Interesting Political Quotes
I found this 'political compass' website today, which I have lost the address to, but it had a section, kind of a quiz, basically, on quotes from various people throughout history. It's quite interesting, since they all come from sources one wouldn't expect.
"This is likely to be administered for a course of years and then end in despotism ... when the people shall become so corrupted as to need despotic government, being incapable of any other."
-Benjamin Franklin on the U.S. Constitution
"I do not find in our particular superstition of Christianity one redeeming feature.....Millions of innocent men, women and children, since the introduction of Christianity, have been burned, tortured, fined and imprisoned. What has been the effect of this coercion?To make half the world fools and half hypocrites; to support roguery and error all over the world."
-Thomas Jefferson
"Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed; those who are cold and are not clothed"
-Dwight D. Eisenhower
"Japan was already defeated ... dropping the bomb was completely unnecessary. I thought that our country should avoid shocking world opinion by the use of a weapon whose employment was no longer necessary to save American lives"
-Dwight D. Eisenhower
"In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist. We must never let the weight of this combination endanger our liberties or democratic processes. We should take nothing for granted. Only an alert and knowledgeable citizenry can compel the proper meshing of the huge industrial and military machinery of defense with our peaceful methods and goals, so that security and liberty may prosper together."
-Dwight D. Eisenhower
"He has not developed any significant capability with respect to weapons of mass destruction. He is unable to project conventional power against his neighbours."
-Colin Powell on Saddam Hussein in February, 2001.
"We are able to keep arms from him. His military forces have not been rebuilt."
-Condoleeza Rice on Saddam Hussein in July, 2001.
"I do not consider Hitler to be as bad as he is depicted. He is showing an ability that is amazing and seems to be gaining his victories without much bloodshed"
-Mahatma Gandhi
"What has miserable, inefficient Mexico to do with the great mission of peopling the New World with a noble race?"
-Walt Whitman on the U.S. annexation of 1/3 of Mexico.
"It involves psychological flaws, corruptions, errors, or unfortunate premises .... Therefore I regard it as immoral ... And more than that, if you want my really sincere opinion. It's disgusting."
-Ayn Rand on homosexuality.
"To occupy Iraq would instantly shatter our coalition, turning the whole Arab world against us and make a broken tyrant into a latter-day hero ... assigning young soldiers to a fruitless hunt for a securely entrenched dictator and condemning them to fight in what would be an un-winnable urban guerilla war. It could only plunge that part of the world into even greater instability."
-George Bush (Sr.), 1998
"The word and working of God is quite clear; that women were made to be either wives or prostitutes."
-Martin Luther (the reformation dude, not the civil rights dude)
"To kill a man in a paroxysm of passion is understandable, but to have him killed by someone else after calm and serious meditation and on the pretext of duty honourably discharged is incomprehensible."
-The Marquis de Sade
"The Jews should have offered themselves to the butcher's knife. They should have thrown themselves into the sea from cliffs."
-Mahatma Ghandi
And I had to add this one...because misquoting can be fun for everyone...from last night's Bill O'Reilly interview with George Bush:
"I don't care what you think."
-Bill O'Reilly to George W. Bush
|