F

Facebook

"Facebook has a rare talent for making the world a worse place." -- BRYAN APPLEYARD (the British journalist and author, in Dec. 2021)

Facial hair

“A man with a mustache has to have some special talent, a special skill, something to exonerate his vanity. Archery, card tricks...” – DENIS JOHNSON

"If a man is clean shaved and has a well-fitting collar and tie, he can get away with a multitude of suspicious circumstances." -- GEOFFREY HOUSEHOLD (Well, that's certainly been my experience... so far....)

“I will never tolerate any minister (cabinet member) of mine wearing a beard.” – MARGARET THATCHER

"The studied, three days' growth -- as if they think it's what makes a man. People looked like that only when they were shipwrecked or in battle, which is, I suppose, the look young men who have hardly lived want desperately to cultivate." -- MARK HELPRIN

“Men should grow beards. One of the two body parts that separate men from women is the beard, For example, if you see a man with long hair from afar you may think he is a woman if he does not have a beard. Because nowadays women and men dress similarly. God forbid! You could be possessed by indecent thoughts!" -- MURAT BAYARAL     (A Turkish Islamic cleric, in April 2024 -- and I already hate shaving, so I'll think of this genius each morning when I do so.) 

"If you've never owned a pickup truck and a rifle or shotgun, and you've never hunted game and removed the internal organs of the animal you slaughtered for purposes of preserving the meat for ingestion later, use a razor on a near-daily basis." -- DAVID HARSANYI (senior editor of THE FEDERALIST, writing in April 2018)

"He decided, for future reference, that a man could wear glasses or grow a moustache, but not both. The human face wasn't large enough to carry so much furniture." -- GUY BELLAMY

"All men who're ashamed of their appearance grow beards. Especially fat men." -- STEVE TESICH

"My beard feels like a dog that I'm taking for a walk. It precedes me, as though it knows the way back to my apartment." -- STEVE TESICH

“Beards belong to artists, psychiatrists and communists.” – RICHMAL CROMPTON (the genius lady English author, 1890-1969, of the beloved “William” books of my youth.)

“On grounds of taste, the only beards that should be permitted are blond ones, and only on overweight men. Anyway, it used to be that it was mostly criminals who grew beards.” – TAKI THEODORACOPULOS (who was born in 1936, to you can figure out what he means by “used to be”)

Facts

“Let us begin by setting aside all the facts, because they do not affect the question.” – JEAN-JACQUES ROUSSEAU (setting the tone for the modern Left, of which this old loonie was the godfather)

“There is nothing more horrible than the murder of a beautiful theory by a brutal gang of facts.” –  FRANCOIS DE LA ROCHEFOUCAULD (answering that sinister shit-head Rousseau, above)

“You are entitled to your own opinions, but not to your own facts.” – DANIEL PATRICK MOYNIHAN (this has been attributed to many people, but I'm sticking with he who I’m pretty sure was its originator, my old pal Pat Moynihan)

“I think that we’re raising whole generations who regard facts as more or less optional.” – THOMAS SOWELL (In May 2011)

“For every expert there is an equal and opposite expert; but for every fact there is not necessarily an equal and opposite fact.” - THOMAS SOWELL 

"Facts don't care about your feelings.” – BEN SHAPIRO

"What are called the facts of life can be a prison." -- SHIVA NAIPAUL     (well, yes... but they're still the facts of life.)

“Facts do not cease to exist because they are ignored.” ― ALDOUS HUXLEY

"Facts are the great enemy of truth." -- MIGUEL DE CERVANTES (actually, it was his don Quixote who said this -- and I must say the pair of 'em sound like a couple of commies to me....)

"Facts are not truth." -- HILLARY MANTEL (I think she's full of shit, here, but I pass it along because it's short and because it's provocative and because it's... hey, I’d better stop here, or I’ll take it out....)

“The facts of life are conservative.” – MARGARET THATCHER  (that’s more like it….)

“We choose truth over facts” -- JOE BIDEN      (in 8 August 2019. Yes, you certainly do, China Joe.)                                                                                           

"When the facts change, I change my mind." -- JOHN MAYNARD KEYNES

“There are no true stories; there are only facts, and the stories we tell ourselves about those facts.” – BECKY COOPER (Author of the book “We Keep The Dead Close: A Murder At Harvard)

"Facts are better than dreams." -- BOB DOLE (I doubt I would’ve included this if anyone else had said it, but it’s so Bob Dole... that I just had to)

“All facts are equivalently dismal. Any set of circumstances can give rise to a variety of psychological conditions. We acknowledge this when we skip the flash-backs in novels.” – JOHN UPDIKE (I’m not sure this makes much sense, but what the hell, it’s Updike....)

"It is more important to be morally right than to be factually correct." -- ALEXANDRA OCASIO-CORTEZ (No comment required, but to which the great THOMAS SOWELL has replied: "It is usually futile to try to talk facts and analysis to people who are enjoying a sense of moral superiority in their ignorance.")

"When it comes to the law in general, and crime and punishment in particular, the facts matter more than the ideas." -- JONAH GOLDBERG

"The Left, which has long held that facts were 'cheating', has now come to deny that they, in fact, exist." -- DAVID MAMET

"Hard facts play no role in the world-view of the berserk left." -- ROD LIDDLE

"It is central to the liberal delusion to deny facts, whether it be in gender politics, racial politics or even in mathematics. And so the American liberal colleges shepherd us all towards the De-Enlightenment." -- ROD LIDDLE

“Fact-Checkers”

“But 'fact-checkers' malfunction in a very particular fashion – namely by interpreting messy, ambiguous, and value-laden fact patterns in just the way that most flatters a certain kind of center-left episteme.” – DANIEL FOSTER (in NR, January 2017)

“You should never believe everything you read in the newspapers or hear on a radio broadcast, but be especially sceptical when it comes under the heading Fact Check. It will be cherry-picked stats handed down by some tenth-rate academic determined to prove his or her point of view, but presented as if it’s the word of either God or pristine science: the two being, for the secular left, coterminous.” – ROD LIDDLE

Failure

“Success is going from failure to failure with no loss of enthusiasm.” – WINSTON CHURCHILL

“Failure is what civilizes us and makes us interesting.” – QUENTIN WILLSON (A British “motoring journalist”)

“Restlessness is discontent – and discontent is the first necessity of progress. Show me a thoroughly satisfied man – and I will show you a failure.” -- THOMAS EDISON

"I have not failed. I've just found 10,000 ways that won't work." --THOMAS A. EDISON

"Failure is what people do ninety-nine percent of the time." -- WALKER PERCY

"No art can progress unless failure is sometimes risked." -- ANTHONY BURGESS

“My son and I are Americans, we prepare for glory by failing until we don’t.” – CRAIG FERGUSON (the Scottish-American honcho of the Late Late Show – or at least he was when he said this.)

“If you’re a failure long enough, you become a legend.” – WILLIE NELSON

“If a man does not wear a Rolex by the time he is 50, he is a failure.” – JACQUES SEGUELA (A senior adviser to ex-Frogue President Sarkozy)

"Capitalism without failure is a bit like religion without sin." -- LARRY KUDLOW

“When you fail conventionally you get sympathy, when you fail unconventionally you get blamed.” – RORY SUTHERLAND

“Life is easier, psychologically at least, when you can attribute failure entirely to external causes and not to yourself.” – THEODORE DALRYMPLE

“Trying is the first step towards failure.” – HOMER SIMPSON

“If our lives are the sum of our free decisions, then the unsuccessful have nobody to blame but themselves.” -- DANIEL HITCHENS  (writing in the SPECTATOR in July 2015)

“This organization doesn't deserve its own existence.” -- JANE JOLIS (Referring to her NY Giants, after their 27-7 clobbering at the hands of the lowly Philadelphia Iggles in 2015)

“Ever tried? Ever failed? No matter. Try again. Fail again. Fail better.” -- SAMUEL BECKETT (The Irish playright who could never decide if he was Irish or French and who, in any case, as the author of  something like “Waiting for Godot” is a chap who probably underwent more than his share of failure before finally grabbing the brass ring....)

“Failure was the secular equivalent of sin. Modern secular man was born into a world whose moral framework was composed not of laws and duties but of tests and comparisons. There were no absolute outside standards, so standards had to generate themselves from within, relativistically. One’s natural sense of inadequacy could be kept at bay only by pious acts of repeated successfulness. And failure was more terrifying than sin. Sin could be repented of by an act of volition; failure could not be disposed of so easily. Sin could be avoided by everyone, if he chose, but failure could not. For there to be any who succeeded, there had to be some who failed.” -- MICHAL FRAYN (in his very funny 1967 novel “Towards The End Of The Morning”.)

"I don't know how to succeed, but I know how to fail -- just try to please everybody." -- BUDDY HOLLY (to his friend, the singer Dion DiMucci --  of "Dion and the Belmonts" -- who quoted him.)

"Failures are more interesting than successes: they have all that regret, they act out, they feel thwarted and frustrated, not fun to live with but great fun to write about." -- MICK HERRON (the author of the amusing "Slough" spy novels – which are, as it happens, all based on “failures”)

"Recriminations are excuses for failures." -- BING WEST

 "If you don't fail, you're not even trying. To get something you never had, you have to do something you never did." -- DENZEL WASHINGTON       (To the University of Pennsylvania, in 2011)

"It's only a failure if you don't at least try." -- DAVID HEMPLEMAN-ADAMS      (A British explorer, in 2024… in tune with Brother Denzel, see above…)

"A man's life is interesting primarily when he has failed -- I well know. For it is a sign that he has tried to surpass himself." -- GEORGES CLEMENCEAU

“Fairness”

"I have found the world kinder than I expected, but less just." – SAMUEL JOHNSON (the good Doctor...)

“Everyone knows that life ought to be fair and that God’s a lousy guy for not making it happen. Everyone should get what everyone else gets. And, if everyone gets broke, hungry and dead, well, fair’s fair.” - P. J. O’ROURKE

“Freedom is not fair. Much can be made of the fact, I suppose. Personally, I'm immune to the complaint. I have a twelve-year-old daughter, Muffin. All I hear is, 'It's not fair! It's not fair! It's not fair!'  I say to her, 'Honey, you're cute. That's not fair. You're smart. That's not fair. You were born in the United States of America. That's not fair. Darling, you had better get down on your knees and pray to God that things don't start getting fair for you.'.” – P. J. O'ROURKE

“If life was fair, Elvis would be alive and all the impersonators would be dead.” – JOHNNY CARSON

“Life isn't fair. A lot of us came to terms with that in puberty or sometime shortly thereafter, but protesters across the country are still stunned to learn that the world does not value what they do as much as they do.” – JIM GERAGHTY

“There are better things to be than 'fair'.” -- E. M. FORSTER (and yes, he used quotation marks around “fair”)

“You know what's not 'fair?' That future generations will have a lower standard of living because you were an irresponsible Marxist.” – KEVIN EDER (a young chap who lives in Washington D.C., who describes himself as a “Fake blogger. Twitter terrorist. Unorthodox Jew. Impure conservative. Chipotle addict. Right-wing meerkat”, in 2012)

"I’m all for free speech, but if a politician uses the phrase “fair share” and doesn’t follow it with an exact number and explain how they got there, they should be locked up in prison." -- FRANK J. FLEMING     (referring specifically to that commie Elizabeth Warren, on 24 March 2024)

“What is your ‘fair share’ of what someone else has worked for?" – THOMAS SOWELL

“Life has never been even close to fair, so the pretense that the Government can make it fair is a valuable and inexhaustible asset to politicians who want to expand government.” – THOMAS SOWELL

“Most things are unfair in some respects, and it's just a matter of deciding which kinds of unfairness are acceptable, even desirable, and which are not.” -- ALEXANDER CHANCELLOR (it used to be called, I believe, “discrimination”)

"You don't get what you deserve; you get what you negotiate." – KEVIN D. WILLIAMSON

"If it is a judgment about fairness or inclusion, I will always fall down on the side of fairness." -- SEBASTIAN COE (an otherwise rather un-remarkable statement except that it was spoken by the one-time greatest long-distance runner in the world. And he said this in conjunction with the whole trans-sexual foofaraw, in June 2022)

Faith

“Reason  itself is a matter of faith. It is an act of faith to assert that our thoughts have any relation to reality at all.” – G. K. CHESTERTON

“Doubt may give your dinner a funny taste, but it's faith that goes out and kills.” – JOHN UPDIKE

“Faith isn't a sort of added amenity of the Welfare State that you say, 'Well, to all this, having made a good income, now I'll have a little icing on top of religion'. It's the essence of the whole thing.” – EVELYN WAUGH

«In order to experience a 'near-death experience', one must, as you know, have a faith that looks through death, and I have a faith which has its work cut out focusing on next Tuesday.» -- ALAN COREN (the great English humorist, famously from Cricklewood (London) and for hilariously impersonating Idi Amin, and most famous for his collection of columns entitled «Golfing For Cats» which had a huge swastika on the cover, and for impersonating Idi Amin, on record and in colums. One funny Limey Jew.)

“To one who has faith, no explanation is necessary. To one without faith, no explanation is possible.” – ST. THOMAS AQUINAS

«Men and women do not willingly die in defense of common sense and sweet reason.» -- SIR ROY HATTERSLEY (the Catholic Labour politician who famously pronounced his «rs as «w»s, and was thus known as «Siw Woy»)

"Accepting faith means giving up on questioning, which is how we learn, how we move on." -- ALAN JUDD

"Faith means saying goodbye to reason and science. When you get faith you throw the switches, you blow a gasket, you deliberately go soft in the head. It's more comfortable that way." --  REDMOND O'HANLON    (in his excellent 1996 "Congo Journey") 

«The faithful are less likely to take a bet than the believers.» – JONAH GOLDBERG

"Faith is the opposite of intelligence." -- STAN LEE (the Marvel Comics maven -- real name was Stanley Martin Lieber)

"You don't have to believe in the trolley company to let it take you where you want to go." -- LEON TROTSKY

Fame

“I love signing autographs.  I’ll sign anything but veal cutlets.  My ballpoint pen slips on veal cutlets.” – CASEY STENGEL (The Yankee manager I started out with.)

“I always thought I’d like my tombstone to be blank. No epitaph and no name. Well, actually I’d like it to say ‘figment’.” – ANDY WARHOL

“Martyrdom is the only way in which a man can become famous without ability.” – GEORGE BERNARD SHAW (Man was he wrong. On two fronts: first, these days anybody can – and does – become famous for anything and nothing. And as for martyrs, fuggeddaboudid – you get a dozen ragheaded martyrs every day before breakfast, and not one of ‘em is famous…..)

“One dreams of the goddess Fame, and winds up with the bitch Publicity.” – PETER DE VRIES

"If you knew how quickly people forget the dead you would stop living to impress people." - CHRISTOPHER WALKEN (the actor)

"When you're famous, people look at you like they're trying to figure something out." -- ROBERT WEBB (I wouldn't know, but I think I get what he's getting at. Anyway, Robert is the hugely amusing English comic, who often partners with the even funnier David Mitchell) 

"Fame is the mask that eats into the face." -- JOHN UPDIKE

“If you’re a failure long enough, you become a legend.” – WILLIE NELSON

“We are told to let our light shine, and if it does, we won't need to tell anybody it does. Lighthouses don't fire cannons to call attention to their shining – they just shine." — D. L. MOODY    (the 19th century American religious leadeer and founder of, of all things, the Mt. Hermon School -- which was, along with Choate, our great rivals when I went to Deerfield... in the early 60s)

“Andy Warhol is still famous for saying 43 years ago that in the future, everyone will be famous for 15 minutes. It’s more likely that in the future everyone will be famous to 15 people.” -- STEVE SAILER (the paleo-con author and blogger. As his friend Derb Derbyshire comments: “The dogs howl; the caravan moves on.”)

“The less you think about being great, the more likely it is to happen.” – CHARLES WHEELAN (from his book “10 1/2 Things No Commencement Speaker Ever Said”)

“Fans don’t boo nobodies.” — REGGIE JACKSON

“It's the other people who change – not me.” – RICHARD BURTON (The great Welsh actor was talking about the dynamic between himself and people around him. He went on to add “They begin to be self-conscious and start unconsciously to act. Women especially become arch or arrogant, simpering or ultra-sophisticated.”)

"Fame is a sweet poison that you drink of first in eager gulps. Then you come to loathe it" -- SIR RICHARD BURTON (expounding on the above)

 “Fame may last a minute, but infamy lasts a lifetime.” – ALSTON B. RAMSAY (a speech-writer for Sec-Def Gates, among others, before becoming a screenwriter –“Midnighters”)

“I always wanted to be somebody, but now I realize I should have been more specific.” -- LILY TOMLIN

"Censure is the tax a man pays to the public for being eminent." -- JONATHAN SWIFT (in 1703) 

“The greatest struggle an athlete undergoes is the battle for our memories.” – WILLIAM GOLDMAN (The famous American screenwriter)

“A very quiet and tasteful way to be famous is to have a famous relative, then you can not only be nothing, but you can do nothing too.” -- P. J. O'ROURKE

“The urge we have to seek fame is a throwback to our period as hunter-gatherers where we lived in communities small enough for everyone to know everyone else. ('There's Ug. He is a mighty hunter.' and so on.) In other words, back in the good old days, absolutely everyone was famous – and for much longer than 15 minutes. And we've never really got over this loss.” -- JAMES DELINGPOLE

“Well-adjusted people want to become rich; insane people want to become famous.” – DAVE “IOWAHAWK” BURGE

"I think I know what military fame is; to be killed on the field of battle and have you name misspelled in the newspapers." -- WILLIAM TECUMSEH SHERMAN

"I stopped believing in Santa Claus at the age of 6, when my mother took me to see him in a store and he asked me for my autograph." -- SHIRLEY TEMPLE 

“The higher we soar the smaller we appear to those who cannot fly.” – FRIEDRICH NIETZSCHE (1844-1900)

"Being famous on Facebook is like being rich in Monopoly." -- GILLES HAGEGE (A Parisian veterinarian, in 2015)

“There is only one thing in life worse than being written about, and that is not being written about.” – MICK JAGGER

"When you get to the top of the tree, there’s nothing up there." -- ANTHONY HOPKINS

"You have to be pretty well-adjusted not to resent obscurity." -- GUY BELLAMY

"You're not a star until they can spell your name in Karachi." -- HUMPHREY BOGART

“Fame means that millions of people have the wrong idea of who you are.” – ERICA JONG

"After I'm dead I'd rather have people ask why I have no monument than why I have one." -- CATO (THE ELDER)

"The worst thing in life is to be famous without money," -- ROBERT JAMES RITCHIE (“KID ROCK”)

"Don't be a lady, be a legend." -- STEVIE NICKS (never as hot as she thought she was….)

"I need Kleenex for both the seven-passenger and coupé Cadillacs. One does not regurgitate and let fly a hock-tuey out of the car window and expect to hold the respect of his public. One cannot forget their Nobless Oblige." -- W. C. FIELDS

"I do not like it when people recognize me, and I like it even less when they have never heard of me." -- NIGEL WILLIAMS (the extremely amusing English novelist) 

“One dreams of the goddess Fame and winds up with the bitch Publicity.” – PETER DEVRIES

"A life without fame can be a good life, but fame without a life is no life at all." -- CLIVE JAMES

"Though I may have a certain amount of fame from television, I’m always aware that it doesn’t make me any better. Like everyone else, my valet puts my pants on me one leg at a time." -- PAT SAJAK (in March 2022)

Family

“The concept of a ‘single-parent’ family illustrates how easily redefinition can swallow contradiction.” – KENNETH MINOGUE

"If a man chooses truth over his father, that man is a fool." – HERB GOLD (Author of  the novel “Swifty The Magician”, This is a most curious quote indeed, but I pass it on regardless; what the hell....)

“To those who say we should simply focus on fiscal issues, I say you would not be able to print enough money in a thousand years to pay for the government you would need if the traditional family collapses.” – MIKE PENCE      (When he was still Republican Congressman from Indiana)           

“There is no reciprocity. Men love women – women love children – children love hamsters.” – ALICE THOMAS ELLIS (the British novelist)

"Every generation revolts against its fathers and makes friends with its grandfathers." -- LEWIS MUMFORD (I never found this to be particularly the case, but it's juuuust glib enough to make the cut) 

“But when things hit the fan, family is there in a way that other people aren’t. Not because those other people are bad, but because your family is your family.” – JONAH GOLDBERG

“Every family, no matter how normal or weird, is a bubble, a unique little civilization of its own.” – JONAH GOLDBERG

"As often happens to family men, it seems that the longer he stayed away from home, the closer he grew to his beloved family." -- STEVE TESICH (sounds about right to me....) 

