G                                                                              

Gambling                                                                                                                                              

“It is better to have lost and lost, than never to have lost at all.” - CHICO MARX                                                                   (the “‘eyyyy, getta yo’ tootsie-frootsie ice-cream” one…. Chico was an infamous, inveterate gambler.)

“Life is six-to-five against.” – DAMON RUNYON

“The race is not always to the swift, nor the battle to the strong, but that's the way to bet" – DAMON RUNYON

"Don't fuck with the casino business. The casino business, ya gotta understand, certain people feel it is their God-given right to milk that kinda thing. Other people try to get involved, they get extremely upset, it's like their whole world seems outa whack." -- LAURENCE SHAMES (a mobster in his 1996 comic novel "Tropical Depression")

“I examined my Liberalism and found it like an addiction to roulette. Here, though the odds are plain, and the certainty of loss apparent to anyone with a knowledge of arithmetic, the addict, failing time and again, is convinced he yet is graced with the power to contravene natural laws: The roulette addict, when he inevitably comes to grief, does not examine either the nature of roulette, or of his delusion, but retires to develop a new system.” – DAVID MAMET

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

"Never play cards with a man whose first name is a city." -- ELLIOTT ABRAMS                                                                                 (the great foreign policy "rainmaker" for both Reagan and "W")

"The lottery is my favorite form of taxation: A voluntary tax on the stupid." – MICHAEL GRAHAM

"I figure you have the same chance of winning the lottery whether you play or not." -- FRAN LEBOWITZ

“Gambling is entertainment for the empty-headed.” -- PHILIP HENSCHER

“The gambler is not there to take part. The gambler isn't even there necessarily to win. The gambler is there to find an edge; to game the table.” -- SIMON INGS (writing in THE SPECTATOR, May 2016)

"I've had lots of experience calculating the odds of survival, and as we used to say, any odds better than 50/50 were too good to be true." -- NELSON DEMILLE

“There was something horribly familiar about the one-armed bandits. You stood around hopefully, summoned up your reserves of optimism, spent money you couldn’t afford, and waited for the prize that never came. It was just like life.” – GUY BELLAMY

"The immense wealth of the Casino is derived wholly and directly from man's refusal to accept the conclusion of mathematical proof." -- EVELYN WAUGH

“Man is a gaming animal. He must always be trying to get the better in something or other.” – CHARLES LAMB (1775-1834)

Games

"People are born equal until they play Monopoly." -- NIGEL WILLIAMS (the very amusing English novelist)

"The British royal family had to abandon their habit of playing Monopoly. It always led to arguments. How unlike them." -- MARK MASON (reporting on the book "Around The World In 80 Games" by Marcus du Sautoy)

Gandhi

"It is alarming and also nauseating to see Mr. Gandhi, a seditious Middle Temple lawyer of the type well known in the East, now posing as a fakir, striding half naked up the steps of the Viceregal palace to parley on equal terms with the representatives with the King-Emperor." -- WINSTON CHURCHILL

Gardens, (-ening)

“A garden, my dear, is a place for passing through as quickly as possible on the way to the pub.” – NIGEL WILLIAMS  

Gates, (Bill)

“At this point, I am convinced that he is categorically insane (and an a–hole to the core).” -- ELON MUSK

“GDP” (Gross Domestic Product

“Be skeptical of those GDP numbers.  GDP has basically three pieces : private consumption, investment, and government spending. Guess which one of those has been getting jacked up in the United States since 2009? When calculating GDP, government spending is valued at cost, meaning that if the government goes and borrows $1 trillion, buys $1 trillion worth of water balloons, and has a massive national water-balloon fight on the Mall, that's another trillion bucks added to the GDP, even though it's made us poorer as a nation, not richer. And Washington has been having a hell of a water-balloon fight since 2008.” – KEVIN D. WILLIAMSON

“Gender” (and "Transgender")

“I identify as male because I am a male and I am not delusional.” – KURT SCHLICHTER

“My pronouns are ‘fuck you’.” – KURT SCHLICHTER

“Pronouns and delusions do not trump biology.” – KEVIN D. WILLIAMSON

“Because ‘gender’ is an infinitely plastic concept, it can be put to almost any end.” – KEVIN D. WILLIAMSON

“What should be appreciated here is that the elevation of ‘gender’ over ‘sex’ — the elevation of the interpretative and metaphorical over the physical and literal — is an ideological project, one that should be resisted.” – KEVIN D. WILLIAMSON

"Maybe the boy who thinks he's a girl is just gay; maybe the girl who hates the girly stuff just needs to learn that being female doesn't mean you need to act like a Kardashian. Maybe childhood makes you sad sometimes, and there are other solutions besides 'Hand me the dick saw'." -- BILL MAHER 

“If kids knew what they wanted to be at age eight, the wolrd would be filled with cowboys and princesses. I wanted to be a pirate. Thank God nobody took me seriously and scheduled me for eye removal and peg-leg surgery.” — BILL MAHER 

“I'm all for people calling themselves what they want, but using the plural pronoun 'they' for one person makes nonsense of the entire language.” – LYNN BARBER (English journalist – SUNDAY TIMES – December '15)

“Vast swaths of young people, unable to buy a home or get a job, now realize they are trapped in the wrong body. Well, great.” – TOM HOLLANDER (The English actor. Has played a lot of poofters in films, but he's probably not one himself... I'm just guessing)

“Gender cannot be at real risk because it is anchored in an immutable reality. What is on the cards is oppression, socially engineered dysfunction and the loss of individual freedom.” – MELANIE PHILLIPS

“No theory of fluids is too foolish to lack aggressive advocates: mephitic, vapor, plogiston, animal magnetism, vril, brain-waves, hysteric vapors. 'Gender' has joined them as the most 'fluid' thing of all.” – DOT WORDSWORTH (The SPECTATOR's resident etymologist.)

“If women can't penetrate traditional male spaces, such as fraternities, locker rooms or infantry platoons, then those spaces are dangerous, and abolition of gender integration isn't just a matter of social justice but, indeed, of public safety.” – DAVID FRENCH

"'Genders' are like the Twin Towers -- there used to be two of them, but now they've become really sensitive subjects." -- CHRIS PLANTE (the late-morning guy on my fave radio station, WMAL in Washington DC, in Jan. 2017)

"We no longer live in a binary world -- now we have men, women and leftists." -- CHRIS PLANTE (On 13 May 2019)

"We live in a country where you can choose your gender but not your light bulb." -- DR. GENE LINGERFELT (A conservative pastor on the Twoot, in April 2017)

“Fluidity of gender is, naturally, a hot topic in queer studies – an academic discipline as abstruse as particle physics, and discussed in equally impenetrable jargon.” – MARTIN GAYFORD (an art critic in THE SPECCIE, in April 2017, and, I suspect, a poofter himself – in which case his name     would be particularly felicitous...)

“ 'Gender Studies' is an intellectually worthless degree indicative of shrill resentment, bolshiness, blue hair, lax personal hygiene and weaponised entitlement.” – JAMES DELINGPOLE

"Your penis makes you bad unless you were not born with it, in which case you are America's greatest hero." -- KURT SCHLICHTER

“If saying that you can never change your sex was a false statement , there would be no reason for leftists to forbid you to say it. It would be obvious. But since it is a true statement, they fear it and must forbid it. They are fascists.” – KURT SCHLICHTER

"There are no trans kids, only disgusting parents who should be imprisoned." -- KURT SCHLICHTER 

“To believe that wanting makes it so – in this instance that a man can become a woman or vice versa simply by willing it – is a characteristically left-wing position. It is the origin of the magic money tree, of the triumph of opinion over fact in education.” – DAVID STARKEY (a famous English homosexualist)

"The transgender movement is something which has long been considered as insanity by virtually every civilized society in human history." -- BEN STEIN

"Less than 20 years after Eve Ensler 'empowered' women by 'reclaiming' their vaginas, it seems a woman doesn't need a vagina at all and it's totally 'cisgenderist' to suggest you're not a woman if you're hung like a horse." -- MARK STEYN

“There are two genders, men & women. The gender ideologues have already lost the scientific battle, so now they are all foaming at the mouth trying to enforce their views―because they want people to be completely malleable to their ideological image” – JORDAN PETERSON

“The cultural-Marxist Left’s war on Western civilization and American society is conducted on many fronts, including the courts and the streets, but also on a daily basis in the arena of public opinion, via the language. One prominent example has been their transformation of the two human sexes, male and female, first into 'genders' (a term drawn from English grammar, and of which there are three, including neuter) and then into multiple genders. This of course demands a new set of pronouns which promptly are given 'identity' characteristics, the better to tribalize and thus weaponize these hitherto unknown species of human beings.” – MICHAEL WALSH

"Trans women are a type of woman the way Spam is a type of ham." -- MICHAEL WALSH 

"The hormone treatments and surgeries look a lot like medical malpractice. So why were they permitted to happen? One reason, undoubtedly, is that the transgender cause dovetails so nicely with the agenda of the hard Left. Under the Obama administration, activists pressed the transgender cause with all the grace and sensitivity of the mob at Pamplona." – RACHEL LU (A Robert Novak Journalism fellow, in NR, in March 2018)

"There is no evidence that transgenders are born that way. There is, however, evidence that they are suffering from untreated mental disorders such as bipolar disorder, dissociative disorder, separation anxiety, schizophrenia, and personality disorder." -- WALT HEYER (an American ex-trans-sexual fellow) 

"The insistence that man-made women be accepted as women is the institutional expression of the mistaken conviction that women are defective males." – GERMAINE GREER

"'Gender is a social construct' is the polite way to be an anti-evolutionist." -- DAVE "IOWAHAWK" BURGE

“Transgenderism is a fashion, it’s terrible rat-baggery – how many different kinds of lavatory can you have? And it’s pretty evil when it’s preached to children by crazy teachers. I provoked a torrent of outrage when I used the word ‘mutilation’ to describe it. They had their genitalia chopped off and tucked in and whatever they had to do. And that aroused a lot of indignation.” – BARRY HUMPHRIES

“Sweden – the world’s leader in uterine transplants – is anxious to reclaim the title of the world’s most batshit crazy nation, which the Canadians and that simpering idiot Justin Trudeau currently have in their grasp.” – ROD LIDDLE

“There is only one meaningful test: what chromosomes do you have?” – ROD LIDDLE

“I was chatting to a young medical student, a very bright chap from West Africa, who was nonetheless perplexed by a certain element of his course. The puzzle, for him, was the point of offering cervical smear tests to men who had transitioned to become women. The course module was very clear, he said, that these people must not be left out, despite not possessing a cervix. I tried to explain to the lad that we are now living in a world which could best be described as ‘post-real’, where truth and fact have no purchase and that, for the sake of his career, he had best go along with it all unless he wanted to be outed as a fascist bigot, or a gigoted fascist, whatever. One day, not too far down the line, he may be faced with the problem of treating a man who identifies as a unicorn and presents with a complaint relating to his fetlocks.” – ROD LIDDLE

“A human being in possession of XY chromosomes, a beard and a todger is a ‘man’, no matter what he might wish the rest of us to call him.” – ROD LIDDLE (top marks for “todger”....)

"The wider and wider the (gender) net is cast in search of adolescent delusions, the more it seems that the entirety of them consist of people who are not quite right in the head. 'A bit light', as my father used to say, in a kindly manner, of the mentally disturbed. It does seem to me that there are two possible causes for insisting to people how you wish to be addressed: the first is narcissism and self-importance and the second is lunacy." -- ROD LIDDLE

"When nobody in the Labour Party can tell you what 'a woman' is, you know you are at the end of time for a civilisation, a state of utter derangement in which western society is in danger of disappearing with a shallow pphutt, way up beyond its own sphincter muscle." -- ROD LIDDLE (obviously, what goes for the UK Labour Party goes for the US Democrat Party. He said this is April 2022)

"The distinction between male and female is more profound than any other aspect of human existence. So how on earth can someone with male genitalia claim to be a woman or vice versa? If someone has gender reassignment surgery, that's different, but otherwise just declaring something doesn't make it so." -- JEREMY STOCKER  (a bloke from Warwickshire, UK, in Sept. 2018)

“Liberals who posture as defenders of science when it comes to global warming flee all reference to biology when it comes to gender.” -- CAMILLE PAGLIA

“So let me get this straight – Men are not allowed to talk about abortions because they don’t have uteruses, but they are allowed to identify as women even though they have penises. Liberals have lost their minds.” – T. RUSSELL HUNTER (an American anti-abortion “activist”)

"There is something almost awe-inspiring in the way in which our age can deny reality, redefine things and try to make everyone agree to the new definition, only then to not go along with it. See also 'woman' (noun)." -- DOUGLAS MURRAY

"Where part of this began going really wrong -- is the moment that gender-nonsense activists chose to target the children.  To tell children that there was no such thing as biological sex.  To pretend that we are made of Lego and can take parts off and put them on again at will. To replace biological reality with gender woo-woo." -- DOUGLAS MURRAY (in June 2023) 

"Kirsten Gillibrand, you know, she's running for President, from New York. And she suggests we have three genders, which I guess would be, let's see -- male, female, and liberal Democrat." – CHRIS PLANTE (On WMAL in February 2019)

“A man will never become a woman, and she will never become a man, no matter what cruel mutilations one or the other agrees to undergo.” — ROBERT CARDINAL SARAH (Cardinal from Guinea, in 2019 — and the chap who, in my humble half-Catholic opinion, should have become Pope — instead of that Argentine Marxist.)

“From the news, you might believe that 57 percent of the population is now gender-fluid, or at least experiencing varying levels of gender viscosity. If you believe that there are two genders – you gotcher yen, and you gother yang there, as Archie Bunker might put it – you hesitate to say so on social media, lest the panopticon of Google seal your wrongthink in digital amber.” – JAMES LILEKS

"Gender ideology is the fullest expression of liberalism's desire to sever men and women from nature and from tradition." -- SORHAB AHMARI

"Most people know what sex they are already, don't they? They use a thing called a mirror." -- GUY BELLAMY (in 1989)

“Feeling that you are a different sex than the one you were born into is something that you are free to feel. You’re even free to live according to that feeling. But it doesn’t change what medical textbooks tell us.” – JONAH GOLDBERG

"I actually wish transgender women could get periods. That would put an end to this movement within about 28 days." -- ADA LLUCH (A young  Spanish woman -- a "beauty and health consultant" from Madrid -- in April 2023)

"I would never fire someone for being gay, but homosexuality is not a gender, it’s a behavior. Trans is not a gender, it’s a mental illness." -- JOHN NOLTE                (on the Twoot, 15 June 2020, when the Supreme Court made an insane decision that includes trans-sexuals in the civil rights laws)

"I've always been a perplexed why anyone lucky enough to be born male would want to swap sexes. But it seems completely rational to me that girls might rather be boys." -- LIONEL SHRIVER

"Transgenderism -- it's hard to recall any collective preoccupation that gathered momentum so quickly." -- LIONEL SHRIVER

" 'Men are women'. We might as well recite 'Lamps are carrots' or 'Knitting needles are tractors'. Bearing XY chromosomes, a 'trans woman' is male down to each individual cell. However carved up, he cannot give birth or nurse, he doesn't menstruate or go through menopause. His 'transition' is ornamental. Her transition is grammatical." --LIONEL SHRIVER

"Trans activists aren't promoting an opinion but the overt defiance of objective reality. We're on perilous ground when we mainstream bald-faced lies." -- LIONEL SHRIVER

"A society that's lost a grip of as profound a matter as the reality of the male and female has reached a state of perilous decay." --LIONEL SHRIVER  (in April 2022)

" 'Gender' has become a nonsense word." -- LIONEL SHRIVER (9 Sept. 2023)

“There are men, women, and delusions.” – KURT SCHLICHTER

"There are no ‘trans’ people, only disturbed ones." -- KURT SCHLICHTER

"The trans insanity will go on until women, who are the victims, decide to stop allowing it. Liberal women let this happen. Men see it, accurately, as a problem for women that is tolerated by women." -- KURT SCHLICHTER

"Marxists spoke of the construction of a 'new socialist man' as a crucial task in the broader process of socialist construction. Today, in a time of both rising fascism and an emergent socialist movement, our challenge is transsexualising our Marxism. We should think of the project of transition to communism in our time -- communization -- as including the transition to new communist selves, new ways of being and relating to one another." -- ROSA LEE (I can't tell if this is a guy pretending to be a woman, or an actual woman, but anyway, it appeared in 2023 in a screed called "Transgender Marxism")

"They went from gay people were born that way to trans people were born wrong." -- DEREK WHEELER (an "Anarcho-Libertarian Capitalist" on the Twoot, in July 2023)

"Saying 'I don’t consent to puberty' is the equivalent of saying 'I don’t consent to digestion'." -- SARAH FACINELLI (A Deputy Editor at an outfit called "Wrong Speak Publishing", on 24 Oct. 2022) 

"Turns out, women are easy to push around. Just ask a transgender athlete." -- LIBBY EMMONS                                                                                                     (writing in the, er, organ of the homosexual "Log Cabin Republicans", "OutSpoken", 21 Dec. "21)

"If some weirdo at work started talking about sexual options and ideologies with you, they’d be sexually harassing you. Why do we have lower standards for teachers in school when they push their far left sexual agenda on children?" -- ROBBY STARBUCK (Cuban American, candidate for Congress in Tennessee -- said in April 2022)

"If you told a 12 year old girl to get breast implants you’d be rightly called called a pedophile, but if you tell one to cut out her breasts, you’re called 'Disney'.” -- MIKE CERNOVICH (the self-described “new right” Wiki-described “social media personality”, on11 April 2022)

"The enormous increase in minors suddenly identifying as non-gender-conforming or transgender has nothing to do with actual gender dysphoria, which is a diagnosable and rare condition, and everything to do with social contagion and Munchausen by proxy." --BEN SHAPIRO (8 April 2022)

"None of these kids have gender dysphoria. They have TikTok infection instead. What used to be normal preteen or teen low self esteem is now a gender acrobatic pronoun label. Hormone blockers are this generation’s Ecstasy. Except the effects don’t just wear off." -- MARINA MEDVIN (an attorney and columnist at TownHall and Forbes, on 13 April 2022)

"Trans-man, trans-woman. I sometimes got the two mixed up, until I learned to replace 'trans-' with 'not-'." -- FRANCIS ROY (A self-described "regular guy”, on the Twoot)

"Tragic ladies just litter the world. So do broken men. Even so. At the end of the day. And boy I've had some long days. I'm sure still glad I'm not a woman." -- J. P. DONLEAVY

"I used to think of Europe as a continent of vaguely feminized men but unlike their American counterparts, at least they can’t get pregnant." -- DAVID DEEBLE (American comedian, in June 2023)

“ ‘Cis’ is ideological language, signifying belief in the unfalsifiable concept of gender identity. You have a perfect right to believe in unprovable essences… but the rest of us have a right to disagree, and to refuse to adopt your jargon.” -- J. K. ROWLING

“We never did this through all of human history until like two weeks ago. They're having third graders declare pronouns? We're not doing the pronoun olympics in Florida." -- GOV. RON DESANTIS (in May 2023)

"There is no such thing as a transgender child. A trans child is like a vegan cat—a sick person forced them to be that way." -- IAN MILES CHEONG     (an excellent Canadian-Malaysian anti-Left "influencer" and general "media person")

"I feel very very strongly that you should have every single solitary right including use of your gender identity bathrooms in public." -- JOE BIDEN (He spoke this bit of blinding eloquence to noted beer "influencer" Dylan Mulvaney, at the White House, on 22 Oct. '22)

"One's sex, (a matter of chromosomes), is 'assigned' at conception. And all else is Leftist cant, flummery, delusion and mischievous bullshit." -- JACK JOLIS

"There are two sexes. If you have XX chromosomes, you’re a woman. If you have XY chromosomes, you’re a man. Period. Gender dysphoria is a mental health disorder. Affirming a kid’s confusion isn’t compassion. It’s cruelty. That’s the truth." -- VIVEK RAMASWAMY  (in July 2023)

"I would've won 100 tournaments if I'd thrown on a skirt and called myself a tranny. That dude (a trans-sexual guy playing in the Ladies PGA tournament) is as feminine as a Ford F-150." -- JOHN DALY      (the great Gonzo-golfist, in 2024)

"Only nutjobs want kids to have nutjobs." -- GREG GUTFELD     (In Aug.2024)

“It is not as easy as some may, in this culture war, now want to portray it, that the XX or the XY is the clear distinction between the men and women. This is scientifically not true anymore," -- THOMAS BACH        (Head of the International Olympic Committee, in Aug. '24)

"You don't define this ("gender" question) by what's on someone's passport. You check their chromosomes.  XX marks the spot.  XY marks the other one. It's that simple." -- RICHARD MADELEY     (the long-time presenter of TV's "Good Morning Britain")

Generality(-ies)

“There are two kinds of people in the world: those that divide everybody into groups, and those that overgeneralize.” - BEN PERSHING (of ROLL CALL magazine…)

“One should be wary, as a general rule, of making general rules based on personal experience.” – HUGO RIFKIND (the journalist son of the Scottish Conservative ex-Minister of Defense, and, disappointingly but predictably, a squishy anti-American.)

