, arrogant, chest-thumping, nose-thumbing America, going it alone again, not getting in step. I didn't want to thump my chest or thumb my nose, actually; I just wanted to keep miles, pounds, gallons, and so on. [...] And I this was as a junior-high-schooler was puzzled by one thing: Our teachers and betters were always celebrating difference, and urging it on us. But when it came to America, and American exceptionalism, difference was damned. I, however, really did believe in Vive la diffιrence and in the American differences that were part of it. --Jay Nordlinger, "The Politics of Parading" [10 June 2002] - To say that these men paid their shillings to watch twenty- two hirelings kick a ball is merely to say that a violin is wood and catgut, that "Hamlet" is so much paper and ink. For a shilling the Bruddersford United AFC offered you Conflict and Art. --J.B. [John Boynton] Priestley (18941984) English novelist, playwright and critic. _Good Companions_ [1929] Some people think football is a matter of life and death. . . I can assure them it is much more serious than that. --Bill Shankly (19131981) Scottish footballer. In "Sunday Times" [4 October 1981]. - ^^ A Bolton [England] woman petitioning for a divorce was asked to give an example of her husband's behaviour. 'Last year Harry asked me if I had anything to discuss before the football season began,' she said. _The Folio Book of Humorous Anecdotes_ Introduced by Edward Leeson [2005], "Crime and the Law" ^^ - The next six quotations regard the trading of superstar David Beckham footballer (soccer) from Manchester United to Real Madrid in 2003: Never, never, never, never. Nothing, never, never, never. Not now. Not ever. --Real Madrid president Florentino Perez, April 29. [when asked if David Beckham would be traded to Real Madrid.] I am delighted he [Perez] has confirmed that. We at Manchester United never had any intention of selling David --Peter Kenyon, April 29. I'd rather jack it in than leave United. They're the only team I've ever wanted to play for. --David Beckham, June 15 Manchester United today reached agreement for the transfer of David Beckham to Real Madrid for a fee of 35 million euros. --Official Statement by Manchester United, June 17. I recognise that this is an amazing opportunity for me at this stage in my career and a unique and exciting experience for my family. I know that I will always regret it later in life if I had turned down the chance to play at another great club like Real Madrid. --David Beckham, June 17. Show me the money! --line from "Jerry Maguire" [1996 film] -  SOCIAL SECURITY . . see: "MONEY" for related links see: "POLITICS" for related links It [Social Security] cannot remain static. Changes in our population, in our working habits, and in our standard of living require constant revision. --John Fitzgerald Kennedy (19171963) American Democratic statesman, President of the U.S. [19611963]. [30 June 1961] - "The National Ponzi Scheme" by Walter E. Williams [4 February 2009] The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) was set up to combat fraudulent practices. The SEC's website explains that "Ponzi schemes are a type of illegal pyramid scheme named for Charles Ponzi, who duped thousands of New England residents into investing in a postage stamp speculation scheme back in the 1920s." It goes on to say, "Decades later, the Ponzi scheme continues to work on the 'rob-Peter-to-pay-Paul' principle, as money from new investors is used to pay off earlier investors until the whole scheme collapses." That is how the SEC described the recent Bernard Madoff $50 billion Ponzi scheme, "a stunning fraud that appears to be of epic proportions." A Ponzi scheme does not generate any wealth whatsoever; that is why it ultimately collapses. As Circuit Judge Anderson said in the 1922 Lowell v. Brown case, the Ponzi scheme was "simply the old fraud of paying the earlier comers out of the contributions of the later comers." So long as the number of late comers you might call them suckers grows, the fraudulent scheme has life. We have a national Ponzi scheme where Congress collects about $785 billion in Social Security taxes from about 163 million workers to send out $585 billion to 50 million Social Security recipients. Social Security's trustees tell us that the surplus goes into a $2.2 trillion trust fund to meet future obligations. The problem is whatever difference between Social Security taxes and benefits paid out is spent by Congress. What the Treasury Department does is give the Social Security Trust Fund non-marketable "special issue government