"Family love and financial dependence don't go together." -- EVELYN WAUGH

«Everybody is a conservative when it comes to his own family.» -- KEVIN D. WILLIAMSON

"Spend more time with my family? Good heavens, no -- the last thing I want to do is spend more time with my family!" -- NICHOLAS RIDLEY (The great Lord Ridley of Lyddesdale, a loyal Thatcherite Treasury Minister in Mrs. Thatcher's Govt., in 1990, on being sacked for publishing an anti-German article in the SPECTATOR and being asked if he was "residing" so he could "spend more time with his family".)

“Destroy the family, you destroy the country.” -- VLADIMIR I. LENIN

«Without strong families, you can't have free markets or limited government. Without loving families, no society can long govern itself.» – JENNIFER ROBACK MORSE

«If you cannot get rid of the family skeleton, you may as well make it dance" – GEORGE BERNARD SHAW

“Quite possibly, the most ticklish relationship in human history is that between mother-in-law and daughter-in-law.” – JAY NORDLINGER

"Children of married parents find a place in society already prepared for them, furnished by a regime of parental sacrifice, and protected by social norms. Take away marriage and you expose children to the risk of coming into the world as strangers." – ROGER SCRUTON

“The family has become a subversive institution—almost an underground conspiracy—at war with the state and the state-sponsored culture.” -- SIR ROGER SCRUTON (in 2001)

“Don't judge folks by their relatives.” – WILL ROGERS

"We all grow up in families, which of course are little socialist communities, from each according to her ability, to each according to his need." -- DEIRDRE NANSEN McCLOSKEY

“The single biggest cause of poverty since 1970 has been the dissolution of both the nuclear (and for that matter extended) family. It is a heart-breaking, self-inflicted wound, but no liberal will so much as mention it as a causal factor in poverty, still less accept – as every single longitudinal study has shown – that single parenthood means egregious outcomes for the kids, in terms of mental health, employment, drug use, criminality, earning power. Indeed, we are still enjoined not to stigmatize single mothers. OK, we should not do so. But we should make it clear that single parenthood is not a desirable outcome, for the mums, for the kids, for the families.” – ROD LIDDLE (in March, 2021)

"If society is the prison families are the cells, with no time off for good behavior." -- JOHN UPDIKE

“A family is but too often a commonwealth of malignants.” – ALEXANDER POPE (English pote. 1688-1744)

“His lordship had sometimes regretted that his family, though an ancient clan, did not possess a Family Curse.” – P. G. WODEHOUSE

“People assume that parents and children will understand each other. It doesn’t work out like that. They share experiences, but they don’t seem to share the same memories of them. Family business is strange.” – NIGEL WILLIAMS   

"We are defined by our families, not by our friends." -- NIGEL WILLIAMS 

"Traditional families is simply code for white supremacy." -- MIKE BARON      (an idiot who describes himself as "Creator of Nexus and Badger, writer for Marvel and DC")

Fanaticism

"You cannot reason a man out of something that he was not reasoned into in the first place." -- JONATHAN SWIFT (Mr. Gulliver's Travels. And what he said could just as easily go for Obamamania as for religious fanaticism.)

“It is to put a very high value on your surmises to roast a man alive for them.” – MICHEL DE MONTAIGNE

“A fanatic is someone who redoubles his efforts after forgetting his aim.” – GEORGE SANTAYANA (cute, but also wrong – there have been, and are, plenty of fanatics who know exactly what their aim is....)

“A fanatic is one who can’t change his mind and won’t change the subject.” -- WINSTON CHURCHILL

“You have to quit confusing a madness with a mission.” ― FLANNERY O'CONNOR

“What is a fanatic? It is a person who has only got room in his head for one idea at a time.” – JONATHAN SUMPTION (the English author and ex-judge.)

Fantasy

“Once you invite people into your fantasy, once it’s shared, it becomes real.” – MARY WAKEFIELD

Farms, (Farming)

“A farm is like keeping goldfish, only bigger. You can never walk out on it.” – AIDAN HARTLEY

“The smartest man is the farmer, for, while he works all day, he's thinking.” – HARRY  S. TRUMAN

“Death and failure are more integral to farming than any other experience that I’ve witnessed in my life.” – AIDAN HARTLEY       (a transplanted Brit farmer in Kenya)            

“Small farmers are no more environmentally responsible than big farmers. They are smaller, that’s all.” – MATTHEW PARRIS

Fascism

(for “Nazi” see “Socialism, National”)

“Fascism, what was that about?  Only a generation ago this political movement almost conquered the world.  Now we have to look it up in an encyclopedia to find out what it was.  Fascists must have been reactionaries because that’s the other word we always called them when we were calling the draft board fascists in the 1960’s.  And yet, in the 1920’s and 1930’s fascists considered themselves way-modern and a hot source of progress.  Fascism sought to bring people together, to heal the fragmentation of society, to remedy the alienation that the individual feels in the ruthlessly competitive atmosphere of the free market.  But, at the same time, fascism wanted to preserve and improve all the material benefits of industrialism and trade.  So far it sounds – as I’ve pointed out before – like a New Democrat’s campaign platform.  It didn’t work”. – P. J. O’ROURKE

“Fascism was an unusually pathological variety of socialism; it was a third way between capitalism and communism”. – NICHOLAS FARRELL (from his book “Mussolini”)

“Fascism, which was founded by the revolutionary socialist Benito Mussolini, regards big banks, big business and big pharma, the global and the multinational, as the enemy.” – NICHOLAS FARRELL (in November 2021)

“’Fascist” describes more a methodology than an ideology.” – R.W. CORNELA (a good citizen from Amagansett, NY.  NFI – No Further Information)

“Ah well, when we pass seventy we get used to being called fascist by people who don’t know what the word means”. – GEORGE McDONALD FRASER (the author of the “Flashman” books)

“We are all born fascists, and have to be expensively educated out of it.” – MICHAEL HOWARD (NOT  the ex-leader of the Brit Conservative Party, but rather the Brit historian and Oxford History Professor)

“It’s got to the point now where any time I hear the word (fascist), alone or compounded and not used in a narrowly historical context, I immediately assume that the speaker can have nothing serious to say. About any thing.” – JAMES BOWMAN

"Yes, in the '30s, I was a communist, which is to say, a fascist." -- CLAUD COCKBURN (leftist English journalist, author and screenwriter, 1904-1981) 

“Fascism is the stage reached after communism has proved an illusion." – PETER DRUCKER

“Fascism is the aestheticisation of politics.” – WALTER BENJAMIN (this guy was a German Marxist and I think he was commenting mainly and wistfully about the Nasties' natty uniforms in the 30s...)

"The fact is that you don’t get anything called Fascism without having Marxism first." -- JONAH GOLDBERG

“Fascism is almost by definition popular, both with elites and with the masses, particularly the young.” – JONAH GOLDBERG

“Fascism means everything within the state, nothing outside the state.” – BENITO MUSSOLINI

“Fascism should more properly be called corporatism, since it is the merger of the state and corporate power.” -- BENITO MUSSOLINI 

“Italian fascism, even though no one is allowed to say so, was a left-wing revolutionary movement which Mussolini founded because the first world war had made him realise that the proletariat is more loyal to its nation than its class.” – NICHOLAS FARRELL  (the English author and journalist who has lived in Italy and is an expert in things Eytie, in THE UK SPECTATOR in March 2013)

“Il Duce, realising that people are more loyal to country than class, invented fascism, which replaced International Socialism with National Socialism. He was thus able to 'weaponise' – to use a current word – what the people wanted.” – NICHOLAS FARRELL (in March 2018)

“The modern welfare state is not antithetical to fascism but essential to it.” – JONAH GOLDBERG

“The best working definition of a 'fascist' in American politics is simply 'a conservative who's winning an argument'." – JONAH GOLDBERG

"When fascism comes to America, it will be called anti-fascism." – HUEY LONG

“There wasn't much good to come out of the 1930s, but say this for the Fascists and their era: There was a sense of style.” -- KEVIN D. WILLIAMSON (Reminds me of when, as a lad of 10 and hearing of the anti-Communist uprising in Hungary in 1956, I asked my Dad what “communism” was – “They're just like the Nazis” he answered, “only with more rubbish uniforms.”)

“Fascism is just socialism in snappier uniforms.” -- KURT SCHLICHTER      (my dad, see above, was ahead of his time)  

 "Fussiness leads to fascism." -- KURT SCHICHTER       (very amusing, Colonel…)                                                                                                                                                                                              

“In the greatest hoax of modern history, Russia’s ruling ‘socialist workers party,’ the Communists, established themselves as the polar opposites of their two socialist clones, the National Socialist German Workers Party (quicknamed ‘the Nazis’) and Italy’s Marxist-inspired Fascisti, by branding both as ‘the fascists’. This spin of all spins has played havoc upon Western political discourse ever since.” – TOM WOLFE     (this is a very important quote – a great pity it’s too long for a Twoot)   

" 'Fascism’ was, in fact, a Marxist coinage Marxists borrowed the name of Mussolini's Italian party, the Fascisti, and applied it to Hitler's Nazis, adroitly papering over the fact that the Nazis were also revolutionary socialists." -- TOM WOLFE

"It was Stalin who first realized how effective it was to turn the enemy into a fascist.” – ERIC ZEMMOUR      (the iconoclastic anti-politically correct conservative French writer, in 2014)                                          

"Bolshevism and Fascism were heresies of socialism." – RICHARD PIPES

“Communism is Fascism - successful Fascism, if you will. What we have called Fascism is, rather, the form of tyranny that can be overthrown - that has, largely, failed. Not only is Fascism (and overt military rule) the probable destiny of all Communist societies - especially when their populations are moved to revolt - but Communism is in itself a variant, the most successful variant, of Fascism. Fascism with a human face.'' – SUSAN SONTAG (because she's a lefty herself, she adds that “with a human face” thing. Not me.)

“Fascism has come only to mean something not desirable.” -- GEORGE ORWELL

“The original fascists, Mussolini and Mosley, began as socialists impatient with the democratic process.” – JEREMY STOCKER (A letter-writer from Warwickshire, to the SPECTATOR in January 2017)

«If you are not being shocked, offended or insulted, you are not living in a free society. And if you are okay with that, you are either a fascist or a slave. (And everyday it becomes clearer and clearer that too many on the Left choose to be both.)” – JOHN NOLTE

“In the liberal imagination, fascism is always about to happen here – and usually it involves Republicans.” -- JOHN J. MILLER

“Fascism has somehow been portrayed as something on the right, but the right is for individual rights and limited government, and nothing could be more anti-fascist than us.” -- DINESH D'SOUZA      (author of the excellent book on this subject, “The Big Lie”)                                                                                                             

"Fascism did not stem from right-wing nationalists but from a transformation of the revolutionary Left" -- STANLEY PAYNE       (author, “A History of Fascism”)    

"It is important to realize that Fascism and Nazism were socialist dictatorships. It is of great consequence that the communists have succeeded in changing the semantic connotation of Fascism. Fascism…was a variety of Italian socialism.…Dictatorship and violent oppression of all dissenters are today exclusively socialist institutions. The philosophy of the Nazis, the German National Socialist Labor Party, is the purest and most consistent manifestation of the anti-capitalistic and socialist spirit of our age.…The slogan into which the Nazis condensed their economic philosophy, viz., Gemeinutz geht vor Eigennutz (i.e., the commonweal ranks above private profit), is likewise the idea underlying the American New Deal and the Soviet management of economic affairs. It implies that profit-seeking business harms the vital interests of the immense majority, and that it is the sacred duty of popular government to prevent the emergence of profits by public control of production and distribution.…The mass slaughters (of Jews) perpetrated in the Nazi horror camps are too horrible to be adequately described by words. But they were the logical and consistent application of (socialist) doctrines and policies parading as applied science and approved by some men who in a sector of the natural sciences have displayed acumen and technical skill in laboratory research." -- LUDWIG VON MISES

"What is Fascism? Private ownership but total government control and regulation- well isn't this the liberal philosophy?" -- RONALD REAGAN

“The liberal democracies of the West, which we all love and cherish, can become very illiberal and not remotely democratic when the idiotic shibboleths of the liberal elite are challenged. Then it turns kinda fascisty.” – ROD LIDDLE

"Fascism is merely disillusioned communism." -- JACK JOLIS

"'Fascism' is just the residual aesthetic/moral/cultural/psychological mindset that remains -- after the economic illusions of communism have withered away." -- JACK JOLIS

“Fascism is just a more cynical version of Marxism. But it's Marxist, alright. (And when Fascists and Socialists fight, it's just a nasty Family Feud.)” – JACK JOLIS

"When all is said and done, Fascism is just 'Attitudinal Socialism'." -- JACK JOLIS

"Fascism is more of a tactic than an ideology -- and it's what remains once the Socialist fanatics have taken power, and all their Utopian theories have turned to blood and dust, and all that remains is grim totalitarian power--and ruthlessly clinging to it at all costs." -- JACK JOLIS

"That's all Fascism/National Socialism was/is: Repressive, statist totalitarianism that enrolls national corporations to keep the economy turning over." -- JACK JOLIS

"When you compare fascism with communism it is pretty much the same thing, though the German and Italian fascists always were smarter dressers, and their guns usually worked better." -- R. EMMETT TYRRELL, JR.

“There is a little fascist in all of us. And that’s the part of you that will become dominant when things get tough.” – NELSON DEMILLE

"Under fascism rubber truncheons and castor oil had to be tempered with abstractions like progress, divine beauty, and the human spirit." -- ANTHONY BURGESS (castor oil is sometimes used in torture, but I'll spare you the details)

 “Fascism, and the associated genocide, arose because a climate developed in Germany in which it was held that all intellectual activity conform with an accepted, approved ideology.” – MALCOLM BRADBURY

"And for the International Order that we have worked for generations to build. Ordinary men and women are too small-minded to govern their own affairs. Order and progress can only come when individuals surrender their rights to an all-powerful Sovereign." – BARACK OBAMA (if this isn’t an example of fascism, I don’t know what is....)

"The only fascists are the people accusing conservatives of fascism. That's because fascism itself is leftist." -- CARLOS OSWEDA    (the Twitter superstar who used to be THOMAS WICTOR)         

“The next international war will be Russia against Fascism but this time Fascism will be called Democracy.” -- FIDEL CASTRO (I can't confirm this quote, supposedly made in 1997, but it comes to me from my good pal and sometime adviser, Samuel M'Cheyne Glasser -- oft quoted himself in these pages -- who says he read it somewhere... and that's good enough for me.) 

"Socialism —> Literally censoring platforms that you already own and control because you are the government. Fascism —> inducing or encouraging private companies to do it for you, often with implicit promises of rewards or threats of punishment." -- KEN GARDNER (A Twoot-philosopher from Texas, in September 2022)

Fascism (in America)

“When fascism comes to America, it will not be in brown and black shirts. It will not be with jack-boots. It will be Nike sneakers and Smiley shirts.” -- GEORGE CARLIN

"The dark night of fascism is always falling in America, but landing in Europe." -- RAYMOND ARON (French egghead, 1905-1983, as per Richard Brookhiser)

Fascism (in Europe)                                                                                                                                  

“The difference between Britain and the continent (is): unlike their European counterparts, the English elite could never take Fascism seriously enough to fall for it.” – MARK STEYN

“The original fascists, Mussolini and Mosley, began as socialists impatient with the democratic process.” – JEREMY STOCKER (A letter-writer from Warwickshire, to the SPECTATOR in January 2017)

“Fascism (in 1938) was about continual, often frenzied, action and radically transforming the existing order of things – it was perpetual political motion.” – LAWRENCE JAMES (the British historian)

"The dark night of fascism is always falling in America, but landing in Europe." -- RAYMOND ARON (French egghead, 1905-1983, as per Richard Brookhiser)

Fashion

“Fake furs, and fake purrs.” – MATTHEW PARRIS (the nominally Conservative ex-Brit MP, famously poofter, and political columnist. Not a total idiot, but sanctimonious for my taste.)

“This stuff was designed by a man who doesn’t know women, never had one, and dreams of being one.” – COCO CHANEL (here describing the clothes of Dior)

"Every time a woman goes out, she should first look at herself in a mirror -- and take one thing off." -- COCO CHANEL

“Some people would never be bored if they had not heard of boredom.” – FRANCOIS  LA ROCHEFOUCAULD

“Everything changes but the avant-garde.” – PAUL VALERY (the Frog writer) (the Frog writer)

“There is only one time zone in fashion, and that is ‘right now’.” – ALEX JAMES (the bass player for the Brit rock band “Blur” whose wife is “something in fashion”.)

“There really isn’t such a thing as the ‘Zeitgeist’. In the expression ‘where it’s at’, the word ‘it’ doesn’t stand for anything.” – TOBY YOUNG (The Brit  author of such gems as “How to Lose Friends and Alienate People” and “The Sound  Of No Hands Clapping”, and definitely not one of the KINKS’ notorious “Dedicated Followers of Fashion”….)

“Finally I think I get fashion. I never understood how an industry so dominated by women could seem to hate them so much. Now, I see. Fashion isn’t anti-woman. It’s anti-human.” -- HUGO RIFKIND (the columnist and the son of the ex-British Conservative Minister of Defense)

“Fashion is what you adopt when you don’t know who you are.” – SEBASTIAN HORSLEY (the self-described English “high-priest of the dandy movement”, who died in 2010)

“I don’t want to be hip. I would rather be reincarnated as a happy aquatic worm in a North Korean septic tank – and if Barack Obama really is God, I will be.” – MARK HELPRIN

"The ideas of a time are like the clothes of a season." -- WYNDHAM LEWIS (a little banal, but Lewis was a 20th century British author and artist of some import, so...) 

“A dead thing can go with the stream, but only a living thing can go against it.” – G.K. CHESTERTON

“For anyone of a rational disposition, fashion is often nearly impossible to fathom. Throughout many periods of history – perhaps most –  it can see, as if the whole impulse of fashion has been to look maximally ridiculous. If one could be maximally uncomfortable as well, the triumph was all the greater.” – BILL BRYSON

"Anything promoted as 'Smart ______'  invariably turns out to be painfully, epically stupid. Smart Car, Smart Grid, Smart Power, Smart President." – DAVID “IOWAHAWK” BURGE

“She'd never had a problem that wasn't fashionable.” – DONALD WESTLAKE

“Blue jeans are the most beautiful thing since the gondola.” – DIANA VREELAND       (the long-time Cruella DeVille of VOGUE and other such publications)                                                 

 “All fashion depends for its survival on a group of misguided lemmings who live for conformity dressed up as anti-conformity.” – HARRY MOUNT (the author of “How England Made The English”)

“In our society, there is almost no greater apostasy than the refusal to keep up.” – LEON WIESELTIER (the long-time editor of THE NEW REPUBLIC, when it was still an honorable, at least, liberal rag)

“Fashion, of course, is the handmaiden (excuse me, handperson) of lust. You might not think that, given some of the fashions you see in the Times. But then again, everything according to taste. The presentation of purple hindquarters excites the mandrill.” – P. J. O'ROURKE

“In the eighties women wore shoulder pads. Giant ones. Did you tell them it looked good? I didn't. No guy ever did. They don't care about us. They told each other it made their waists look smaller. In fact, their waists looked exactly the same and their shoulders looked like they were trying out as linebacker for the Pittsburgh Steelers.” – KYLE SMITH

"Creators should have nothing to do with Islamic fashion. Designers are there to make women more beautiful, to give them their freedom, not to collaborate with this dictatorship which imposes this abominable thing by which we hide women and make them live a hidden life." --PIERRE BERGE (the late business partner and boy-friend of  the late Yves St. Laurent)

"But the edge moves on. It always does." -- KEVIN D. WILLIAMSON

“I am beginning to feel that it won't matter that my stories are about conditions and a life which has ceased to exist. I don't believe people care a damn, so long as the story is funny. But of course my stuff has been out of date since 1914, and nobody has seemed to mind.” – P. G. WODEHOUSE (in 1946)

"These days, if you mock the prevailing fashion in the world of the arts or journalism, you’re called a conservative. Which is just another term for a heretic." -- TOM WOLFE

"Fashion really is the most disgusting industry." -- ANNE JOLIS

"The more fashionable a thing is the quicker it ages." -- MILES KINGTON

“We created a product nobody needs, but people want. If you need an ugly old car, it can wait, but if you want a new fashion item, it cannot wait.” – KARL LAGERFELD

“(Anna) Wintour will never catch the virus. Corona won't go near her." -- TAKI THEODORACOPULOS

"Fashion is a form of ugliness so intolerable that we have to alter it every six months." -- OSCAR WILDE 

"If you chase trends, you'll always be behind." --LEON RUSSELL (advice given by the great Tulsa Oklahoma rocker to Gary Wright, of the band Spooky Tooth.)