“We should have more clichés. They are in truth, as someone said in jest, the poetry of the people. Without clichés there are no proverbs, no shared references, and language itself is scarcely possible. Without dead metaphors we cannot speak, depend on it.” – DOT WORDSWORTH (the UK SPECTATOR's language matron-in-residence....)

“The moment we try to cut through the white noise of life and synthesize a simple truth, we invariably generalize.” – JONAH GOLDBERG

"When people think seriously, they think abstractly; they conjure up simplified pictures of reality called concepts, theories, models, paradigms. Without such intellectual constructs, there is, William James said, only ‘a bloomin’ buzzin’ confusion'.”  -- SAMUEL HUNTINGTON

“Generalization is valuable, generally."-- KEVIN D. WILLIAMSON

“The true enemy of man is generalisation.” – CESLAW MILOSZ (Nobel-lit winner fella, apparently – and Nobel prize notwithstanding, I can think of a  few more pressing “enemies of man” than “generalisation”....)

"When you're generalizing with accuracy, that's called sociology." -- ROBBY SOAVE                                                                          (an Editor at REASON magazine)

"A generalization is like a beautiful but carelessly stitched pillow: the moment you slide it under your head, it starts bulging on one side or the other and soon the stuffing is pouring out like so many contradictions." -- VASSILY AKSYONOV (I almost didn't include this because it's both so banal and... so effing wrong. Without generalization there's no communication, ffs....)

"It's understood by writers of my tremblingly sensitive generation that unless you are discussing the Brits, the Italians, the Spanish, the French, other western European nations, Scandinavians, other northern European nations, Canadians, Australians, Russians, Americans and possibly Greeks, it's considered rude to make airy and unfunded generalities about an entire culture. I think of this as the Developed Nations League of Cultural Cliché." -- JOHN PHIPPS (freelance English journalist, in July 2022)

Generations

“The age of our parents, inferior to that of our grandparents, brought forth ourselves, who are more worthless still and destined to have children still more corrupt.” - HORACE (Roman pote, 65BC – 8 BC…..)

"Well, I’m not a Boomer. I’m a Gen-X’er --- a label I was never entirely thrilled with, hoping for something snazzier, like The Latest Generation --- on account of my inability to show up on time…. While most Boomers spent the ‘60s through the ‘80s doing whatever they felt like doing, then celebrating themselves for it, they’ve morphed into a new strain of liberalism. Nowadays, they take much more pleasure in telling others what they can’t do (smoking, eating trans fats, burning fossil fuels) rather than partaking in what they once loved to do themselves (having promiscuous sex and smoking lots of weed). To many of them, prudish sanctimony is the new hedonism. Any idiot can make their own fun. But real fun is ruining somebody else’s. Boomers are still the same solipsistic, self-entitled, vainglorious, reap-all-the-benefits-while-making-few-of-the-sacrifices, over-spending, materialistic, nostalgizing, sentimentalizing, collagenized, botoxed, forever-young-because-they-refuse-to-act-their-age centers of the universe as they’ve always been. So go easier on your generation. " – MATT LABASH

"Most generations laugh at what previous generations used to censor. The 'Millennial' generation censors what previous generations used to laugh at." -- DAVE "IOWAHAWK" BURGE

“It goes Greatest Generation,

Silent Generation,

Spoiled Hippie Narcissists,

Grunge Losers,

then Garbage Babies.

Generation test:

Cried when FDR died

Cried when JFK died

Cried when John Lennon died

Cried when Cobain died

Cries constantly for no reason” – DAVE “IOWAHAWK” BURGE

"Nothing paves the way for Political correctness like ignorance, and the farther removed we get from the last generation to receive a proper education, the more ignorant college students become." -- HELEN ANDREWS (from the Centre of Independent Studies, Sydney Aus.)

"To 'Millennials', socialism is the belief in social media. Duh. What else would it mean?" -- ADAM MATHEWS                            (a fellow on the Twoot)

“Every generation, no matter how it repines the passing of old times, believes two things of itself: that it has worked out a better way to parent and a better way to act. They’re always wrong.” -- JULIAN FELLOWES                                  (Julian Alexander Kitchener-Fellowes, Baron Fellowes of West Stafford DL is an English actor, novelist, film   director and screenwriter, and a Conservative peer of the House of Lords.) 

"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)

Genetics (and Genealogy)                                                                                                               

"Blood  knew not itself; but knowledge of blood was all." -- ALAN JUDD

"Every brain is born not as a blank slate waiting to be filled in by experience,  but as an exposed negative witing to be slipped into developer fluid. The negative might be developed well or it might be develope poorly, but all you're going to get is what was already on the negative at birth." -- EDWARD O. WILSON 

“Just because one is born in a stable doesn't make one a horse." -- THE DUKE OF WELLINGTON      (Actually, it was said by a DANIEL O'CONNELL, speaking OF Arthur Wellesley, the Iron Duke... but it’s come to be commonly attributed to the Duke.)

“Geneva Conventions”

“You know, people ask me that all the time, 'Aren't you concerned that you folks aren't covered under the Geneva Convention in [operating] in the likes of Iraq or Afghanistan or Pakistan? And I say, 'Absolutely not,' because these people, they crawled out of the sewer and they have a 1200 AD mentality. They're barbarians. They don't know where Geneva is, let alone that there was a convention there." - ERIC PRINCE (the ex-boss of Blackwater. And here he was quoted disapprovingly by THE NATION magazine, in 2010, but I think it’s marvelous - particularly the last bit! Eric Prince is my kind of dude.)

Genitalia 

"Like taking a rare and fabulous Hispano Suiza for a ride, the penis is a wonderful idea, but in practice inconvenient, slow and noisy -- and one is always worried that it might break down halfway." -- A. A. GILL

Genius

"The word 'genius' isn't applicable in football. A genius is a guy like Norman Einstein." – JOE THEISMAN                    (The ex-Washington Redskins quarterback & “sports analyst”)

“Skill, they say, is being able to hit the target. Genius is seeing a target no one else can detect.” – STEPHEN BAYLEY (The English art critic. And incidentally, I’m no genius but when I was in the Army and “qualifying” on the M-60 machine gun, I was hitting targets I couldn’t even see. Don’t ask me how, but I did. Strewth. I ended up being a “Sharpshooter” on the ol’ M-60.)

"This is what ‘genius’ feels like.  Graceful mad brilliance with a touch of industriousness.” -- CATHERINE FERNANDEZ                                                                     (her comment on Polina Osetinskaya’s performance of Bach’s Piano Concerto in D Minor)

“Talent instantly recognizes genius. Only mediocrity knows nothing greater than itself.” – ARTHUR CONAN DOYLE

"Genius is knowing when to stop." -- JOHAN WOLFGANG VON GOETHE (Hell, you could just as well say that "Genius is knowing when to start", but this little bit of fatuity makes a nice epigram, at any rate)

“They laughed at Columbus, they laughed at Fulton, they laughed at the Wright brothers. But they also laughed at Bozo the Clown. The fact that some geniuses were laughed at does not imply that all who are laughed at are geniuses.” -- CARL SAGAN 

“The world is full of agreeably mannered people, but lamentably short of men of genius.” – EVELYN WAUGH

"True genius resides resides in the capacity to evaluate conflicting information." -- WINSTON CHURCHILL 

“When you’re one step ahead of the crowd you’re a genius. When you’re two steps ahead, you’re a crackpot.” – SHLOMO RISKIN (the Orthodox Rabbi of the Noo Yawk’s Lincoln Square Synagogue)

"Genius, to me, has something to do with doing it much more easily than other people." -- JOHN CLEESE 

"The prime attribute of genius is the ability to see the obvious." -- CHARLES McCARRY

“A crazy genius is considered more of a genius than a sane genius.” – JUDY BELUSHI (John’s widow.)

Gentleman (-men)

“The basic principle of English social life is that everyone thinks he is a gentleman. There is a second principle of almost equal importance: everyone draws the line or demarcation immediately below his own heels.” - EVELYN WAUGH

“The gentleman is invariably civil to others, but he will not tolerate incivility toward himself (or toward those who depend on his protection).” – JOHN O'SULLIVAN (the 2nd Editor of NATIONAL REVIEW – after Fabuckley and before Rich Lowry.)

“A gentleman is someone who is never unintentially rude.” – DOUGLAS SUTHERLAND

“A gentleman is one who observes the maxim of the ancient sage, that we should ever conduct ourselves towards our enemy as if he were one day to be our friend. Furthermore, he has too much good sense to be affronted at insults, he is too well employed to remember injuries, and too indolent to bear malice.” – JOHN HENRY NEWMAN

"You had to learn how to be a gentleman before you could become a cad." -- TERRY-THOMAS (a chap who should know....) 

“A gentleman is someone who can play the accordion but doesn’t.” – TOM WAITS

Geography/(Maps)

“The constant study of maps is apt to disturb men’s reason powers.” -- LORD SALISBURY (ROBERT GASCOYNE-CECIL) (1830-1903; on one of my own many, if minor, problems….)

“Ignorance of map-reading is just part of a wider ignorance of geography. I suspect the subject is badly taught, especially in the state schools. The old system, learning capes and capitals and countries by heart, and poring over atlases, was mechanical but it meant children learned facts and had a good idea of where places were, and their shapes. A generation ago the subject was taken over by the Left, and instead of facts and places children learned about protecting the environment, saving the planet, emissions and how nature is being ruined by industry in the USA. The result is they simply parrot current fads and fantasies, and know nothing.” – PAUL JOHNSON

"Sometimes I think war is God's way of teaching us geography." -- PAUL RODRIGUEZ                                                    (The Californian comic)

“Geography is the most fundamental factor on foreign policy because it is the most permanent.” – NICHOLAS SPYKMAN      (described as a “Dutch-American geo-political writer”)                                                        

“Geography is history.” – MONTESQUIEU (1689-1755. Actually, I think it would 've been better – and more accurate – to say that “Geography is Destiny”, but he didn't, and so this will have to do.)

"The world was divided roughly into three hemispheres -- Europe, where there had been a war; it was full of towns like Paris and Buda-Pest, all equally remote and peopled with prostitutes; the East, a place full of camels and elephants, deserts and dervishes and nodding mandarins; and America, which besides its own two continents included Australia, New Zealand, and most of the British Empire not obviously "Eastern"; somewhere, too, there were some 'savages'." -- EVELYN WAUGH      (In "A Tutor's Tale", in 1927.  And I’d say that was pretty accurate.)                                             

“Kids always know geography better than adults. Kids know apartments better, buildings better, neighborhoods better.” – DONALD WESTLAKE (using “geography” in its most expansive sense)

"Rivers are such natural boundaries. You are surprised to find that people speak the same language on the other bank." -- NIGEL WILLIAMS     (not always, old chap....)

"Americans, bless them, never really understood the map of Africa." -- WILBUR SMITH

"Maps are the tools of many ambitious people, of policy makers, commanders of armies, and youths who like to play at being one of those. And the problem is that maps are easily confused with the world." -- TRACY KIDDER (in his rather pathetic Vietnam War memoir, "My Detachment", from 2005)

"History is all explained by geography." -- ROBERT PENN WARREN (There's a lot to history than geography, of course, but it is a big part of it, certainly)

"Nothing is far away these days." -- GEORGE BRANDIS (the ex-"High Commissioner", i.e., Ambassador, of Australia to Great Britain -- in 2022)

“A key has no logic to its shape: the only logic is, it turns the lock.” – G. K. CHESTERTON                                                               (this isn’t really about geography, … but it kinda is.)

“The acre is a medieval unit of area denoting the minimum size of a plot of land in which it is always permissible to urinate.” – RORY SUTHERLAND

"Britain is incontestably substantial. amazingly, it is the thirteenth-largest land mass on the planet and that includes four continents -- Australia, Antarctica, America and Eurasia-Africa (which geographers, being anally retentive and unimaginative, classify as a single mass) . Only eight islands on Earth are bigger: Greenland, New Guinea, Borneo, Madagascar, Baffin, Sumatra, Honshu and Vancouver. By population, Britain is the fourth largest island state, behind only Indonesia, Japan, and the Philippines. By wealth it is second. Measured by decent music, old stony buildings, variety of boiled sweets, and reasons for not going to work because of the weather, it is number one by a very wide margin." -- BILL BRYSON

Geology

 "Geologists are men with beards whose emotional bandwidth is taken up with an unnatural attachment to cherts and clasts and the chill beauty of the subducted lithosphere." -- PHILIP MARSDEN     (the English travel-writer and novelist. And I should confess that geology is the only subject I actually flunked, and damn near flunked a second time -- at Cornell -- if I hadn't cheated on the final exam.  Not my academic Finest Hour....)

Geometry

“The triangle – the worst geometry for both love and intelligence work.” – MICHAEL WALSH

“Do not in any case have anything to do with the parallels. I know every twist and turn in this business and I have myself wandered in its fathomless night, which has extinguished every light and joy in my life. I beg you in the name of God. Leave the parallels in peace.” – FARKAS BOLYAI (the famous 19th century Hungarian Euclidian mathematician, in a letter to his even more famous Euclidian mathematician, Janos Bolyai.)

Geopolitics

“The rulers of a nation endowed with great natural wealth simply have less need of their people, or of their people’s approval, as the history of the modern Middle East illustrates.” - JOHN DERBYSHIRE

Georgia (US state)

"In the summertime South Georgia bowed down, helplessly, abjectly, to her rulers, the insects." -- TOM WOLFE

Germany

“The Germans are a cultured and talented people, but in the past they have shown a marked inability to limit their ambitions or respect their neighbors.” - MARGARET THATCHER

“Everything ponderous, vicious and solemnly clumsy, all long-winded and boring types of style are developed in profuse variety among the Germans” - FRIEDRICH NIETZSCHE (not least this quote…)

“The larger the German body, the smaller the German bathing suit and the louder the German voice issuing German demands and German orders to everybody who doesn’t speak German. For this, and several other reasons, Germany is known as ‘the land where Israelis learned their manners’.” - P. J. O’ROURKE

“We have the shortest working week, the oldest students and the youngest pensioners in the industrialized world. A successful industrial nation, a nation with a future, cannot be run like a collective amusement park.” - HELMUT KOHL (the ex-Chancellor. I didn’t think much of him at the time, but considering the boobs that have followed him, he was a giant in retrospect…)

“One reason why extremism tends to flourish in Germany is the deep well of hate in that society.  Too many Germans do not just hate foreigners, they hate other Germans as well. Which is another way of saying that too many Germans hate themselves.” - IAN BURUMA (the same can be said of the Germanoid Flemish…)

"Only in Germany could a beggar be fat." -- MARK HELPRIN 

"The Germans know nothing about food other than to stuff themselves to bursting." -- BERNARD LEVIN (the long-time columnist for the Times Of London)

“The Germans are deeply cultured, but totally uncivilized.” - RONALD HARWOOD          (the English theatre director/producer, and I must say, I totally agree with the old poof…)

“My countrymen are a race of carnivorous sheep.” – KONRAD ADENAUER (“Der Alte”. Probably the greatest German statesman of all time. Certainly the most decent.)

“The traditional German toxic mix of passive obedience and arrogant swagger.” – ARAM BAKSHIAN JR. (amongst other things, a speechwriter, first for Gerald Ford and then for Reagan.)