securities" that are simply bookkeeping entries that are IOUs. According to Social Security trustee estimates, around 2016 the amount of Social Security benefits paid will exceed taxes collected. That means one of two things, or both, must happen: Congress will raise taxes and/or slash promised Social Security benefits. Each year the situation will get worse since the number of retirees is predicted to increase relative to the number in the workforce paying taxes. In 1940, there were 42 workers per retiree, in 1950 there were 16, today there are 3 and in 20 or 30 years there will be 2 or fewer workers per retiree. Social Security is unsustainable because it is not meeting the first order condition of a Ponzi scheme, namely expanding the pool of suckers. Social Security has been one congressional lie after another since its inception. Here's what a 1936 Social Security pamphlet said: "After the first 3 years that is to say, beginning in 1940 you will pay, and your employer will pay, 1.5 cents for each dollar you earn, up to $3,000 a year ... beginning in 1943, you will pay 2 cents, and so will your employer, for every dollar you earn for the next 3 years. ... And finally, beginning in 1949, twelve years from now, you and your employer will each pay 3 cents on each dollar you earn, up to $3,000 a year. That is the most you will ever pay." The pamphlet also said, "Beginning November 24, 1936, the United States government will set up a Social Security account for you. ... The checks will come to you as a right." That's another lie. In Flemming vs Nestor (1960), the U.S. Supreme court held that you have no "accrued property rights" to a Social Security check. That means Congress can do anything it wishes with Social Security. There is little or nothing that can be done to prevent the economic and political chaos that will result from the collapse of Social Security. Today's recipients of Social Security, along with their powerful AARP lobby, represent a powerful political force. Few politicians are willing to risk their careers alienating today's senior citizens for the benefit of Americans in 2040. After all what do today's seniors and politicians care about a 2040 calamity? They will be dead by then. Born in Philadelphia in 1936, Walter E. Williams holds a bachelor's degree in economics from California State University (1965) and a master's degree (1967) and doctorate (1972) in economics from the University of California at Los Angeles. - Q: How did Social Security start? A: The first government-provided social insurance was created in Europe in the 19th century, with Germany rolling out its system in 1889 at the urging of Chancellor Otto von Bismarck. By the time America adopted its Social Security Act in 1935, a total of 34 European countries were operating some sort of safety net. Three big changes in the early 20th century left Americans clamoring for protection: the Industrial Revolution, a 10-year jump in average life span and the Great Depression, which wiped out many older people's life savings. Populists pushed plans for a safety net: Louisiana governor and senator Huey Long wanted a "Share Our Wealth" program to guarantee every family $5,000 a year, and California doctor Francis Townsend, who found himself unemployed in 1933 at age 66, proposed a $200 monthly pension for everyone 60-plus. In 1934, President Franklin D. Roosevelt announced plans to provide a program for "Social Security," a new term at the time. A Committee on Economic Security drafted the plan, which Congress approved a year later. Q: Where did the original, full retirement age of 65 come from? A: Most people believe that Chancellor Bismarck picked the age in 1889 "because almost nobody survived that long," says Mr. Hokenson, [an] economist. In fact, Germany's initial retirement age was 70. By the time the U.S. got around to adopting its own system in 1935, the big influence was the railroad, not Chancellor Bismarck. The notion of mandatory retirement at 65 dates to 1874, when a railroad company established the first private industrial pension plan, Mr. Hokenson says. "At that time, 65 was believed to be the maximum age at which one could safely operate a train," he says. The federal Railroad Retirement Act of 1934 institutionalized age 65 as the retirement age for all railroad workers. In the course of its research, President Roosevelt's committee used the example of the railroads and state pension systems, roughly half of which used age 65 as the retirement benchmark, to guide its work. --in the "Wall Street Journal" . . see: "CAPITALISM" see: "COMMUNISM" see: "DEMOCRACY" see: "POLITICS" for other related links It is true that self-interest is the cause of all the evils, as well as all the benefits, that can fall to the lot of man. This cannot fail to be the case, since self-interest determines all our actions. Certain political theorists, seeing this, have conceived of no better way to cut off evil at its roots than to stifle *self-interest*. But, since by this act they would also destroy the very motive force of our activity, they thought it best to endow us with a different motive force: *devotion and self-sacrifice*. They hoped that henceforth all social transactions and arrangements would be carried out, at their bidding, on the principle of self-abnegation. People are no longer to seek their own good but others'; the admonitions of pain and pleasure are no longer to count for anything, any more than the punishments and rewards of responsibility. All the laws of nature are to be overturned; the spirit of self-sacrifice is to take the place of the instinct of self-preservation; in a word, no one is ever to consider his own personality except to hasten to sacrifice it to the common good. It is from this complete transformation of the human heart that certain political theorists, who believe themselves to be very religious, expect the coming of perfect social harmony. They forget to tell us how they propose to carry out the indispensable preliminary, the transformation of the human heart. If they are mad enough to undertake it, they will certainly not be strong enough to achieve it. Do they desire the proof? Let them try the experiment on themselves; let them try to stifle self-interest in their own hearts so that it is no longer evidenced in the most ordinary acts of their lives. They will not be long in admitting their own inability to do so. How, then, do they presume to impose upon all men, without exception, a doctrine to which they themselves cannot submit? --Frederic Bastiat (18011850) French economist. _Economic Harmonies_, ch.22 [1850] ... the myth of socialism is far stronger than the reality of capitalism. That is because capitalism is not really an ism at all. It is what people do if you leave them alone. --attributed to Arnold Beichman (19132010) American journalist and author. The strongly redistributive state must become ever more intrusive, and the final trade-off may be between equality and liberty. --Peter Berger (b. 1929) American sociologist and Lutheran theologian. _The Capitalist Revolution_ [1986] My son, if sinners entice thee, consent thou not. If they say, '...Cast in thy lot with us, let us all have one purse,' my son walk not in the way with them, refrain thy foot from their path. For their feet run to evil, and make haste to shed blood. --Bible "Proverbs" 1:10-16 He who would do good to another must do it in minute particulars; General good is the plea of the scoundrel, hypocrite, and flatterer. --William Blake (17571827) English poet. "Jerusalem" ch. 3, plate 55, l. 60 [1815] 1/ You cannot bring about prosperity by discouraging thrift. 2/ You cannot strengthen the weak by weakening the strong. 3/ You cannot help small men by tearing down big men. 4/ You cannot help the poor man by destroying the rich. 5/ You cannot lift the wage earner up by pulling the wage payer down. 6/ You cannot keep out of trouble by spending more than your income. 7/ You cannot further the brotherhood of man by inciting class hatred. 9/ You cannot build character and courage by taking away man's initiative and independence. 8/ You cannot establish social security on borrowed money. 10/ You cannot help men permanently by doing for them what they could and should do for themselves. --Rev. William John Henry Boetcker (18731962) German-born American minister and author. "The Industrial Decalogue" [1916] I believe that the duel between Christianity and atheism is the most important in the world. I further believe that the struggle between individualism and collectivism is the same struggle reproduced on another level. --William F. Buckley Jr. (19252008) American author and journalist. "God and Man at Yale" [1951] Hey, Obama has just nationalized nothing more and nothing less than General Motors. Comrade Obama! Fidel, careful or we are going to end up to his right. --Hugo Chavez (b. 1954) President of Venezuela [1998 ]. On a live television broadcast, reported by Reuters [2 June 2009]. The inherent vice of Capitalism is the unequal sharing of blessings; the inherent vice of Socialism is the equal sharing of miseries. --Winston Churchill (18741965) British Conservative statesman