“In the end, fashion overcomes personality.” – JOHN UPDIKE (he may be right about this, but he was actually referring to Louis XV’s mistresses when he said it)

“I do declare, that you women are so giddy, so giddy, that you’d wear a feather stickin’ out of your ass – if it was in style!” – J. GOLDEN KIMBALL      (1853-1938, an American Mormon bigwig.)     

"Everything gets credible if you wait long enough; one generation's cringe is another's kitsch cult classic." -- BEN ELTON (the leftist English comic)

"I was the future, once." -- DAVID CAMERON  (the rather "wet" Conservative former PM of the UK)

 “No Englishwoman should wear beige or brown, because it makes them look like a baked potato.” – BARBARA CARTLAND (the British “Queen of Romance Novels, having had 728 of them published, and who contrived to always wear pink)

Fashion (Male)

“It is folly to allow men to rule the world when they begin the day by tying a noose around their necks.” – GERMAINE GREER

"A well-dressed man is suitably garbed for each occassion, e.g., socks are always worn at the piano." -- TERRY-THOMAS (Who was once voted Britain's Best-Dressed Man) 

“No one since Elvis has pulled off a white suit.” – HARRY MOUNT (I beg to differ. Although, to be honest, the high point of my own white-suitedness coincided with Elvis')

"Like a good lawyer, a jacket should at least cover your ass. When a man's butt is showing below the bottom of his jacket, I think it makes him look like a female flight attendant from the back." -- TOM FORD 

“Record producers and guitarists insist on the inalienable right to wear denim below the waist without denim, a ponytailed forty-five-year-old walking in with a quasi-anorexic sweetykin babe in red silk minidress is just another sad old tosser in a Versace suit; with his Levis in place he is a lucky sod defying time.” – JAMES HAWES   (the English novelist, in 1997)

Fate (Fatalism)

“Most things may never happen.” – PHILIP LARKIN (!!!)

"Whoso diggeth a pit shall fall therein." -- PETER DEVRIES 

"The unexpected always happens; the inevitable never." – JOHN MAYNARD KEYNES (unexpectedly wise words from the old tax’n’spender)

“What we anticipate seldom occurs; what we least expected generally happens.” – BENJAMIN DISRAELI

“The odds become meaningless when everything is at stake.” – KARL MARLANTES (The author of the excellent, if depressing, Vietnam War novel “Matterhorn”.)

“Unseen in the background, Fate was quietly slipping lead into the boxing glove.” – P. G. WODEHOUSE 

“I do not believe in a fate that will fall on us no matter what we can do, I do believe in a fate that will fall on us if we do nothing.” – RONALD REAGAN

"Men do not rule circumstances, circumstances rule men." -- HERODOTUS (contemporary of Socrates)

"In politics when something works out just right for the leader you can bet it was planned that way" – FRANKLIN D. ROOSEVELT

"What cannot be avoided, must be welcomed." -- WILLIAM BOYD      (well, an African rebel chief in his 1990 novel "Brazzaville Beach" says this.)                                                                   

"Randomness (a.k.a. chance) has been factored in, but coincidence violates the human craving for order." -- DONALD WESTLAKE

"Being fatalistic is inevitable." -- DR. CHIP BECK      (my old Agency paramilitary colleague)

Fatherhood

“Fatherlessness is the engine that drives many of our worst social problems. The most important predictor of juvenile delinquency is not race or income, it is the absence of a father. For teenage pregnancy it is the same story. Young fatherless women are twice as likely to get pregnant outside of marriage. The explosion of juvenile crime and teenage pregnancy tracks the increase in fatherless homes with eerie precision.” – DAVID BLANKENHORN (American author and chief honcho of the Institute For American Values)

“Fatherhood is a suspension of his own self-interest for the greater good.” – MEYER FORTES       (an “anthropologist”, it says here… nfi…)

“Somehow, the all-powerful patriarchy appears to have had a bit of an oversight when it comes to the protection of patriarchy itself. As the law currently stands, a woman can leave her husband, sue him for divorce, kick him out of his house, take his children and, best of all, make him foot the bill for everything. Now where, I wonder, had the patriarchy popped off to when that little lot got passed?” – DAVID THOMAS (The British author who was a man when he wrote this but who, last time I heard, in 2019, was in the process of becoming a woman.)

“So long as America has reduced fathers to unappreciated paychecks, it should surprise no one that our society decays.” – GENE HOPP (A good citizen from Bellevue, Washington, in a 1996 letter to the WEEKLY STANDARD)

"If a man chooses truth over his father, that man is a fool." – HERB GOLD (Author of  the novel “Swifty The Magician”, This is a most curious quote indeed, but I pass it on regardless; what the hell....)

"When I was a boy of 14, my father was so ignorant I could hardly stand to have the old man around. But when I got to be 21, I was astonished at how much the old man had learned in seven years." – MARK TWAIN

“If the father is not in the home the boy will find a father in the streets.” -- DENZEL WASHINGTON

"When my brother and I were growing up in Idaho, my dad would play catch with us in the yard.  My mom once complained to him 'You’re tearing up the grass!, and dad replied, 'We’re not raising grass. We’re raising boys'." -- HARMON KILLEBREW      (the great 1st baseman for the Washington Senators/Minnesota Twins, and his dad was a sheriff out there)

“We (fathers) are practically the only remaining demographic whome absolutely no one cares about 'triggering', which is just as well given how negatively we are portrayed in virtually every film or television programme coming out in Hollywood.” -- TOBY YOUNG (in 2018)

“Fathers are fathers, not because they are filled with some ‘essence of fatherhood’, but because they have children.” – SIMON INGS (an English novelist and science writer living in London... and here he’s both tautological, but  quotable nevertheless.)

"Fathers are not modern men." -- LAURA FREEMAN (I love this. Laura wrote this in the UK SPECTATOR, in April 2018)

“Fatherhood is a time of long days and short years.” – JONAH GOLDBERG      (he admitted that this was not original to him, but he didn’t specify who originally said it, and he said it, so it stands with him.)                                                

“Fatherhood and nostalgia are tightly bound up. I see this clearly now, as I rekindle my friendship with Tintin and introduce him to my three-year old son Max.” – SOHRAB AHMARI (he wrote this in June 2020, and I’m delighted to see that I share a fondness for the – for me – indispensable Tintin with my old pal Sohrab.)

"A father who does not teach his son a trade teaches him to be a highway robber." -- HILLEL (the famous Joosh religious teacher, who died circa 10 BC) 

"Whatever a boy happens to be doing, his father will surely want him to be doing something else. Even if the boy can fit in both things, his father will try to stop him." -- ERIC JACOBS       (Kingsley Amis’ biographer)                                        

“By the time a man realizes that maybe his father was right, he usually has a son who thinks he's wrong." – CHARLES WADSWORTH (the famous classical pianist, from Newman, GA, USA)

“He said what he thought did my dad. Maybe that was his crime.” – NIGEL WILLIAMS (in his 1992 novel “They Came From SW19)

Fault

“We confess to little faults only to persuade ourselves that we have no great ones.” --  FRANCOIS DE LA ROCHEFOUCAULD

“If we had no faults we should not take so much pleasure in noting those of others. “ -- FRANCOIS DE LA ROCHEFOUCAULD (two variations on the same theme....)

F.B.I., The

“The FBI’s anti-terrorism work nowadays consists almost exclusively of leading persons in the groups that it influences into near-crimes, and then to prosecutions that it touts as triumphs.” -- ANGELO CODEVILLA (on 23 June 2021)

"The FBI cannot a solve a crime it did not commit itself." -- DON SURBER (the post-Obama FBI we're talking about, here....)

"As a non-binary government official who enjoyed spying on suspected Russian stooges and state enemies, I gotta say J Edgar Hoover was way ahead of his time." -- DAVE "IOWAHAWK" BURGE (in April 2022) 

"The FBI has replaced the Ku Klux Klan as the paramilitary wing of the Democratic Party." -- DINESH D'SOUZA (on 20 August 2022)

“After 9/11 the FBI has been stuck in this netherworld of being a law enforcement agency and an intelligence agency, and you can’t combine those with the same people in the same organization or you get political police." -- J. MICHAEL WALLER (a very savvy Senior Analyst for Strategy, at the Center for Security Policy)

"The key to understanding today’s FBI is to know that the Bureau has internalized Critical Legal Theory, in which the integrity of evidence and legal procedure no longer matter. Everything is to advance a Cultural Marxist agenda, even though most have no idea of what’s happening." -- J. MICHAEL WALLER (on 10 August 2023)

"The FBI is just a bureaucracy. Bureaucracies come and go. And it's just a brand. It used to be a cool brand. Now the FBI is the Bud Light of law." -- J. MICHAEL WALLER (in April 2024)

"Say what you will about ol' J. Edgar, Mr Hoover would have never allowed his Bureau to get mixed up in stupid political games like the FBI did with Twitter. Not because he cared about civil liberties, but because he knew how awful such partisan nonsense would look for the FBI." -- JOHN SCHINDLER (in Dec. 2022)

Fear

“Fear has its uses.” – BEN STEIN

“It is fear, after all, which makes the world go round.” – THEODORE DALRYMPLE (see? And there’s one of Ben Stein’s uses…)

"The human mind is never better disposed to gratitude and attachment than when softened by fear." – GEN. SIR CHARLES NAPIER

“A good scare is worth more to a man than good advice.”  – EDGAR WATSON HOWE (an American novelist, newspaper and magazine editor, in the first part of the 20th Century)

“A coward is a slave to his fears, but a fool refuses to listen to them. Fear has something to tell us.” – JONAH GOLDBERG

«Fear is dangerous when it serves as a substitute for thinking.» – JONAH GOLDBERG

"Fear is the beginning of wisdom." – WILLIAM TECUMSEH SHERMAN

“Fear is a gift. It promotes wisdom.” – KURT SCHLICHTER

"Fear is the teacher, and class is in session." – KURT SCHLICHTER

"If I die tomorrow it will have been useless to have been afraid today." -- MARK HELPRIN

 “There is no terror in the bang, only in the anticipation of it.» – (SIR) ALFRED HITCHCOCK

"What frightens us today is exactly the same sort of thing that frightened us yesterday. It's just a different wolf." -- (SIR) ALFRED HITCHCOCK 

"To fear to face an issue is to believe that the worst is true." – AYN RAND

“He who fears he shall suffer, already suffers what he fears" – MICHEL DE MONTAIGNE

«I don't ask you to be unafraid, simply to act unafraid.» – GENERAL CHARLES GEORGE «CHINESE» GORDON (Yup, the guy played by Charlton Heston in «Khartoum»)

"There is no contagion equal to that of fear." -- GENERAL CHARLES "CHINESE" GORDON

“On the other side of fear lies freedom!”- J. B. GLOSSINGER (The generalissimo of something called “The Alive Foundation, Inc.”)

«Fear is a reaction. Courage is a decision.» – WINSTON CHURCHILL

«You face your fear because your goal demands it, that is the goddamn warrior spirit.» – ALEX HONNOLD (the young American star «free solo» rock climber)

"It's what people know about themselves, inside -- that makes 'em afraid." -- ERNEST TIDYMAN (in his screenplay for "High Plains Drifter", 1973 -- spoken by Clint Eastwood)

“Fear concentrates the mind: confident soldiers are tempted to turn into a disorderly, careless rabble, while fear makes them attentive, obedient and disciplined.” – XENOPHON (431 BC – 354 BC. An ancient Greek historian, philosopher and soldier)

“Prudence was another word for fear.” – ALEX BERENSON (Don’t believe it.)

"Speed is a function of fear." -- JACK JOLIS

"Don't look back, something might be gaining on you." -- SATCHEL PAIGE    (the legendary baseballist, 1906-1982)

"I know witches aren't real. That's why I'm afraid of them." -- TRACY KIDDER 

“The Mother of All Living is the ancient power of fright and lust.” – ROBERT GRAVES (the pote)

“Fear inspires every political decision.” – PROF. JOHN GREENWAY (the late “gonzo anthropologist” from Colorado)

"Extreme terror gives us back the gestures of our childhood." -- MALCOLM DE CHAZAL (A Mauritian --from Mauritius -- writer, artist and self-described visionary, 1902-1981)

Feeling (and “Feeling” and “Feelings”)

“Feeling comes naturally but thought does not.” – THEODORE DALRYMPLE

“Now you’ve gone and hurt my feelings. Both of them” – KURT SCHLICHTER

“Today’s liberal elites champion a social gospel, without the gospel. For all of them, the sole proof of redemption is the holding of a proper sense of social ills. The only available confidence about their salvation, as something superadded to experience, is the self-esteem that comes with feeling they oppose the social evils of bigotry and power and the groupthink of the mob.” – JODY BOTTUM       (In his book “An Anxious Age”)                                

«Nobody can hurt your feelings without your active participation.» – DAVE «IOWAHAWK» BURGE

“Facts don’t care about your feelings.” – BEN SHAPIRO

“I don't assess the nation's mood, I assess my own. And I'm feeling good.” – JUSTICE ANTONIN SCALIA (the late. He was feeling good, until he wasn't.)

"Without thinking, there's no clarity; and without feeling, there's no purpose." -- MARK HELPRIN

"Think of feelings as cards. They're nothing on their own. It's how you play them that makes a fellow happy wealthy and wise." -- CHARLES McCARRY 

“The problem traditionally associated with being male, which is that our sex finds it difficult to understand human feelings.” -- CHARLES MOORE

"The problem isn’t that Johnny can’t read. The problem isn’t even that Johnny can’t think. The problem is that Johnny doesn’t know what thinking is; he confuses it with feeling." -- THOMAS SOWELL

“It is the ultimate expression of a narcissistic society, this endless revelling in ‘feelings’, the consequence of a country where people have had it too easy for too long.” – ROD LIDDLE (in March 2021)

“A good rule in life: if you’re not sure what their feelings are – don’t.” – MICHAEL FRAYN

“Rationality is far less potent than feelings.” – ANDREW SULLIVAN (in May 2021)

Fellowship

“Although the word 'fellowship' itself is gender neutral, it has a distinctly masculine vibe – men creates fellowships (Jesus and His apostles; the Bee Gees); women create covens.” -- CHRISTINE ROSEN (author and Senior Editor at THE NEW ATLANTIS)

Feminism

“Feminists have no interest whatsoever in any concept of fair treatment.” – DAVID THOMAS       (The British author who was a man when he wrote this but who, last time I heard, in 2019, was in the process of becoming a woman.)               

“A career and a family -- you can have it all, you just can't have it all at the same time." – JEANNE KIRKPATRICK

“Feminists are never really interested in the accomplishments of women but only of liberal women.” – MONA CHAREN

“Feminism is a conspiracy by women against women.” – LLOYD EVANS (Theater critic of the UK SPECTATOR)

"The battle of the sexes ended decades ago when women asked for equality in the office andat home, thereby doubling their work-load, and men instantly agreed to this anti-women bargain." -- LLOYD EVANS

 “I love the womens’ movement, especially when I’m walking behind it.” – RUSH LIMBAUGH

“It is surely unwise to burn one’s bra when one is unsure where one’s next bra is coming from.” – VENETIA THOMPSON (An English chick who left working in London’s “City” – the Brit Wall St. – to become a snide “journalist”)

“Feminism is now well into middle age. A century ago, it was a revolutionary movement; in the 1960s and 1970s, it was a political leaning; now it’s a profession. And, as is true of many professions, its practitioners spend much of their time making work for each other.” – FRED SHWARTZ

“What problems could you possibly have? You're a feminist. Feminists by definition do not have problems. They are simply corrupted by patriarchy, aren't they?” – NIGEL WILLIAMS (the British novelist)

"I have no use for 'men’s rights', any more than I have any use for 'women’s rights', but let us ask: Who was it that decided it was a good idea to politicize love, sex and marriage? Who spent the past four decades proclaiming that 'the personal is political', so that every office flirtation and every petty domestic quarrel is a federal civil rights violation? The damned feminists, that’s who.” — ROBERT STACY McCAIN

“And the misery of the feminist backlash over the whole god damn country was whipping everybody into bloody wretched minded submission either feminizing men or making them into bigger bastards than ever they were. And everybody desperate to diplomatically conform and afraid to call anything by its real name.” – J. P. DONLEAVY

“If women make less than men for doing the same job, why would a capitalist ever hire a man?” – DAVE “Iowahawk” BURGE

“The worst thing about feminists is listening to them talk.” – KEVIN D. WILLIAMSON

“Women's rights are a lot of hooey.” -- HARRY S TRUMAN

“In women's studies today, academics can't quite bring themselves to address sexism when it's practiced by anyone who isn't white.” -- ROBERT VERBRUGGEN (in NR in October 2012)

“One definition of a feminist is someone whose estimate is on the high side.” -- JIM TARANTO (Tell you the truth, I don't even get this – but it sounds like an amusing quote nevertheless...)

“The feminist movement was invented to allow ugly women access to the mainstream of society.” – RUSH LIMBAUGH

“Feminism has always been a matter of women having a leg wrestling match with their own other leg.” – P. J. O’ROURKE

“These days being a feminist boils down to being a famous woman who isn’t identifiable as a Republican.” – JONAH GOLDBERG

“I am occasionally desired by congenital imbeciles and the editors of magazines to say something about the writing of detective fiction 'from the woman's moint of view'. To such demands one can only say, 'Go away and don't be silly. You might as well ask what is the female angle on an equilateral triangle.” – DOROTHY L. SAYERS (the famous English detective novelist, in 1938)  

«Radical feminism appears to be about some chicks dictating to other chicks. And in the end no one gets his sandwich.» – KURT SCHLICHTER

“Feminism is an ideology that consists solely of manifesting affluent chicks' daddy issues.” – KURT SCHLICHTER

“The one thing that feminists hate, above all else, is happy men.” – LARRY O'CONNOR (the ex-Breitbart metrosexual, on his morning radio show on WMAL-AM, Washington D.C., 13 August 2015)

“A lot of vaguely intellectual feministy New York girls seem to think the Pill is a male plot to give them cancer or something, a conspiracy they discuss over cigarettes.” – KYLE SMITH

“Want to close the wage gap? Step one: Change your major from feminist dance therapy to electrical engineering.” – CHRISTINA H. SOMMERS

“The underlying idea was that men and women were so fundamentally similar that the detail of being one or the other should, in a just world, have a negligible impact on how any individual's life unfolds.” – WILLIAM VOEGELI

“Regarding oneself as a victim makes happiness impossible. Which is a big reason many feminists are unhappy human beings.” – DENNIS PRAGER (another reason is that they tend to be ugly...)

"Feminism has become a catchall vegetable drawer where bunches of clingy sob sisters can store their moldy neuroses.” -- CAMILLE PAGLIA

"Feminism used to be a battle for equality. But now you'd think it was the fight for special victim status." -- EMILY HILL (SPECTATOR, 25 March 2017 – author of collection of short stories “Bad Romance”)

"Feminism is a socialist, anti-family political movement that encourages women t leave their husbands, kill their children, practice witchcraft, destroy capitalism and become lesbians." -- PAT ROBERTSON

"Weaponizing the vagina for political or career gain is such dangerous territory. Most straight white men would be safer sharing their workspace with Ebola." -- KATIE HOPKINS

"To most feminists, feminism means eliminating power imbalances between men and women. A physical power imbalance between the sexes will always exist. But guns can level the playing field, potentially saving women's lives in the process." -- BETHANY MANDEL      (Editor of RICOCHET, in August 2018)    

“The trouble with systematic feminism is that it heightens rather than dampens one’s phallocentricity. It makes more difficult the sexual forgetting we depend on for decent everyday social intercourse.” – JOHN UPDIKE

"He took refuge in self-righteous feminism, the modern equivalent of hiding behind a woman's petticoats." -- BEN ELTON (in his otherwise lousy 1996 novel "Popcorn")

“Women’s lib has done to femininity what the Boston Strangler did for door-to-door selling.” --LUCIANNE GOLDBERG (Jonah's mom) 

"In order to qualify as 'intersectional feminist' and present yourself as a victim of 'systemic inequality' you need to be a member of the ruling class. One of the distinguishing characteristics of 'social justice' activists is that they tend to be rich, high-achieving young women who have been to elite universities which is why they're such ripe targets for satire." -- TOBY YOUNG

“1st wave feminism --“We want to be equal to men.’

2nd wave feminism – “We don’t need men.’

