1) For the Right and the Left to ponder:
“To different minds the same world is a hell and a heaven.” [Emerson]
2) Advice to Talking Heads:
“No one would talk much in society if he [she] misunderstands others.” [Goethe]
3) Evangelists behind conservatism:
“The ruling passion, be what it will/ The ruling passion conquers reason still.” [ Pope]
4) Take heed mighty corporations:
“Satan now is wiser than of yore/ And tempts by making rich, not making poor.” [Pope]
5) #43 in relation to #41:
“May men say, ‘He is far greater than his father, when he returns from battle.” [Homer]
6) To all politicians who speak with forked tongue:
“Hateful to me as the gates of Hades is that man who hides one thing in his heart and speaks another.” [Homer]
7) Monica’s failure to send the dress to the cleaners:
“Cleanse thou me from secret faults.” [Bible, Psalms 19:12]
8) About this deficit and debt:
“And your children shall wander in wilderness forty years.” [Bible, Exodus]
9) Before Outsourcing:
“Man goeth forth unto his work and to his labor until the evening.” [Psalms 104:19
10) Gay men’s honeymoon:
“Behold how good and how pleasant it is for brethren to dwell together in unity!” [Psalms 133:1]
11) Dawn of welfare:
“And distribution was made unto every man according as he had need.” [Bible, Acts 4:35]
12) Bush Cabinet:
“If this counsel or this work be of men, it will come to nought: But if it be of God, ye a cannot overthrow it.” [Bible, Acts5:38,9]
13) Iraqi mission:
“Go ye into all the world, and preach the gospel to every creature.” [Bible Mark 16:15]
14) Leadership?:
A prince should have no other aim or thought, nor take up any other thing for his study, but war and its organization and discipline, for that is the only art that is necessary to one who commands.” [Machiavelli]
15) Memo to Leaders:
“No matter that we may mount on stilts, we still must walk on our own legs. And on the highest throne in the world, we still sit only on our own bottom. [Montaigne]
16) Advice to Intelligence agencies:
“The first and wisest of them all professed/ To know this only, that he nothing knew.” [Milton ]
17) Letter to John Ashcroft:
“Give me the liberty to know, to utter and to argue freely according to conscience, above all liberties.” [Milton]
18) White House Motto:
“Take note, take note, O world!/ To be direct and honest is not safe.” [Shakes.]
19) Spirit of Disability Act:
“ ‘Tis not enough to help the feeble up,/ But to support him after.” [Shakes.]
20) Vietnam veterans look at Iraq:
“What’s past is prologue.” [Shakes.]
21) Enron executives:
“Wickedness is always easier than virtue; for it takes the shortcut to everything.” [S. Johnson]
22) Free Trade:
“Avarice, the spur of industry.” [Hume]
23) On Going to War:
“No testimony is sufficient to establish a miracle, unless the testimony be of such a kind that its falsehood would be more miraculous than the fact which it endeavors to establish.” [Hume]
24) On the inevitable capture of bin Laden:
“He was within a few hours of giving his enemies the slip forever.” [L. Sterne]
25) In defense of gay men:
“What female heart can gold despise?/ What cat’s averse to fish?” [Th. Gray]
26) For the Christian Right:
“Morality is not properly the doctrine of how we make ourselves happy, but how we make ourselves worthy of happiness.” [Kant]
27) Why FDR taxed the hell out of the rich:
“Where wealth and freedom reign, contentment fails,/ And honor sinks where commerce long prevails.” [O. Goldsmith]
28) The necessity for public education:
“Liberty cannot be preserved without a general knowledge among the people, who have a right ... and a desire to know; but besides this, they have a right, an indisputable, unalienable, indefeasible [indefensible], divine right to that most dreaded and envied kind of knowledge, I mean of the characters and conduct of their rulers.” [J. Adams]
29) Advice for Neo-cons and anti-mommyists:
“The care of human life and happiness, and not their destruction, is the first and only legitimate object of good government.” [Jefferson]
30) Sherye Hanson and WiseFawn:
“You will never be alone with a poet in your pocket.” [J. Adams]
Feel free to tie your own knots.