“It is the besetting vice of democracies to substitute public opinion for law. This is the usual form in which the masses of men exhibit their tyranny.” — James Fenimore Cooper, _The American Democrat_ (1838)

“Happy is he who dashes the heads of his enemy’s children against rocks.” — Psalms 137:9

“We live in the age of “Everything Has Rights.” Now, I’m not denying that the concept of rights is valid, but I wonder … whatever happened to obligations? One rarely hears the term anymore. Indeed, have you ever heard of a “human obligations movement?”… The very ideal that holds a democracy together — the willingness to make personal sacrifice for the common good– is going quickly by the wayside.” — John K. Rosemond (“Who’s in Charge Around Here?” Hemispheres, Sept. 1999)

“The drinking age should be 18. When you’re 18 years old you’re old enough  to vote. You should be old enough to drink. Look at who we have to vote for! You need a drink.” — Marc Price

“I cannot undertake to lay my finger on that article of the Constitution which granted a right to Congress of expending, on objects of benevolence, the money of their constituents….” — James Madison (4th American President)

“Every decent man is ashamed of the government he lives under.” — H.L. Mencken

“In truth, there never was any remarkable lawgiver amongst any people who did not resort to divine authority, as otherwise his laws would not have been accepted by the people; for there are many good laws, the importance of which is known to be the sagacious lawgiver, but the reasons for which are not sufficiently evident to enable him to persuade others to submit to them; and therefore do wise men, for the purpose of removing this difficulty, resort to divine authority.” — Niccolo Machiavelli

The gentle minde by gentle deeds is knowne;

For a man by nothing is so well betrayed

As by his manners.

~~ Edmund Spenser ~~

~~ The Faerie Queene, Book vi, Canto iii, St. 1 ~~

“We are what we repeatedly do.” — Aristotle

“Everyone who lives dies, but not everyone who dies has lived.” — No Fear

“Let us not look back in anger or forward in fear, but around us in awareness.: — James Thurber (1894-1961)

Each man reaps on his own farm.” — Plautus — Mostellaria, Act iii, Sc. 2, 112, (799.)

“To light a candle is to cast a shadow.” — Ursula K. Le Guin, “A Wizard of Earthsea”, 1975

“The essence of good and evil is a certain disposition of the will.” — Epictetus — Of Courage, — Discourses, Book i, Chap. xxix

Let us go, through certain half-deserted streets,
The muttering retreats
Of restless nights in one-night cheap hotels
And sawdust restaurants with oyster-shells:
Streets that follow like a tedious argument
Of insidious intent
To lead you to an overwhelming question…
Oh, do not ask, “What is it?”

~~ T. S. Eliot ~~

When I works, I works hard.
When I sits, I sits loose.
When I thinks, I falls asleep.

Which is Why….

Sometimes I sits and thinks,
and sometimes,
I just sits.

gigoid, the dubious

The *only* duly authorized Computer Curmudgeon.

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