3rd wave feminism – “We are men.’ “-- CHRIS FULLER (a self-confessed leftie, on the Twoot, in Sept. 2019)

"The age of consent thing is really a feminist social construct. Do we really believe you have to be 18 years old in order to consent to sex otherwise it's rape? It's really about artificially increasing the marketplace value of older women." -- NICK FUENTES (This guy Fuentes is really a repulsive character, and I only include this bit of nastiness to show how lefty trendiness can be used against itself)

“Feminists by definition do not have problems. They are simply corrupted by patriarchy, aren’t they?” – NIGEL WILLIAMS  

"We are effectively run in this country (America, 2024) by a bunch of childless cat ladies who are miserable at their own lives and the choices they've made and so they want to make the rest of the country miserable too." -- J. D. VANCE

Fencing

"Never fence with an amateur. They'll kill you for sure." - WILLIAM F. BUCKLEY, JR. (how he knew this I don’t know – but I’m prepared to take his word for it.)

Fifth (5th) Amendment

“The 5th Amendment was meant to protect you from the government, not protect the government from you.” – DAVE “IOWAHAWK” BURGE

Fights,(-ing)

“Never get into a fight with an inanimate object.” – P. J. O’ROURKE (for starters....)

“I feel about fights as I do about enemas – they are seldom really necessary and always profoundly unpleasant.” – CHRIS MILLER (an Alpha Delta Phi brother of mine, from the legendary chapter at Dartmouth, and the author of ANIMAL HOUSE. X-ray, bro….)

“Never get into a bar fight with an ugly man because he doesn't have enough to lose.” – JIM GERAGHTY (of NATIONAL REVIEW)

“One of the first things we are taught is never to pick on people smaller than ourselves. The other thing I was taught was to hit the biggest first if attacked by many: it might discourage the others.” – TAKI THEODORACOPOLOS

“I won the fight by about 200 yards!” – LEN GOODMAN (the Brit “brains” behind the “Dancing With The Stars” TV mindlessness…)

“If you find yourself in a fair fight, your tactics suck.” – CLINT SMITH

“We fight rather to keep something alive than in the expectation that anything will triumph.” – T.S. ELIOT

"Never pick a fight with a guy who knows how to fight," – ALLEN WEST

"If you find yourself in a fair fight, you didn't plan your mission properly." -- COL. DAVID HACKWORTH (the highly decorated author and Special Forces officer during Vietnam. A definite hot shit.)

"I will never attack an opponent from the left. I will attack them from below." -- DAVE "IOWAHAWK" BURGE

"In my opinion, judo and jujitsu and karate are a load of crap, no more use in a real fight than Mrs. Murphy arse." -- PROFESSOR JOHN GREENWAY (perhaps my favorite professor of all-time. Big Jawn was an Anthropology prof at the University of Colorado who wrote a fantastic book called "Down Among The Wild Men" about the Australian Aborigines, and who invented the taxonomic distinction between "feathered Indians" and "toweled   Indians" and in general, as you might imagine, was in perpetual hot water with the lefty politically correct Schutzstaffel)

“Not fair, perhaps, but then I never saw any sense at all in fighting fair.” – PROF. JOHN GREENWAY

“I've had about 400 fights while drinking and I don't recall having won a single one.” – GEORGE C. SCOTT

“From the cradle to the grave, fighting, rightly understood, is the business, the real, highest, honestest (sic) business, of every son of man. Every one who is worth his salt has his enemies, who must be beaten, be they evil thoughts and habits in himself or spiritual wickedness in high places, or Russians, or Border-ruffians, or Bill, Tom, or Harry, who will not let him live his life in quiet till he has thrashed them.” – THOMAS HUGHES      (In his “Tom Brown’s Schooldays”)                            

“You can't fight anyone who's on drugs, bud. They've go abnormal strength and don't feel pain.” – JEREMY CLARKE (The UK SPECTATOR's “Low Life” columnist to his drunken friend Trev, who was looking for a    barroom punchup)

“You wanna fight, is that what you want? Come on you son of a bitch – I’ll hit you so hard I’ll kill your whole family.” – BARRY LEVINSON (the actor Tim Daly as “Billy Howard” in Levinson's great“Diner”)

“If a man consults whether he is to fight, when he has the power in his own hands, it is certain that his opinion is against fighting.” – ADMIRAL HORATIO NELSON

“If there is fighting to be done, almost every society on Earth recognizes that it is men who are going to have to do it.” – DOUGLAS MURRAY 

"Even though he was my enemy, I had to admire his strategy: first he punched me, then he kicked me, then he punched me again." – JACK HANDEY (the American “humorist”)

"Always run from a knife and rush a gun." - JIMMY HOFFA (sound advice, no doubt, but that still didn't save him from ending up as part of the cornerstone of the Teamsters International Headquarters Building in Washington D.C.)

“Mutual incomprehension rarely qualities as a clash.” – JOSEPH BOTTUM

“Go in close, and when you think you are too close, go in closer.” – THOMAS McGUIRE (A pilot in the  “Lafayette Escadrille” – those American pilots who went to fight for France in WWI before the US got into the war.)

“There are occasions when it pays better to fight and be beaten than not to fight at all.” – GEORGE ORWELL

"Never fence with an amateur. They'll kill you for sure." - WILLIAM F. BUCKLEY, JR.

"W.C. Fields had a point. You should never kick a man unless he's down." -- ROBERT "BUD" McFARLANE   (the ex-Marine and Reagan's National Security adviser and Ollie North's boss during "Iran-Contra")

"I am ready to take up arms at a moment's notice. The legs we can take up later." -- W.C. FIELDS

“If you want to be The Man, you've got to beat The Man.” – BILL KRISTOL (actually, he was advising Marco Rubio in his primary struggle against Trump, and it's hard to picture the effete Kristol in, let's say, an actual barroom brawl, but still... it's an OK quote...)  

“What I learned growing up in The Bronx: When you get your ass kicked, the problem is not the other guy. It's you.” – ANDREW C. McCARTHY

“At some point, the civilized descend into the anarchic primordial soup to do battle with the loons and everyone starts scrabbling about in the swamp, chucking muck at each other and screaming like harpies.” – MELISSA KITE

"No one wants to be called 'feisty'. That's what a rapist says when his victim fights back." -- LLOYD EVANS

 “The problem most guys have in bar fights is that they think there are rules. There are no rules.” -- JAMES FREEMAN (Daughter Annie's Wall Street Journal pal columnist, actually quoting a pal of his who was a bodyguard for the Aussie rock band AC-DC's rowdy Angus Young)

"You can't really win, but you can fight." -- MARK HELPRIN

"In any existential conflict, the side that is willing to discard the rules will be the winner. This side will be that which understands, as a matter of course, that the rules themselves can be used against an opponent." -- DAVID MAMET

“Don't start none, won't be none.” – JAMES BROWN (“de HAWddest-woikin' man in show bidness!” – and this is a phrase used by many, but I heard James say it, so he gets the credit here. My Compendium, my rules.)

"One of the difficult things with battles, I can tell you, whether you're fighting them or whether you're describing them afterwards, is that people don't stop to introduce themselves." -- MICHAEL FRAYN (the very amusing late English playwright and novelist -- and yes, I've found this to be the case, as well...) 

“The hardest thing to get people to understand is: You literally have seconds to win a gun fight in a defensive shooting. If you are trying to shoot tight shot groups you need to open that shit up and shoot faster. Speed does count in a gun fight.” – MICHAEL KEYES (An ex-US Army Special Forces vet, and tactics and firearms instructor)

“After that the two of them had a fast fistfight, and one of them did not live to know who the winner was.” – FLANN O’BRIEN (In his memorably amusing 1964 novel, “The Dalkey Archive”)

“Don't pick a fight with an old man. If he is too old to fight, he'll just kill you.” – WILL ROGERS

"Why do we box? The fact is that fist-fighting is an archetypal form of combat. It's the way people fight when they're not fighting for their lives. In normal circumstances, when people fight for honor or precedence or access to females, they put their fists up -- and afterwards, the the winner is a good deal happier than the loser, they carry on living." -- SIMON BARNES

"I learned only 2 useful things from all the bar-room fights I was ever in: 1/ Although virtually all of them are over some girl, 100% of the time that girl will not thank you for them. (To put it mildly.) and 2/ The first solid punch (if there even is a solid punch) wins it. (Movies lie)." --JACK JOLIS

“Only get into fights with people who are demonstrably drunker than you are.” – JACK JOLIS

"As in playing football and making love, it is best not to think too much when engaged in mortal combat." --  CHARLES McCARRY

"It's hard fighting against your own nature when it's in your nature to fight." -- GRAHAM SWIFT

“Hit first, hit hard, and hit often.” – TOBY YOUNG (and the most important one of these, – by far – trust me, is the first.)

“If you’re going to have a fight, there’s no good sticking to the Marquess of Queensberry’s rules, if you get my meaning. If the other chap’s out to hurt you, why then kick him in the belly and have done with it.” – NEVIL SHUTE (the great English novelist, in 1945)

“The most important thing in any endeavor is to get involved in the fight, and in that way learn what to do next.” – LENIN (VLADIMIR ILLYCH ULIANOV)

"Fair play for one and all, that's my motto. But I don't mind playing unfair once in a while to bring it about." -- WILLIAM BOYD (actually said by a character in his 1993 novel "The Blue Afternoon")

"Be peaceful, be courteous, obey the law, respect everyone; but if someone puts his hand on you, send him to the cemetery." -- MALCOLM X (This sounds like what I always told my kids when they were small: "Be kind but take no shit" –  and I'm bound to say that I'm starting to warm to this Mr. X.)

“There is something about coshing a man for the first time that inspires a certain wild but unstable confidence. One moment you are faced with a powerful and unnerving obstacle; the next, without thought or subtlety, you have overcome it. By disengaging from the habits of a lifetime you have slipped into a new effortless gear in which all things seem possible. Minutes afterwards the adrenalin aftertaste still tickles the roots of the tongue, nauseous, exultant, the unique flavour of rewarded violence.” – LIONEL DAVIDSON (in his superb 1960 spy novel, “The Night Of Wenceslas”)

"I try not to pick fights, but I do finish them." -- ELON MUSK (he actually said this, on his new acquisition "the Twoot" , on 29 April 2022) 

"I don't ever want to be in a fair fight" -- NORMAN SCHWARTZKOPF (“Stormin’ Norman — the great “Desert Storm” general)

“Finance, International”

“My real enemy is the world of finance.” – FRANCOIS HOLLANDE (Great. He said this when he was President of France.)

Finland

" ‘Lapland’? Sounds like an amusement park for perverts.” – DAVE “IOWAHAWK” BURGE

«Finland is the only country I know where in the mini-bars the Coke bottles are covered in dust but all the vodka bottles are shining bright, fresh from the distillers than morning.» – PETER BIDDLECOMBE

“I never knew I was an introvert myself until I went to Finland and I felt a bit like Dorothy waking up at the end of The Wizard Of Oz.” – RORY SUTHERLAND

Fire

"A man sitting with a fire has got to have a stick. No-one can sit in front of a fire without wanting to poke it, to rearrange it, to help it. A fire is every man's oldest friend; fires belong to us. You watch a woman before a fire: she'll stand back and look and hug herself. She looks at it the way she looks at a naked man: she's fascinated but frightened. But a man, now, he'll kick it and prod it. Men and fire, they know each other." -- A. A. GILL

Fishing

“A jerk on one end of the line waiting for a jerk on the other.” – ROBERT HUGHES (The Australian-born author of, er, “A Jerk On One End”)

“Watching other people fishing is dreadfully dull, though watching people failing to catch fish is even duller.” – SIMON HOGGART

“What fish there are on the planet are in the Southern Hemisphere, like sparkling snowflakes settling in a glass globe.” – JOHN UPDIKE (in 1996)

“Many men go fishing all their lives, without knowing that it is not fish they are after.” – HENRY DAVID THOREAU (I neither like fishing or Thoreau, and I’m damned if I know why I’m including this bit of piffle...)

"Waiting for a bus is about as thrilling as fishing, with the similar tantalisation that something, sometime, somehow will turn up." -- GEORGE COURTAULD (in his 1995 "The Travels Of A Fat Bulldog")  

"Fishing is as close as you can come to doing nothing and still be doing something." -- LAURENCE SHAMES

Fitness

“You don't gradually become fat. Rather, you just wake up one day and discover you're a fat person.” – CLIVE JAMES (the Australian-born Brit author and raconteur)

Flags

“The universal flag of mankind – drying wash.” – ROBERT DALEY (Author of “The Prince Of The City” – a great cop writer; NY’s version of LA’s Joseph Wambaugh)

“The Chorus Line of National Underwear hung out to dry in front of the United Nations.” – MARK HELPRIN

“Lots of people – well, lots of men and boys – get vaguely excited about flags. And the kind of people who get vaguely excited about flags tend also to be the kind who remember anecdotes and trivia.” – DANIEL HANNAN (guilty as charged....)

“In battle it is not syllogisms that will keep the reluctant nerves and muscle to their post in the third hour of the bombardment. The crudest sentimentalism of a flag of a country or a regiment will be of more use.” – C. S. LEWIS

“Since the Civil War, Americans have been a flag-oriented people. The Stars and Stripes has the status of a religious icon and is a more central symbol of national identity for Americans than their flags are for peoples of other nations.” -- SAMUEL HUNTINGTON

“That flag (the American flag) has made more humans free than any in history.” – JIM HANSON (President of the Security Studies Group)

"The left reacts to the American flag the same way a vampire does to garlic." -- KEVIN SORBO (the actor) 

"I judge people by the flags they fly. (That's why they fly them.)" -- JACK JOLIS

Flattery

"Flattery could not be overdone so long as it was shameless, which meant ignoring one's own embarrassment." -- ALAN JUDD

"People so often took you at your own evaluation; you could get almost anywhere by flattering and smiling. But the most adept were often also the most vulnerable to the same tactic." -- ALAN JUDD

"What really flatters a man is that you think him worth flattering." -- GEORGE BERNARD SHAW (I try to avoid quoting this old lefty diva whenever I can, but I have to admit, this one is pretty good....) 

"Flattery, like patriotism and idealism, was all very well so long as you didn't inhale." -- NICHOLAS SHAKESPEARE

Florida

“This is Florida, and even the sky is in questionable taste.” – MARTIN AMIS

“Florida, where eating is the main physical recreation.” – JOHN UPDIKE

"That New York City suburb known as Palm Beach, Florida." -- KEVIN D. WILLIAMSON

“Just landed in Florida from NYC. Closest feeling an American can have to crossing from East to West Berlin circa 1965.” ~~ BUCK SEXTON    (Feb. 2024)

"There is a whole new ethic taking shape in South Florida, and despite the rich Latin overlay, it is not so far from the taproot of Spanish-speaking kind of Darwinism, like the Sicilians brought to New York a hundred years ago and like the Japanese brought to Hawaii after World War II, and not really much different from what the Israelis are bringing to Lebanon today." -- HUNTER S. THOMPSON (in 1983)

"Florida is the place where woke goes to die." -- RON DESANTIS (in August 2022)

“Storm Damage Makes Florida Look almost As Bad As California!” — RON DESANTIS (After Hurricane Ian, in Oct. 2022)

"There are no basements in Florida." -- LOU DOBBS (but plenty of attics)

"Florida is the state that looks most like most like what we’d expect the United States to look like in 2060." -- PHILIP BUMP       (in "The Aftermath: The Last Days Of The Baby Boom",  2023)

Flowers

“Flowers are obscene sex organs.” – SYLVAIN TESSON (a hell-raising Frogue travel writer, and apparently quite a dude.)

"A weed, after all, is just a flower in the wrong place." -- A. A. GILL

“A flower is a weed with an advertising budget.” – RORY SUTHERLAND

F.O.M.O. (“Fear Of Missing Out”)

"One lives as if one always might 'miss out on something'." -- FRIEDRICH NIETZSCHE (in 1887 -- which just goes to show, once again, that, as the Bible says, "There is nothing new under the sun".)

Fonda, Jane

"Hanoi-Jane has the face of a horse and the persistence of an ass." -- JACK JOLIS

"In a recent interview on the subject of parenting, Jane Fonda admitted that it wasn't easy to talk to her children about sex. But she felt it was necessary because she did not want them to learn about sex the way that she did. By reading North Vietnamese propaganda pamphlets." -- NORM COLEMAN      (the late SNL comic...)

Food

“If it has two legs and doesn’t talk, or has four legs and isn’t a table, you can eat it.” – CARLA BERG JOLIS (A world-class cook, quoting, so she claims, an ‘old Cantonese saying’.)

“Another iron law: the longer food takes, the worse it is, because the chef has no idea what he’s doing.” – BEN STEIN

“From a dietary point of view, the Neolithic Period is still with us. We may sprinkle our dishes with bay leaves and chopped fennel, but underneath it all is Stone Age food. And when we get sick, it is Stone Age diseases we suffer.” – BILL BRYSON

"Eggs benedict was created at the Waldorf Astoria in the 1890s and designed as a hangover cure for one Samuel Benedict, though how anyone with a hangover could face poached eggs swimming in hollandaise sauce and think it recuperative will forever be a mystery to me." -- BILL BRYSON

"If it has four legs and is not a chair, has wings and is not an aeroplane, or swims and is not a submarine, the Cantonese will eat it." -- PRINCE PHILIP, THE DUKE OF EDINBURGH (The splendid, Greek-born Duke was the only "royal" I really had time for. I was once in Swaziland when the Queen and the Duke were visiting -- it was a bit of a tricky visit because in those days South Africa was still being boycotted, but the airport in Swaziland's capital, Mbabane, was too small for the Royal Jet, so they had to sort of "slip through" via Johannesburg.  Anyway, the point of this story is that that night, on Swazi TV, the young lady reading the news said, {and I swear, like Dave Barry, I am not making this up}, "Tonight we saw the arrival of her Majesty Queen Elizabeth the Eleventh, and her husband, the Duck of Edinburg" -- pronounced Edin-berg.  Oh, what wizard japes....)

“I blame Andy Gibb. Corn wants to be your everything, sugar, gas, booze.” – ED MORRISSEY

“Food has ruined more relationships than infidelity.” – COLETTE (The French author, 1873-1954, whose full name was Sidonie-Gabrielle Colette)

“I was a light eater. When it got light, I started eating.” -- ART DONOVAN      (ex-tackle for the Baltimore Colts)                                                                   

“The reason foreigners drink their coffee black isn't because they're sophisticated: it's because their milk tastes like crap.” -- RORY SUTHERLAND

"I like meat. An awful lot. Not only does it taste good, but it's the thing that has made us great. If it hadn't been for meat, we would probably not have discovered fire." -- JAMES DELINGPOLE       (Author, TV critic, conservative "young fogey", and a sort of the English version of Greg Gutfeld... And I don't know if he's actually, technically correct about the cause-and-effect link between meat and fire, but it at least.... well, bears ponderin'.....)                           

“I don't get ham. You have pork, then you make it terrible. WTF?” -- KURT SCHLICHTER

“ ‘Mac ‘n’cheese’ is just wadding.” — KURT SCHLICHTER

"It is a brave man who first tried an oyster." -- JONATHAN SWIFT    (many people have said this, and even more have heard it said -- but few know that the originator of the observation was Mr. Gulliver's Travels, 1667-1745, himself)

"My wife and I tried two or three times in the last forty years to have breakfast together, but it was so disagreeable we had to stop." -- WINSTON CHURCHILL (From anyone else this might have been TMI, but the old boy manages to make even this banal observation sound practically Wodehousian.)

“Eat all the broken cookies; they don't count.” -- AMANDA FORTINI      (a US writer for various publications, no doubt a lib, on the Twoot)                                             

"Goat cheese tastes like curdled death." -- JONAH GOLDBERG

“Goat cheese (a.k.a. Satan’s foot fungus)” -- JONAH GOLDBERG      (I'm glad to see he doesn't seem to like it any more than I do....)                                                                   

"I like chili, but not enough to discuss it with someone from Texas." -- CALVIN TRILLIN

“Everything looks better after lunch.” -- WINSTON CHURCHILL     (upon hearing of the fall of Tobruk, Libya, in 1942)                                                                    

"Nobody is happy ordering a salad at a restaurant. They're all lying. And I don't want to hear about great kinds of salad that have meat and/or cheese and/or bread in them. The salad is the crappy part of those salads and we all know it." -- BEN SHAPIRO

“Cucumbers should be well sliced, and dressed with pepper and vinegar, and then thrown out.” – DR. SAMUEL JOHNSON

"Several years ago, in California, I ate my first clam and it tasted like a gonad dipped in motor oil." -- STEVE MARTIN

“I like spaghetti because you don’t have to take your eyes off the book to pick about among it, it’s all the same.” – PHILIP LARKIN

«Cheese makes great food for an army, being compact, nutritious, and possessing a good shelf life. Under Roman occupation, the daily ration was an ounce. Elsewhere, in the American civil war, this went up to a whole pound; and in the first world war, every French soldier on the Western Front was given a camembert (an ingenious marketing ploy which brought the cheese nationwide fame).» – STEPHANIE SY-QUIA (in the UK SPECTATOR in Nov. 2019)

"Cheese becomes more tasteless the further north it is made." -- GEORGE COURTAULD (in his 1995 "The Travels Of A Fat Bulldog")

"To understand a culture, a people, a civilization, it helps to know what they prohibit, and what they eagerly poach and serve with pak choi.". -- SEAN THOMAS    (a British author and journalist)

"Lasagne is a dish made from steamed wedding invitations." -- LLOYD EVANS

“Americans have never really caught on to the idea of eating sheep. I think they think it’s cissy.” – HUGH LAURIE (the English comic actor – and you can tell he’s English due to the “c” in “cissy”.)