and Prime Minister [19401945, 19511955]. House of Commons speech [22 October 1945]. The reason why the wage-worker must put up with so small a return is that, under this system, he is not treated as a human being, Christianity to the contrary notwithstanding. The capitalists are refined cannibals; they look at the workingman in no other light than a horse; in fact, in a worse light. They will take care of a horse, but let the workingmen die. Labor is cheap, and it is treated that way under capitalism. Under socialism, standing upon that high scientific plane, we see a higher morality. We see that labor should not be treated as a commodity; it should not be treated as shoes, and potatoes, and hairpins, and cast-off clothing, but as human beings capable of the highest intellectual development. So treating him, the wageworker of today becomes a part owner in the machinery of production, and, being part owner of the machinery of production, he gets the full return of his labor. He is then free from the shackles that compel him to accept wages. He becomes the boss of the machine, whereas today he is its appendage. --Daniel De Leon (18521914), American socialist. "Reform or Revolution" [1896 address in Boston] Are we never to learn that Socialism has its roots in envy and in nothing else? --Norman Douglas (18681952) Austrian-born British novelist and essayist. _An Almanac_ [1945] "13 May" I look upon an increase of the power of the State with the greatest fear, because although while apparently doing good by minimizing exploitation, it does the greatest harm to mankind by destroying individuality, which lies at the root of all progress. We know of so many cases where men have adopted trusteeship, but none where the State has really lived for the poor. --Mohandas K. Gandhi (18691948) Indian statesman and leader of the nationalistic movement against British rule. Interview with Nirmal Kumar Bose _The Hindustan Times_ [17 October 1935]. We are all Socialists now. --William Harcourt (18271904) British politician. Speech in House of Commons [11 August 1887]. Of what importance is all that, if I range men firmly within a discipline they cannot escape? Let them own land or factories as much as they please. The decisive factor is that the State, through the Party, is supreme over them regardless of whether they are owners or workers. All that is unessential; our socialism goes far deeper. It establishes a relationship of the individual to the State, the national community. Why need we trouble to socialize banks and factories? We socialize human beings. --Adolf Hitler (18891945) German dictator. To Herman Rauschning, pre-World War II, in Robert Hessen _Why Does Socialism Continue to Appeal to Anyone?_. I never read a socialist yet . . . and I have read a number, that I didn't think talked drool. --Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr. (18411935) Justice of the United States Supreme Court, legal historian, and philosopher. Letter to Harold Laski. I was guilty of judging capitalism by its operations and socialism by its hopes and aspirations; capitalism by its works and socialism by its literature. --Sidney Hook (19021989) American educator and social philosopher. _Out of Step_ [1985] The urge to distribute wealth equally, and still more the belief that it can be brought about by political action, is the most dangerous of all popular emotions. It is the legitimation of envy, of all the deadly sins the one which a stable society based on consensus should fear the most. The monster state is a source of many evils; but it is, above all, an engine of envy. --Paul Johnson (1928 ) British historian. _The Recovery of Freedom_ [1980] Because of its progress, modern civilization creates an ever-increasing mass of unadapted people always ready to struggle against it. They form the majority of socialists. --Gustave Le Bon (18411931) French social psychologist best known for his study of the psychological characteristics of crowds. _Aphorisms of Present Times_ [1913] tr. Alice Widener [1979] He is no socialist who will not sacrifice his fatherland for the triumph of the social revolution. --V.I. Lenin (18701924) Russian revolutionary and first head of the Soviet state (19171924). Quoted by Edward Meade Earl "Lenin, Trotsky, Stalin: Soviet Concepts of War" in Earle ed. _Makers of Modern Strategy_ [1943]. Communism means barbarism, but socialism means, or wishes to mean, cooperation and community of interests, sympathy, the giving to hands not so large a share as to the brains, but a larger share than hitherto in the wealth they must continue