“There is a sort of unfreedom in these people (Germans) that is worse than the subordination in front of a sergeant major.” – JOSEPH ROTH (Jawohl!  Herr Roth, by the way, was an Austrian journalist and novelist who lived from 1894-1939)

“Everything sounds meaner in German.” – KEVIN D. WILLIAMSON

“The Left’s heart is still in East Berlin.” – KEVIN D. WILLIAMSON

“Whenever the German dives into a sentence, that is the last you are going to see of him till he emerges on the other side of the Atlantic with his verb in his mouth.” – MARK TWAIN

"A German cannot just sell you a pair of socks. He wants you to love him for it." -- CARL JUNG 

“German thoroughness always pushes them to extremes  -- either to extreme militarism (then) or extreme pacifism (now).” – JACK JOLIS

“Germans can't help doing everything to extremes: militarism, racism, pacifism, political correctness, self-abasement – whatever it is, they overdo it.” – JACK JOLIS

“Germans: don't you just love them? One minute they are a NAZI state, the next a hippy one.” – JEREMY CLARKE

“A German joke is no laughing matter.” – SUE PRIDEAUX (an English novelist and biographer.)

“The Germans may dive deeper, but they come up muddier.” – ALDOUS HUXLEY (This is so opaque that if it were from anyone less distinguished than this guy I don't think I'd have included it)

“Germans make good Americans, though of course they make bad Germans.” – RICHARD BROOKHISER

"So I see that Ivanka Trump was booed and jeered at a gathering of power women in Germany a few days ago. She responded with her customary politesse. But as I thought about it the consciousness came to me that Ivanka Trump might have been more assertive. She might have said, ‘I am a person, just one person, and as just one person you can treat me as you wish. But I am a Jew. My husband is a Jew. We are Jews and we are Americans and I am here at the request of the President. Your ancestors murdered six million of my fellow Jews and killed hundreds of American prisoners of war. Nevertheless, when the war ended, America fed your ancestors, gave them medical care. We funded the rebirth of German industry. We kept a large force in Germany to protect you from the Russians for 72 years and we paid for it even as Germany grew rich. So I don’t think I’ll listen to your jeers any longer. And I’ll tell my father that you don’t need us any more and we surely don’t need you’.” -- BEN STEIN (In May 2017)

"Germany was the greatest power in Europe from  the day of its founding." -- CONRAD BLACK (although, in fairness, he also goes on to state that Germany was the last power in Europe to be founded)

“Apparently, a German is able to live on stinging nettles and wood fibre indefinitely.” – P. G. WODEHOUSE (in 1940 – while he was being held in a detention camp.)

“Germans are a race of carnivorous sheep.” – HUGH DALTON (the British Labour Chancellor of the Exchequer from 1945 to 1947)

“We have a unified Europe now, dominated by Germany, based on a joint surrender of sovereignty, but we all know who calls the tune and pays the bills. There has been no need to send in the cavalry or Panzers to make this latest conquest; diplomacy, and the case with which so many European countries have accepted a loss of democratic power, have done it for them.” – SIMON HEFFER (in March 2019)

“In Germany, the love of order is breathed with the air. It’s a tidy place, is Germany.” – JEROME K. JEROME (in “Three Men On The Brummel”, in 1900)

“Germany’s characteristic posture since World War II has been to shuffle around on its knees while hitting everyone else over the head with its own moral superiority.” -- TED BROMUND (of the HERITAGE FOUNDATION)

“Crime in Germany is against the law.” – MARTIN CRUZ SMITH

"Germany is the vampire of Europe." -- STEVE TESICH (in 1996, the year he died)

“The wonderful thing about a German face was that the agony of thought played so clearly on it.” – MARTIN CRUZ SMITH

"The nation that went from panzers to Porsches and peaceniks is waking up to the reality that there are things that have to be fought for." -- PETER MANDELSON (the poofter UK Labour Party grandee, in July 2022)

“If the majority of the German people had had their way, there would have been no denazification (after WWII) worthy of the name.” – HARALD JAHNER (author of “Aftermath”)

"It is considerate of the Germans always to be correcting the little sins of other people." -- GEORGE COURTAULD (maybe I've been cretinized by too much time on the Twoot, but I feel compelled to mention that George was... er, ... being sarcastic, here.)

"Music and making money is to New Yorkers what music and war was to the Germans." -- WALKER PERCY    (yes -- "was")

"In German politics, not upsetting Russia is a strategy that enjoys bipartisan support." -- WOLFGANG MUNCHAU (The "Director" of something called "Eurointelligence", writing in January 2022)

"It's a German characteristic to act as though they are immune to error." -- BRYAN FORBES

"Germans make good soldiers and bad citizens. They never complain. It's always a bad sign in a population." -- WILLIAM BOYD (he wrote this in 1987, when Germans still may or may not have made "good soldiers" -- which they certainly aren't anymore.)

Germany, East

"The east (Germany) is a country where phones are allotted on the basis of how often they want to call you." -- ROBERT LITTELL

"Traveling through East Germany is like watching television without the colour." -- NICHOLAS SHAKESPEARE       (in his 2005 "East German" novel "Snowleg")

"A gang of insane geriatrics had presided over this breakdown in trust (in East Germany). The permanent exhibition -- it went under the name of 'Power and Banality -- didn't evoke a country so much as his boarding school. A pressurized place where people behaved worse than in the natural world." -- NICHOLAS SHAKESPEARE       (in his 2005 "East German" novel "Snowleg")

Ghosts

“I don’t believe in ghosts, but I’m afraid of them.” – SIR KINGSLEY AMIS

Gingrich, Newt

“Sure, maybe Newt acts like the smartest guy in the room - but considering the rooms we're talking about, he is the smartest guy in the room.” – SCOTT WILSON (a frequent commentor to NRO's The Corner, in Nov. 2011)

“Newt is a mixture, like most people — only more so.” – JAY NORDLINGER

Girls

“And besides, it has never been a particularly fruitful business, asking teenage girls what they feel.” – MARTIN AMIS

“Why do girls have to tell all the time?” – JOHN UPDIKE

"The more a girl talks, the more she'll fuck. their mouths and their cunts are connected by this long nerve down their spines." -- JOHN UPDIKE (in fairness to one of our finest authors, this wasn’t him talking, but a character in his 2004 novel, “Villages”.)

“Through years of careful study and analysis he has concluded that all the nice girls have boyfriends.” – PETER MOORE (the Australian travel writer talking about a disappointed bloke he met in Croatia)

“Getting my daughter and her friends to a movie makes me dream of a world in which teenage girls' sense of time was as keen as their sense of outrage.” – JAMES LILEKS

"Little girls just want to be bigger girls." --  RUTH HANDLER       (the co-founder and first president of Mattel toy company, commenting on her 1959-introduced Barbie doll)

"Girls are more harmed by social media than boys because they're more likely to buy into the three great untruths of social media: The first is that they are fragile and can be harmed by speech and words. Next, that their emotions, and especially their anxieties, are reliable guides to reality. And finally, that society is one big battle between victims and oppressors." -- JONATHAN HAIDT (an American social psychologist and author, and prof at NYU) 

“It’s hard to beat a classroom of adolescent girls for sheer cruelty.” – MICHELA WRONG (An interestingly-named white Brit journalist and author, specializing in Africa)

"Girls are like the Japanese -- they fear loss of face." -- KEITH WATERHOUSE

Giuliani, Rudy

“In my lifetime, only two politicians have really and truly delivered. Ronald Reagan and Rudy Giuliani. Reagan saved the entire world. And then Rudy did something even harder. He saved New York.” - JOSH GILDER (son of free-market economics guru George Gilder)

“Rudy (Giuliani) is a natural S.O.B., one of those rare, near-extinct politicians whose strong leadership abilities and personal behavior are completely unrelated and probably inimical.” - FLORENCE KING

"Rudy Giuliani is the Forrest Gump of American politics -- wherever the action is, Rudy's right in the middle of it." -- CHARLEY KIRK (on 9 June 2021)

“Global Warming” (“Climate Change”)

“Like most people in the debate about ‘Global Warming’, I do not know what I am talking about, but I can tell that the climate-change alarmists are wrong by the character of their argument. They jump from ‘climate change is happening’ to ‘It is caused by man’ to ‘Climate change must be bad’ to ‘The planet is under threat’ to ‘governments can and must solve it’. This is not reasoning: it is End Time talk - the cry of woe, the denunciation of human wickedness, the approach of judgment, the call to repentance. When we hear the explicitly religious equivalent from the First Church of Jesus Christ Superstar in Eureka, Missouri, we all sneer, but when we hear it from the Archbishop of Canterbury and the government’s chief scientific adviser we are expected to nod our heads in shocked agreement.” -- CHARLES MOORE (ex-Editor of both THE (UK) SPECTATOR and THE (LONDON) DAILY TELEGRAPH)

“Apparently everything is a significant contributor to ‘climate change’, including lack of climate change. My own view is that homophobia causes climate change.” - MARK STEYN

“The fact that ‘climate change’ is not secure enough to tolerate dissent helps explain why it's going nowhere.” – MARK STEYN

“If anything and everything can be used to 'prove' your thesis, what you've got is not a thesis but a crock.” – MARK STEYN

“In truth, global warming as popularly understood is more prophesy than science; the demand to suppress all doubt and dissent is contrary to the very spirit of science”. - JAMES TARANTO (when he was the editor of the Wall Street Journal’s excellent “Best Of The Web”)

“Was life better when a sheet of ice a mile thick covered Chicago? Was it worse when Greenland was so warm that Vikings farmed there?” - GEORGE WILL

“One obvious problem with global warming is that, if the threat it poses is really as serious as the politicians and ‘consensus’ scientists say it is -- and if they are also right in their diagnosis of its cause -- then mere tinkering about with light bulbs and windmills will not have the slightest effect in preventing it. We should all, including the Chinese who are building two coal-fired power stations a week, have to abandon pretty well everything modern industrial civilization stands for.” - CHRISTOPHER BOOKER (in March 2008)

“If we are not able to ask skeptical questions of scientists, to interrogate those who tell us something is true, to be skeptical of those in authority, then we’re up for grabs for the next charlatan, political or religious, who comes ambling along.” -- CARL SAGAN (in 1996) 

“ ‘Climate change’ is a policy game dreamed up by bored semester intellectuals and idle upper class.” - TOM BETHELL

"Strange, parasitic end-time cultists who stop members of the public who still bother to go to work from actually getting there." -- DOUGLAS MURRAY 

“Global warming is a canard that is unconnected to carbon emissions. It has engaged the world in endless heated discussion of transfers, which will not occur, of colossal sums to compensate the undeserving for actions that all know to be innocuous in a process that everyone knows all will ignore.” - CONRAD BLACK

"Before the Copenhagen conference, Gordon Brown said that there were only '50 days to save the world'. But the conference failed to agree, the world survived and already the whole venture looks like a satire by Jonathan Swift." -- CHARLES MOORE
(Educated at Eton and Cambridge, the ex-editor of the DAILY TELEGRAPH, the SUNDAY TELEGRAPH  and the UK SPECTATOR, he's a most extraordinarily lucid and phlegmatic chap. He wrote this on 9 Jan. 2010)

“Climate-change catastrophism has been taken up by the Western left-intelligentsia, their heads stuffed with all the sub-Marxist and ethno-masochist flapdoodle of the modern academy,  They hate capitalism, they hate Western civilization, and they hate their own ancestors. The kind of dramatic social engineering implicit in the phrase ‘combating climate change’ is emotionally appealing to them.” - JOHN DERBYSHIRE

"At this point, there's a real question as to whether 'climate science' even deserves to be called science." -- JAMES TARANTO

“All the computers in the world won’t help you if your unexamined and unconscious assumptions on the nature of reality are simply wrong in their basic conception. All the computers can do is help you to be stupid in an expensive fashion.” — WILLIAM IRWIN THOMPSON (American philosopher,\critic and poet, in 1971 – when we really had neither computers nor global warming alarms, but his wise words certainly apply to the latter....)

“For all the welter of ‘evidence’ supporting it, AGW is essentially a socio-political fantasy, not a scientific reality. It exists only because a significant number of the world’s opinion-formers feel in their hearts that it ought to exist.” - JAMES DELINGPOLE

“The climate change industry has become so vast and all encompassing, employing so many people, it simply cannot be allowed to fail.” – JAMES DELINGPOLE (in April 2016)

“Climate change is a Potemkin industry: it's the very emblem of crony capitalism – entirely dependent for its existence on favours granted to rent-seeking troughers by the political class.” – JAMES DELINGPOLE

"Global warming is part of a natural cycle and there's nothing we can do to stop these cycles. The world is now facing spending a vast amount of money in tax to try to solve a problem that doesn't actually exist." -- DR. DAVID BELLAMY (the late eminent English botanist and environmentalist) 

“To an amazing extent, global warming has become all-explaining. It is the cause of our natural ills, in all their diversity. It is an idée fixe, a universal bogey. Just as the Jew is both a communist and a capitalist, and the American both a materialist and a puritan, global warming is responsible for heat and cold, drought and flood — anything nature might be throwing at us at the moment. When Al Gore gives a speech on global warming, he is apt to say, “We’ve been having some weird weather lately, haven’t we?” The word weird covers a multitude of conditions.” – JAY NORDLINGER

“The Left has never sufficiently grappled with the fact that they make the same policy prescriptions no matter what the alleged malady is. They hated fossil fuels when global cooling was the big concern and they hated fossil fuels when global warming grabbed the headlines. If your policy prescriptions don't change when the symptoms are completely reversed, don't be shocked when people suspect you have another agenda.” – JONAH GOLDBERG

“If you honestly believe that climate change is an existential or extinction level threat (as many Dem candidates for president have said), then opposing nuclear power is incomprehensible.” – JONAH GOLDBERG

“Remember: weather is not climate, unless it is.” – DAVE “IOWAHAWK” BURGE

“If someone doesn't have kids, why would they give a shit about the climate in 100 years?” – DAVE “IOWAHAWK” BURGE

“Global warming, climate change, all these things are just a dream come true for politicians. The opportunities for taxation, for policies, for control, for crony capitalism are just immense, you can see their eyes bulge.” – RICHARD LINDZEN (MIT Prof. of “Atmospheric Physics”, yesterday)

“When they claim the (Global Warming) 'science is settled', you can be sure of two things - it's not remotely settled - and they're losing the argument." – GEORGE WILL

“Global warming is socialism by the back door. I mean, the whole point of global warming is it is a rationalization for progressives to do what progressives want to do.” – GEORGE WILL

"Science has been drawn into the trap of seriously overstating the climate problem -- or what is much the same, of seriously understating the uncertainties associated with the climate problem -- in its efforts to promote the cause." -- GARTH PALTRIDGE (Formerly Australia's chief atmospheric-research scientist)

“Nothing is so firmly believed as what is least known.” – MICHEL DE MONTAIGNE (ah, a fellow “denier”... heh...)

"'Climate change' is an appealing boutique issue for liberal billionaires and A-list movie stars because 'saving the planet' appeals to their vanity. But, if you're not a liberal billionaire, you're trying to stay afloat not because the oceans are rising but  because family incomes are flatlined and America has declining social mobility. 'Climate change' is a luxury issue most Americans can't afford..” – MARK STEYN

«No matter if the science in global warming is all phony, climate change provides the greatest opportunity to bring about justice and equality in the world.» -- CATHERINE STEWART (former Canadian Minister For The Environment. And there you have it.)

"The more intensely she believes in global warming, the less hot she is." – KURT SCHLICHTER

"Weird how absolutely nothing they say we should do to address the climate hoax is something leftists don’t want to do anyway." -- KURT SCHLICHTER  (in July 2022)

"Climate change is a religious belief for those who think they're too smart for religion." – BUCK SEXTON (Ex-FBI, an excellent intel guy, security analyst for Breibart, and occasional replacement for El Rushbo)  

«But who is to say that global warming is not good for us? Global warming is certainly not a problem for nature. The planet has  no preferred state, no ideal climate or temperature. Nor, for that matter is there an ideal or normal carbon dioxide level. The concept of ecological balance is a romantic Green myth. Nature is in a constant state of flux and the earth’s history is characterised by continual change.» -- KENAN MALIK (A British scientist in 1995)

«Would you bet your paycheck on a weather forecast for tomorrow? If not, then why should this country bet billions on global warming predictions that have even less foundation?» – THOMAS SOWELL

"If there was no racism, there’d be no climate crisis. If there was no misogyny, there’d be no climate crisis. It’s part of a mindset. It’s the mindset that looks at a woman and says, 'Nice tits!' " -- JANE FONDA                                                                                                                                                                                                                  (Hah! -- I KNEW the "science" behind "GlobWarm" was all bullshit. Anyway, she blurted this on 7 Dec 22) 

"There'd be no climate crisis if it wasn't for racism." -- JANE FONDA (Jan. 2023. Hanoi Jane is a commie gift that keeps on giving.)

"If climate change causes both milder and more severe winters, how will you know when it's fixed?" -- JOHN GROVES                                                                          (A baseball-playing guy from Ottawa, on the Twoot)

«I’ll start believing it’s a crisis when the people who tell me it’s a crisis start acting like it’s a crisis.» -- GLENN REYNOLDS (The «Instapundit» on the Interwebs, and by day he's a Law Professor at the Univ. Of Tennessee)

"Why should we want to reverse this? We have made our world slightly less frigid, significantly more fertile, and vastly more prosperous. Should our freedom therefore be curtailed?" -- ROBERT ZUBRIN

«Climate change is an obsession of the rich which is not shared by the global poor, who care more about everything, even getting online.» – MATT RIDLEY

"And now we have the 'science' of global warming, and news. education, and opinion warped to support an un-demonstrable opinion; dissent is indicted and, where possible, banned as the production of monsters who, by their acts, are self-confessed as the enemies of humanity." -- DAVID MAMET

"Educated contemporaries shake their heads over medieval fears of the comet's tail and believe the world is ending because of global warming." -- DAVID MAMET

«The greatest threat we face is the people who believe that global warming is the greatest threat we face.» – DENNIS PRAGER

"Regarding those who profess to know how to bring down the moon, to hide the sun, to make the sea and the land barren and all that other nonsense, it looks to me like impiety." -- HIPPOCRATES (de famous original M.D., in 5th century B.C.)