Food, (“Fast”, “Junk”)

“As a non-stop traveler, I am subjected to terrifying garbage masquerading as gourmet food. Almost always, the best meal I get anywhere is at McDonald’s. It is just a miracle that their cheeseburgers, Big Macs, apple pies, and salads can be so consistently great. What magic do they have? I love almost all fast food, but McDonald’s is a true miracle.” – BEN STEIN

“Is there any food more perfect than the potato chip? A single thin slice contains the three primary food groups: salt, fat and crunchiness.” – CAMERON STRACHER        (editor of the New York University Law School Law Review)      

“It's not the government's call to ban Happy Meals  out of kids' hands. It's not their business. The point-man for the anti-Happy Meal initiative (in San Francisco) stated that this wasn't just about nutrition, though – this was 'food justice', a new concept that will soon join hands with the commerce clause to ban interstate transport of fast food, unless Taco Bell gets smart and markets its burritos as 'undocumented wraps'.” – JAMES LILEKS (in the 29 Nov 2010 issue of NR)

“So let’s not be tough on Christmas gift-giving. Unless of course we’re talking about fruit cake, which I believe in some magazine’s survey of preferred and un-preferred gifts finished below no gift at all. I’m convinced I could get all the people in the lower 48 who like fruit cake in my dining room with space left for the Tampa Bay Buccaneers’ defensive unit. In uniform. Writer Calvin Trillin suggested that there is only one fruit cake in America, but the people who receive it as a gift give it away to others so quickly that the motion gives the impression that there are many fruit cakes.” – LARRY THORNBERRY

“Salty snacks: a fictitious substance that begins as corn, which is pulverized into malleable mush, formed into geometric shapes, soaked in a scary-sounding chemical that has at least one 'X' in its name – which ensures that the snack will have the crunchiness of a chitinous bug shell well into its second decade – and, for awesomeness, dusted with stuff that is Technically Cheese. If you eat a lot you become an ambulatory bolus of junk.” – JAMES LILEKS

«The food was a horror show. The Plaidburger was just that – strips of whitish cheese, limp green peppers, exhausted strips of red peppers, and some lurid yellow extrusion, the general effect looking like a melted pile of crayons. The sort of pattern found on Reagan's jackets. Pouring ketchup on it made it look like a murder scene at a Miami Beach shuffleboard center. » -- JAMES LILEKS (in his otherwise sadly rather impenetrable novel, «Mr. Obvious»)

«With food, sometimes it's better not to know.» -- TERRY HAYES

 "Pizza -- history's greatest invention for teenagers." -- AIDAN HARTLEY

"Brunch turns out to be less a merger of convenience between breakfast and lunch and more an excuse to make an early start on drinking." -- ERIC JACOBS (the biographer of Kingsley Amis)

«Funny thing about men – as soon as they turn fifty they start eating the weirdest parts of the animal.» –  CHRISTOPHER DOUGLAS (The author and star of the very funny English radio comedy «Ed Reardon’s Week»)

“American have never really caught on to the idea of eating sheep. I think they think it’s cissy.” – HUGH LAURIE (the English comic actor – and you can tell he’s English due to the “c” in “cissy”.)

"People who lecture the world are very odd. Tony Blair claimed the poor should be prevented from eating junk food: don't let them eat cake. This makes him much more hypocritical than Marie Antoinette who was at least generous in her misguided sentiments, and, to an extent, ahead of her time." -- MELISSA KITE 

“A ‘Tacoria’ – that’s a place where they sell you tacos and diarrhea.” – CHRIS PLANTE (On 21 April 2021)

"I bought a pork pie that was delicious. The British are surely the only people in the world who have made a culinary feature of boiled cartilage and phlegm." -- BILLBRYSON

"To be sure, a lot of British foods don't sound very attractive -- toad-in-the-hole, bubble and squeak, bangers and mash, faggots in gravy, gooseberry fool, clotted cream. No one, as far as I can tell, has ever satisfactorily explained why the British insist on endowing their foods with strange and unseductive names. I am convinced that if the British had given their foods pretentious names like 'galantine of pork saucisson en croute' or 'julienne of vegetables Wellington', people would gobble them up and there would be no jokes about British cooking." -- BILL BRYSON

"If you have ever dined on this marine delicacy, you may get the same experience by finding an old golf ball, removing the cover, and eating what remains. the whelk is the most flavorless and indestructible thing ever to be regarded as a food. I think I still have one of them in a jacket pocket somewhere." -- BILL BRYSON

"The better the hamburger place, the shittier the french fries." -- DAVE "IOWAHAWK" BURGE      (It's interesting that he doesn't capitalize french....) 

Food, (“organic”)

“The widespread belief that natural herbs are harmless because they are natural is, alas, a manifestation of the modern paganism of people who have never lived where there is no street lighting.” –  THEODORE DALRYMPLE  (A.K.A. ANTHONY DANIELS)

“We eat organic, we just have to shoot it first." – SARAH PALIN

“There’s one of those health food restaurants near where I live. The one thing the customers all have in common – apart from clothes which have never seen the inside of a washing machine and hair which appears to have been washed in stagnant sump oil – is that they all look ill.” – RICHARD LITTLEJOHN (I’ve seen the exact same thing, the few times I’ve been dragged into a “health food” store or restaurant. Anyway, Littlejohn is a columnist for the UK “Sun”, and he wrote this in 1995)

Foolishness

“We are all in some measure fools; our follies, then should at least be natural and agreeable.” – DAVID HUME

“A writer who does not passionately believe in the perfectibility of man has no dedication nor any membership in literature.” – JOHN STEINBECK (In his 1962 Nobel acceptance speech, and a better example of sheer fatuity and foolishness I can't offhand think of....)

“It didn’t matter if you made a fool of yourself in front of strangers – he saw that now. It probably didn’t matter much if you did it in front of your friends. The shameful thing was doing it in front of strangers, and being seen by your friends in the process.” – MICHAEL FRAYN (in his hilarious 1967 novel, “Towards The end Of The Morning”)

"Of course there are old fools, but when guiding young fools their experience can be invaluable." -- MARK HELPRIN

Football, American (& the NFL)

“Football is not a contact sport, it's a collision sport. Dancing is a contact sport.'' – DUFFY DOUGHERTY (football coach at Michigan State U. from ’54-’72)

“Columbia (University)’s idea of a good middle linebacker is Mohandas K. Gandhi.” – D. KEITH MANO (the novelist and graduate of Columbia)

“Casual observers tend to think that football is about strength. It’s not. It’s about weakness.” – NEAL B. FREEMAN

"There are few institutions--none outside of academia--that mix pomposity and anti-intellectualism with quite the gusto the NFL does. You have the Roman-numbered Super Bowls and the shake-your-booty halftime shows. Those who credit feminism for the fact that 60 percent of undergraduate degrees now go to women should examine the role of football-watching before leaping to conclusions." -- CHRISTOPHER CALDWELL

"To watch a football game is to be in prolonged neurotic doubt as to what you're seeing. It's more like an emergency happening at a distance than a game." – JACQUES BARZUN       (French-born American cultural historian, and, incidentally a good pal and mentor of THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR’s R. Emmett Tyrrell.)                                                     

“Baseball ain't like football. You can't make up no trick plays.” — YOGI BERRA

“Most of the black quarterbacks, they like running. Because they’re probably used to running from the law.”– DEXTER MANLEY      (black star defensive end for Washington, Phoenix and Tampa Bay – said this on CBS TV in Dec '15 and caught unholy shit for his pains....)  

“Let me explain my job very simply: My job is to line up five, seven, ten yards in front of a man and run at him at full speed.” – RAY LEWIS (the longtime Baltimore Ravens linebacker that Keith Mano's Columbia confused with Mohandas K. Gandhi…)

"College football is a sport that bears the same relation to education that bullfighting does to agriculture" – ELBERT HUBBARD

"When it's third and ten, you can have the milk drinkers; I'll take the whiskey drinkers every time." MAX McGEE (ex-Green Bay Packers receiver)

"The NFL bureaucracy rammed its extraneous agendas down the throat of America, as if twentysomething, half-educated multimillionaires were the moral superiors to those who paid their salaries. Politics are destroying the NFL." -- VICTOR DAVIS HANSON (on the suicidal caving in by the NFL to BLM.)

"I have only one personal thought, really. And I am so disappointed. And I used to love, during the fall and winter, to watch the NFL on Sunday. And it's not that I'm some great patriot. I was in the Navy for a year -- didn't go anywhere, didn't do anything.. But I have overwhelming respect and admiration for anyone who puts on a uniform and goes to war. So the only thing I can do in my little way is not to preach. I will never watch another NFL game." -- VIN SCULLY (Hall of Fame long-time L.A. Dodgers announcer, in November 2017)

"There is no getting away from football. Americans are cursed with it. The quarterback is God, and to stand back there with the ball resting easily in your hand, your arm cocked and hell breaking loose all around you, is to know the real essence of the mythical America; a foolish game with no foundation in reality, and yet a childish faith that a man can be a good sport and a winner on the same day." -- HUNTER S. THOMPSON 

"I don't think that we should take knees in protest instead of be standing up for our flag." – JIM BROWN    (the greatest running back of all time, in the White House, 11 Oct 18)

"American 'Football' -- a game in which foot hits ball only three or four times in the course of an hour. Strange: the ball travels from hand to hand, but the game isn't called handball; the ball (though I'd rather not dignify that pigskin by the snam of ball) travels under the arm, but the game isn't  called armball. 'Football' is a complete misnomer" -- VASSILY AKSYONOV (a Russian writer who emigrated to Washington D.C.  where, despite the above outburst, he became a big Redskins fan)

"Football is an immense exercise in trying to get the other people to make mistakes -- not be where they should be." -- GEORGE PLIMPTON (my briefly-met onetime pal, who of course once played, briefly, with the Detroit Lions)

"College football would be more interesting if the faculty played instead of the students." -- H. L. MENCKEN
 

Force  

"Who overcomes by force hath overcome but half his foe." - JOHN MILTON   (Paradise Lost, 1674)

Foreign Aid

“Foreign aid is the transfer of money from poor people in rich countries to rich people in poor countries.” – LORD (PETER) BAUER (most {serious} debates on foreign aid include this quotation…)

“There is no better way to acquire a reputation for compassion than by proposing aid for the dark continent: this, despite the fact that such aid has not always brought much in the way of enlightenment – quite the reverse. It was aid to Somalia that provided both the motive and the means for the leaders of tribal factions to keep the war of each against all going for years, until the country had been smashed utterly. It is aid that likewise keeps the war in Sudan going, and it was aid that paid for Nyerere’s forced relocation of three-quarters of the rural population of his country, Tanzania. The result was an economic disaster -- to which, of course, the only solution was further aid.” – ANTHONY DANIELS

“Development experts never did have the first idea how wealth was created. I mean that literally. They did have the hundredth idea, and the ninety-ninth, but the fundamentals they either never grasped or actively repudiated. They also had the figures to back up their bogus world view. When the Berlin Wall fell, the Statistical Abstract of the U.S. included a table showing that GNP per capita was higher in East Germany than in West Germany. The data had been compiled by well-paid professionals. If the wall had not fallen, many would still believe the figures. Perhaps the experts still do.” – TOM BETHELL (in 1995)

“Plop an educated man in the middle of some Third World nation, and suddenly he begins to find plausible schemes that would have him locked up were he ever to promote them in his homeland.” – WILLIAM McGURN (in the AMERICAN SPECTATOR in 1996)

“For God’s sake, please stop the aid!” – JAMES SHIKWATI (Kenyan economist, in 2006. Nobody, of course, listened to him….)

“Again and again in Africa, aid has enabled wars to continue.” – RICHARD DOWDEN (English author of “Africa: Altered States, Ordinary Miracles”)

“There is an 'aid curse', like the much-commented-on 'natural resource curse'. Being an aid recipient is like having oil under your territory:  it frees governments from the need to tax their people. With no need to tax, there is no need to consult, or seek consensus. Thus aid actually decreases democracy and makes government worse.” – WILLIAM EASTERLY (author, NYU Prof, and general “development aid” maven...)

“A hundred years ago when foreign aid was unthought of (except as tribute or bribe) we were a respected and admired country. After a century of philanthropy everyone hates our guts.” – P. J. O'ROURKE

“Transnational do-gooding is political correctness on tour. It takes the relativist assumptions of the multiculti varsity and applies them geopolitically: The white man's burden meets liberal guilt.” – MARK STEYN

“The world's poorest countries are not easy places in which to spend large amounts of money without causing harm.” – J. M. SHAW    (an English veteran of the NGO scams and author of the Kenya-set novel “Ten Weeks In Africa”)

“There are now more western aid workers on the continent (of Africa) than there were colonial administrators. And to what end? Since 1960, western governments have pumped more than $1 trillion in aid into the region, with the remarkable result that GDP per capita has declined.” – JAMES DELINGPOLE

“Woe betide any organsation that thinks of itself as especially good. It'll give itself leeway to behave in a terrible way.” – MARY WAKEFIELD

“Aid is pernicious and injudicious aid can destroy all before it. Take food aid. It is wonderful for saving those in extreme peril, but once the extreme event has passed, it destroys farmers and local markets, and inevitably leads to corruption. It is rather like steroids in medicine, which in the short-term save the patient’s life but in the long-term can easily kill them.” – GILBERT GREENALL (adviser to the British Government on foreign aid from 1991 to 1997)

"Trillions of dollars in western aid don't buy hearts and minds in Africa, it turns out. Instead, Africans remember fondly the 36 million AK-47 assault rifles (sic) Moscow supplied for Africa's wars, plus the MiG jets, tanks and artillery. Africa's Cold War years were extremely hot, and by the time of the Soviet Union's collapse, millions were dead." -- AIDAN HARTLEY (in April 2022) 

Foreign Policy

“Swordplay is the only instrument with which to conduct foreign policy.” – JOSEPH GOEBBELS (eh?)

“America is the well-wisher to the freedom and independence of all.  She is the champion and vindication only of her own.” – JOHN QUINCY ADAMS (NATIONAL REVIEW calls this “the founding text of American foreign-policy realism”. Yeah yeah  yeah… but it’s also trotted out by every left-wing - and libertarian/isolationist - criticism of America trying to do something good or useful abroad.  Like helping allies and other good guys…)

“I could as well follow principles in crafting a foreign policy as walk through a dense forest with a twelve-foot pole between my teeth.” – OTTO VON BISMARK

“The secret of politics? Make a good treaty with Russia.” -- OTTO VON BISMARCK (suitably snide, but woefully obsolete in Putinoid Russia....) 

“Liberal foreign policy can be summed up as 'it’s better to do wrong in a group than to do right alone'.” – JONAH GOLDBERG

"When it comes to foreign policy, idealism about ends is entirely justified, but so is realism about means." -- JONAH GOLDBERG

"The genius of you Americans is that you never make clear-cut stupid moves, only complicated stupid moves which make us wonder at the possibility that there may be something to them which we are missing." – GAMAL ABDEL NASSER       (“stupid moves” is a bit rich coming from this bozo….)                                              

“The Left insisted that we abandon, in 1973, a war we had just won in Vietnam, and go on home, as the Left today insists we withdraw from Afghanistan and withdraw from Iraq. Leaving to one side legitimate legislative differences over the strategic worth of any one conflict, what real or potential enemy could possibly misinterpret its possibilities of gain in the light of our absolutely predictable absence of resolve?” – DAVID MAMET

“You said that on occasion America had dictated to other nations. Mr. President, America has not dictated to other nations. We have freed other nations from dictators.” – MITT ROMNEY

“America risks being seen as harmless as an enemy and treacherous as a friend.” – BERNARD LEWIS      (under Commander B. Hussein Corpseman)

“It is a funny thing about American foreign policy. The Democrats are the peacenik party until they have an opportunity to send American soldiers off to die for no reason other than to make them feel good about their higher morality.” – ERICK ERICKSON (The guy of the famous RedState blog)

“One is tempted to chalk Obama's Middle East policy up to incompetence, but there may be a deeper explanation. Virtually every American president from George Washington to George W. Bush has believed that American influence is a force for good in the world. But Barack Obama appears to believe that American influence is intrinsically bad. That may be the real reason Obama is now frittering away the legacy of America's brillian diplomacy.” -- MARIO LOYOLA (The former counsel for the U.S. Senate Republican Policy Committee, in October 2013)                                                                                           

“The world does not go away when America retreats.” – HENRY R. NAU       (Poli-sci prof at Geroge Washington Univ. and author of “Conservative Internationalism; in Sept. 2013)

"The world becomes more dangerous, not less dangerous when America gets less involved." – CHUCK HAGEL (The Corpseman's 1st SecDef—a sort of isolationist/dovish Republican senator from Nebraska who had to be one of the most naïve pols alive when he accepted the gig, but he showed quite a bit of integrity after he left office.)

“The World does not go away when America retreats. Each time America has come home, after the First World War, the Second World War, Vietnam, and the Cold War, new conflicts yanked it back into world affairs, always under less favorable circumstances and with higher casualties than if it had acted earlier.” – HENRY R. NAU

“Instead of worrying about what other countries think about us, I would make them worry about what we think of them.” – DAVE “IOWAHAWK” BURGE

“There are 10-year old music prodigies. There are 10-year old math prodigies. There are no 10-year old foreign policy prodigies.” – DAVE “IOWAHAWK” BURGE

“I agree that America must be the world's policeman, but it shouldn't be the world's priest.” – BRET STEPHENS (my daughter’s old boss at the WSJ)

"Oh and one more thing: you're not going to like what comes after America." -- LEONARD COHEN

"The world can have messy American military interventions, or the world can have massacres. Those are the options." -- JIM GERAGHTY

"Something I learned:  if you wait for the perfect option in foreign policy, it will never come." -- MIKE POMPEO      (you could say the same about pretty much everything in life, but I like Pompeo, so it's in...)

"'America First' does not mean 'America Alone'." -- SEBASTIAN GORKA (Trump's British-Hungarian-born Special Adviser, 6 July 2017)

“As you conduct your foreign policy, doing what you must, pause every once in a while to consider, 'How will it look to the boys in the camps'?” – VLADIMIR BUKOWSKY

"Americans are perpetually ambivalent if not resentful about the dependence of other nations on their power and eager to wean them from it. For Russia, on the other hand, cultivating such dependency is precisely the purpose and the proof of its great-power status." -- VANCE SERCHUK (of the KKR Global Institute, 30 Sept., NR)

"The problem with thinking about geopolitics as a chess game among the great powers, is the tendency to forget that the pawns can move themselves." -- VANCE SERCHUK

"As a general rule, the more times someone repeats the phrase ‘international norms’, the less they have any actual strategy." -- STEPHEN MILLER (Trump's Senior Adviser, and, as far as I'm concerned, the most useful guy in Trump's White House)

“In international relations, a curious indeterminacy principle obtains:  a margin of unpredictability must be maintained around you. So the stupid act becomes obligatory if one is to have a presence.” – JOHN UPDIKE

“If US foreign policy is left up to the private sector, we will all be speaking Chinese tomorrow.” – KYLE BASS      (the Chief Investment Officer for Hayman Capital Management, on the last day of 2021)

"The #1 foreign policy project of the Obamarroid Demo☭rats from Jan. '09 to now has been the aiding, abetting, promoting and protecting DeathToAmerica Iran." -- JACK JOLIS     (in Sept. 2024)

"Only intellectual fashion and the tyranny of Right/Left thinking prevent intelligent men  of goodwill from perceiving the facts that traditional authoritarian governments are less repressive than revolutionary autocracies, that they are more susceptible of liberalization, and that they are more compatible with U.S. interests." -- JEANNE KIRKPATRICK      (Reagan's Democrat-but-anti-communist Ambassadrice to the UN, and a friend/collaboratrice of my dad's)

"There is a rank due to the United States among nations which will be withheld, if not absolutely lost, by the reputation of weakness." -- GEORGE WASHINGTON      (quoted by Mike Pompeo in his "Never Give An Inch")

“In the past, the Trump administration was the one that introduced the greatest number of anti-Russia sanctions compared with its predecessors.” -- SERGEI LAVROV      (Russia's Foreign Minister, in Nov.'24, commenting on Trump's re-election.)