to produce means in short the practical application of Christianity to life, and has in it the secret of orderly and benign reconstruction. --James Russell Lowell (18191891) American poet, critic, essayist, and diplomat. _Democracy_, address, Birmingham, England [6 October 1884] The function of socialism is to raise suffering to a higher level. --Norman Mailer (19232007) American author, two-time winner of the Pulitzer Prize. Attributed in Laurence J. Peter _Peter's Quotations: Ideas for Our Time_ [1977]. Socialism, indeed, is simply the degenerate capitalism of bankrupt capitalists. Its one genuine object is to get more money for its professors; all of its other grandiloquent objects are afterthoughts, and most of them are bogus. --H.L. (Henry Louis) Mencken (18801956) American journalist and literary critic. _Prejudices: Third Series_ [1922] - Then there was communism's weak-tea sister, socialism. Socialists maintained that we shouldn't take all the money away from all the people since all the people don't have money. We should take all the money away from only the people who make money. Then, when we run out of that, we could take more money from the people who...hey, wait! Where'd you people go? What do you mean you're "tax exiles in Monaco?" --P.J. O'Rourke (1947 ) American political satirist. _The CEO of the Sofa_ [2001] For forty-some years the ban-the-bomb bums, unilateral disarmament goonies, nuclear-freeze sleaze, peace creeps, and no-nukes kooks bragged about the horrors of atomic war. There was no end to their end of the world. They painstakingly detailed Armageddon, polished the Apocalypse, rubbed and loved a radioactive holocaust that made the Jonathan Edwards sermon "Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God" sound like a vacation postcard from Cozumel. "Better red than dead!" they shrieked. They could have gone to Stalin's Russia, Mao's China, or Pol Pot's Cambodia and been both. --P.J. O'Rourke (1947 ) American political satirist. _The CEO of the Sofa_ [2001] - - By bringing the whole of life under the control of the State, Socialism necessarily gives power to an inner ring of bureaucrats, who in almost every case will be men who want power for its own sake and will stick at nothing in order to retain it. --George Orwell [Eric Blair] (19031950) English novelist. Reviewing _The Road to Selfdom_ by F.A. Hayek [9 April 1944] in _The Collected Essays, Journalism and Letters of George Orwell_ ed. Sonia Orwell and Ian Angus [1968]. As with the Christian religion, the worst advertisement for Socialism is its adherents. --George Orwell [Eric Blair] (19031950) English novelist. _The Road to Wigan Pier_, ch. 11 [1937] The high-water mark, so to speak, of Socialist literature is W.H. Auden, a sort of gutless Kipling. --George Orwell [Eric Blair] (19031950) English novelist. _The Road to Wigan Pier_, ch. 11 [1937] - ...Bismarck asked whether horse-racing was still popular in England. More than ever, replied his guest. "Then there never will be Socialism in England," cried Bismarck. "You are a happy country. You are safe, as long as the people are devoted to racing. Here a gentleman cannot ride down the street without twenty persons saying to themselves or each other, 'Why has that fellow a horse, and I have not one?' In England the more horses a nobleman has, the more popular he is. So long as the English are devoted to racing, Socialism has no chance with you." --Hesketh Pearson (18871964) English actor and biographer. _Dizzy, the Life and Personality of Benjamin Disraeli_ [1951] - Men have been taught that the highest virtue is not to achieve, but to give. Yet one cannot give that which has not been created. Creation comes before distribution or there will be nothing to distribute. The need of the creator comes before the need of any possible beneficiary. Yet we are taught to admire the second- hander who dispenses gifts he has not produced above the man who made the gifts possible. --Ayn Rand (19051982) Russian-born American writer. _The Fountainhead_ [1943] pt. 4, "Howard Roark" Ch. XVIII The 'common good' of a collective a race, a class, a state was the claim and justification of every tyranny ever established over men. Every major horror of history was committed in the name of an altruistic motive. Has any act of selfishness ever equaled the carnage perpetrated by disciples of altruism? Does the fault lie in men's hypocrisy or in the nature of the principle? The most dreadful butchers were the most sincere. They believed in the perfect society reached through the guillotine and the firing squad. Nobody