“Global warming is a scare industry worth an annual $1.5 trillion that has been built on the notion that antrhopogenic CO² is responsible for unprecedented and catastrophic changes to the world's climate. Yet the scientists promoting this hypothesis are a fairly small, closed shop who validate one another's work in a process which has been nicknamed 'pal review' and whose response to criticism from dissidents is to bully them, smear them and have them denied access to mainstream science journals.” -- JAMES DELINGPOLE

“What fascinates me far more is the way the faddish preoccupations of a few green cultists have somehow come to dominate our entire culture, corrupting the intellectual current, suborning institutions, crushing dissent – much as Marxist, fascist and Nazi ideologies did in the 20th century, only with rather more widespread success.” – JAMES DELINGPOLE

"This is the crux of the matter. Statements about climate change are no longer being policed for their accuracy, but rather for the degree to which they help or hurt the activist agenda." -- OREN CASS (a fellow of the Manhattan Institute, in May 2017)

“ ‘Global warming’ provides a marvelous excuse for global socialism.” – MARGARET THATCHER

"'Climate change' is a sentimental myth unsupported by evidence” – CAMILLE PAGLIA

"If climate change is 'the biggest global health threat of the 21st century' then we may be on the verge of immortality." -- ARTHUR KIMES (Executive Co-Blogger – AceofSpadesHQ)

“We’ve got to ride this global warming issue. Even if the theory of global warming is wrong, we will be doing the right thing in terms of economic and environmental policy.” — TIMOTHY E. WIRTH
(Ex-Democrat Senator from Colorado, and President of the “UN Foundation” when he said this)

"If you are wondering what you can do about climate change: The world's top scientists just gave rigorous backing to systematically dismantle capitalism as a key requirement to maintaining civilization and a habitable planet. I mean, if you are looking for something to do." -- ERIC HOLTHAUS                       (an American meteorologist, in April 2019)

"Climate is always changing. Who's attacking scientists? The United States has cut its emissions more than any other country. The problem that the climate alarmists never want to discuss, is how to do you make the real polluters – e.g. India and China - follow the rules?" -- DAVID HOROWITZ

“The very idea that we can stop climate change is barking mad. Climate change is inevitable, as geology has always shown." – DAVID SHELLEY (New Zealand lecturer of geology)

“I believe this is one of the greatest policy phantoms, the misguided and quite ludicrous proposition that we can have any affect on the climate. If we could we should be the first to make it rain and, more importantly, stop the recurrence of an ice age anytime in the coming millennium.” –- BARNABY JOYCE (Australian MP and twice the Deputy Prime Minister of Australia – in 2019)

“The interesting thing about the Green New Deal is it wasn’t originally a climate thing at all. Do you guys think of it as a climate thing? Because we really think of  it as a how-do-you-change-the-entire-economy thing.” – SAIKAT CHAKRABARTI (the commie Rasputin behind Alexandra Ocasio-Cortez)

"I never fly, drive or buy meat. and I've got 11 solar panels on my roof, but I know faulty science when I see it. Here are some of the questions we sceptics (sic) want answered: Why did the last Ice Age end without man-made pollution? Why is CO2 deemed 'poisonous' when it sustains all plant life? And why, after decades of 'warming', have so few central-heating engineers retrained as air-conditioning engineers?" -- LLOYD EVANS

“Older people like me know that every climate scare offered to us in the past 45 years has turned out to be bogus.” – LLOYD EVANS (in November 2019)

“The only way to get our society to truly change is to frighten people with the possibility of a catastrophe.”
– DANIEL BOTKIN (emeritus professor at UC Santa Cruz and a big Globwarmista)

“People have been imagining that the climate is changing, exaggerating every weather event, getting widespread press coverage, and blaming it on man – for as long as there have been newspapers.” -- TONY HELLER (A major Australian climate change skeptic)

"The Climate Panic Movement is all about saving the children who walked out of school to protest and got a three-day weekend. If you argue with the children, you hate science and want polar bears into Nebraska." -- JAMES LILEKS

“The whole business is eerily religious in feel. Back in the 15th century, the question was : Do you believe in Christ? It was required in Spain by the Inquisition that the answer should be affirmative. It is required today to believe that carbon-dioxide emissions threaten the ecological balance.” – WILLIAM F. BUCKLEY JR; (in 2007)

"No matter how often these 'experts' (climate alarmists) are shown to be no better at forecasting than Paul The Octopus -- worse, actually -- they just carry on as if nothing had happened." -- TOBY YOUNG                                                                           (in Feb. 2020)

"Every time a climate scientist -- or a 14-year old girl -- pops up to tell us the Earth is about to catch fire, the reaction of politicians, movie stars, media personalities, recording artists and just about the entire professional class is to start running around like headless chickens." -- TOBY YOUNG (in Feb 2022)

"It's not the fact of climate change that I'm skeptical about, but the claim that it's anthropogenic. I think that could be ture, but the evideence isn't compelling enough to justify the net-zero policy. It's likely more people than usual will die of cold this winter as a result of the increased cost of heating our homes and disruption to the energy supply, both of which are partly due to intergovernmental efforts to reduce the West's reliance on coal and gas." -- TOBY YOUNG

"If we could influence the atmosphere, don't you think we would?" – MARK LEVIN                                                                         (on his radio program, 24 Aug ‘20)

"It is no use following the science if the science comes from only one direction and there is no open debate." -- ROD LIDDLE

"The long-running and seemingly unstoppable 'Human-caused climate-change' hoax has been the Marxist Left's most wildly successful move, since they decided to use it in place of the old, moribund, and dead-boring ‘proletariat & the means of production’ thing. It's bullshit -- but it works." -- JACK JOLIS

"On climate change we own the science, and so we've partnered with Google to ensure that the public gets the UN message." -- MELISSA FLEMING (The UN Under-Secretary for Public Communications, in Sept. '22 and a Deep State totalitarian if ever there was one.)

"Just so I’m clear: We can’t stop a virus made in a lab in China, but we can change the temperature of a planet by killing jobs and raising taxes. Roger that." -- ROBERT O'NEILL                                                                                                                              (the SEAL that waxed Bin Laden)

"Global Warming is a fictional, manufactured crisis, and a total scam." -- JOHN COLEMAN (the co-founder and president of the Weather Channel, shortly before he died in 2018)

"In the hands of Democratic politicians, climate change is like systemic racism in the sky. You can't see it, but rest assured it's everywhere and it's deadly. And like systemic racism, it is your fault. The American middle class did it, they cause climate change" -- TUCKER CARLSON (in September 2020)

"I’m wondering what caused hurricanes before climate change. Was it racism? I bet it was racism." -- THOMAS GARRARD (an Iraqi Army vet on the Twoot, 27 Sept.2022)

"The myth of global warming, which even if true, would call for nuclear energy, not making gasoline more expensive." -- ROY CAMERON

" ‘Climate change’ nuts resemble believers in ‘Biblical prophecy’: the messiah is always coming imminently, but somehow never arrives." -- MICHAEL WALSH (May 2023)

"CO2 is 0.04% of the atmosphere, and human beings are responsible for 3% of that 0.04%... It's like saying: 'There's a granule of sugar on the Harbour Bridge. Clean the bridge up, it's dirty'." -- ALAN JONES (the famous Australian broadcaster, rugby coach and Prime Ministerial speechwriter)

"If you can control energy, you can control human beings. If, in fact, the combustion of fossil fuels is having a dangerous impact on climate, you have a recipe for controlling all use of fossil fuels—that’s 80-90% of all the energy. If you can control that and shut it down, you can shut down the engines of the world. And that is no less than what the environmental movement wants to do, and has been trying to do now going on 30 years with global warming." -- JOSEPH BAST (of the Heartland Institute)

"The myth of global warming, which even if true, would call for nuclear energy, not making gasoline more expensive." -- ROY CAMERON

"We'll never head off climate catastrophe without dismantling white supremacy." -- KATE MARVEL   (of NASA-Godard Institute of Space Studies, in 1 June 2020 -- and this is it, people: it's "Back to the caves and tree-tops with you!")

"In real science, there are always arguments, no science is ever settled. It's absurd when people say the science of climate is settled. The climate alarm is nonsense, you know, it's a hoax." -- WILLIAM HAPPER      (in 2024, the 84-year old former Princeton professor)

"I assert that there is no connection whatsoever between CO2 and climate change." -- JOHN CLAUSER      (the American Nobel  Prize-winning physicist)

"A startling revelation is that most climate activists are Marxists masquerading as environmentalists." -- CHRIS MARTZ      (Climatologist and climate-blogger, in June 2024)

"No one has yet shown that human emissions of carbon dioxide drive global warming, and if they did, they'd also have to show that the natural emissions—and that's 97% of the total—don't drive global warming.

Then I look back in time through my geological eyes, and look at times in the past when we have very high carbon dioxide contents of the atmosphere, up to hundreds of times higher than now, and we see that we didn't have runaway global warmin. But what we did have is six major ice ages, and there is no correlation over geological time between carbon dioxide in the atmosphere and temperature." -- PROF. IAN PLIMER      (Australian author and Prof. of Geology)

"We have been cooling down for the last 4000 years. It's all about when you start the measurements." "If you take measurements from the Medieval Warming... we've cooled about five degrees since then. If you take measurements from the Roman Warming, we've cooled about five degrees."  -- (PROF.) IAN PLIMER       (Australian geologist)

"We need to save the world from the people who want to 'save the world'." --JIM HANSON       (author, Fox commenter and ex-Special Forces all-round good guy)

"The real ‘climate change deniers’ are those who deny the climate changed before we started burning fossil fuels." -- DR. MATTHEW WIELICKI        (an Associate Professor in the Department of Geology at the University of Alabama)

"Nothing they tell us we need to do to save the planet will actually save the planet... but it will abolish freedom, democracy and the rule of law." -- CHRISTINE ANDERSON      (German AfD MEP, in Sept. 2024) 

“Globalism” (Globalists”, “Globalization”)

“Free trade does not get a good press in France.” - JOHN LAUGHLAND

“Economic independence  produces decline.” – GEORGE GILDER

“Self-sufficiency is poverty.” – MATT RIDLEY

“I've never understood why people argue that globalisation makes for a more fragile system: the opposite is the case. Harvest failures can be regional, but never global, so world trade ensures that we have the insurance policy of access to somebody else's bumper harvest.” – MATT RIDLEY

“You can try passing laws against emerging markets and efficient global supply chains. Good luck with that – the thing to keep in mind is that Robinson Crusoe was poor, and that North Korea ispoor for the same reason. Autarky is for fools.” – KEVIN D. WILLIAMSON

"In a post-modern, globalized world devoid of traditional values, the only remaining factor structuring society will be snobbery." -- ALEXANDRE KOJEVE (a French-Russian philosopher who died in 1968, so this was a pretty prophetic pronunciamento)

“Global warming provides a marvelous excuse for global socialism.” – MARGARET THATCHER

“(In the 1990s) the ‘new world’ of thorough-going globalization was enthusiastically anticipated by the center-left and little challenged by the dominant foreign-policy thinking on the right.” – ELBRIDGE COLBY (a “principal at the Marathon Initiative”, whatever that might be when it’s at home, in NR in Dec. 2019)

“When Boris was confronted by businessmen angry with Brexit, his response, capturing the popular mood, was ‘Fuck business’.” – TIM STANLEY

"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 (It is claimed by some that this quote is a conflation of remarks he made in Brussels in 2014, and then at the UN also in 2014, but I’m not convinced of that. As far as I can tell, he said this.)

“You will own nothing and you will be happy.” –  KLAUS SCHWAB (the head of something called THE WORLD ECONOMIC FORUM, in January 2021)

"If you can't change the economic policy of your country by the way you vote at an election, because your economy is controlled by non-democratic forces elsewhere, then what remedy is open to you other than to riot?" -- SIMON HEFFER

“Globalization is all about wealth. It knows the price of everything and the value of nothing. Without borders the world will become - is visibly becoming - a howling desert of traffic fumes, plastic and concrete, where nowhere is home and the only language is money.” -- PETER HITCHENS      (in June 2024)

God

“Sometimes we are told that with God, all things are possible. We should also bear in mind that without God, all things are permissible.” - TOM BETHELL

“The glory of God is to hide a thing, and the glory of man is to find it.” - WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE (clever dick…)

“God, isn’t god a shit?” - RANDOLPH CHURCHILL (Winston’s son, upon first encountering the Old testament, as recorded by his comrade-in-arms, Evelyn Waugh, during WWII in Jugoslavia…)

“I’ve always figured that if God wanted us to go to church a lot He’d have given us bigger behinds to sit on and smaller heads to think with.” - P. J. O’ROURKE

“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

“Santa Clause is a Democrat; God is a Republican.” – P. J. O’ROURKE

“To the godless, all things may seem possible without God, but Western Civilization will not be possible: We'll get a different God, and Mohammed is his prophet.” – TOM BETHELL

“If you want to make god laugh, tell him about your plans.” - JOE QUEENAN (Author of “Balsamic Dreams”)

“If you want to make God laugh, tell him you've got plans” – TERRY HAYES (And I'm pretty sure neither of these guys were the first to say this, but I read them both say it, so....)

“God was an alcoholic. He created this world when He woke up with a hangover.” - PETER COOK (the great comedian and, in fact, well qualified to comment on this subject, having played the Devil in his own terrific movie “Bedazzled” and,  if ever there was one, an alcoholic.)

“The God of the Old Testament is a psychotic delinquent.” - RICHARD DAWKINS

"God doesn’t exist - the bastard!" -- JEAN-PAUL SARTRE

“God is exactly the sort of person you’d want your daughter to marry if he were human.” - DOUGLAS ADAMS (With that beard? - no way! Anyway, this is the Douglas Adams of the “Hitchhiker’s Guide to The Galaxy”….)

“It’s not so much that I’m an atheist - it’s more that I hate Him, really.” - KINGSLEY AMIS

“I really believe that religion and relationship with God are opposed. I don’t care what kind of religion it is. If you’ve got a whole series of behavioural laws to follow, then I mean it’s not right. That’s not God. Good luck. Give it your best shot and tell me how it works for you, but I don’t think that’s the Truth.” - WILLIAM P. YOUNG (author of “The Shack”)

“Prove to me that there is a God and I will really begin to despair.” - PETER DEVRIES

“It is the final proof of God’s omnipotence that he need not exist in order to save us.” – PETER DEVRIES (in his 1958 novel “The Mackerel Plaza”)

“To the godless, all things may seem possible without God, but Western Civilization will not be possible. We'll get a different God, and Mohammed is his prophet.” – TOM BETHELL

“God talks to televangelists, football coaches, and people in mental hospitals. Why shouldn’t he talk to Rick Perry? In the spirit of Joseph Heller, I have a covenant with God. I leave him alone and he leaves me alone. If, however, I have a big problem, I ask God for the answer. He tells Rick Perry. And Rick tells me.” – KINKY FRIEDMAN

“I want to know His (God’s) thoughts, the rest are details." – ALBERT EINSTEIN                                                             (This is what he actually said – nothing about the goddamn devil....)

“I mind my own business and I expect others to do likewise, and why God should find merit in groups of people who gather in a building and sing ridiculous hymns rather badly is quite beyond my comprehension. He doesn't sound right in the head to me.” – TOM SHARPE (the English “satirical” novelist)

“God walking on earth is more important than man walking on the moon.” – JIM IRWIN (the moon-walking astronaut)

“Everything in the world that's good depends on God.” – EVELYN WAUGH

“God? Who knows God? Can you believe in someone you don't know?” – DAVID BEN-GURION

“In religious matters, it is prudent to venerate what we do not comprehend. We cannot prove that God is infinite, omnipotent and good, but we require the assumption that He is so or all is dark.” – WALTER BAGEHOT                                    (Fair enough – as long as he says “venerate” rather than “worship”....)

“I believe in Someone Out There – call Him God, since other names, like Festus or Darrin, do not seem to fit – but am not entirely certain He is all that mindful of what goes on down here.” – JAMES LILEKS

"We are strung together by God on a thread of song and dance." -- PLATO (Not sure about the translation from the Greek here -- didn't Plato live before monotheism? -- but this is how it's cited by the writer Michael Knox Beran in NR, Feb. 2014)

“God died, not in battle or in peace with his dogs around him, but by treachery.” -- MICHAEL OAKESHOTT

“The first gulf from the glass of natural sciences will turn you into an atheist, but at the bottom of the glass, God is waiting for you.” – WERNER HEISENBERG (German physicist, winner of the 1932 Physics Nobel Prize for the “invention of quantum mechanics” and, you'll notably remember, the muse and alias of Walter White in “Breaking Bad”)

“You must believe in God, my dear, whatever the clergymen say.” -- BENJAMIN JOWETT (famous 19 century Master of Balliol College, Oxford)

"Human history is the long terrible story of man trying to find something other than God which will make him happy." ~ C. S. LEWIS

"If there is a God, I don't think He would demand that anyone bow down or stand up to him." -- REBECCA WEST (my sentiment pree-cisely) 

“God is certainly a gentleman, and no gentleman cares to be praised to his face.” -- AUGUSTUS HARE (An English writer, in answer to a question from his friend Somerset Maugham about why he omitted God's name when saying grace.)

“You can safely assume that you've created God in your own image when it turns out that God hates all the same people you do.” -- ANNE LAMOTT (the leftist American novelist)

"I am afraid I think, like Frederick the Great, that God exists but leaves us pretty well alone to make our muddles while we are here. No good bothering Him, I'm afraid. 'Nancy Mitford is on the line again, Almighty.''Tell her to get on with her work'." -- NANCY MITFORD (in NR, in 1968)

“God didn’t mean sex for having fun. It’s for having babies. If He’d meant it for fun, He’d have designed it all a lot better than what He did.” – DAVID NOBBS

“I don’t believe in God, but I fear him greatly.” – CHARLES KRAUTHAMMER

"God is God. He can do whatever the hell he wants. The Muslims at least got that part right." -- WARREN PLATTS     (in Feb. 24)
 

"You don't need God anymore; you have us Democrats."-- NANCY PELOSI (in 2006)

“Perhaps nothing would embarrass God more than if every one of His creatures took His Word literally and to heart.” – DAVID LODGE

“God is a fatalist.” – ALAN JUDD

"It's not that I don't believe in God -- I do. It's just that I don't believe that any god that wants and expects to be worshiped and prayed to... deserves to be worshiped and prayed to." -- JACK JOLIS

"The whole notion of turning to God struck him as wrong and self-deceiving. If there was a God, then surely you were surrounded by Him and couldn't avoid turning to Him even if you tried. If there was no God, then turning in some agreed-upon direction in order to find him was a gesture of such futility that he was better off without it." -- STEVE TESICH

"If you are on God's business, you got no time to be in anybody else's business!" -- THE REV. J. D. HOLMES (A preacher in Murphy, Cherokee County, NC, as quoted by Denis Johnson in his essay "Run, Rudolph, Run", in 1996.)