Forgiveness

“To forgive and forget is to surrender dearly bought experience.” – ARTHUR SCHOPENHAUER   (the Schopenhauer…)

“A (male) chum doesn't forgive, he just forgets – women forgive everything but never forget.” – TOVE JANSSON      (Famous lady Finnish artist and author, 1914-2001 – created the “Moomins”, whatever the hell they were....)

“Being forgiven is very unpleasant.” – TOVE JANSSON

"Forgive your enemies, but never forget their names." -- JOHN F. KENNEDY

“To understand is not to forgive. It is simply better than the alternative, which is not to understand." – ALEC NOVE (Russian-born prof of economics at Glasgow Univ., and author, 1915-1994)

“God will pardon me. It is his business.” – HEINRICH HEINE

“Forgiving them is God’s function. Our job is simply to arrange the meeting.” – GEN. NORMAN SCHWARZKOPF (on being asked if there was room for forgiveness for the perpetrators of 9/11. Of course, this was back when American generals were at least pro-American....)

Fortune/Misfortune

"Man feels the loss more intensely than the gain" – SENECA (the famous Roman “Stoic” – 4 BC – 65 AD)               

Fossil Fuels

"Fossil fuels are evil. We should run our economy and heat our homes instead with the cleanest and most efficient source of energy, unicorn urine." -- MIKE DORAN (of The Hudson Institute -- a rare clear-eyed think-tanker)

Fox News

“Fox News, supposedly the conservative voice, is really much more conformist than it pretends, and specializes in noisy opinion more than real news.” – CHARLES MOORE

“It was always rock ‘n’ roll around Rupert (Murdoch) and that’s the way I liked it.” – KELVIN MACKENZIE (The long-time Editor of News Corps’ THE SUN in the UK)

“Fracking”

“Greens don’t like fracking because they don’t like prosperity.” – DANIEL HANNAN

“Opposition to fracking is pure Kulturkampf with almost nothing to do with genuine environmental concerns.” – KEVIN D. WILLIAMSON

France

“The race consists of human beings and the French. There is a Moral sense and many nations have it.  Also there is an Immoral sense.  The French have it.  Scratch a Frenchman and you find a savage… a Frenchwoman and you find a harlot.  The French are the connecting link between man and the monkey; they have bestialities which are unknown in civilized lands.” – MARK TWAIN (…so… he liked them, did he?...)

"France is the only developed country that strains to keep the obsolete, 1960s model of a closed and dirigiste economy. It's an aberration to think that the solution to every problem is to spend public monies and hire more civil servants." -- NICOLAS BAVEREZ (French corporate lawyer and author of "France In Decline')

“Socialism has been so firmly embedded in the French state that no one can now reform it.” – ROGER SCRUTON (the late Brit philosopher/author, in June 2005)

“The French recognize themselves for what they are:  fearful little men, living for the pleasures of belly and groin, and thinking themselves the cream of humanity.” – ALGIS VALIUNAS

“Man is a creature who stands somewhere between the angels and the French.” – MARK TWAIN

“French rationalism is justly famous for producing irrational outcomes.” – GEORGE NEUMAYR (the XO at THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR)

"France has neither winter nor summer nor morals. Apart from these drawbacks it is a fine country. France has usually been governed by prostitutes." -- MARK TWAIN

"I would rather have a German division in front of me than a French one behind me." -- GENERAL GEORGE S. PATTON

"Going to war without France is like going deer-hunting without your accordion" -- GENERAL NORMAN SCHWARTZKOPF

"We can stand here like the French, or we can do something about it." -- MARGE SIMPSON

"As far as I'm concerned, war always means failure" -- PRESIDENT JACQUES CHIRAC

"As far as France is concerned, he's right." -- RUSH LIMBAUGH

"The only time France wants us to go to war is when the German Army is sitting in Paris sipping coffee." -- REGIS PHILBIN

"The French are a smallish, monkey-looking bunch and not dressed any better, on average, than the citizens of Baltimore. True, you can sit outside in Paris and drink little cups of coffee, but why this is more stylish than sitting inside and drinking large glasses of whiskey I don't know." -- P. J. O'ROURKE

"You know, the French remind me a little bit of an aging actress of the 1940s who was still trying to dine out on her looks but doesn't have the face for it." -- SEN. JOHN McCAIN

"You know why the French didn't want to bomb Saddam Hussein? Because he hates America, he loves mistresses and wears a beret. He is French people." -- CONAN O'BRIEN

“As always, when anything bad happens, France is involved.” – ANDREW STUTTAFORD (here referring to the international drug trade, but that’s neither here nor there…)

“The French nation of physical and political hypochondriacs, well accustomed to brooding over their own chronic malaise or crise as they swallow record numbers of medicaments, does not have a rival in the morosity stakes.” – SUZANNE LOWRY

“Because Adam Smith’s doctrine of the ‘invisible hand’ has never taken root in France, the pursuit of self-interest and service to the community are usually thought to be incompatible.” – JOHN LAUGHLAND (the Invisible Hand is universal – it only doesn’t “take root” wherever it’s prevented from ‘taking root’…)

“It’s unfortunate that the biggest bike race in the world is in France.” – LANCE ARMSTRONG (I only keep this in here as a historical oddity. Armstrong is a feckless schmuck.)

“A Frenchman must always be talking.” – DR. SAMUEL JOHNSON

“French art, if not sanguinary, is usually obscene.” – HERBERT SPENCER

“We always have been, we are, and I hope that we always shall be detested in France.” -- THE DUKE OF WELLINGTON

“Many French are still unable to digest the reality that communism and socialism, the equivalent for them of a secular religion, failed.” – JEAN-FRANCOIS REVEL (a good friend and collaborator of my father’s, as it happens… A fine bloke…)

“Whenever you learn something about French politics, you see how vast is the gap between their culture and ours.” – CHARLES MOORE (The English journo, of course, but here he speaks for all “Anglo-Saxons”)

“Unlike French voters, French politicians have long memories.” – JOHN LAUGHLAN (Another English journo, here commenting on Francois Mitterrand and his times…)

“France’s population consumes by far the highest doses of tranquilizers and antidepressants in the world. There must be a reason for this.” – THEODORE DALRYMPLE (in 2007)

“No one who visits France can fail to observe how well administered it is. This is the good aspect of what most Anglo-Saxons would regard as an undesirable and even noxious cultural trait: that so many intelligent young people want to work for the government.” – THEODORE DALRYMPLE (in 2017)

“Some Brits regard the Channel Tunnel as the greatest tragedy to befall their enchanted isle since King Harold got a Norman arrow in his eye in 1066.” – TONY ALLEN-MILLS

“French cigarettes make your mouth smell like a small industrial town.” – IRWIN SHAW

“The French are hag-ridden by their historically created inferiority complex (in politics, that is, not in anything else). They choose false gloire in place of self-interest. They end up with neither, but make themselves a damned nuisance to their allies.” – FRANK JOHNSON

“France does not live on happiness.” – ANDRE MAUROIS (to be fair to the old fart, this inanity was his reply to someone who told him that “France’s happiest years were lived under Louis Phillippe”.)

“Never doubt the courage of the French. They are the ones who discovered snails are edible.” – DOUG LARSON (wise ass columnist from Green Bay, Wisconsin.)

"Industrial action in France is when the bureaucrats walk out on themselves." -- DENIS BOYLES (author of "African Lives", "Vile France" and "Superior, Nebraska")

“The French love nothing so much as the superfluous.” – JOSEPH A. HARRISS (an American writer living in Paris, and writing, in 2009, about “l’Académie Française”)

“The French are a young man’s vice.” – CHARLES McCARRY

"To come to France and be annoyed at the presence of riots would be like visiting Italy and being furious at the amount of pasta on the menus." -- IGOR TORONYI-LALIC (a Brit art critic-journalist)

"France is a nation in which high-end capitalism, heavy-handed statism and the anger of the crown co-exist in constant tension. Modern France in three words: 'Elegance and anarchy'." -- MARTIN VANDER WEYER

"Only the French, I thought, could attain orgasm by listening to themselves." -- STEPHEN CLARKE

"A French politician without a mistress is like a sheriff without a gun -- people think he has no firepower." -- STEPHEN CLARKE

“If you take away anti-Americanism there is nothing left of French political thought.” – JEAN-FRANCOIS REVEL

“Paris is the seat of a highly developed humanity, and one thus witnesses highly developed forms of suffering there.” – SAUL BELLOW

“It is platitudinous to say that the French are a nation of rebels, but it is a common mistake to believe that their rebelliousness is necessarily left-wing. On the contrary, there is a vigorous tradition of right-wing revolt in France which, in history, has been almost as violent.” – JOHN LAUGHLAND (almost as violent, maybe, but not nearly as frequent....)

“There are many things Americans will suffer, but taking orders from the French is not one of them.” – CHARLES KRAUTHAMMER

"The great thing about France is, if you believe in socialism you call yourself a Socialist and other people are allowed to call you Socialist. Ahem.” – ROB LONG

"The French are weak and difficult to deal with." – WINSTON CHURCHILL       (In a 1945 telegram to Truman)

"As a race, the French tend to have strong heads, weak stomachs and a rooted abhorrence of hospitality." -- EVELYN WAUGH

“When we are young we are American, but when we grow up we become Frenchmen.” – EVELYN WAUGH

“Nobody works harder than the Frogues at finding ways to work less.” – JACK JOLIS

“France is the land that invented chauvinism." -- ANTHONY BURGESS

"There is an ingrained pedantry in the French: waitresses will correct your genders and even prostitutes can sound like schoolmistresses." -- ANTHONY BURGESS (Burgess, who lived quite a lot in France, wrote this in 1990, long before "genders" had become a leftist-loaded term)

“Every life is destined to have a certain amount of difficulty in it. One can get that all out of the way at once by simply buying a French car.” – DANIEL PINKWAT (apparently Mr. Pinkwater is an American author of children’s books.)

“Everyone hates a snob. Except the French. In France, un snob is a person who, rather than clodishly giving the world power over him, has taken the time to cultivate an appreciation for the finest.” – JONATHAN V. LAST (in the old THE WEEKLY STANDARD)

“The only difference between the ideology of the French socialist minister and the Ferguson (Missouri) looter is scale. That and the immensely superior quality of the Frenchman’s comestibles. But the principles which govern both are the same. Eventually you run out of other people’s money and other people’s patience. And that’s starting to happen all over the world right about now.”-- RICHARD FERNANDEZ      (author of the blog "The Belmont Club" column in PJM)

“What’s the difference between France and Cuba? Cuba does not have strikes.” – PATRICK CHAMOREL (A Frenchman of the Hoover Institution, in 2006)

“And, this being France, the town's post office would probably be shut until further notice to enable the state employees to travel down to Marseilles to throw cobble stones at the police in support of their demand for a one-hour working week.” – JEREMY CLARKE

"It's a different world, isn't it – France?" – JEREMY CLARKE

“When people profess a love of France, I assume they mean a love of eating.” – JEREMY CLARKE

“They say that we forfeit three quarters of ourselves to be like other people. Not the French.” – JEREMY CLARKE

"France was once a very great country, both a military as well as an intellectual powerhouse. It is now just a tourist attraction where one may or may not get killed by an Islamist." -- TAKI THEODORACOPULOS (in July 2016, just about the time of the Nice atrocity)

“In French hotels, paying more often doesn't get you a better level of service; just a higher level of pomposity and condescension.” – RORY SUTHERLAND

"For good and ill, the French accord economics a far lower status in their decision-making hierarchy than Anglo-Saxons do. There is a Platonist mentality in France which holds that economic reality is all very well, but it shouldn't interfere with your philosophical ideals." -- RORY SUTHERLAND

“The French may claim to be revolutionaries, but they are terrified of change.” – JONATHAN MILLER (not the famous English author and TV performer, but rather a columnist for the UK SPECCIE)

“French red tape, compared to which that of which Great Britain and America is only pinkish. Where in the matter of rules and regulations London and New York merely scratch the surface, these Gauls plumb the depths. It is estimated that a French minor official, with his heart really in his work, can turn more hairs grey, and have more clients tearing those hairs than any six of his opposing numbers on the pay rolls of other nations.” – P. G. WODEHOUSE

“France is the most jumpy and suspicious country on earth.” – P. G. WODEHOUSE

“There is probably nobody in the world less elfin than a French prison official.” – P. G. WODEHOUSE (“Elfin” – I must pass that on to my pal P. N. Gwynne....)

"The French, for all their faults, never, ever apologize for being French." -- KEVIN D. WILLIAMSON

“France is a country where you can make love in the afternoon without people hammering on the door.” – BARBARA CARTLAND

“The usual problem in France is a public that perennially votes for revolution and then resists all change.” – DOUGLAS MURRAY

“It is always a pleasure to watch Paris burning. On the surface a civilized country, but scrape a little deeper and France is revealed as a nation of kind of faux-Arabs (aside from that rapidly growing proportion who are actual Arabs) easily incensed into an incandescent toddler fury at real or imagined iniquities, things not working out quite the way that they had hoped. An inchoate existential rage.”  – ROD LIDDLE

"The French never sin out of love or hate, but only for personal gain." -- STENDHAL (French writer, and Stendhal was his 1-name pseudo. Early 19th century)

“The French are never on anyone’s side for very long. And France is a nation always ready to put its hand in anyone’s pocket except its own.” – ROBERT MORLEY

“France is only by a tortuous use of language described as a working democracy.” – WILLIAM F. BUCKLEY, JR.

“The French are a super-sensitive people, and they cannot bear for others to succeed where they failed.” – WILLIAM F. BUCKLEY, JR.

"The French take a much more horizontal approach to life. A Gallic shrug of the shoulders and another slug of wine. Everything shuts at 12:20 for lunch; as to whether it will re-open postprandially, on verra, as they say. That's not to say they're inefficient." -- SARAH VINE (a BBC talking head)

“Despite everything, I so love our ancient enemies the French. Economically, yes, they are hopelessly left-wing; but culturally they have remained defiantly, proudly, unapologetically themselves. They smoke all the time (as of course the French should);  they have sex all the time (ditto); and though conscious that France’s imperial greatness is as lost as Britain’s, they nevertheless carry on regardless as if their former colonies in North Africa and the Middle East are still very much their domain, and something they can still handle much more sophisticatedly than that pesky arriviste superpower les Americains.” – JAMES DELINGPOLE

“France has the only two things toward which we drift as we grow older – intelligence and good manners."-- F. SCOTT FITZGERALD (hmmm... as Francophile as I am, even I wouldn’t got that far... or even close to it....)

'To be French is to defend the right to mock. To be French is to defend the right to laugh, jest, mock and caricature, of which Voltaire maintained that it is the source of all other rights. Freedom in France includes the freedom to believe or not to believe. But this is inseparable from the freedom of expression up to the right to blasphemy.” – EMMANUEL MACRON (5 Sept. 2020)

“The French have little sense of the inadvertently ridiculous.” – ROGER LEWIS

"There are more astrologers than priests in France. And just think how many priests there are! So that's two big groups of Frenchmen who believe in magic. Sorcerers! They're sorcerers!" -- MARCELLIN AGNAGNA     (a Congolese {Brazza} biologist and govt. official, to his friend Redmond O'Hanlon, quoted in 1996)

"Everything obscene comes from France." -- JAMES DIXON     (a doctor who was one of scores of private experts who, in 1888, contributed to creating the massive first  Oxford English Dictionary)

“Calling the French arrogant is a little like saying Romans speak Italian. French folks have the most euphonious language on earth, their scholars commit the most esoteric theoretics, their food is superb, their athletes are more courageous and better trained than those of any other country. They are culturally superior and can pronounce the word ‘ennui’ in a way that lets the rest of us know how much they suffer in our presence. Arrogance is a Frenchcultural trait, as delicious, in its way, as any bouillabaisse.” – TIM CAHILL

Fraternities

“As we have seen time and again, the authoritarian impulse among college administrators is strong. They do not particularly like voluntary student associations existing outside their mélange of codes, clauses, and quotas, and they certainly do not like fraternities, many of which are unreconstructed redoubts of everything that drives college administrators batty. If the role of judge in hazing cases is left to the Dean Wormers of the world, abuse will follow. Don't expect the media to side with Delta House.” --  BLAKE SEITZ      (a student at the University of Georgia and a member of Beta Upsilon Chi, in August '13)

“I didn't really become cool until I became a member of the Columbia chapter of Alpha Delta Phi and had a really cool girlfriend. We had parties like small-scale versions of the ones in the 2013 movie of The Great Gatsby. In high school, I was not anywhere near cool enough to deserve a beautiful heartthrob.” -- BEN STEIN          (Best fraternity in America, Alpha Delta Phi.  Of course, it also happens to be mine....)     

“A good fraternity is -- in just about every way -- the ideal male education and preparation for later life. * You're among friends -- or at least people of your own choosing * Bound by ritual and tradition and code. * You drink together (regularly) * And occasionally fight together (in bars & against outsiders) * You experience "real life":

   — You run the considerable "bu$iness" of the house

   —You deal with the cops (often)

—You deal with "politics" (the ☭ollege Administration)                                                                    * It's an incalculable help to your social (i.e., love/sex) life                                                                   * It inculcates loyalty and solidarity.                                                                                                  * It teaches you to deal with adversity and even betrayal.

And all by the time we'd reached 21 yrs of age.

 (With all that, who needs the effing college, and its $80,000 a year?)” – JACK JOLIS

"If there is any hope on American ☭ampuses (a huge 'if'), it resides in our residual fraternity houses." -- JACK JOLIS (1967 president of ΑΔΦ at Cornell, in July 2024)

“What cartoon characters and Alpha Delta brothers most had in common, I thought, was their exuberance.” – CHRIS MILLER         (my ΑΔΦ brother, albeit at Dartmouth, and the co-screenwriter of “Animal House”) 

“Alpha Delts did not pass out, they rested.” – CHRIS MILLER

“At AD ( ΑΔΦ) it was hard to name the moment when the last party trailed off and the next one began. Like towns in Southern California, they ran together with no discernible boundary.” – CHRIS MILLER

"I wonder how many sad kids are just lonely. Our former fraternity houses have been filled with offices to help us feel better, and we are sadder and sicker than any generation before." -- GINEVRA DAVIS (A Stanford grad, now in "arts and design", in her June 2022 article "Stanford's War On Social Life")

Free Markets (Free Trade, Free Enterprise)                                                                

“Far from increasing envy, open economies diminish it.” – BRIAN ANDERSON       (author of “South Park Conservatives”)                                 

“I am a free trader and believer in open borders for widgets, but not necessarily for widget makers.” – JONAH GOLDBERG

“Because men ought not be beasts, and are not angels, scarcity is best resolved by exchange in the market economy.” – RYAN T. ANDERSON (a “junior fellow” at FIRST THINGS, in Sept. 2007)

"A major source of objection to a free economy is precisely that it ... gives people what they want instead of what a particular group thinks they ought to want. Underlying most arguments against the free market is a lack of belief in freedom itself. " – MILTON FRIEDMAN

“The free market is not an ideology or a creed or something we're supposed to take on faith, it's a measurement. It's a bathroom scale. I may hate what I see when I step on the bathroom scale, but I can't pass a law saying I weigh 160 pounds. Authoritarian governments think they can pass that law—a law to change the measurement of things.” – P. J. O’ROURKE

“The government has embraced an arrogant ideology. They claim to know the key to prosperity. It’s analogous to communism. They thought the same thing. The clever ones – themselves – would run everything. That’s the analogy. The key to prosperity is to let things run themselves. We’ll liberalize everything, let everyone look after himself, let business, not the state, run the economy. The state should have no views, no policies of its own. Just open it all up, step back, let it go and you’ll see how well everything will work if we just leave things alone.  -- VACLAV HAVEL (NOT, I hasten to add, the “other” Vaclav – Klaus, from whom you might more readily have expected this muscular gem.)