questioned their right to murder since they were murdering for an altruistic purpose. It was accepted that man must be sacrificed for other men. Actors change, but the course of the tragedy remains the same. A humanitarian who starts with declarations of love for mankind and ends with a sea of blood. It goes on and will go on so long as men believe that an action is good if it is unselfish. That permits the altruist to act and forces his victims to bear it. The leaders of collectivist movements ask nothing for themselves. But observe the results. --Ayn Rand (19051982) Russian-born American writer. - When I put a queston to [Lenin] about socialism in agriculture, he explained with glee how he had incited the poorer peasants against the richer ones, "and they soon hanged them from the nearest tree ha!ha!ha!" His guffaw at the thought of those massacred made my blood run cold. --Bertrand Russell (18721970) British philosopher, mathematician, and Nobel laureate. Referring to a 1920 interview in Moscow, "Eminent Men I Have Known," _Unpopular Essays_ [1950]. A government which robs Peter to pay Paul can always depend on the support of Paul. --George Bernard Shaw (18561950) Irish comic dramatist, literary critic, Socialist propagandist, and winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1925 [he didn't accept it.] _Everybody's Political What's What?_, ch. 30 [1944] The strongest argument for socialism is that it sounds good. The strongest argument against socialism is that it doesn't work. But those who live by words will always have a soft spot in their hearts for socialism because it sounds so good. --Thomas Sowell (1930 ) American economist and author. All socialism is slavery . . . . That which fundamentally distinguishes the slave is that he labors under coercion to satisfy another's desires. --Herbert Spencer (18201903) English philosopher. "The Coming Slavery" in _The Contemporary Review_ [April 1884] The trouble with socialism is that you eventually run out of other people's money. --attributed to Margaret Thatcher (1925 ) British conservative stateswoman and Prime Minister [19791990]. The American people will never knowingly adopt socialism, but under the name of liberalism they will adopt every fragment of the socialist program until one day America will be a socialist nation without ever knowing how it happened. --attributed to Norman Thomas (18841968) American socialist, pacifist, and six-time presidential candidate for the Socialist Party of America. Quoted in Lyle H. Rossiter, Jr. _The Liberal Mind_, p. 27 [2006]. Democracy and socialism have nothing in common but one word: equality. But notice the difference: while democracy seeks equality in liberty, socialism seeks equality in restraint and servitude. --Alexis de Tocqueville (18051859) French historian and politician. Constituent Assembly speech, Paris, France [12 September 1848]. - The American people will never knowingly adopt socialism, but under the name of liberalism, they will adopt every fragment of the socialist program until one day America will be a socialist nation without ever knowing how it happened. --attributed to Norman Thomas - Socialist Party Leader and one of the founders of the ACLU. I am for socialism, disarmament, and ultimately for abolishing the State itself as an instrument of violence and compulsion. I seek the social ownership of property, the abolition of the propertied class, and sole control of those who produce wealth. Communism is the goal. --Roger Baldwin, founder of the American Civil Liberties Union. Quoted in the National Federation for Decency Journal, September 1988. page 9. Source #2 The nation's most formidable legal lobby, the ACLU, was founded in 1920 by the avowedly socialist Roger Baldwin, following his imprisonment for draft evasion, along with an assortment of Communist Party officials, radicals and anarchists. Baldwin, who directed the ACLU from 1920 to 1950, wrote for his college-reunion yearbook in 1935: "I have continued directing the unpopular fight for the rights of agitation, as director of the American Civil Liberties Union.... I seek the social ownership of property, the abolition of the propertied class and sole control of those who produce wealth. Communism is the goal." This sort of history has tended to annoy conservatives and, though a few have been able to overlook it to join, most have avoided membership in the ACLU Nonetheless, it now boasts a 50-state network including 300 local chapters. --John Elvin, "Can a Political Odd Couple Reconcile Its Differences," Insight on the News [28 July 1997], Questia [31 December 2004] - . . see: "THE HUMAN RACE" for related links He who is unable to live in society, or who has no need because he is sufficient for himself, must be either a beast or a god. --Aristotle (384322 B.C.) Greek philosopher. _Politics_, bk. 1 We started off trying to set up a small anarchist community, but people wouldn't obey the rules. --Alan Bennett (1934 ) English actor and playwright. _Getting On_ [1972] In 1940, teachers were asked what they regarded as the three major problems in American schools. They identified the three major problems as: Littering, noise, and chewing gum. Teachers last year [1992] were asked what the three major problems in American schools were, and they defined them as: Rape, assault, and suicide. --William J. Bennett (b. 1943) American poiltician and author. Quoted in Larry F. Sternberg _Why Jews Should Not Be Liberals_ [2006]. Our society must make it right and possible for old people not to fear the young or be deserted by them, for the test of a civilization is the way that it cares for its helpless members. --Pearl S. Buck (18921973) American author noted for her novels of life in China; winner of the 1938 Nobel Prize for Literature. _My Several Worlds_ [1954] The world either breaks or hardens the heart. --attributed to Sιbastien-Roch Nicolas Chamfort (17411794) French playwright and conversationalist. The eyes of the social herd, who always observe little things, and generally form from them their opinions of great affairs. --Benjamin Disraeli (18041881) British Tory statesman, novelist, and Prime Minister [1868, 18741880]. _Endymion_, ch. XLIX [1880] No man is an Island, entire of it self; every man is a piece of the Continent; a part of the main; if a clod be washed away by the sea, Europe is the less, as well as if a promontory were. --John Donne (15721631) English poet and dean of St. Paul's [16211631]. "Devotions upon Emergent Occasions" [1624] The degree of civilization in a society is revealed by entering its prisons. --Fyodor Dostoyevsky (18211881) Russian novelist, journalist, and short story writer. _The House of the Dead_ [1862] , tr. Constance Garnett [1957] No society can survive, no civilization can survive, with 12-year-olds having babies, with 15-year-olds killing each other, with 17-year-olds dying of AIDS, with 18-year-olds getting diplomas they can't read. --Newt Gingrich (1943 ) American politician. Speech in Washington, D.C. [5 December 1994]. You gotta say this for the white race its self-confidence knows no bounds. Who else could go to a small island in the South Pacific where there's no poverty, no crime, no unemployment, no war and no worry and call it a 'primitive society?' --Dick Gregory (1932 ) American comedian and social activist. _From the Back of the Bus_ [1962] The two highest achievements of the human mind are the twin concepts of 'loyalty' and 'duty.' Whenever these twin concepts fall into disrepute get out of there fast! You may possibly save yourself, but it is too late to save that society. It is doomed. --Robert A(nson) Heinlein (19071988) American science-fiction writer. _Time Enough for Love_ "Intermission" [1973] In a consumer society there are inevitably two kinds of slaves: the prisoners of addiction and the prisoners of envy. --Ivan Illich (19262002) Austrian philosopher. _Tools for Conviviality_, ch. 3 [1973] The proper time to influence the character of a child is about a hundred years before he is born. --William Ralph Inge (18601954) English writer and Dean of St. Paul's [19111934]. _More Lay Thoughts of a Dean_ [1931] Those who wallow in the imperfections of their society or turn them into an excuse for a nihilistic orgy usually end up by eroding all social and moral restraints; eventually in their pitiless assault on all beliefs they multiply suffering. --Henry Alfred Kissinger (1923 ) German-born American diplomat. _White House Years_ [1979] It is no measure of health to be well adjusted to a profoundly sick society. --attributed to Jiddu Krishnamurti (18951986) Indian spiritual philosopher. What its children become, that will the community become. --Suzanne LaFollette (18931983) Ameican editor and author. _Concerning Women_ "Woman and Marriage" [1926] A town that boasts inhabitants like me Can have no lack of good society! --Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (18071882) American poet. "The Birds of Killingworth" _Tales of a Wayside Inn_ [1863] Anyone who knows anything of history knows that great social changes are impossible without feminine upheaval. Social progress can be measured exactly by the social