“Who can look at thunderstorm and still not believe in God?” – ALEXANDER SOLZHENITSYN

"If the Jews are God's chosen people -- that's all one needs to know about God." -- PATRICIA HIGHSMITH       (the celebrated American novelist and, incidentally, a raving anti-Semite)   

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

"As things presently stand, there may be sings of his (sic) existence but they point both ways and are therefore ambiguous and so prove nothing. For example, the wonders of the universe do not convince those most conversant with the wonders, the scientists themselves. Whether or not this testifies to the stupidity of scientists or to God's success at concealing himself doesn't matter." -- WALKER PERCY    (in 1980)

"If God knew what exactly was going to happen in the future, He would go mad with boredom." -- GEORGE COURTAULD (When I told my young kids that God gave us 2 things: a conscience and free will, I neglected to add that He gave Himself free will as well)

"One doesn't believe in God or disbelieve in Him. It isn't an argument. His existence is not a question of argument but of apprehension. Either you apprehend God, or you don't." -- MARK HELPRIN 

“God’s three greatest creations:  the ocean, Hamlet and Don Giovanni.” - GUSTAVE FLAUBERT

“The reason the mass of men fear God, and at bottom dislike Him, is because they rather distrust His heart, and fancy Him all brain like a watch.” – HERMAN MELVILLE

Goldwater, Barry

“Barry Goldwater was the most consequential loser in the history of U.S. presidential elections.” -- JOHN J. MILLER (I was gonna say – He said this before Trump in ‘20... but then again, Trump didn’t lose in ‘20.)

“”Most of the people in this country believe what Goldwater believes, and always have. But most of them don’t know it. Let’s hope they don’t find out.”” -- SUSAN SONTAG                                                                                                                              (The premier international female leftist "public intellectual", in 1966, no less -- a scant two years after Barry took the national schnitzel. And at least here, letting the cat rather spectacularly out of the bag, she was being pretty candid, for a lefty.)

"Goldwater won the election of 1964; it just took 16 years to count all the votes." -- GEORGE WILL

Golf

“Golf is not a sport, but a game.  Walking three and a half miles while swinging an occasional golf club does not quality as athleticism.” - LAWRENCE D. BAUER (of Rochester, NY.  In October 2002)

“It’s funny you should mention golf to me. My brother used to talk about it all the time until I killed him. Golf is an acquired taste, like poisoned gas.” - ART BUCHWALD

“Golf is the crack of sports. It absolutely saved my life.” - ALICE COOPER (famous great pal and golfing partner of Nixon. The great “It Couple” of the 80s…heh…)

“Golf is a game that they ought to force prisoners to play, as part of their punishment.” - RUSH LIMBAUGH

“My difficulty with golf is that, although I play it once or twice a year to be sociable. I dislike almost everything about it. The point of the game seems to be the methodical euthanising of workday-size chunks of time by well-off white men. Golf eats land, drinks water, displaces wildlife, fosters sprawl. I dislike the self-congratulations of its etiquette, the self-important hush of its television analysts.” – JONATHAN FRANZEN

“The British middle classes prefer a nice round of golf, that thing they claim is a sport but is actually an excuse to combine knitwear, gin and racism dressed up as tradition.” – MARK MASON (an English writer who rather famously, not to say eccentrically, wrote a book called “Walk The Line” about his above-ground walking tour of the entire London underground system.)

“You know when golf is great to watch? When everybody stinks.” – JOHN PODHORETZ

“Whoever is the next president should not golf. Golfing only gets presidents into trouble.” – JOHN PODHORETZ

“I spent 32 years writing about sport, but I never got golf. The (British) Open unwound itself across last weekend to my complete bewilderment. Golf seems a pleasant enough recreation for people too old for sport, but shouldn't proper sport have an element of physical risk? Or at least physical commitment?” -- SIMON BARNES

“If I had my way, no man guilty of golf would be eligible to hold any office of trust in these United States.” -- H. L. MENCKEN

"When I read about the evils of drinking after golfing I gave up reading." – PAUL HORNUNG (the one-time great quarterback of the Green Bay Packers)

“I'll watch golf when it has defense.” – DAVE “IOWAHAWK” BURGE

"Hockey is a sport for white men. Basketball is a sport for black men. Golf is a sport for white men dressed like black pimps." – TIGER WOODS

"In Cuba, Fidel Castro banned golf. Golf was banned in the Soviet Union and Mao outlawed it in China in 1961. This is one of the less-well-known reasons why communism failed in these countries."  – JAMES BARTHOLOMEW

"If you're golfing in a storm and afraid of lightning, hold up a 1-iron. Not even God can hit a 1-iron." - LEE TREVINO (I don't know a 1-iron from an iron lung, but I wouldn't bet against Lee, here....) 

"Golf is a plague invented by Calvinist Scots as a punishment for man's sins." -- JAMES RESTON

"Never hit a golf ball or a child in anger." -- WALKER PERCY

"The reason they call it 'golf' is that all the other 4-letter words were used up." -- LESLIE NIELSEN (the "Naked Gun" and "airplane!" comic actor)

"Golf, like whisky drinking, is not an officer's occupation unless he is a Celt." -- GEORGE COURTAULD (in his 1995 "The Travels Of A Fat Bulldog")

“Watch televised golf for glimpses of Republican heaven.” – JOHN UPDIKE

“I’ve heard it said that golf is a very challenging game, and I’m sure it is – and so is throwing a tic-tac a hundred yards into a shoe-box. In reality, golf is eight and a half hours of idiotic hacking through sand and weeds, while driving drunk in a clown-car through a fake park.” – JERRY SEINFELD

Good Intentions (see also Liberals/-ism)

“The basic tenet of moral philosophy is all about trying to be good. If you’re trying to be good, even if you’re making a really bad job of it, then you’re good.” - HUGH FEARNLEY-WHITTINGSTALL (and mountains of corpses can be directly attributed to this absolutely insane way of thinking by the absurdly named Brit Oxford “don”…)

“One of the great mistakes is to judge policies and programs by their intentions rather than their results.” – MILTON FRIEDMAN

“In my experience, the left can nearly always claim to have good intentions, but what it does nearly always has disastrous results.” – NIALL FERGUSON

“Evil men don't get up in the morning saying 'I'm going to do evil.' They say, 'I'm going to make the world a better place'.” – CHRISTOPHER BOOKER (the English author, journalist, noted Euro-skeptic, and one of the founders of the “iconic” magazine PRIVATE EYE)

“It is near impossible to cut funding for the road to hell when the pavers have such obviously good intentions.” – RORY SUTHERLAND

"The wicked are wicked no doubt, and they go astray and they fall, and they come by their deserts; but who can tell the mischief which the very virtuous do?" -- WILLIAM MAKEPEACE THACKERAY (in 1853)

“The road to hell is paved with Ivy League degrees.” – THOMAS SOWELL

“The urge to save humanity is almost always a false-face for the urge to rule it.” – H. L. MENCKEN

“If there's one thing we've learned from history, it's that most things people do to other people aren't very nice. Even when – maybe especially when – they're driven by good intentions.” – ROB LONG

“The main responsibility for the (twentieth) century's disaster lies not so much in the problems as in the solutions.” – ROBERT CONQUEST

“It is hardly too strong to say that the Constitution was made to guard the people against the dangers of good intentions.” – DANIEL WEBSTER

“To do evil, a human being must first of all believe that what he's doing is good.” – ALEKSANDR SOLZHENITSYN

“You can’t beat good intentions for causing misery, deaths and political upheaval.” – ROD LIDDLE

 "All top-down attempts at leftie social engineering end up causing more misery and injustice than the misery and injustice they were designed to alleviate. This is chiefly because they come up against that most un-leftie of things, reality -- but also because liberals are incapable of looking at actual outcomes and are able only to wring their hands to despair and wish for stuff. The world is not an ideal place and attempts to pretend they can make it so are always misbegotten." -- ROD LIDDLE

“ ‘They went into this with the best intentions’. Is there a better eight-word summary of liberalism? From the New Deal to the Great Society to Obamacare: Intentions are what matter. The best intentions are what make you ‘the ones we have been waiting for’, as Obama used to refer to himself and his flock of true believers. Picture a giant consulting firm in which you were graded not on outcomes but on sincerity.” – KYLE SMITH (in Dec. 2019)

Goodness

“I don’t think goodness depends on evil, but it depends on the possibility of evil.” – P. D. JAMES

“There's something to be said about good men and most good men can smell a good or bad man a million miles away.” — DAIN EHRING (the CEO of an outfit called Gate House Strategies)

Google

“Google is definitely a woman. It makes suggestions before you even finish what you’re trying to say.” -- SAMUEL MCHEYNE GLASSER  (in all honesty, he was quoting "some guy")

"On climate change we own the science, and so we've partnered with Google to ensure that the public gets the UN message." -- MELISSA FLEMING (The UN Under-Secretary for Public Communications, in Sept. '22 and a Deep State totalitarian if ever there was one.)

"Google is not a benign website designed to make your life easier. It is a tool of the regime for the purpose of surveillance and control." -- MICHAEL RECTENWALD (a (a complete fool of a Libertarian, but he’s right on the money in this case)

“Google is the most nefarious of all the high-tech monopolies. By skewing every search far far left, it influences what about 98% of people think about… pretty much everything.” — JACK JOLIS

Gore, Al                                                                                                                                              

“That self-serious bootlick” - P. J. O’ROURKE

“I don’t know what Al Gore proposes the world run on. Maybe hot air.” - RALPH KLEIN (Prime Minister of Alberta, in 2006, fed up with taking shit for pumping oil.)

“Making fun of Al Gore is a little like pouring melted butter on ice cream - I mean, I guess you can do it, but why?” - ROB LONG

“For you kids out there too young to remember, Al Gore is a vaguely gay, morbidly obese former Clinton administration official who raised campaign cash from Buddhist monks and claimed he invented the Internet.” - ANN COULTER

"Al Gore is so feminized and diversified and ecologically correct, he's practically lactating." -- MAUREEN DOWD (in 2004 -- and with the lactating bidness she was a bit ahead of her time...)

“In America, the mentally challenged have the same rights as everyone else. Which is, presumably, how Al Gore got to become Vice President.” – RICHARD LITTLEJOHN (the columnist for the UK “Sun”, in 1995)

Gossip

“If you don’t have anything nice to say about anyone - come and sit by me.” - MARGOT ASQUITH (Britain’s first female Member of Parliament, and the one who prompted the famous Curchillian “Yes, Margot, but tomorrow I’ll be sober, but you’ll still be ugly.”)

“Gossip – personal business, erotic or financial, of someone behind whose back the knowledge was imparted. We live in inflationary times, however, when people who would once have been the victims of gossip have become the stars (and producers) of their own dramas of exposure.” – RICHARD BROOKHISER (in June 2012)

“As you get older you'll realize that the only conversations worth having are behind people's backs.” – BRYAN FORBES (the English director of one of my 150 Greatest Films of All Times, “Whistle Down The Wind” with Hayley Mills, as well as “The Wrong Box”, and also a writer, author of an amusing novel called “Partly Cloudy”, from which this is taken.)

“Gossip thrives in an honor culture in decline – that is reputation remain important but is rarely supposed to correspond to the reality behind it.” – JAMES BOWMAN (The one-time movie reviewer of the American Spectator)

“Nobody ever gossips about other people's secret virtues.” -- BERTRAND RUSSELL

“Gossip is news wearing a red dress and running ahead of the pack.” -- LIZ SMITH (the famous, what else?, gossip columnist)

“In his long exposure to gossip and rumours his experience was that the more unbelievable stories were the true ones.” – GUY BELLAMY

“If there is one thing worse than being talked about, it is not being talked about.” – JAMES FORSYTH

"All history is gossip." -- CLARE BOOTH LUCE (1903-1987, a great conservative lady, and, among other things, a one-time lover of the great Roald Dahl)

"Gossip is the opiate of the oppressed." -- ERICA JONG     (I very much doubt that this is the case -- but it sounds peremptory enough to warrant inclusion here....)

"The fact that you stand up to drink in an English pub means you can be closer to people you don't know than if you're sitting at a table. the gossip you get in a French café is the gossip of your groups. The gossip you get in a London pub is the gossip of other people's groups, if you're careful and clever. That's very valuable, because you can take it back to the office and put two and two together and make some money." -- PETER REES (the ex-chief planning officer of "The Square Mile", the nickname of of London's financial district)

Government

“Just because you cannot fathom your government having ill meanings towards you doesn’t mean it is not true.” – CHRISTINE ANDERSON (A German Member of the European Parliament, in Dec. 2021)

“Government is simple provided two conditions are met: You do it locally, and you do it without unions.”  -- MARK STEYN (The worst thing JFK ever did – even worse than denying the liberators the promised air support at the Bay of Pigs – was issuing the Executive Order, insanely never rescinded since, authorizing federal employees to unionize.)

"My reading of history convinces me that most bad government results from too much government." -- THOMAS JEFFERSON

"History in general only informs us what bad government is." -- THOMAS JEFFERSON

“I predict future happiness for Americans if they can prevent the government from wasting the labors of the people under the pretense of taking care of them.” – THOMAS JEFFERSON

“If corporations aren't people, what about governments?” – JAMES TARANTO

“Physical calamities and natural disasters forced us to live in communities.  Living in communities added to these natural problems; the drawbacks of living in society led to our need to be governed and government increases social evils.  You’ve just read a résumé of the history of mankind.” -- NICOLAS-SEBASTIEN CHAMFORT

“Everyone wants to live at the expense of the State. They forget that the State lives at the expense of everyone.” – FREDERIC BASTIAT

"When government tells you to 'celebrate' something, it's not going to be much of a party." -- DAVE "IOWAHAWK" BURGE

“Government shouldn't provide any services that are already advertised in the Yellow Pages.” – JEB BUSH

"Government is not reason; it is not eloquence; it is force. Like fire, it is a dangerous servant and a fearful master." -- GEORGE WASHINGTON

“The  bigger the government the smaller the citizen.” – DENNIS PRAGER

“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

"There's never a recession if you work for the government." -- ANN COULTER

“The people most unfit to govern are the ones who want to govern.” – JACK JOLIS

“That’s what Bill Clinton had in mind when he said the era of big government was over; instead he’d be ushering in the era of small government, lots and lots of it, all over the place, like a map of America repainted by Seurat - and, when you add up all the little dots, you find out that small government works out far more expensive than big government.” - MARK STEYN

“It is the nature of government to expand. And since governments produce no wealth they must seize it to grow and prosper.” --  NATHAN SAX (a concerned citizen of New Providence, NJ.)

"From the culture, not from Congresses, come values, norms, truths, understandings as to how we must live, and what we must accordingly do. Government's task is more modest: namely, finding what the people value, then protecting or promoting it." -- WILLIAM MURCHISON (A Texan. Here writing in the Am Spec, in March 2013)

“Government, even in its best state, is but a necessary evil.” - THOMAS PAINE (THE Tom Paine. Kicked out of England, so he came to America, from where he helped to kick out the English. Pity the Brits didn’t have the benefit of the later wisdom of Lyndon Johnson who once said, about his enemies, “it’s usually better to have them inside the tent pissing out, than outside the tent pissing in.”)

“Government should recognize that it can’t solve every problem.” - IAIN DUNCAN SMITH (The short-lived leader of the British Conservative Party, in the early 2000s, and a jolly sound fellow, although he should have followed his logic to say that “all problems can’t be solved PERIOD…” or “FULL STOP” as they say over there...)

"You'd be surprised how much government you'd never miss." – MITCH DANIELS (The ex-GOP Governor of Indiana, and later President of Purdue University)

“The most important element in achieving good government is to have good taste” -- VACLAV HAVEL (this was relayed to me by my great Australian pal Patrick Harford, and we both agreed that the best taste ever shown by Havel, outside of his taste in rock music, was to choose Vaclav Klaus as his Prime Minister.)

"I don't want the government to feel my pain, I want it to feel my boot in its ass." -- JONAH GOLDBERG (at the University of Minnesota in March 2007-- and I wonder how this would go over at the European Commission.)

“Governance works best when it is aimed not at making people better, but at improving the legal framework within which people live, so that their own efforts to better themselves are optimized.” - JOHN McVICAR

“No matter how bad the situation, government can make it worse.” - IAIN MURRAY (a Senior Fellow at the Competitive Enterprise Institute)

“Thank goodness we don’t get all the government we pay for.” - WILL ROGERS

“1. Best government = good Tsar

2. Worst government = bad Tsar

3. Good Tsars are very rare. So it's best not to have Tsars at all.” - MICHAEL LEDEEN (actually, not him, but, by his own admission, his “wise Russian grandmother”.)

“Portraits of the head of the government should not exceed a postage stamp in size.” - VLADDIMIR NABOKOV

“I long for the Italian solution; governments so unstable and lacking in legislative majorities that for long periods we don’t have one. Think of it: no new legislation! No frenetic activity masquerading as progress! Then, truly, we could throw down our crutches and walk.” - THEODORE DALRYMPLE

“Leroy's Second Rule, whether you like it or not - never take on the government as a private corporation; you will lose, even when they do as well.” - LEROY W. SINCLAIR (my old fraternity brother, pal, mentor, and one of the few good, i.e., sane, Democrats I’ve ever had the pleasure of “discussing” with…. And remind me to ask him what his First Rule is....)

“The bill of particulars written by Thomas Jefferson against George III would not require much editing to describe today’s excesses by the Federal Government, never mind that it is the creature of the ruled, by the ruled. Already, self-government, as widely practiced, is an exercise in self-deception. Ask the people. (Calling Mr. Gallup!)” - WILLIAM F. BUCKLEY, JR.

“The small things are overthought. The big things are underthought. This is the way of government.” - PEGGY NOONAN (good one, Peg…)

“Government attracts puritans who like banning things on the grounds that prevention is for our own good, an argument that is potentially limitless in its self-justifying intrusion.” - ALAN JUDD (one of my favorite authors, particularly of the excellent “Short Of Glory”, one of the best novels on Africa, along with Waugh’s “Black Mischief”, William Boyd’s “A Good Man In Africa”, and my - P.N. Gwynne’s - own “Firmly By the Tail”….)

“You can have openness or you can have government, but you cannot have open government. Not effective government, anyway.” – ALAN JUDD

“The natural progress of things is for liberty to yield and government to gain ground.” - THOMAS JEFFERSON

“Government's most basic responsibility is the health and welfare of its people.” --  MICHAEL BLOOMBERG (ka-WRONG! This is the Credo of the Left, and it’s exactly bass-ackwards - Government’s most basic responsibility is the defense and security of its people. Everything else is icing on the cake.)