“Defending free enterprise requires first what it is -- and what it is not. A welfare system for business is not, and tends to discredit, free enterprise. Supporters of markets must be zealous not only in protecting business from government but in protecting citizens from their i,proper combination.” -- RAMESH PONNURU

“The free market is not a creed or an ideology that political conservatives, libertarians, and Ayn Rand acolytes want Americans to take on faith. The free market is simply a measurement. The free market tells us what people are willing to pay for a given thing at a given moment. That's all the free market does. The free market is a bathroom scale. We may not like what we see when we step on the bathroom scale, but we can't pass a law making ourselves weigh 165. Liberals and leftists think we can.” – P. J. O'ROURKE

“There is no such thing as a trade imbalance; Trade can't be out of balance because a balance is what trade is. Buyers and sellers decide that one thing is worth another. All free trade is balance trade: Saying there's an imbalance in freely conducted trade is like saying there's an imbalance in freely conducted sex. It's like admitting you screwed some half-baked videographer who was hanging around your presidential campaign, and then claiming she had sex and you didn't. (But you're not John Edwards.)” – P. J. O'ROURKE

“There is no such thing as a trade deficit, but there is such a thing as a current accounts deficit. The Chinese have decided to import money instead of things they can immediately enjoy – my black Lab would make quite a stir fry. China holds an enormous amount of U.S. Money and we don't hold any of theirs. This worries America. I'll be damned if I know why.” – P. J. O'ROURKE

“Free trade benefits almost everybody, but they don’t know who they are. Free trade hurts a few, and they all know who they are.” -- PHIL GRAMM (The ex-economics professor who became a pretty good Republican senator from Texas in the '90s)

"The most important single central fact about a free market is that no exchange takes place unless both parties benefit." -- MILTON FRIEDMAN

"Free trade, one of the greatest blessings a government can confer on a people, is in almost every country unpopular." -- THOMAS BABINGTON MACAULAY (19th century English Whig historian and politico)

“Free trade is God's diplomacy.” -- WILLIAM GLADSTONE (of course, the multiple 19century Brit PM – Disraeli's great rival)

"Free trade benefits most people, and they don't know it. It hurts some people, and they ALL know it.” -- PHIL GRAMM (ex-Republican Senator from Texas, and extremely sound on economics...)

"In case you've been living in a cave or an economics faculty for the past ten years, I'll repeat it: Goods are not like people. Goods only move wherever they are needed. They don't come laden with an attachment to a homeland or a social newtwork. Your Bosch dishwasher doesn't pine for its washing-machine mates back in Stuttgart. Your Ikea sofa doesn't claim benefits. If you buy a Mercedes, you don't suddenly find two Audis and a volkswagen turning up on your drive claiming to be close relatives and demanding to live in your garage." -- RORY SUTHERLAND

“What we should seek is not so much free trade as pain-free trade.” -- RORY SUTHERLAND (in 2017. He was referring specifically to crippling customs hassles, costs & delays in merely mailing shit internationally....)

"Every exchange which takes place between nations renders another exchange possible...Multiply exchanges and you multiply goodwill; increase goodwill and you increase national security." – WINSTON CHURCHILL

“Our Sussex and Kent smugglers used to be known as ‘free traders’, which is intereting and – if we have to sneak over an EU tariff wall – entirely appropriate for today.” – CHARLES MOORE (in the SPECCIE on 3 Feb. 2019, just as Brexit was coming to a head.)

Free Will

“The only difference between a human being and a stone rolling down a hill is that the human being thinks he is in charge of his own destiny.” – BARUCH SPINOZA (Jeeves’ favorite philosopher…)

“Either our actions are determined, in which case there is nothing we can do about them, or our actions are random, in which case there is nothing we can do about them.” – DAVID HUME (This is “sophisticated”, as in sophistry, tosh. He leaves OUT the notion of free will….)

“Free will—-Nobody knows if we really have it, but there is no way to live other than by ASSUMING we have it.” – JOHN DERBYSHIRE

"We must believe in free will -- we have no other choice." -- ISAAC BASHEVIS SINGER     (nice one, Bashevis....)

"We can do what we want, but we can't want what we want." – ARTHUR SCHOPENHAUER

"Only the man behind the rifle has free will." -- W.H.AUDEN

“What we have is not free will but free won't.” – VILAYANUR RAMACHANDRAN (described as a “cognitive scientist”, and, judging by the sound of his last name, a Sri Lankan one at that....)

“If our lives are the sum of our free decisions, then the unsuccessful have nobody to blame but themselves.” -- DANIEL HITCHENS  (writing in the SPECTATOR in July 2015)

“What cannot be predicted looks very much like free will.” -- ANTHONY BURGESS

“Now free will is in itself the noblest thing we can have, since it makes us in a way equal to God and seems to exempt us from being his subjects.” -- RENE DESCARTES

"If we were all good, we would not need free will, which is, finally, the possibility of courage." -- DAVID MAMET (a little obtuse, perhaps, but very portentous sounding)
 

“The first completely free man will be the last one left on earth. He’ll be able to do just whatever he likes, if he can think of anything.” -- KINGSLEY AMIS

Freedom

“Relinquishing one’s freedom voluntarily is the definition of ridiculousness.” – PHILIP ROTH (I think he was talking here about sex, or marriage – anyway, something carnal.  Still, it’s perfectly serviceable for loftier purposes…)

“Freedom breeds resentment and will therefore always be under attack.” – ROGER SCRUTON     (what he calls “one of the fundamental facts of modern politics)

"A major source of objection to a free economy is precisely that it ... gives people what they want instead of what a particular group thinks they ought to want. Underlying most arguments against the free market is a lack of belief in freedom itself." –  MILTON FRIEDMAN

"I don't believe in a government that protects us from ourselves."– RONALD REAGAN

“Freedom is never more than one generation away from extinction.” - RONALD REAGAN

"We must be willing to pay a price for freedom." -- H. L. MENCKEN

“It is the emergence of freedom rather than the extent of servility that needs explanation.” – KENNETH MINOGUE (The conservative Australian political theorist)

“Freedom is mentally and morally demanding; bondage is easy (painful and miserable, but easy).” – DIANA SCHAUB (a political science prof at Loyola University, Maryland)

“Freedom is not fair. Much can be made of the fact, I suppose. Personally, I'm immune to the complaint. I have a twelve-year-old daughter, Muffin. All I hear is, 'It's not fair! It's not fair! It's not fair!'  I say to her, 'Honey, you're cute. That's not fair. You're smart. That's not fair. You were born in the United States of America. That's not fair. Darling, you had better get down on your knees and pray to God that things don't start getting fair for you.'.” – P. J. O'ROURKE

“Any problem generated by relatively too little of a commodity has one and only one ultimate cause: too little freedom. Take off the shackles and humans would produce abundance orders of magnitude greater than you have ever dreamed.” – JEFF PERREN (a letter-writer to NRO on 7 Mar 11)

“Accustomed to the argument that freedom brings prosperity, we are perilously close to valuing freedom because it brings prosperity. When it fails to do so – at least that increasing prosperity that we now regard as our birthright – we shall be only too ready to ditch it for something else.” -- THEODORE DALRYMPLE

“There seems to be an inverse relationship between written instruments of freedom, such as a Charter, and freedom itself. It’s as if freedom were too fragile to be put into words: If you write down your rights and freedoms, you lose them.” – GEORGE JONAS (the Hungarian-born Canadian whose writings were the basis of the film “Munich”)

“It is because there are no guarantees in a free society that you develop the habits that are essential to success in a free society.” – JONAH GOLDBERG

“The past shows unvaryingly that when a people’s freedom disappears, it goes not with a bang, but in silence amid the comfort of being cared for. That is the dire peril in the present trend toward statism.” – RICHARD WEAVER (in 1962)

“What is ominous is the ease with which some people go from saying that they don't like something to saying that the government should forbid it.  When you go down that road, don't expect freedom to survive very long.” -- THOMAS SOWELL

“The insistence that 'freedom' ought to include everything desirable in life has, time and again, led to the most brutish suppressions of freedom in the ordinary sense. Millions have been butchered in the name of that fuller freedom.” -- FERDINAND MOUNT

“To avoid glaring inequality or widespread misery I am ready to sacrifice some, or all of my freedom, but it is freedom that I am giving up. Everything is what it is: liberty is liberty, not equality or fairness or justice or huma happiness or a quiet conscience.” -- DAVID CAUTE (The British novelist, journalist, playwright, and historian)

“When we had to leave Cuba, we had someplace to go to, someplace to flee to — America. But if we lose our freedom here, where would we go?” -- RAFAEL CRUZ (Senator Ted's Papa)

"When people are free to do what they want to do, one of the things they want to do is to make rules." – G. K. CHESTERTON

“If I want to relieve my spirit, then I should seek not honor but freedom.” -- REMBRANDT VAN RIJN

“If a nation values anything more than freedom, it will lose its freedom; and the irony of it is that if it is comfort or money that it values more, it will lose that, too.” — W. SOMERSET MAUGHAM

“Freedom is messy. In free societies, people will fall through the cracks — drink too much, eat too much, buy unaffordable homes, fail to make prudent provision for health care, and much else. But the price of being relieved of all those tiresome choices by a benign paternal government is far too high. Big Government is the small option: it’s the guarantee of smaller freedom, smaller homes, smaller cars, smaller opportunities, smaller lives.” – MARK STEYN

“Freedom is a fighting word.” -- SIDNEY HOOK (the old ex-lefty and friend of my parents. I met him once – marvelous old coot, and smart as anything.)

“You Americans invented freedom. You invented freedom. And you’re on your way to losing it, not because of newcomers unwilling to become Americans, but because of natives unwilling to teach them.” – PETER SCHRAMM (Who was brought to America by his family from their native Hungary in '56 when he was 10. Same age as I was when, at about the same time, I was “hosting” the young Hungarian orphan refugee Ishtvan Lehel in Paris and becoming a lifelong anti-communist and anti-leftist conservative. Schramm died in 2015.)

“The only way to deal with an unfree world is to become so absolutely free that your very existence is an act of rebellion.” – ALBERT CAMUS

“On the other side of fear  lies freedom!”- J. B. GLOSSINGER (The generalissimo of something called “The Alive Foundation, Inc.”)

“Americans are not a virtuous people, yet they are free.” – ALEXIS DE TOQUEVILLE

"It is never a mistake to fight for someone else's freedom." -- BOB KERREY (The good Kerrey--with an extra "e". Ex-Democrat Senator from Nebraska, Won the Medal of Honor in Vietnam while losing the better part of a leg there.)

"Too many Americans feel that freedom is actually a burden." -- BEN SHAPIRO (he said this in April 2018, and, although true, the same could be said of people everywhere.)

“A doctrine of total freedom pursued to its logical conclusion is a world where bullies are free to do their will.” – PEREGRINE WORSTHORNE (a conservative columnist for THE DAILY TELEGRAPH whose name always gave my English-born dad a laff whenever he saw it in the papers, when I was a kid, beginning in the late 50s)

“Freedom is being left alone. Freedom is a sphere of autonomy, an inviolable political space that no authority may invade.” – CHARLES KRAUTHAMMER

 "We need not so much laws which enforce freedom, as a culture which lets freedom flourish." -- CHARLES MOORE

"My definition of a free society is a society where it is safe to be unpopular. Where it's safe to say what's on your mind, especially when everyone disagrees. Where it's safe to believe what you believe especially when everyone else's beliefs stand elsewhere." -- ADLAI STEVENSON

"It is quite extraordinary how people swallow the loss of freedoms when it is described as protection of freedom." -- MILES KINGTON

"Freedom's untidy, and free people are free to make mistakes and commit crimes and do bad things." -- DONALD RUMSFELD

“They who clamor loudest for freedom are often the ones least likely to be happy in a free society... They want to eliminate free competition and the ruthless testing to which the individual is continually subjected in a free society.” – ERIC HOFFER

"Human beings are born with different capacities. If they are free, they are not equal; if they are equal, they are not free." -- ALEKSANDR SOLZHENITSYN

“Freedom is an oasis in a desert of slavery. Liberals are poisoning the water.” – DON SURBER (on 30 Sept. 2021)

"If a man can't walk around in his own country without fear, what business has he selling freedom to the Russians?" -- JOHN UPDIKE

Freedom (Economic)

“The law of the jungle is that there is no law: The strong kill the weak. Economic freedom, in contrast, exists only where rule of law prevails — where people can’t kill, steal, and defraud each other, where private property rights are protected and trust is widespread.” – JAY W. RICHARDS (Dr. Richards is a honcho at the Institute of Faith, Work and Economics)

“Individual liberty yields the iPhone. Politics protects the post office.” – JONAH GOLDBERG

Freedom (Personal)

“We can do what we like so long as we live in fear.” – HERBERT MARCUSE (wow, I never thought I’d be quoting this arseholio… and, in fact, the more I read this, the less I know what it means… I mean really means…. But, what the shit, it sounds cool… )

“Freedom is the ignorance of necessity.” – HUGH LAWSON-TANCRED (nor do I have any idea whatsoever what this portentously-named gent means by this portentously-sounding bon mot either, but he uttered it in England in 1999.)

“A society in which authority decides what you can hear, think and say will not only be a society lacking in humour, it will be one lacking in humanity.” – DOUGLAS MURRAY (the English social scientist and, in 2010, the director of the “Centre for Social Cohesion”)

"Freedom has ceased to be a birthright; it has come to mean whatever we are still permitted to do.” – JOE SOBRAN                                     (a one-time brilliant writer for NATIONAL REVIEW until he had a falling out with WFB over perceived anti-Semitism.)

“You only have power over people so long as you don't take everything away from them. But when you've robbed a man of everything he's no longer in your power – he's free again.” – ALEXANDER SOLZHENITSYN

“Freedom that requires a lifetime of grateful thraldom to one’s emancipator isn’t freedom. It’s slavery.” – LLOYD EVANS

“Freedom makes many things harder, which is to say it makes many things more valuable.” – JONAH GOLDBERG

"When people are free to do as they please, they usually imitate each other." -- ERIC HOFFER (the wise old longshoreman/philosopher who famously came to Nixon's support during the latter's, er, trickier moments in the early 70s)

“Freedom aggravates at least as much as it alleviates frustration. Freedom of choice places the whole blame of failure on the shoulders of the individual... Unless a man has the talents to make something of himself, freedom is an irksome burden.” – ERIC HOFFER

"The only man who is truly free is the one who can turn down an invitation to dinner without giving any excuse." -- JULES RENARD (19th Century Frogue author and general egg-head.)

"I'd rather be a poor master than a rich servant." -- MICHAEL CAINE

“To be free, often, is to be alone.” – JOHN UPDIKE

“All men are born free; just not for long." – JOHN LE CARRE (I really hate quoting this anti-American piece of shit, but this is a pretty neat quote.)

"That the real hallmark of personal freedom, as far as I'm concerned -- when the clock doesn't matter." -- RUSH LIMBAUGH (20 Jan 2021 –  3 weeks before he died.)

Freedom of the Press

“In Czechoslovakia there is no such thing as freedom of the press. In the U.S. There is no such thing as freedom from the press.” – MARTINA NAVRATILOVA (back a million years ago when Czechoslovakia was still commie and Martina was one of theirs – light-years before her argy-bargy with the trans-sexuals.)

“If you're not free to criticize the press, you can't be said to have a free press.” – JACK JOLIS

Freedom of  Speech

“We can never be sure that the opinion we are endeavoring to stifle is a false opinion; and if we were sure, stifling it would be an evil still.” – JOHN STUART MILL

“Various Muslim leaders at the United Nations have been lecturing us about free expression. Leaders who abuse and torture their own citizens for expressing their ideas or faith seem to think they have standing to lecture us about the limits of freedom. Well, the tribe of barbarism doesn’t get to lecture the tribe of liberty about what freedom means.” – JONAH GOLDBERG

“Our belief in open debate can easily be set aside, it seems, if what is said may offend some important group, whether it is a dictatorial government abroad or a noisy and threatening lobby at home. If we want to take credit for our belief in free speech, it needs to be genuinely free.” – DANIEL WOLF (an English “documentary film-maker and freelance journalist)

“The Constitution gives every American the inalienable right to make a damn fool of himself.” – JOHN CIARDI (noted American poet, translator and etymologist. So it says….)

“We don’t need to ‘control’ free speech, we need to control ourselves.” – PEGGY NOONAN

“The political system that protects the First Amendment – all but requires it.” – AUSTIN BAY (American author of both fiction and non-fiction, and columnist, in 2009)

“Freedom of speech is an American concept, so I don't give it any value.” -- DEAN STEACY      (lead investigator of the Canadian “Human rights” Commission– and this is one outrageous statement to remember.)

“My biggest concern is that your view has the First Amendment hamstringing the government in significant ways." -- JUSTICE KETANJI BROWN JACKSON
 

“’Free speech’ doesn’t mean speech has no consequences – for in that case why say anything at all? What it means is that the government does not determine those consequences.” -- MARK STEYN

“As I've had cause to learn myself in recent years, when some goons want to kill you over a book, the merits of the book are not the issue; the goons are.” – MARK STEYN

«If you let them take your right to free speech, how are you going to stop them from taking all the others?» -- MARK STEYN

"Free peoples are losing the habit of free speech. They're taught, not really just at university but in fact from kindergarten, that there is a correct view of certain subjects and that incorrect views are distressing. The last two generations raised in the Western world, they don't do that thing, the apocryphal Voltaire line, 'I disagree with what you say but I'll fight to the death for you to.' They'll fight to the death for you not to be allowed to say it. People can actually lose the spirit of liberty and once you've lost that there are not a lot of easy paths back.” – MARK STEYN

«There is no argument that can be made for government regulation of speech.» – MARK STEYN

"The point of free speech is it's for the stuff that's over the line. If free speech is only for polite persons of mild temperament withing government-policed parameters, it isn't free at all. So screw that." -- MARK STEYN

"Free speech is essential to a free society because, when you deny people an opportunity to 'act like normal political parties' there's nothing left for them to do but punch your lights out." -- MARK STEYN

“We had freedom of speech — but we never had freedom after speech.” – ANWAR IBRAHIM                      (The Malaysian opposition leader)

“The only valuable sort of freedom of speech is the sort that allows people to do or to say what others find wrong-headed, offensive, distasteful and intolerant.” -- JAMES ALLAN (in “The Australian”)

"Why does the left hate free speech? Because they don’t know how to talk about the substantive merits when they are challenged. Having submerged themselves in disciplining each other by denouncing any heretics in their midst, they find themselves overwhelmed and outnumbered in America, where there is vibrant debate about all sorts of things they don’t know how to begin to talk about. They resort to stomping their feet and shouting 'shut up', when they aren’t prissily imploring everyone to be 'civil'.” — ANN ALTHOUSE

“There should be regulations on what can and cannot be protested. The Chinese people need to be controlled because if we are not being controlled, we’ll just do what we want.” -- JACKIE CHAN (To which Michelle Malkin replies "God forbid!". There was a time, long ago, when I found Jackie Chan amusing. No more. His is the voice of voluntary "Dhimmitude" -- no, check that, actually, it's even worse -- he's made hundreds of millions of dollars, thanks to the freedom afforded him by the free market of America and the free-est society on earth, Hong Kong, as a result of which he is free to do and say anything he wants, yet he's doing his best to curb the freedoms of over a billion of his own countrymen. Disgostante.)