position of the fair sex, the ugly ones included. --Karl Marx (18181883) German political philosopher. Letter to Dr. Kugelmann [12 December 1868]. Modern social practices have done four things to the household. First, by converting the village into a city, they have replaced the personalized village neighborhood by an agglomeration of human beings, most of whose relations are as impersonal as those between passers-by on a busy street or fellow passengers in a bus or subway car. Second, they have stripped the household of many of its old-time tasks: the barnyard, the woodpile, food preservation, cooking, the workshop, construction, the making of implements and utensils, the making of cloth and clothing, laundering, and transferred these and other activities to factories and stores. Third, they have taken adults out of the household into factories, stores, and offices and children into schools and playgrounds. Fourth, through organizing an extensive amusement industry, they have induced both adult and juvenile members of the household to spend a great deal of their spare time away from home. Such changes have gone a long way toward destroying the villages of households and have done much to break up the family. Helen Knothe Nearing & Scott Nearing _The Maple Sugar Book_ [1972], ch 11 "The Money in Maple" What is wrong with the old Adam Smith philosophy and what should be completely unacceptable to any American (and I would say this particularly to my fellow Republicans) is the idea of the survival of the fittest. Let's put it this way: The fittest should survive, and also the fit should survive. Those who are 'unfit' you have to have a social conscience about, to take care of them. The 'survival of the fittest' assumes 'the hell with the rest of them.' This is wrong, morally and socially, apart from being completely wrong politically. --Richard Nixon (19131994) American Republican statesman, President [19691974]. Quoted in Earl Mazo, _Richard Nixon: A Political and Personal Portrait_ [1959]. As society advances the standard of poverty rises. --Theodore Parker (18101860) American minister of the Unitarian church. "Thoughts on Labor" in _The Dial_ [April 1841]. ("The Dial" was a Transcendentalist magazine.) To give up the task of reforming society is to give up one's responsibility as a free man. --Alan Stewart Paton (19031988) South African author. Article in "The Saturday Review" [1967]. Americans are getting like a Ford car they all have the same parts, the same upholstering, and make exactly the same noises. --Will Rogers [William Penn Adair Rogers] (18791935) American humorist and actor. Quoted in Willis Lemon Uhl & Francis F. Powers _Personal and Social Adjustment, a Text in Social Science_ [1938]. No one shows himself as he is, but wears his mask and plays his part. Indeed, the whole of our social arrangements may be likened to a perpetual comedy; and this is why a man who is worth anything finds society so insipid, while a blockhead is quite at home in it. --Arthur Schopenhauer (17881860) German philosopher. _Studies in Pessimism_ [1851] If you wish to appear agreeable in society, you must consent to be taught many things which you know already. --Charles Maurice de Talleyrand-Pιrigord (17541838) French statesman. _Reminiscences of Prince Talleyrand; Edited from the Papers of the Late M. Colmache, Private Secretary to the Prince_ [2 vol., 2nd ed., 1850] Good humor may be said to be one of the very best articles of dress one can wear in society. --William Makepeace Thackeray (18111863) English novelist. _Sketches and Travels in London_ [1856] "On Tailoringand Toilets in General" ----- anomie (noun) ['ζ-nκ-mee] Social instability caused by an undermining of values; also, the personal rootlessness that comes from a lack of purpose. end page | SACRED PLACES - SANTA CLAUS | SARCASM - SCHOOL | SCIENCE - SCULPTURE | SEA (THE) - SEEING | SELF - SELF-ESTEEM | SELF-EXAMINATION - SEMANTICS | SENATE (THE U.S.) - SERIOUSNESS | SEX | SEX SYMBOLS - SHEEP | SHIPS - SHYNESS | SICKNESS - SILENCE | SILLINESS - SINGING | SINGLE-MINDEDNESS - SKY | SLANDER - SLAVERY | SLEEP - SMILES | SMOKING - SOCIETY | SOLDIERS - SOPHISTICATION | SORROW - SOUTH SEA | SPACE - SPAM | SPEECH | SPEECHES - SPENDTHRIFTS | SPIDERS - SPY | SPORTS & SPORTSMANSHIP | STAGE (THE) - STERILIZATION | STOCK MARKET - STRANGERS | STRENGTH - SUBURBS | SUCCESS | SUFFERING - SUMMER | SUN - SUPREME COURT | SURPRISE - SYSTEM (THE) | | R | S | T | U - END | | Return Home | The Credits | The Cast | Act 1 | Act 2 | Act 3 | The Reviews | |
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