“The farther the state extends its reach, the less sure its touch.” - ALEXANDER HAMILTON

"When the state cannot please everybody, it will choose whom it had better please." -- ANTHONY DE JASAY (the Hungarian economist, and although this sounds nice, I would have gone much further:  "The state well knows that it can't please everybody something it never intended in the first place -- and it chooses to please only its own ideology.")  

"There are limits to the good which government can do, but almost no limits to the harm." --  SIR KEITH JOSEPH
(senior advisor to Margaret Thatcher)

“They say the press is distracting Clinton from the business of government. Well, I hope so. Distracting a politician from governing is like distracting a bear from eating your baby, or getting a dog to quit chewing on your wallet, anyway.” - P. J. O’ROURKE

“If men were angels there would be no need for government.” – JAMES MADISON

"A government that breaks its law can also easily break you." -- V. S. NAIPAUL     (so self-evident as to be banal, but I include it because it's by V.S. Naipaul -- a guy I like.) 

“As millions of ordinary citizens are aware, the federal government does almost nothing well, and most things excruciatingly badly.” - JOHN DERBYSHIRE

“Politeness is the preserve of nations who allow their citizens to get on with their lives.” - MELISSA KITE (conservative English journalist, in 2008)

“World War II was the last government program that really worked.” - GEORGE WILL

“I am against all governments, including my own.” – GEORGES CLEMENCEAU (top Frogue during WWI. Actually, he was Prime Minister twice – from 1906-09 and 1917-1920)

“You can be sure of one thing about government. If it ain’t broke, they will fix it and don’t worry about the breaking bit, they will do that for themselves.” -- SUSAN HILL (English authoress, in November 2008)

“There are few social injustices in the world so unfair that they can’t be made worse by well-intentioned government meddling.” - JAMES DELINGPOLE

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

“Government does not solve problems; it subsidizes them.” ~ RONALD REAGAN

"The problem for conservatives is that any failure of the market leads to more government, and any failure of government also leads to more government." -- PHILIP KLEIN (writing in the AMERICAN SPECTATOR, April 2009. And forget about "conservatives", I'd say this is a problem for everybody...)

"Always love your country, but never trust your government." -- ROBERT NOVAK

"The more numerous the laws, the more corrupt the state." - TACITUS (Roman senator and historian, 56-117 A.D.,  and, by the sound of it, history's first theapars convivalis popularis)

“Government is a broker in pillage, and every election is sort of an advance auction sale of stolen goods.” - H.L. MENCKEN

"Societies could not be created on sheets of parchment. They could not, even with the most golden of fountain pens, be signed into existence. Inevitably men will succumb to their own reality. The abandonment of the Constitution could be likened to a house settling into its own foundations." -- SHIVA NAIPAUL     (writing about a country very much like Guyana, in his 1983 "Love And Death In A Hot Country")

"Government is the great fiction, through which everybody endeavors to live at the expense of everybody else:" -- FREDERIC BASTIAT (1801-1850. The French version of Adam Smith -- bet you didn't know they even had one, did you....)

"A government that robs Peter to pay Paul can always depend on the support of Paul."  -- GEORGE BERNARD SHAW

“The most powerful people in government are always invisible.” -- ANDY FERGUSON

"Good government is a constable — it keeps the peace and protects property. Parasitic government — which is, sad to say, practically the only form known in the modern world — is at its best a middleman that takes a cut of every transaction by positioning itself as a nuisance separating you from your goals. At its worst, it is functionally identical to a goon running a protection racket." -- KEVIN D. WILLIAMSON

"Weighing benefits against costs is the way most people make decisions — and the way most businesses make decisions, if they want to stay in business. Only in government is any benefit, however small, considered to be worth any cost, however large." — THOMAS SOWELL

“The government makes off with one-fourth of our goods and services. Then the government gives those goods and services back to us. (In a slightly altered form, the way a horse gives the hay we feed it back to us in a slightly altered form.)” – P. J. O'ROURKE

“The second most important function of government, in my opinion, is trash pickup. And people in government can start with themselves, as far as I'm concerned.” – P. J. O'ROURKE

“Government is a mile of boxcars filled with lard. You and I are unlikely to get this train moving by pushing on the caboose even if we get all our friends to help. But once it's in motion we'd better not stand in its way.” – P. J. O'ROURKE

“I think happiness research is interesting. I am still thinking through how it should inform policymakers. The idea of a government actively trying to make people happier gives me the willies. I don't want the federal family getting into that business too actively. At the same time, I'd like to see it get out of the habit of making people unhappier.” – JONAH GOLDBERG

“It is a progressive tendency to believe that the government or an election can straighten the crooked timber of humanity. This is an eternal struggle with endless battles to be fought because there will always be people who want the government to impose cosmic justice, to fill the holes in their souls, to love them. Government can't be God. Heck, it can't even be Baal. But that won't permanently stop people from making that mistake.” – JONAH GOLDBERG

"The nine most terrifying words in the English language are: 'I'm from the government and I'm here to help.'"  -- RONALD REAGAN

“Government is a disease masquerading as its own cure.” – ROBERT LEFEVRE                                                                                                                                                     (American libertarian and pacifist . bit of a crank, actually, but it's a good quote, anyway.)

“The government will spend every penny it takes in taxes, and whatever more it can get away with.” – MILTON FRIEDMAN

“Nothing is so permanent as a temporary government program.” – MILTON FRIEDMAN

“The government doesn't need to do something. It needs to undo much of what it already has done.” – ARTHUR LAFFER

“Government is an organic cultural organism. It lives by growing, and it grows by accretion.” – DAVID MAMET

“All government programs must not only expand after success, but expand after failure, in order 'to bring about eventual success.”  Note that all this hocus-pocus is taking place with the money actually earned by hardworking individuals.” – DAVID MAMET

 “Government intervention in private enterprise is the death of private enterprise (cf. East versus West Germany; Havana versus Miami; Palestine versus Israel). Has the case not already been settled?” – DAVID MAMET

“All live needs to consume. And to consume we must produce. The Government cannot produce, it can merely confiscate, intrude, and allocate accoridng to some plan pleasant to the capacity or cupidity of the current officeholders.” – DAVID MAMET

"How small should government be? Small enough that it is not worth corrupting." – JAMES PETHOKOUKIS

“Whenever government assumes to deliver us from the trouble of thinking for ourselves, the only consequences it produces are torpor and imbecility.” – WILLIAM GODWIN                                                                                                                      (the English journalist, political philosopher and novelist, 1756 – 1836, married, believe it or not, to the early feminist pain in the ass Mary Wollstonecraft, and father of Mary, who became Mary Shelley, wife of the pote Percy and the author of “Frankenstein”.)

“In government, it is unreasonableness that improves people's lives.” – STEVE HILTON                                                        (A supposed hot-shot whiz-kid adviser to the Cameron govt. in the UK, until he vamoosed for greener pastures in California. And I must say I think his sentiment here is full of beans, but it sounds like a quote, doesn't it...)

 “Government is good at one thing: It knows how to break your legs, hand you a crutch, and say ‘See, if it weren’t for the Government, you wouldn’t be able to walk.’ ” – HARRY BROWNE (ex- Presidential Candidate of the US Libertarian Party)

"Any man who thinks he can be happy and prosperous by letting the Government take care of him; better take a closer look at the American Indian." - HENRY FORD

“Evans Law: When our people get into government, they cease to be our people.” – M. STANTON EVANS

“Where the people fear the government you have tyranny. Where the government fears the people you have liberty.” – JOHN BASIL BARNHILL                           (American writer and publisher at the turn of the 20th century)

"A state is a geographically defined monopoly on violence." -- MAX WEBER

“The government does not compel people to do stuff. The government compels people to do stuff at the point of a gun.” – BEN SHAPIRO

"Government Creates wealth the way ticks create blood." - GROVER NORQUIST

“Every government witch-hunt always finds a witch.” – DAN BONGINO                                                                                             (ex-Secret Service agent, radio talker, and , as of Nov. 2017, failed conservative candidate to Congress)

"The government is like the reins of a horse - it can slow the economy down or turn it the wrong way but the only way to make it go faster iz to quit pulling on the damn thing." -- THOMAS COLLET (a guy on Facebook, commenting in NRO in Nov; 2017)

“British governments may not be much good, but at least we can get rid of them.” – ANDREW GIMSON (British political journalist)

“The bigger the government the smaller the citizen.” – CHARLIE KIRK

“When Alexander the Great visited the philosopher Diogenes and asked whether he could do anything for him, Diogenes is said to have replied: ‘Yes, stand a little less between me and the sun.’ It is what every citizen is entitled to ask of his government.” ― HENRY HAZLITT

"Governments love picking winners, but losers are good at picking governments."-- DIETER HELM                                              (a professor at Oxford University)

«The government can improve your net worth, but not your self-worth.» – JONAH GOLDBERG

“Until August 1914 a sensible, law-abiding Englishman could pass through life and hardly notice the existence of the English state, beyond the post office and the policeman.” – A. J. P. TAYLOR (the famous historian, and this passage kicks off his book “English History 1914-1945. And, for those who might not know, August was when WWI kicked off in 1914.)

"The U.S.A. was meant to be a collection of small governments kept from oppressing minorities and each other by one limited but overarching federal system of laws and courts. But people prefer to oppress each other, each one wants all the others regulated, and the Feds took a lesson from local politicians who used this basic desire to their advantage by promising to honor it in exchange for votes." -- DENIS JOHNSON

Government, Federal                                                                                                               

"The average American has regular contact with the federal government at three points - the IRS, the post office and the TSA. Start with that fact if you are formulating a unified field theory to explain the public's current political mood."-- GEORGE WILL                                                                                                                                                   (If you're inclined to throw the beloved DMV into this cherished bouquet, remember that the DMV is a State-supplied mitzvah, rather than a Feddle one -- consider it the icing on the cake....)

“The  Framers understood that there is no societal good in a government that must 'do' for individuals and factions. 'Doing' is a zero-sum game. Government does not inherently have anything to give. What it awards you it must seize from me. What it gives one faction it must deny to others.” – ANDREW C. McCARTHY

“For every action there is an equal and opposite government program.” – BOB WELLS (the American editor)

“There's no market feedback mechanism for government programs, which means that when you do stupid you do immortally stupid. You get Americans in the 21th Century still paying the temporary emergency telephone tax to fund the Spanish-American War (1897-98). On and on it goes. Forever. Deathless stupdity tends to accrete and clog up the system, over time, and Washington is a factory whose workers produced deathless stupidity like it's their job, like they're being paid for it. Because it is. Because they are. -- KEVIN D. WILLIAMSON

“Obama's vision is 100 percent catawampus from the traditional American understanding of government. He sees civil society as a vacuum where, absent the federal government, we are autarkic, anarchistic individuals left to fend for ourselves, drinking puddle water and using cat fat for Chapstick ("Nice Book of Eli reference" -- The Couch). If the federal government won't do it -- whatever it is -- then we are all on our own. But that is not how the vast majority of Americans live. Nor do we define our understanding of communal, cooperative life purely through the prism of the federal government. If the federal government won't organize a bake sale at my kid's school, we are indeed on our own, but we are not alone.
-- JONAH GOLDBERG

"The margin for error in government, when it's extremely well-run, is enormous. When a government is as huge, dissolute, and distracted by a 10,000-headed hydr a of  'priorities' as it is today, that margin of error is no longer even a margin of error, it is a function of government itself." -- JONAH GOLDBERG

"If you put the federal government in charge of the Sahara Desert, in 5 years there'd be a shortage of sand." -- MILTON FRIEDMAN

“Meanwhile, America is on a path to being a country whose citizens Work six months of every year just to pay for a government they don’t want or need.” – ARTHUR C. BROOKS

“Whenever a service is provided by the government, a whole new set of agendas come into play. The No. 1 purpose of any government agency is to be a jobs program.” – ANN COULTER

“Washington — where nobody gets fired and everybody always eats lunch.” – CHARLES HURT                                  (in the Washington Times, in May 2013)

"Swollen government has a shriveled brain: By printing and borrowing money, government avoids thinking about its proper scope and actual competence." -- GEORGE WILL

"Government is force, full stop." -- JONAH GOLDBERG

“The world is not naturally becoming more complicated. It's that government has an interest in making life more difficult to navigate without its help.” -- JONAH GOLDBERG

“The three branches of government are money, television and bullshit.” – P. J. O'ROURKE

“All governments turn bad. What matters is that you never get more than two terrible governments in a row.” -- RORY SUTHERLAND

“American government is not noted for its sense of proportion. “ -- MARK STEYN

“The United States has the most powerful government, with the longest reach, of any nation in history. It is also the Brokest Nation in History. Resolving that contradiction is unlikely to be pretty.” -- MARK STEYN

"The Federal Reserve is neither 'federal' nor a 'reserve'. It is not owned by the federal government, and it does not hold real assets in reserve. In reality, it is a giant debt factory backed by the "full faith and credit" of the government, or taxpayers." -- ARMSTRONG WILLIAMS                                                                                                (author and financial adviser)

“You may, by the arbitrary and sterile act of Government, (for remember, Governments create nothing and have nothing to give but what they have first taken away), you may put money in the pocket of one set of Englishmen, but it will be money taken from the pockets of another set of Englishmen, and the greater part will be spilled on the way.” -- WINSTON CHURCHILL

“Governments create nothing and have nothing to give but what they have first taken away.” -- WINSTON CHURCHILL

“The government has no more right to tell me what goes into my mouth than it has to tell me what comes out of my mouth.” – MILTON FRIEDMAN

"Governments create problems. Then they complain about them." -- JOHN STOSSEL

"In the CIA, as elsewhere in the federal government, you're innocent until you're investigated." -- ROBERT BAER

"What the government is good at is collecting taxes, taking away your freedoms and killing people. It's not good at much else." -- TOM CLANCY

“The danger is not that a particular class is unfit to govern. Every class is unfit to govern." – LORD ACTON                                (JOHN DALBERG-ACTON, the “power corrupts” fellow, 1834-1902)

Government (good)                                                                                                                          

"What if this is all a cruel joke on us? What if the people who hate government are good at it and the people who love government are bad at it?" -- MAUREEN DOWD                (What indeed?, Mo....  Ms. Dowd, for those lucky enough not to know, is the aging resident Hip Lefty Chick at   the NY TIMES, a true legend in her own mind.)

“Little else is requisite to carry a state to the higher degree of opulence but peace, easy taxes, and a tolerable administration of justice.” – ADAM SMITH

“Never underestimate the coercive power of the central state in the service of good.”-- JERRY BROWN (the sparadrap governor of California, and if this isn't a defense of totalitarianism, I don't know what is....)

"Folks, this government isn't too big to fail, it's too big to succeed."- SARAH PALIN

“When government programs ‘take care of us,’ they kill off some of the best of life and make us much less productive. They don't even make people happy.” – JOHN STOSSEL (on 14 May 2020)

Government “gridlock”

“Our system generally promotes gridlock. We often bemoan this as a fault, but it is in fact our system’s greatest virtue. Our government is designed to slow down the decision-making processes so that the people can debate, deliberate, and ultimately come to a conclusion that truly works to the benefit of the whole nation and does not trample on the rights of some political minority.” – JAY COST

Government, local

"The lower down the democratic pyramid you go, the more various institutions are likely to be staffed by goose-stepping social inadequates who fill up the gaping holes in their lives by taking it our on you. If you ever doubt that, just look at Home Owner associations in the USA.” — ROD LIDDLE (in Dec. ‘22)

Government, (“Popular”)

“Only in Switzerland and America did the theory and practice of popular government survive into the modern world. But note: they survived because they were planted in an older, hybrid pre-Enlightenment roots.” - ANGELO CODEVILLA

Government, (reasons for)

“The sole end for which mankind are warranted, individually or collectively, in interfering with the liberty of action of any of their number is self-protection.” - JOHN STUART MILL (ah yeas, but the Ethiopian in the fuel supply, here, is the meaning of “self-protection” - conservatives like me mean that narrowly to mean only police and armed forces, while socialist nanny-staters will include it to mean smoking and everything-under-the-sun….)

“At the very least, government should do no harm.” - DAVID WILLETS (a Brit Conservative M.P., in 1994)

“Churches are built from and for love. The government is not. It cannot love you and should not try. To believe that it can is to commit one of the gravest category errors in political thought.” - JONAH GOLDBERG

“The government should be concerned only with those issues which involve the use of force. This means: the police, the armed services, and the law courts to settle disputes among men. Nothing else.” -- AYN RAND

“The role of government is not to perfect us, but to protect us.” - SARAH PALIN

"The protection of the population from crime is not an optional extra for the state once it has paid for the sex-change operations of those who want them, etc., but comes very close to the state's whole raison d'etre, and rulers who fail in this regard are no longer legitimate, but parasites upon the body politic." -- THEODORE DALRYMPLE

“The whole duty of government is to prevent crime and to preserve contracts.” – (LORD) WILLIAM LAMB, 2nd VISCOUNT MELBOURNE (PM of Great Britain from 1834-1841, and he had it about right.)