“Offensive speech is the most important speech the First Amendment guarantees.” – SCOTT WILSON (One of NRO's more perceptive commenters, in 2013)

“The free flow of information – the freedom of the press – the First Amendment itself – will thrive so long as the government doesn't try to protect it.” -- ANDREW FERGUSON

“Everyone is in favor of free speech; hardly a day passes without its being extolled. And yet, some people’s idea of it is that they are free to say what they like, but if anyone else says anything back, that is an outrage.” – WINSTON CHURCHILL

“Free speech is a warts-and-all liberty. If you are not prepared to be unpopular, if you are not prepared to come to the aid of people you and your friends find repugnant, you should not pretend to support it.” -- NICK COHEN (a columnist for the UK “Observer” and the author of book called “What's Left”)

"The 1st Amendment is being erased before our eyes. Erased by government censors, ESG bankers, leftist prosecutors, marxist judges and vengeful partisan deep blue juries. Your neighbors with 'hate has no home here ' yard signs wouldn’t blink before shouting 'guilty' and taking all you have." -- STEPHEN MILLER     (the splendid "senior adviser" to Trump) 

"If you have to have government permission to engage in free speech, you don’t have free speech." – KEVIN D. WILLIAMSON

“The First Amendment is, like the rest of the Bill of Rights, a blessedly anti-democratic feature of our republic that says, in short: ‘You idiots don’t get a vote on this.’” – KEVIN D. WILLIAMSON

“Never forget, the Speech Police are also the Thought Police. If you can't speak the truth, it becomes impossible to know the truth.” – ROBERT STACY MCCAIN

“It is increasingly clear that some of those religious doctrines are going to have to change, because the alternative is eternal conflict. One example: the idea that Islamic law applies to non-Muslims, which is precisely as preposterous as if I were to declare that you are all my slaves. And by the way, same goes for the elastic hate-speech rules through which American academia is seeking to impose Islamic doctrine on our university students. I have every right to mock whatever prophet I want, and if your religion says otherwise, then you’re just wrong, and if you want to fight about it, then let’s fight.” – MARIO LOYOLA

“I have every right to mock whatever prophet I want, and if your religion says otherwise, then you’re just wrong, and if you want to fight about it, then let’s fight.” – MARIO LOYOLA

“If liberty means anything at all, it means the right to tell people what they do not want to hear.” – GEORGE ORWELL

“Free speech doesn't really mean anything unless someone is offended.” – GEORGE ORWELL

"Twitter was expensive but free speech is priceless" -- ELON MUSK

"$44 billion was not the cost of Twitter. It was the cost of restoring free speech." -- ELON MUSK

"Free speech—at least speech that is truly free—is always a scandal to someone or other." – BRET STEPHENS

"It is technically impossible to write an anti-speech code that can't be twisted against speech that nobody wanted to bar. It has been tried and tried and tried." -- ELEANOR HOLMES NORTON     (a reluctant admission from the long-serving, non-voting Leftist "Representative" from D.C., in April 2024) 

"There is freedom of speech. But I cannot guarantee freedom after speech." -- IDI AMIN (the guy who made Alan Coren's career -- look it up)

“Claiming 'hate speech isn’t free speech' is akin to claiming ‘guilty people don’t need due process’. That’s why the law’s there, dumbass.” – CHARLES C. W. COOKE

“If one wishes to understand what separates a person who is ‘standing up for free speech’ from a person who is merely speaking within a free market of ideas, one must look not at what that person is saying but at how his enemies are treating him.” – CHARLES C. W. COOKE

"A society that has a bulletproof legal right to speak but that has no meaningful culture of free speech will end up, in practice, without either. For most people, the bigger threat to speech comes not from the government, which tends to censor capriciously, but from their employer, from their peers, or, increasingly, from the Internet." -- CHARLES C. W. COOKE

"There’s no conflict between defending free speech and deciding what speech you wish voluntarily to consume. ‘This is a bad movie, don’t watch it’ is fine. ‘This movie shouldn’t exist and I want it removed’ is not." -- CHARLES C.W. COOKE (15 June 2022) 

“Once a government is committed to the principle of silencing the voice of opposition, it has only one way to go, and that is down the path of increasingly repressive measures, until it becomes a source of terror of all its citizens and creates a country where everyone lives in fear.” – HARRY S TRUMAN

"You do not define the First Amendment. It defines you. And it is bigger than you. That's how freedom works." -- CHARLTON HESTON

“To suppress free speech is a double wrong. It violates the rights of the hearer as well as those of the speaker.” – FREDERICK DOUGLASS

"Opponents of free speech, such as the NY Times editorial board, do not oppose speech. They oppose freedom."-- JAMES TARANTO

"I stand firm in my belief that free speech is a dangerous tool and must be restricted." -- ANTHONY ALBANESE     (the terminally feckless prime minister of Australia, in April 2024)

“It legal to yell 'Allahu Akbar' in a crowded theater?” – WILL ANTONIN (A young American cleverdick who describes himself as a “conservative academic”)

“I'll let you ban hate speech if you'll let me define hate speech.” – DAVE “IOWAHAWK” BURGE

"Your speech is violence, my violence is speech" -- DAVE "IOWAHAWK" BURGE

“If you aren't pissing someone off, you are wasting the First Amendment.” – KURT SHCLICHTER

"Liberals despise free speech. How do I know? They tell me." -- KURT SCHLICHTER

“It’s the soldier, not the poet, who has given us the freedom of speech.” – TED CRUZ

“Freedom of speech is either absolute or it is nothing at all.” – ONKAR GHATE (Canadian author of some unknown ethnic extraction, who's also a big cheese in the Ayn Rand Institute)

“Here there is a crucial difference between a legal regime based on restricting government (free speech) and one based on empowering it (“hate speech”): The latter is far more amenable to abuse by people in authority.” – JAMES TARANTO

“For many on the left, the Constitution is a hoary holdover, a ghoul-white hand of the past clamped over the brave mouth of enlightenment.” – JAMES LILEKS

"The most un-American thing you can say is, 'You can't say that'." – GARRISON KEILLOR

“If we don’t believe in free speech for people we despise, we don’t believe in it at all.” – NOAM CHOMSKY (Just like Malcolm X on Education, sometimes these enemy motherfuckers are right....)

“The reason the principle of free speech has to be so staunchly defended is that it is vulnerable to abuse by minority rule. Once you let the idea take hold that something cannot be said because it might offend some imagined third party, you fast enter a death spiral of intolerance: demands for safe spaces, trigger-warnings – a bizarre world.” – RORY SUTHERLAND

«The politically correct mindset not only seeks to censor uncongenial speech but wishes to declare an uncongenial individual ineffable—in effect, to render him an unperson. Unlike free speech, political correctness knows no limits. It is the essence of totalitarianism.» – JAMES TARANTO

“What is freedom of expression? Without the freedom to offend, it ceases to exist.” – SALMAN RUSHDIE

"People show up to abridge or eliminate your freedom of speech and then you're blamed for the violence they threaten." – TUCKER CARLSON (on his Fox TV show, 20 April 2017)

“The framers of the Constitution knew human nature as well as we do. They too had lived in dangerous days; they too knew the suffocating influence of orthodoxy and standardized thought. They weighed the compulsions for restrained speech and thought against the abuses of liberty. They chose liberty.” -- SCOTUS JUSTICE WILLIAM O. DOUGLAS

“We live in a narcissistic society, and for the narcissist, any form of criticism of their political position is 'hate speak' and 'extremism'. But they are neither of those things; they are simply opposing views.” – ROD LIDDLE

“The notion that what you mean does not matter if people become upset with you is yet another small step on the path to totalitarianism.” – ROD LIDDLE (not so small, either, Rod)

“Free speech doesn't harm minorities. It protects them.” – SOHRAB AHMARI (the headline of his article in COMMENTARY, Oct. 2017)

"Freedom of speech is not something to be awarded to those who are thought deserving and denied to those who are thought undeserving." -- SIR JAMES MUNBY (Britains's most senior "family judge", in Sept. 2017)

"You know the one thing that's wrong with this country? Everyone gets a chance to have their fair say." -- BILL CLINTON (on 29 May 1993)

“You've no need for free speech in order to uphold the certainties of your own time. In Galileo's day, no Bill of Rights was required to proclaim the world is flat.” – LIONEL SHRIVER

“Once using the wrong pronoun or stating facts like ‘women don’t have penises’ can get you arrested, your society is no longer free in any meaningful sense.” – LIONEL SHRIVER

“It’s time to give up on the idea that we can legislate niceness. A law against the expression of racist or sexist opinions doesn’t change what goes on in people’s heads; it doesn’t change their hearts. Instead suppression backfires, and makes what we’d like to regard as unacceptable still more virulent.” – LIONEL SHRIVER

“With truly free speech, we strike a bargain: you get to preach atrocities, and I get to say ‘That’s an atrocity.’ Then I speak what you is atrocity, and to me is common sense. It’s a good deal.” – LIONEL SHRIVER

“I don’t share such a view, but it should still be possible to claim that homosexuality is a sin against God without ending up in jail.” – LIONEL SHRIVER

"We abandoned the principle of free expression the moment it brought in laws against 'hate speech', which in legal terms lies entirely in the eye of the beholder." -- LIONEL SHRIVER

"True freedom of expression entails the right to say things that others find disagreeable." -- LIONEL SHRIVER

"Puritanism has bred the assumption that 'good people' do not need free speech, because they couldn't possibly wish to say anything harmful, whereas 'bad people' grasp at it as a cover to say bad things." -- CHIMAMANDA NGOZI ADICHIE (the Nigerian lady noveslist, in  Dec. 2022)

“The whole point of our Constitution, and of America itself, is that all speech -- especially hate speech -- is protected.” – DENNIS PRAGER

 “Today’s digitally nurtured students are imagining speech as much like a book with a fixed number of pages: If there are only so many pages, then some must be set aside for the speech of the marginalized. Yet speech isn’t limited at all. It’s like the Internet, to which more pages are always being added. Of course today’s Internet-marinated students know this; the students of the Left simply pretend otherwise because they fear the spread of conservative ideas, and the only surefire way of winning an argument against a conservative is to prevent him from speaking.” – KYLE SMITH (in March 2018, in NRO)

"The heckler's veto is the opposite of free contract, and is indeed the great virus that afflicts it. It's the rhetorical Cosa Nostra. This thing Of Ours that gets between a speaker and his listeners to rip off the one and rough up the other." -- DANIEL FOSTER                                      (In NR, May 2018)

"If there is any principle of the Constitution that more imperatively calls for attachment than any other it is the principle of free thought — not free thought for those who agree with us but freedom for the thought that we hate" – OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES (my old AΔΦ fratty brother)

“Freedom of speech is freedom of speech for speech that we loathe.” — OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES   (and the last time I looked, “loathe” was a synonym for “hate”.)

"We should be eternally vigilant against attempts to check the expression of opinions we loathe and believe to be fraught with death." -- OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES      (1841-1935 -- the distinguished Supreme Court Justice and, incidentally, an ΑΔΦ fraternity of mine).

“Speech that demeans on the basis of race, ethnicity, gender, religion, age, disability, or any other similar ground is hateful; but the proudest boast of our free speech jurisprudence is that we protect the freedom to express ‘the thought that we hate’.” – JUSTICE SAMUEL ALITO

“A law that can be directed against speech found offensive to some portion of the public can be turned against minority and dissenting views to the detriment of all.” – JUSTICE ANTHONY KENNEDY

“This is probably the greatest irony ever: we fought a 70-year battle against a totalitarian system that prohibited free speech, and having won it we then adopted the very system we defeated. The easiest way of shutting down free speech is by using the R-word. Call someone a racist and all doors close.” – TAKI THEODORACOPULOS

"If we become unable to distinguish between private and public conversation, we shall all go mad." -- CHARLES MOORE

"Every man has the right to utter what he thinks truth, and every other man the right to knock him down for it." -- DR. SAMUEL JOHNSON (that was the deal before the First Amendment, I guess)
 

"Now we have an alliance between the almighty Big Tech Internet companies of this country and the Democrat regime of this country. Together, they have done the unthinkable: they have hit the citizens with overwhelmingly potent restrictions on free speech. They have taken away free speech from a man whom they hate — Donald Trump — and preserved it for the most wicked terrorists on the planet: Al Qaeda, the Taliban, and their friends.

We now have the horrible, Orwellian nightmare where Donald Trump, candidate of the GOP, winner of roughly 75 million votes, has lost his right to free speech while the free speech 'rights' of the Taliban are complete. What I say here is only my opinion and I am only one old man in a small office in California. But I see Free Speech disappearing before our very eyes. This is not America. This is an Orwellian 'Super State' totally at variance with Jefferson’s ideas of what America should be. I am frightened and you should be, too;" -- BEN STEIN (in September, 2021)

 “I was forced to come to the United States, which is a country that has freedom of expression.  America: never negotiate an inch your freedom of speech. It's a point of no return.” -- BRUNO AIUB (The "Brazilian Joe Rogan", known as "Monark" -- in Sept. '23)

"There's no guarantee to free speech on misinformation or hate speech and especially around our democracy." -- TIM WALZ      (as evil a word-salad as you're ever likely to come across)

"He (Elon Musk) has lost his privileges & it ("X") should be taken down; they are directly speaking to millions of people without any level of oversight or regulation --and that has to stop."-- KAMALA HARRIS       (the words of a dictator, in Sept. 2024)

"Our First Amendment stands as a major block to the ability to be able to hammer [disinformation] out of existence." -- JOHN KERRY (more words of a dictator, in Sept.2024)

"Freedom of Speech is useless if it doesn't include 'hate speech'; you don't need Freedom of Speech to defend 'Have a Nice Day' and 'Kumbaya'." -- JACK JOLIS
 

" 'Safety' is always invoked by authoritarian regimes to clampdown on free speech." -- TOBY YOUNG

Freud, Sigmund

"The thing is not that what Freud said was true, but that we have chosen to act as if it were true." -- MALCOM BRADBURY

Friendship

“One of the truths about life is that if you judge your friends by high moral standards, you don’t keep friends for long.  If you are not prepared to have philanderers, wife-beaters, drunks and drug-dealers among your friends, then you are not really ready for friendship.” – SIMON BARNES (not to mention, alas, left-wingers…)

"The best friendships are those founded on misunderstanding." -- JOSEPH STALIN (I'm not sure what the old psychopath was referring to, here, but I'm pretty sure it wasn't anything nice.)

“No man who has lost a friend need fear death.” – HILAIRE BELLOC

"There is nothing in the world I wouldn't do for Bob Hope, and there is nothing he wouldn't do for me -- we spend our lives doing nothing for each other." -- BING CROSBY

“The biggest source of corruption isn't money, but friendship.” – SIDNEY GOLDBERG                            (Jonah’s dad)

"He has no enemies, but is intensely disliked by his friends.." -- OSCAR WILDE

“Friendship is a diminishing of distance between people.” -- KEITH RICHARDS

"If you tell a child that somebody has to be their [sic] friend, I suppose you can force the child to say this is my friend, but it changes the definition of what it means to be a friend." – JOHN ROBERTS                                (During the homosexual marriage case of March 2013)

”Some of my close friends could easily be deceased; this would not have a serious effect on our relationship.” – DAVE BARRY

"Friendship isn't always about exchanging deep and meaningful confidences. If it were, there are a whole lot of lifelong old-school male relationships that would not even earn the name of friendship." -- SAM LEITH

"A smile is a curve that sets everything straight.” -- PHYLLIS DILLER

"In Paris, where there's a friend, there's a way." -- STEPHEN CLARKE       (undoubtedly true -- but you could say the same thing about practically any other city)

"My friends, there are no friends." -- COCO CHANEL

"It takes a great deal of bravery to stand up to our enemies, but just as much to stand up to our friends" – J. K. ROWLING

“Friends are not necessarily the people you like best, they are merely the people who got there first.” – PETER USTINOV

“Nobody you liked at school ever becomes a politician.” – SIMON BRETT

“It is always your rich friends who cost you.” – KYLE SMITH

“You can’t be disappointed in your enemies, only your friends.” --JONAH GOLDBERG

"Friendship in youth represents sympathy without understanding; in age, understanding without sympathy" – DAWN POWELL (An American novelist who died in 1965, at the age of 35)

“Why do we need to see each other, anyway? We know what each other's like.” – JON CANTER

“Count your friends when you're down.” – RICHARD NIXON

"Nobody is a friend of ours. Let's face it." -- RICHARD M. NIXON (I was)

“Friendship, when true, is the only unconditional relationship we can have. All others are conditional and subjected to mutual expectations.” -- DANNY DE BELDER (the Sage Of Flanders and... well, my friend) 

"Anyone can be a friend. So long as you don't get to know him too well." -- J. P. DONLEAVY

“A woman of the world doesn't have friends – she has lovers and acquaintances.” – JOHN GALSWORTHY (in his “The Forsyte Saga”)

“It was ridiculous to have a best friend whom you no longer liked very much.” – DAVID NOBBS

“Knowing people and accepting company indiscriminately complicated the already far-from-simple task of living.” – FLANN O’BRIEN

“We cherish our friends not for their ability to amuse us but for ours to amuse them.” – EVELYN WAUGH

"Good friends are like stars, you don't always see them but you know they're there." -- CHRISTY EVANS (the pseudonym of the mystery writer Christina F. York – as unearthed by Oliver Jolis)

"Never trust the first person who befriends you when you arrive in a new place or join a new organization. People have only one reason for latching on to the newcomer -- they don't get on with the colleagues they're already working with, and see every new arrival as a potential fresh start." -- PHILIP THODY (the late British professor of French)

Fun                                                                                                                                    

"I've never been convinced there's anything inherently wrong with having fun"-- GEORGE "Paper Lion" PLIMPTON                       (I actually once met this fellow in a trendy “singles bar” on Manhattan’s 2nd Ave., in the 70s. We  we both a little drunk and ol’ George did strike me as, indeed, being a fun guy.)

“Work is more fun than fun.” – NOEL COWARD                                                                                  

”We have sought truth and sometimes perhaps found it. But have we had any fun?” – BENJAMIN JOWETT                                               (the 19th Century British theologian, classicist, and Master of Balliol College, Oxford)

Fundamentalism                                                                                                                

“The term "religious fundamentalist" is nearly useless; it matters quite a bit which religion you're talking about.” – KEVIN D. WILLIAMSON

Funerals

“Funerals are the cocktail parties of the aged.” – PHILIP HOPE-WALLACE

“If you're wondering whether you should go to the funeral, you should go to the funeral.”-- CHRIS HAYES                (the liberal MSNBC dork, but this is a cute quote. Even if I don't believe it myself – I skip funerals any chance I get)

“Funerals are two men lying – one in his coffin, the other from the pulpit.” – JAMIE DAY (a good citizen of St. Albans, Hertfordshire, England, in august 2008 – actually quoting his father.)

"I didn't attend the funeral, but I sent a nice letter saying I approved of it." -- MARK TWAIN

"You should always go to other people's funerals. Otherwise, they won't come to yours."-- YOGI BERRA

“It is foolish and wrong to mourn the men who died. Rather we should thank God that such men lived.” ~ GEN. GEORGE S. PATTON, JR.

Furniture

"I'd rather be confined to a Syrian prison than have to discuss furniture ads with a female." -- DAN JENKINS (The author of the seminal pro football novel, "Semi-Tough")

"Sutherland's Law states that furniture design lags technology by about two decades." -- RORY SUTHERLAND

"It is almost impossible to stain a good Persian carpet." -- CHARLES McCARRY

Fusion

"Fusion power can save us by utterly refuting the limited-resource thesis. The amount of deuterium fusion fuel present in one gallon of water contains as much energy as that produced by burning 350 gallons of gasoline. That’s all water on earth, fresh or salt. A gallon of water from Mars contains deuterium with the energy content of 2,000 gallons of gasoline. Other planets or asteroids may offer more still. So what we are talking about with fusion is unlimited energy. With enough energy, you can do anything. In the entire history of human civilization we have not used up a single kilogram of iron or aluminum. We have just degraded some matter from more convenient to less convenient forms. With enough energy, we can rearrange it back, recycling it faster and faster from one form to another. We will never run out of anything.                                                      Furthermore, fusion does not simply represent unlimited energy — it is a new kind of energy with which we could do things that we simply can’t do now. With fusion power, for instance, we could create fusion rockets, which could attain speeds up to 10 percent the speed of light, opening our path to the stars." -- ROBERT ZUBRIN    (in National Review, in August 2021)

Futility

“Internal strife is not always bad. It works to make people forget what a hopeless position they’re in when they’re arguing over trifles.” – NELSON DEMILLE

Future, the

“The future belongs to those who show up for it.” – MARK STEYN (decrying the lack of procreation of the population of the civilized world in 2007, and riffing on Woody Allen’s famous “90% of Life is just showing up.”)

“When you outsource the future, don’t be surprised if it doesn’t turn out the way you expected.” – MARK STEYN

“The future is already here – it just isn't evenly distributed.” –  WILLIAM GIBSON (the cutting-edge techie guru, author of “Zero History”)

“The future has a habit of coming all at once.” – ROB LONG

“The best way to predict the future is to invent it.” – ALAN KAY (The pioneering American computer scientist.)

“The future belongs to crowds.” – DON DELILLO (Oh great. In his novel “Mao II”)

“The best thing about the future is that it comes one day at a time.” – ABRAHAM LINCOLN

“If you want a vision of the future, imagine a folk singer howling in a human ear forever.” - GEORGE ORWELL

"I look to the future because that's where I'm going to spend the rest of my life." -- GEORGE BURNS

“You can't stop the future, all you can do is pick a side.” – MARCUS SAKEY (author and host of the TV Travel Channel)

"Owning a penis 20 years from now will be considered as criminal as drinking a large Coke or driving your own car." -- MATT LABASH (in January 2017)

“Part of the hell of aging is learning just how few items there are on humanity's imaginative menu.” – KYLE SMITH

 "I was the future, once." -- DAVID CAMERON  (the rather "wet" Conservative former PM of the UK)

"I wanted to keep my verbs conditional. I had always found that a good way of staving off the future." -- KEITH WATERHOUSE

“In case there was no future, there was always the past.” – MARTIN CRUZ SMITH

"If we could read the script of the future, we'd never turn the page." -- DAVID MITCHELL    (the serious novelist, not the comic actor)

"It's a foolish man that counts on the future." -- SOPHOCLES      (496-405 BC, and this would have been disqualified for being too self-evident and banal if it had been said by anyone more recent)