The most dangerous man to any government is the man who is able to think things out... without regard to the prevailing superstitions and taboos. Almost inevitably he comes to the conclusion that the government he lives under is dishonest, insane, intolerable. -- H. L. Mencken

A countryman was confessed to the parson to have robbed a mutton at a farmer of her neighbourhood. "My friend, told him the confessor, it must to return, or you shall not have the absolution.—But repply the villager, I had eated him.—So much worse, told him the pastor; you vill be the devil sharing; because in the wide vale where me ought to appear we before God every one shall spoken against you, even the mutton. How! repply the countryman, the mutton will find in that part? I am very glad of that; then the restitution shall be easy, since I shall not have to tell to the farmer: "Neighbour take your mutton again."

In the plot, people came to the land; the land loved them; they worked and struggled and had lots of children. There was a Frenchman who talked funny and a greenhorn from England who was a fancy-pants but when it came to the crunch he was all courage. Those novels would make you retch. -- Canadian novelist Robertson Davies, on the generic Canadian novel.

The inconsistency principle.

Mike Hamar: One of my dads used to say, "Do unto others before someone does it to you." He said that's in the Bible. Red Green: Not in the King James version... but maybe the JESSE James version.

I'm EXCITED!! I want a FLANK STEAK WEEK-END!! I think I'm JULIA CHILD!!

For over two billion years, through the apparent fancy of her endless differentiations and metamorphosis the Cell, as regards its basic physiological mechanisms, has remained one and the same. It is life itself, and our true and distant ancestor. ~ Albert Claude

The sudden sight of me causes panic in the streets. They have yet to learn -- only the savage fears what he does not understand. -- The Silver Surfer

I would suggest that barbarism be considered as a permanent and universal human characteristic which becomes more or less pronounced according to the play of circumstances. -- Simone Weil

La contradiccin es sta: quieren a Dios y quieren a la humanidad. Se obstinan en poner juntos esos dos trminos, que, una vez separados, no pueden encontrarse de nuevo ms que para destruirse recprocamente. Dicen de un tirn: Dios y la libertad del hombre; Dios y la dignidad, la justicia, la igualdad, la fraternidad y la prosperidad de los hombres, sin preocuparse de la lgica fatal conforme a la cual, si Dios existe todo queda condenado a la no-existencia. Porque si Dios existe es necesariamente el amo eterno, supremo, absoluto, y si amo existe el hombre es esclavo; pero si es esclavo, no hay para l ni justicia ni igualdad ni fraternidad ni prosperidad posibles. Podrn, contrariamente al buen sentido y a todas las experiencias de la historia, reventarse a su Dios animado del ms tierno amor por la libertad humana: un amo, haga lo que quiera y por liberal que quiera mostrarse, no deja de ser un amo y su existencia implica necesariamente la esclavitud de todo lo que se encuentra por debajo de l. Por consiguiente, si Dios existiese, no habra para l ms que un solo medio de servir a la libertad humana: dejar de existir. Como celoso amante de la libertad humana y considerndolo como la condicin absoluta de todo lo que adoramos y respetamos en la humanidad, doy vuelta a la frase de Voltaire y digo: si Dios existiese realmente, habra que hacerlo desaparecer. Mikhail Alexandrovich Bakunin, God and the State

Largest Number of Driving Test Failures By April 1970 Mrs. Miriam Hargrave had failed her test thirty-nine times. In the eight preceding years she had received two hundred and twelve driving lessons at a cost of L300. She set the new record while driving triumphantly through a set of red traffic lights in Wakefield, Yorkshire. Disappointingly, she passed at the fortieth attempt (3 August 1970) but eight years later she showed some of her old magic when she was reported as saying that she still didn't like doing right-hand turns. -- Stephen Pile, "The Book of Heroic Failures"

Yo momma is so fat that when she got hit by a bus, she said, 'Who threw that rock at me?'

TAGASAW: The American rhinoceros, native to its prairies, is poached for its thick, blue denim hide. Sunscreen is necessary to survive here. - THE INVISIBLE STATES OF AMERICA A TOURISM GUIDE BY UEL ARAMCHEK

"Objective knowledge, the idea of unity included, belongs to objective consciousness. The forms which express this knowledge when perceived by subjective consciousness are inevitably distorted and, instead of truth, they create more and more delusions. With objective consciousness it is possible to see and feel the unity of everything. But for subjective consciousness the world is split up into millions of separate and unconnected phenomena. Attempts to connect these phenomena into some sort of system in a scientific or philosophical way lead to nothing because man cannot reconstruct the idea of the whole starting from separate facts and they cannot divine the principles of the division of the whole without knowing the laws upon which this division is based." ― George Gurdjieff

Brandy Davis, an outfielder and teammate of mine with the Pittsburgh Pirates, is my choice for team captain. Cincinnatti was beating us 3-1, and I led off the bottom of the eighth with a walk. The next hitter banged a hard single to right field. Feeling the wind at my back, I rounded second and kept going, sliding safely into third base. With runners at first and third, and home-run hitter Ralph Kiner at bat, our manager put in the fast Brandy Davis to run for the player at first. Even with Kiner hitting and a change to win the game with a home run, Brandy took off for second and made it. Now we had runners at second and third. I'm standing at third, knowing I'm not going anywhere, and see Brandy start to take a lead. All of a sudden, here he comes. He makes a great slide into third, and I scream, "Brandy, where are you going?" He looks up, and shouts, "Back to second if I can make it." -- Joe Garagiola, "It's Anybody's Ball Game"

Bathquake, n.: The violent quake that rattles the entire house when the water faucet is turned on to a certain point. -- Rich Hall, "Sniglets"

I do myself a greater injury in lying than I do him of whom I tell a lie. ~ Michele de Montaigne

"So we went to Atari and said, 'Hey, we've got this amazing thing, even built with some of your parts, and what do you think about funding us? Or we'll give it to you. We just want to do it. Pay our salary, we'll come work for you.' And they said, 'No.' So then we went to Hewlett-Packard, and they said, 'Hey, we don't need you. You haven't got through college yet.'" --Apple Computer Inc. founder Steve Jobs on attempts to get Atari and H-P interested in his and Steve Wozniak's personal computer.

Chuck Norris once had sex with a cigarette machine in the Osaka airport.

A man sees a boat that is full of people. And yet there isn’t a single person on the boat. How is this possible? Everyone on the boat is married, so there isn’t one single person on the boat. The man wonders if it’s legal for a transportation system to discriminate against unmarried people. It doesn’t seem legal, but maybe maritime laws are different? Perhaps if things had ended differently with Heather, the man would be on the boat, too. He laughs sadly to himself. He was always single, even when he was with Heather. Love is an illusion. There are no purely unselfish actions. Heather and Dale deserve each other. The man blows his nose. He didn’t even realize he’d been crying. ~ Ethan Kuperberg