 “When government is small and relatively weak, the most effective way to make money is to start a successful private-sector business. But the larger the size and scope of government spending, the easier it is to make money by diverting public resources. Thus in nations with large and powerful governments, the state usually finds itself at the heart of the economic system, even if the system is relatively capitalist.” – LUIGI ZINGALES                                                                           (a naturalized Italian-American economist and author of “A Capitalism Of The People”)

"The purpose of government is to protect men from each other. When government starts to protect people from themselves, it's time to get a new government." -- ROBERT A. HEINLEIN

“Government isn't what you love if you're American, America is what you love. Government is what you have, need and hire. Its most essential duties―especially when it is bankrupt―involve defending rights and safety, not imposing views and values. We already have values.» -- PEGGY NOONAN

“I don’t want him to fix the economy. I want him to stop politicians from trying to fix the economy. That’s what’s caused the problem. When we had 150 years when nobody thought it was the president’s job or anybody else in the government’s job to fix the economy. The economy fixed itself.” – THOMAS SOWELL

“Government is not reason; it is not eloquent; it is force. Like fire, it is a dangerous servant and a fearful master.” – GEORGE WASHINGTON

“There is a lot of sorrow in the world and governments make way too many mistakes. Small government, small problems. Big government, big problems.” – BEN STEIN

“If the government takes into its hands that which the man ought to do for himself, it will inflict upon him greater mischiefs than all the benefits he will have received.” – WILLIAM GLADSTONE

"Swollen government has a shriveled brain: By printing and borrowing money, government avoids thinking about its proper scope and actual competence." -- GEORGE WILL

“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

«There is a crucial difference between saying ‘Society would be better off if the drugs vanished’ and saying ‘Society would be better off when the government tries to make drugs vanish’.» -- CHARLES C. W. COOKE

“Charity is no part of the legislative duty of the government.” - JAMES MADISON

"Government has three primary functions: It should provide for physical defense of the nation. It should enforce contracts between individuals. It should protect citizens from crimes against themselves or their property. When government – in pursuit of good intentions tries to rearrange the economy, legislate morality or help special interests, the costs come in inefficiency, lack of motivation, and loss of freedom. Government should be a referee, not an active player." – MILTON FRIEDMAN

"There is no justification for public interference with purely private concerns."-- CALVIN COOLIDGE

«Perhaps one of the most important accomplishments of my administration has been minding my own business.» – CALVIN COOLIDGE

«Uncle Sam's good at a lot of things but he's a horrible father.» – SHERIFF DAVID A. CLARKE, JR. (the tough, anti-leftist Sheriff of Milwaukee County, Wis., in 2017)

"The constitution is a radical document. It is the job of government to reign in people's rights." -- BILL CLINTON    (1993 – and this, for me, is probably the most objectionable thing this son of a bitch ever said)

«This is nothing that government can give you that it hasn't taken from you in the first place.» – WINSTON CHURCHILL

"Government is not there to provide us with moral uplift or a national sense of meaning. Government is there to plow the goddamned roads. It is there to secure the borders, defend against foreign invasion, and to make sure that the stuff sold in bottles labeled 'aspirin' really is aspirin." -- KEVIN D. WILLIAMSON

"It probably is the primary duty of government to get the economics right. Because when the economics go wrong, everything else goes wrong in very short order." -- DOUGLAS MURRAY

"I'd love to see the Founding Fathers' reaction to 'child care' being a federal issue in a presidential election. How about a federal solution to 'waking up,' and 'making dinner'?" -- ANN COULTER

Government, (secrects/secrecy)

“Most sensible arrangements depend on a measure of discretion and even secrecy - and none more so than parliamentary government. Trouble arises, almost always, from too much openness, not too little.” - PEREGRINE WORSTHORNE (the old Tory journalist. I remember when I was a boy, 50 years ago, my own father, referring to a column in The Telegraph by this gent, exclaiming “this is the most marvelous name anyone ever had!”)

Grammar

“The greater part of the world's troubles are due to questions of grammar.” ― MICHEL DE MONTAIGNE

“If you are using an adverb, you’ve got the wrong verb.” – SIR KINGSLEY AMIS

"I wanted to keep my verbs conditional. I had always found that a good way of staving off the future." -- KEITH WATERHOUSE

"Prepositions are to language what aim is to a gun." -- MARK HELPRIN

Gratitude

"I feel a very unusual sensation – if it is not indigestion, I think it must be gratitude." -- BENJAMIN DISRAELI (The 19th century Jewish-born British prime minister who, as far as I know, had exactly 0 to do with Thanksgiving, but from what I've read of him would have been a treat at any Thanksgiving dinner. His chief contribution to history seems to have been to prick the pompous balloon of his long-time rival, the great Prig and Bore William Gladstone. He -- Disraeli -- also wrote novels in his spare time, and once when he was asked what he thought of some current best-seller replied "When I want to read a book, I write one.")

“Gratitude is a lively sense of future favours.” – ROBERT WALPOLE                                                                   (Britain's first Prime Minister, 1721-1742)

“Gratitude. The only get-rich quick scheme that always works.” – BEN STEIN

“I don’t know why he hates me so much – I never did him a favour.” – TINY ROWLAND                                                               (the late British tycoon, Chairman of “Lonrho”, that was particularly huge in Africa)

“Gratitude is a dog’s disease.” – JOSEPH STALIN

Great Britain

“There’s always snobbery and Puritanism lurking within the British, particularly among the political and bureaucratic classes, the moment they spot someone enjoying themselves.” - MICHAEL VESTEY (British journalist)

“The British disguise emptiness with impudence.” - JAMES  A. N. WHISTLER (The Yankee mother-painting fella…)

“There are a number of things which we in this country are rather good at. One of them is underselling ourselves.” - CHARLES WINDSOR HRH THE PRINCE OF WALES.

“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

“Without its tabloid newspapers, Britain would be France.” – TOBY YOUNG

“To get an idea of politics in Britain you have to imagine a nightmare: the Democratic Party of Obama and Dick Durbin of Illinois opposed by a Republican Party led by Olympia Snowe and Susan Collins of Maine. There is no equivalent to the Tea Party.” – TOM BETHELL

“Watching others toil is a favorite pastime of the British.” – FRANK NORMAN                                                                   (a British Cockney ex-con who later went on to become a successful writer.)

“From a distance, across the pond, it seems as if there are two Britains – a small quiet slice that tends the old virtues behind locked doors, collecting stamps from the days of empire and buffing a bust of Churchill, and a variegated army yowling beyond the hedgerows: loud rude dole-suckled slags and yobs, bloodless academics and Eurocrats bent on extirpating national pride in the name of Western shame, sharia enthusiasts, and a blithe entitled troupe of Pippa-ninny royals.” – JAMES LILEKS

“The British are like their own beer, froth on top, dregs at bottom, the middle excellent." – VOLTAIRE

«There is something peculiarly levelling about British cynicism, which takes the view that, deep down, absolutely everyone is a bit of a twat.» – RORY SUTHERLAND

“ 'Multiculturalism' is really a suicide cult conceived by the western elites not to celebrate all cultures, but to deny their own. And that's particularly unworthy of the British, whose language, culture, and law have been the single greatest force for good in this world.” – MARK STEYN

"The United Kingdom is the land where everything is policed except crime. Under Scotland Yard and Britain's other woeful constabularies, convictions for reported rape and robberies are at all but statistically undetectable levels. But thoughtcrime the Starmtroopers can hunt down with ruthless efficiency..." -- MARK STEYN      (in August 2024) 

«The British are funny people, and the funniest thing about them is how seriously they take being British.» – GREG GUTFELD

“Great Britain made the world.” – TIMOTHY SNYDER (American historian; Yale History Prof.)

«Britain is the only country in the world where the food is more dangerous than the sex.» – JACKIE MASON

«The school is the institution by which, for the rest of their lives, the British come to understand all arbitrary authorities of capricious brutality.» – NIGEL BARLEY (An English anthropologist and the author of the very funny Africa novel, «The Coast»)

«It is this concept of the British as the absentee landlords of the world that has served us so splendidly in the past. » – ROBERT MORLEY (the rotund English comic actor)

« Great Britain is a great country – the only thing it needs is a roof.» – JOHN LENAHAN (it said that this guy is, or was, «an American comedian», and who am I to say otherwise.)

«I have never had much faith in the British character. No other race except the Chinese is so regimented. Moreover, the British have an astounding susceptibility, unlike the Latin or Nordic peoples, to fear and alarm. In short, we are a race of incurable cowards: bovine, lazy and easily bullied. Yet our sense of superiority is undiminished.» – PETRONELLA WYATT (One of Boris Johnson’s many bimbo ex-girlfriends, the wonderfully-named Petronella purports to be a journalist. In October 2020)

"Every true-born Briton lives under a fixed persecution mania that someone is always trying to prevent him from getting a drink." -- EVELYN WAUGH

"Because we Brits are often warlike but never militaristic, we often make a balls-up of the first phase of any campaign." -- BRUCE ANDERSON (ex-Political Editor of THE SPECCIE)

"Britain is the only country where calling someone clever is to abuse them." -- DONALD MACRAE (the late sociologist)

 “Prestige is what makes Great Britain a great power.” – C. HARTLEY GRATTAN               (in Harper’s magazine, 1939)

“Traditional British snobbery disappears overseas and is replaced by the bond of contempt for and antipathy to foreigners.” – HAROLD MACMILLAN (he actually said this while he was Foreign Secretary, in 1955, before he became PM)

“Britain is the only nation I’ve ever been where it takes four ‘thank you’s’ to negotiate a bus ticket.” – BEPPE SEVERGNINI

"It always surprises and annoys foreigners how we (British) can turn our disasters into triumphs: The Khyber Pass, Isandlwana, Mons, the Somme,  Dunkirk, Arnhem et al." -- GEORGE COURTAULD (in his 1995 "The Travels Of A Fat Bulldog")

“The British economy would collapse without lunch.” – NIGEL WILLIAMS (true – but you could probably say that about any economy....)

"Someone needs to explain to me how it is that the richer Britain gets, the poorer it thinks itself." -- BILL BRYSON (in 2015)

"The British really are the only people in the world who become genuinely excited when presented with a hot beverage and a small plain biscuit." -- BILL BRYSON

"Very few things are more reliably astounding than the British when they are enjoying themselves, and I say this with a kind of cautious admiration. They have the ability to get deep and lasting pleasure out of practically nothing at all. Give them a form of transportation that was becoming obsolete in the time of Clement Attlee and they will flock to it. Did you know, Britain has 108 steam railways -- that is surely 106 or so more than any nation needs -- run by 18,500 volunteers? It is an extraordinary fact but a true one that there are thousands of men in Britain who will never need Viagra as long as steam trains are in operation. And steam trains are only a small part of the Diversions No One But the British Would Want. Britain also has a Water Tower Appreciation Society, a Society for Clay Pipe Research, a Pillbox Study Group, a ghost Sign Society and a Roundabout Appreciation Society. Are you following what I am saying? There are people who spend their free time, not at gunpoint, traveling around seeking out the most interesting and satisfying roundabouts." -- BILL  BRYSON

"There is no country in the developed world -- not one -- that has fewer litter bins on its streets than Great Britain. And there is not one country in the developed world -- again, not one -- that has more litter on the ground than Great Britain. Does anyone here see a relationship?" -- BILL BRYSON

"Britain is incontestably substantial. amazingly, it is the thirteenth-largest land mass on the planet and that includes four continents -- Australia, Antarctica, America and Eurasia-Africa (which geographers, being anally retentive and unimaginative, classify as a single mass) . Only eight islands on Earth are bigger: Greenland, New Guinea, Borneo, Madagascar, Baffin, Sumatra, Honshu and Vancouver. By population, Britain is the fourth largest island state, behind only Indonesia, Japan, and the Philippines. By wealth it is second. Measured by decent music, old stony buildings, variety of boiled sweets, and reasons for not going to work because of the weather, it is number one by a very wide margin." -- BILL BRYSON

"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

"A cake-filled, misery-laden grey old island." -- EMMA THOMPSON

Greatness

"You can't be great if you're not rich." -- DONALD TRUMP

“We must not fall back into the rut of inertia...and the craven fear of being great." – WINSTON CHURCHILL (on V-E Day, 1945)

"No great man was ever modest." -- JOHN HAY (McKinley's and Teddy Roosevelt's Secretary of State)

“Lord spare us from Great Men.” -- A. A. GILL

“Great Re-Set, The”

" 'The Great Re-Set' is nothing more than world Marxism's 'Final Push'." -- JACK JOLIS (in April 2022)

"The pandemic represents a rare but narrow window to reflect, reimagine and reset our world." -- KLAUS SCHWAB (the sinister German generalissimo of the Davos "World Economic Forum", said this in May 2021)

"The Great Replacement Theory: It's fine when they outline it; it's only wrong when you notice it." -- BEN SHAPIRO (OK, this is the "Great Replacement Theory" instead of the "Great Reset Theory", but they're all same-same in the febrile Leftist mind)

"There almost exclusively appeared a population never before seen in these parts, which by its dress, demeanor and even language seemed not to belong there but rather to another people, another culture, another history.  Some may welcome such new arrivals, but I consider the change of population to be an unprecedented disaster. In 15 centuries, there has not been a single episode, dramatic though some may have been, neither the Hundred Years War nor the German occupation, that has represented a threat as serious, deadly and virtually definitive in its consequences for our homeland as the change of people." -- RENAUD CAMUS (in his 2008 "Demeures de l'Esprit")

"It is the legacy of Adolf Hitler that has effectively  prohibited not only all references to races, it goes without saying, but also to one degree or another all reference to ethnicities, peoples, civilizations, diverse cultures, origins in general, and nations in their temporal aspect, that is, their heritage, transmission and survival. But I do not believe in a conspiracy: alas no, what I believe is that there are obscure movements in the depths of the species, subject to the very laws of tragedy, starting with the first of them, which has it that the wishes of men and civilizations whose disappearance is foreordained shall be granted." -- RENAUD CAMUS (in his 2023 "The Second Career Of Adolf Hitler")

Greece

“In the good old days of the Cold War, Athenian hacks used to say that there were only two countries where secrets were safe: China and Greece. In the former nobody talked. In the latter everyone did, hence no one believed a word.” - TAKI THEODORACOPULOS

“The ancient Greeks discovered sex, but it took the Romans to include women.” – TAKI THEODORACOPULOS

“What Greece needed back in the Forties was less communism and more electrolysis. What she needs now is less EU and more private enterprise.” – TAKI THEODORACOPULOS (in July 2013)

“Athens, now a city of close to six million, has the ugliest modern architecture west of Tehran, a polluted atmosphere that is the equivalent of sticking one's mouth on the exhaust pipe of a Porsche Targa for at least an hour, and a place where African, Pakistani and Albanian drug dealers have the run of the place.” – TAKI  THEODORACOPULOS

“Athens is always in the hearts and minds of anyone educated in the West who did not choose female or transgender studies.” – TAKI  THEODORACOPULOS

“Why is it that Greeks outside Greece prosper, ask sociologists the world over. Greek Americans talk too loud, like the folks back home, but are honest, religious and family-minded.” – TAKI  THEODORACOPULOS

“We Greeks wallow in lies, as the Arabs do, but unlike them we call ourselves Europeans. We are nothing of the kind. The only thing we inherited from the ancient ones are jealousy and envy. We have no Pericles, no Miltiades, no Themistocles, but plenty of Alcibiadeses. We lie and lie in order to cover up our lies, but then we write that we are like our ancestors which is the greatest lie of all.” – TAKI  THEODORACOPULOS

“We Greeks have contributed a few things apart from cheating and not paying our taxes. . .ancient Greeks even discovered sex, but it took the Romans to include women. Boo!” – TAKI  THEODORACOPULOS

“A few weeks later the riots abated and Greece went back to its semi-civilized state of perpetual strikes and random demonstrations.” - JONATHAN V. LAST (Writing in THE WEEKLY STANDARD in August 2009, but this could have been said at any time.)

“Greece belongs to the category of nations/ethnicities that are their own worst enemies, a category in which I’d include Ireland, Italy, the Arabs, and China. Compare, say, the Japanese, Israelis, and Turks, who, whatever their internal disagreements and dysfunctions, turn as one body to face the outside enemy.” – JOHN DERBYSHIRE

“The Greeks have a trick of disguising a poor quality wine by adding pine resin to it, the idea being that the taste of the resin is not quite so appalling as the taste of the wine.” – ROALD DAHL

"Israel is part of Europe, and Greece is part of the Middle East" -- JACK JOLIS

“I’ve been all over Europe. I’ve even been to Greece. It’s not bad, but it’s pretty destroyed.” – JEAN GENET (in his “Thief’s Journal”. And it reminds me of my own wiseassery when we visited the Parthenon in 1966: “It’s okay, but it would’ve been better if we’d waited til they finished it before coming.”)

“The founders of advanced education were mainly Greeks, who were great talkers, especially when the subject was themselves. Their reputation survives because nobody reads them. One of the last to subject himself to that agony was Thomas Babington, First Baron Macaulay; those who have emulated that great critic are not inclined to disagree with his judgment on Socrates – that the more one reads him, the more one wonders why they didn’t knock him off sooner.” – PROF. JOHN GREENWAY (the late “Gonzo Anthropologist” from Colorado)

“Greed”

“Calling bankers greedy for taking advantage of profit opportunities created by unsound government policies is like calling rich people greedy for allowing Medicare to reimburse their medical bills.” – RICHARD A. POSNER (the  author, judge, and famous American polymath...)

“Greed does not create wealth. Barring luck and crime, wealth may only be created through satisfying the needs of others.” – DAVID MAMET

"The world is not driven by greed, it’s driven by envy." -- CHARLIE MUNGER (the "billionaire investor") 

“I could take any city by driving into it an ass laden with gold.” – PHILIP OF MACEDON (Alexander the Great's Pop.)

“Legal plunder has two roots: One...in human greed, the other in false philanthropy.” – FREDERIC BASTIAT

“ 'Need' now means wanting someone else's money. 'Greed' means wanting to keep your own. 'Compassion' is when a politician arranges the transfer.” – JOSEPH SOBRAN

"Politicians never accuse you of 'greed' for wanting other people's money, only for wanting to keep your own money." – JOSEPH SOBRAN

“I have never understood why it is 'greed' to want to keep the money you have earned but not greed to want to take somebody else's money.” – THOMAS SOWELL

“Free-enterprise so-called ‘greed’ created modern prosperity, while Leftist envy never created anything except festering mountains of misery.” – JACK JOLIS

" 'Greed' is just a pejorative term given to the very human desire for more than the strict minimum necessary to survive." -- JACK JOLIS

“The point is, you can never be too greedy.” – DONALD J. TRUMP

 “Greed is not exactly a virtue, but it is not the worst of vices, either.” – ROGER KAPLAN (in the AMSPEC on 31 Dec. ‘19)     

“Green Jobs”

"After three years of blathering about 'green jobs', the White House admits no one knows what they are. Right now, the best definition of a 'green job' is one that taxpayers have to sink tons of green into creating with little return of green for their trouble." -- ED MORRISSEY (On the "Hot Air" blog, in June 2010.. And there are some hilarious responses to him, such as "A 'green job' is like wax fruit -- it looks real but it's useless", and "A green job is whatever they say it is, and they’ve created over a BILLION of them. So the stimulus is working. Now go away." and "Green Job…sort of like what Lewinsky did to Clinton, only the lobbyist pays the receiver… As in: 'We are passing the card check because the union gave me a great greenjob.'". and  "A green job is when solar plants in Spain mount sheets of black plastic made to look like solar panels to hide the diesel generators. In short, the phrase ‘green job’ means the same as 'snow job'… but is stupifyingly more costly." and, lastly, my two favorites, "A 'green job' is racist" and "This whole friggin’ nightmare of Capt. Kickass is turning me green …."

“Apparently the definition of a ‘green job’ is ‘any job Obama spends your green on’.” – FRED THOMPSON

“There will be ‘green jobs’ alright. But there will be nothing to celebrate about the creation of 3,000 jobs for sustainability officers if simultaneously we lose 30,000 jobs in the steel industry because furnaces have been forced abroad.” – ROSS CLARK (English journalist and author, in October 2021)

“Greens, The”

“We don’t lurk in caves, unwashed and communicating with monosyllabic grunts. (But enough about the Green party.” – JULIE BURCHILL

“Green war is class war.” – SOHRAB AHMARI (responding to a UK plan to force people to switch from cheap gas heating to more expensive “green” heating)

“The Greens want to end ‘the pursuit of endless economic growth’, which is a politician’s way of saying ‘We want people to get poorer’.” – CHARLES MOORE

Greene, Graham

“The red Greene” – ANTHONY BURGESS

Grief

“Happiness is good for the body, but it is grief which develops the strengths of the mind.” – MARCEL PROUST

“Grief is the price we pay for love.” – QUEEN ELIZABETH II (the old girl can approach pottery, when she wants to....)

Grievance (“Grievance”)

"There is nothing perhaps so generally consoling to a man as a well-established grievance, a feeling of having been injured, on which his mind can brood from hour to hour allowing him to pleas his own case in his own court, within his heart and always to plead it successfully." -- ANTHONY TROLLOPE

“Guardian, The”

"The Guardian is the default home for misinformation in the English-speaking world, the middle-brow tribune of antiquarian British leftist bigotry." -- CONRAD BLACK

"That national landfill site of educationally challenged, whining liberal anguish, The Guardian.” – ROD LIDDLE

"The Guardian is based inside a large-ish glass-fronted building which looks like a mental health charity or a firm of international tax-dodgers." -- LLOYD EVANS

"Scratch a liberal and you'll find a tyrannical do-gooder underneath. The Guardian and The Gulag Archipelago are sisters under the skin." -- PHILIP THODY

Guilt  (“Guilt”)

“Bad social conscience is taught to the young as dogma. In certain academic circles, with which I was once familiar, a sense of guilt became as essential to good standing as proper manners used to be.” - JUDGE ROBERT BORK

“Guilt is among the most religious of emotions and has a way of rapidly devolving into a narcissistic God complex.” - JONAH GOLDBERG

“When you have the power to control everything, you feel guilty about everything.” - JONAH GOLDBERG

“Limitless guilt is a form of grandiosity. If Africa is an abominable mess, it is because of what we, the former colonizing nations, did to it: ergo, we are still important.” -- THEODORE DALRYMPLE (Actually, France remained and remains important in Africa precisely because they refuse to feel ”guilty”.)

“What is guilt? Guilt is a gas, and gases disperse, but superior officers don’t.” – TOM WOLFE

“Guilt is the psychological need satisfied by liberalism.” – JAMES BURNHAM

"It's insensible to feel 'guilty" or 'ashamed' about something you didn't do. Claiming that what happened before you were born is all your falut is not only ridiculous. It's vain." -- LIONEL SHRIVER

"Guilt, (offering the illusion of explanation), was preferable to despair." -- DAVID MAMET 

"Liberals feel guilty about everything in the world... except those things that they should feel guilty about." -- JACK JOLIS

Guilt, “Collective”

“If any fundamental assumption underlies our system. it is that guilt is personal and not inheritable.” – JUSTICE ROBERT H. JACKSON (The excellent judge who also coined the deathless and indispensable '“The Constitution is not a suicide pact.”)

"Have we reached the ultimate stage of absurdity where some people are held responsible for things that happened before they were born, while other people are not held responsible for what they themselves are doing today?" -- THOMAS SOWELL

"It's insensible to feel 'guilty" or 'ashamed' about something you didn't do. Claiming that what happened before you were born is all your falut is not only ridiculous. It's vain." -- LIONEL SHRIVER

"The worst thing about CRT isn’t the blatant bigotry and racism, that’s all over neo Marxism in all its forms. Collectivist grouping is it’s greatest evil. Group guilt always leads to group blame, and genocide is next." -- HENRY KRINGLE                                                                                                                             (A good man on the Twoot, 1 Nov. 2021)
 

"Authoritarianism spreads by holding innocent people responsible for the actions of others. Presumptions of collective guilt allow the punitive State to extend its power over people taught to see themselves as criminals, while actual criminals walk free." -- JOHN HAYWARD                                                                   (conservative author and columnist, first with Hot Air, then with Breitbart)

"Few issues get the Left more excited than collective guilt. Everybody who lived before the woke era was evil, and that’s a lot of people." -- DOUG BANDOW (Of the CATO Institute and a guy I frequently disagree with, but certainly not here.)

"Collective guilt is a moral abomination. And And historical collective guilt is a moral abomination compounded by endless idiocy." -- JACK JOLIS

"The son shall not bear the iniquity of the father, neither shall the father bear the iniquity of the son: the righteousness of the righteous shall be upon him, and the wickedness of the wicked shall be upon him." -- EZEKIEL 18

"We do not inherit guilt from our ancestors." -- HENRY LOUIS GATES, JR. (Obama's pal from Harvard -- actually getting it right, for once -- reported in July 2023)

“There’s an analogue of original sin, that white people are expected to feel guilt for what their ancestors — or maybe just people of the same skin colour — did to other people of a different colour. It’s as though we are supposed to inherit the guilt of people of the past, just because we have the same colour skin as they did. And that is, I think, racism. It is actual racism to confer guilt upon people because of the colour of their skin.” -- RICHARD DAWKINS

"I think I should judge you by your own actions and your own character. If someone with the same skin color as you did something terrible, that’s not on you. If your grandfather did something even worse, that’s not on you either. There is no transitive property of righteousness, victimhood, nobility, or villainy." -- JONAH GOLDBERG

"Punishing an innocent person for the deeds of someone else isn’t justice—it’s the tribal morality of prison gangs, the mafia, lynch mobs, and Hamas. " --  JONAH GOLDBERG

"This is the paternalism of the guilty conscience: seeing ourselves as the kings of infamy is still a way of staying on the crest of history. Since Freud we know that masochism is only a reversed sadism, a passion for domination turned against oneself. Europe is still messianic in a minor key. Barbarity is Europe's great pride, which it acknowledges only in itself; it denies that others are barbarous, finding attenuating circumstances for them (whicih is a way of denying them all responsibility). 

By erecting lack of love for oneself into a leading principle, we lie to ourselves about ourselves and close ourselves to others. In Western self-hatred, the Other has no place. It is a narcissistic relationship in which the African, the Indian, and Arab are brought in as extras." -- PASCAL BRUCKNER (this is just a rather long-winded way of describing the Leftist trick of using apparent "self-hatred" to actually re-establish their supremacy. Bruckner is the French author of "Tyranny of Guilt")

“Historical shame is not and should not be heritable. It’s hard enough taking responsibility for the here and now without also of on the sins of total strangers in the unalterable past.” – LIONEL SHRIVER

"White Europeans were invaded, enslaved, colonialized (sic), subjugated, turned into serfs, suffered under the Black Death, and forcibly sent to endless wars. They still built the modern world. I don't care about the suffering of your ancestors. Why not? You don't care about mine." -- STEFAN MOLYNEUX      (the Irish-Canadian "white nationalist", and this would actually pertain pretty much to everyone in history... except, perhaps, the Mongol hordes of Genghis Khan)

Gulf War, The                                                                                                                                                                            

“Gen. Schwarzkopf implies  in his memoirs - perhaps unwittingly - a certain lack of stomach for the fight among some of the troops he commanded in Vietnam. In the Gulf, the desert terrain was such that he could rely on his weapons not his troops.” - FRANK JOHNSON                                                                                               (a slur on American troops from this otherwise sensible and perspicacious British journalist, but I include it for historical purposes.)

“What looked like a victory in the 1991 Gulf War turned out to have been defeat, because although a lot of people were shot, the ones that mattered were not.” – ANGELO CODEVILLA                                                                                                             (prof of international relations at Boston U., writing in the AMSPEC in Aug. 2005)

"Traditionally, a nation that goes to war has war aims. But the U.S. forswore any war aims other than the restoration of the status quo ante (the return of Kuwait to its seedy princelings), preferring to prioritizecoalition-building as an end in itself: The more nations that signed on, the less they signed on to." -- MARK STEYN

Gullibility

“The more we do to you, the less you seem to believe we are doing it.” - JOSEPH MENGELE (some quote, eh?  The Auschwitz “Angel of Death”)

"Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities." -- VOLTAIRE                                                                   (1694-1778)

“If you look around the table and you can’t tell who the sucker is, it’s you.” – MARK VAN DOREN   (American poet, writer and critic, and long-time English prof at Columbia.)                                                                  

"People do not understand the laws of physics, the nature of matter, or even how the human body functions. Hence they do not see limitations on how the world operates. Their sense of normality is thus somewhat precarious. Anything can happen." -- IAN MORTIMER (In his excellent volume "The Time Traveler's Guide To Medieval England") 

Guns (and “Gun Control”)

“You can get more done with a smile and a gun than with just a smile.” - AL CAPONE

“A gun in your hand is always better than a policeman on the phone.” – KYLE SMITH (then of the NY Post)

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

"I would never invade the United States. there would be a gun behind every blade of grass." - ADMIRAL  ISOROKU YAMAMOTO

"If you carry a gun, people will call you paranoid. That's ridiculous... If I have a gun, what in the hell do I have to be paranoid for." - CLINT SMITH

"Make your attacker advance through a wall of bullets. I may get killed with my own gun, but he's gonna have to beat me to death with it, cause it's going to be empty." - CLINT SMITH

"If you're not shootin', you should be loadin'. If you're not loadin, you should be movin', if you're not movin', someone's gonna cut your head off and put it on a stick." - CLINT SMITH

“Without guns we'd still be part of Canada.” – P. J. O'ROURKE

“What with the economy being like it is, I call my .38 Special 'the MasterCard of the future'.” – P. J. O'ROURKE

"The only thing that stops a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun.” -- WAYNE LAPIERRE                                  (The head of the NRA, 21 Dec. ‘12. "There is nothing new under the sun." -- Ecclesiastes 1:9)

“An armed society is a polite society.” - ROBERT A. HEINLEIN

"The true measure of a people's freedom is whether they are armed or not." – ARISTOTLE

“The Second Amendment is America’s first freedom. The Second secures the rest.” - CHARLTON HESTON

"The strongest reason for the people to retain the right to keep and bear arms is, as a last resort, to protect themselves against tyranny in government." – THOMAS JEFFERSON

“I can not see why arms should be denied to any man who is not a slave, since they are the only true badges of liberty.” – ANDREW FLETCHER

“If 'gun control' worked Chicago would by Mayberry by now!” – CAM EDWARDS (of the NRA, in August 2013. Since has moved up to talk radio....)

"A gun in your hand is better than a cop on the phone." -- CHRIS PLANTE

“The existence of gun rights makes the 'need' for gun rights seem less apparent.”– JONAH GOLDBERG

“A free people ought to be armed.” – GEORGE WASHINGTON  

"If a Republican doesn't like guns, he doesn't buy one. If a Democrat doesn't like guns, he wants all guns outlawed except theirs." -- JANIE JOHNSON

“If there's any other thing that has done more than the gun to make men equals, I don't know what it is.” – PAUL KOTIK                                                                     (NR commenter)

“If someone has a gun, and is trying to kill you with it, it would seem reasonable to shoot back at him, with your own gun.” – THE DALAI LAMA                            (Yes, that would be none other than good ol' Tenzin Gyatso, the 14th Dalai Lama, Brother Paul's friend)

“It makes little philosophical sense for the elected representatives of a government that is subordinate to the people to be able to disarm those people.” -- CHARLES C.W. COOKE                                                                                                                    (the young British-born columnist and executive at NRO, in Feb. '13)

“The oft-repeated notion that the Second Amendment exists as an anachronism or was passed to protect 'sport shooting' or 'hunting' is as defective as the idea that the First Amendment exists to protect Shakespeare or the Beatles. Certainly  it does those things, too. But primarily such protections were chiseled deep into American scripture in order to afford the people the perennial scope to take their government to task.” -- CHARLES C.W. COOKE

                                                                                                                                                              “The rifle on the wall of the labourer's cottage or working class flat is the symbol of democracy.” -- GEORGE ORWELL                                                                    (there ya go!....)

"When the dominant weapon is cheap and simple, the common people have a chance." -- GEORGE ORWELL

“Having a gun buy-back program because you think that criminals have too many guns is like having yourself castrated because you think your neighbors have too many kids.” – CLINT EASTWOOD

“Making good people helpless will not make bad people harmless.” – DANA LOESCH                                                                     (The bimbo authoress and talk radio lady)

“The said constitution shall never be construed to authorize Congress to  prevent the people of the United States who are peaceable citizens from keeping their own arms.” – SAMUEL ADAMS

“If the Republicans disarm, all is well and good. If they refuse to disarm, we shall disarm them ourselves.” – ELIZABETH WARREN

"The key to political independence was the modern long-range quick-firing rifle." -- THOMAS PACKENHAM (The English historian was referring to Ethiopia in the 19th century, as it happens, but this can just as well serve as pro-2nd Amendment slogan) 

“The Second Amendment isn't going to fail. That's why we have the Second Amendment.” – CARMINE ZOZZORA (an excellent American chap on the Twoot)

“Seriously. Conservatives own 200+ million guns, 12 trillion rounds of ammo. If we were violent, you'd know it.” – BOB OWENS                                                       (The editor of something called “Bearing Arms” and generally a 2 Amendment enthusiast. From Raleigh, NC)

“The question isn't whether we 'need' guns. It's whether the government should have a monopoly on force.” – ANN COULTER

“The possession of arms is the distinction between a freeman and a slave.” -- JAMES BURGH                                                       (one of the Founding Dads, in 1774)

"We can’t keep weapons out of criminal hands. It’s impossible. We can, however, defend ourselves." – DAVID A. FRENCH

“You cannot invade the mainland United States. There would be a rifle behind every blade of grass.” – ADMIRAL ISOROKU YAMAMOTO

"The Second Amendment isn't about shooting targets. It's about shooting tyrants." -- KEVIN D. WILLIAMSON

“I don't think it's about more gun control. I grew up in the South with guns everywhere, and we never shot anyone. This is about people who aren't taught the value of life.” – SAMUEL L. JACKSON

"I don't care about crime, I just want to get the guns." -- HOWARD METZENBAUM (ex-Democrat Senator from New Jersey – and this pretty much says all you need to know about “gun-controlists”, doesn't it?)

"No-gun zones are killing zones. They are the most dangerous places on the planet and they should not exist." – ANDREW NAPOLITANO (the libertarian ex-judge, on Fox TV, in March 2018.  And boy, is he right on this.....)

"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)

“A man’s rights rest in three boxes: the ballot box, the jury box, and the cartridge box.” – FREDERICK DOUGLASS (a Republican, of course....)

“When a bullet enters a human being, it has hysterics. As if it knows it shouldn’t be there.” – MARTIN AMIS

"I support people having guns in public, not just in your home. We don't have the right to bear arms because of burglars; we have the right to bear arms because of the supreme power of a corrupt and abusive government. It's not about duck hunting; it's about the ability of the individual. It's the same reason we have freedom of speech." -- VINCE VAUGHAN (The actor. A rare good one.)

"When you disarm your subjects you offend them by showing that either from cowardliness or lack of faith, you distrust them; and either conclusion will induce them to hate you." -- NICCOLO MACHIAVELLI

"Americans have the advantage of being armed, an advantage which the Americans possess over the people of almost every other nation." -- JAMES MADISON

"There are people calling for the banning of assault weapons who could not define an 'assault weapon' if their life depended on it. Yet the ignorant expect others to take them seriously." -- THOMAS SOWELL

"Do you realize the bullet out of an AR-15 travels 5 times as rapidly as a bullet shot out of any other gun."-- JOE BIDEN (In a speech in Wilkes-Barre, PA, on 30 Aug. 2022 -- and the mind simply staggers at the arrogant ignorance....) 

“The homicide rate in the U.S. is around average. Russia’s homicide rate is four times ours; rates in Africa average around five times ours; the rate in Brazil is five times ours; Mexico, which has stringent gun control laws, has double our homicide rate; murder rates in the Caribbean approximate those in Africa. It is true that Western European countries in general have lower rates than we do, but that is mostly because African-Americans commit murders at eight times the rate of whites. The murder rate in Norway is very low, but it is indistinguishable from the rate among Norwegian-Americans. It is also noteworthy that the homicide rate in the U.S. today is only one-half what it was in the early 1990s. That decline, which has occurred during a time when gun laws have generally been liberalized, is never addressed by gun control advocates. -- JOHN HINDERAKER (of the POWERLINE blog, in 2013)

"The real first amendment is the free and open internet. The real second amendment is the ability to print guns." – CODY WILSON (in Jan. 2022, an American “gun-rights activist” --- no kidding....)

"Gun Control? It's the best thing you can do for crooks and gangsters."-- SAMMY "THE BULL" GRAVANO (the Gambino family mobster who famously snitched on John Gotti)

"I support mandatory ownership of actual military grade combat rifles by every law abiding adult who is not some communist sissy. I support allowing cowards and losers to decline to do their duty, but would refuse to allow them to vote. Or eat." -- KURT SCHLICHTER

"If violent crime is to be curbed, it is only the intended victim who can do it. The felon does not fear the police, and he fears neither judge nor jury. Therefore, what he must be taught to fear is his intended victim." -- LTC. JEFF COOPER, USMC (1920-2006, the famous shooting instructor)

"Do not bring the Second Amendment into this courtroom. It doesn’t exist here. So you can’t argue Second Amendment. This is New York." -- "JUDGE" ABENA DARKEH     (if that is her name.... in April 2024)

"No such thing as 'gun violence,' any more than there is car violence, ladder violence, baseball bat violence or bathtub violence." -- MICHAEL WALSH      (on the day they narrowly missed assassinating Trump, 13 July 2024)

Gurkhas

"If a man says he is not afraid of dying, he is either lying or is a Gurkha." – FIELD MARSHAL SAM MANEKSHAW (Field Marshal Sam Hormusji Framji Jamshedji Manekshaw, the Chief of Staff f the Indian Army, in 1971)

"Wherever in the world there are C-130's, or Gurkhas, there you will find peace, security, salvation and happiness." – PAUL JOLIS (He’s a big fan. Big fan. You go, Pal!…)