You are here

Just Thinking Chronology

To Quote Unknown

Submitted by Roanman on Fri, 09/04/2009 - 06:54

 

 

Obama's health care plan will be written by a committee whose head says he doesn't understand it, passed by a Congress that hasn't read it, and whose members are exempts from it, signed by a president who smokes in secret, funded by a treasury chief who did not pay his taxes, overseen by a surgeon general who is obese, and financed by a country that is broke.

 

 

To quote Barack Obama

Submitted by Roanman on Sun, 08/30/2009 - 11:35

 

THE PRESIDENT:"...Now, I actually think that the tougher issue around medical care — it’s a related one — is what you do around things like end-of-life care 

DAVID LEONHARDT: Yes, where it’s $20,000 for an extra week of life.

THE PRESIDENT: Exactly. And I just recently went through this. I mean, I’ve told this story, maybe not publicly, but when my grandmother got very ill during the campaign, she got cancer; it was determined to be terminal. And about two or three weeks after her diagnosis she fell, broke her hip. It was determined that she might have had a mild stroke, which is what had precipitated the fall.

So now she’s in the hospital, and the doctor says, Look, you’ve got about — maybe you have three months, maybe you have six months, maybe you have nine months to live. Because of the weakness of your heart, if you have an operation on your hip there are certain risks that — you know, your heart can’t take it. On the other hand, if you just sit there with your hip like this, you’re just going to waste away and your quality of life will be terrible.

And she elected to get the hip replacement and was fine for about two weeks after the hip replacement, and then suddenly just — you know, things fell apart.

 

I don’t know how much that hip replacement cost. I would have paid out of pocket for that hip replacement just because she’s my grandmother. Whether, sort of in the aggregate, society making those decisions to give my grandmother, or everybody else’s aging grandparents or parents, a hip replacement when they’re terminally ill is a sustainable model, is a very difficult question. If somebody told me that my grandmother couldn’t have a hip replacement and she had to lie there in misery in the waning days of her life — that would be pretty upsetting.

 

DAVID LEONHARDT: And it’s going to be hard for people who don’t have the option of paying for it.

 

THE PRESIDENT: So that’s where I think you just get into some very difficult moral issues. But that’s also a huge driver of cost, right?

 

I mean, the chronically ill and those toward the end of their lives are accounting for potentially 80 percent of the total health care bill out here.

DAVID LEONHARDT: So how do you — how do we deal with it?

THE PRESIDENT: Well, I think that there is going to have to be a conversation that is guided by doctors, scientists, ethicists. And then there is going to have to be a very difficult democratic conversation that takes place. It is very difficult to imagine the country making those decisions just through the normal political channels. And that’s part of why you have to have some independent group that can give you guidance. It’s not determinative, but I think has to be able to give you some guidance. And that’s part of what I suspect you’ll see emerging out of the various health care conversations that are taking place on the Hill right now.

 

"Right now, insurance companies are rationing care. They are basically telling you what's covered and what's not. They're telling you, 'We'll cover this drug but we won't cover that drug. You can have this procedure or you can't have that procedure. So why is it that people would prefer having insurance companies make those decisions rather than medical experts and doctors figuring out, you know, what are good deals for care and providing that information to you as a consumer and your doctor so you can make good decisions?"

 

"The rumor that's been circulating a lot lately is this idea that somehow the House of Representatives voted for 'death panels' that will basically pull the plug on grandma because we've decided that it's too expensive to let her live anymore,  "I am not in favor of that."

 

 

Global Warming

Submitted by Roanman on Sat, 08/29/2009 - 09:54

 

All right, here's the story.

 

The Intergovernmental Agency on Climate Change was created  in 1989. It was set up by the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) and the United Nations Environment Program (UNEP), two agencies of the United Nations.  The initial task for the IPCC as outlined in the UN General Assembly Resolution 43/53 of 6 December 1988 was to prepare a comprehensive review and recommendations with respect to the state of knowledge of the science of climate change; social and economic impact of climate change, possible response strategies and elements for inclusion in a possible future international convention on climate.

 

The IPCC says the following of itself. 

 

The Intergovernmental Panel of Climate Change is the leading body for the assessment of climate change, established by the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) and the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) to provide the world with a clear scientific view on the current state of climate change and its potential environmental and socio-economic consequences.

 

"The IPCC is a scientific body. It reviews and assesses the most recent scientific, technical and socio-economic information produced worldwide relevant to the understanding of climate change. It does not conduct any research nor does it monitor climate related data or parameters. Thousands of scientists from all over the world contribute to the work of the IPCC on a voluntary basis. Review is an essential part of the IPCC process, to ensure an objective and complete assessment of current information. Differing viewpoints existing within the scientific community are reflected in the IPCC reports."

 

And says the following about it's proceedures. 

 

In the course of the multi-stage review process, both expert reviewers and governments are invited to comment on the accuracy and completeness of the scientific/technical/socio economic content and the overall balance of the drafts. The circulation process among peer and government experts is very wide, with hundreds of scientists looking into the drafts to check the soundness of the scientific information contained in them. The Review Editors of the report (normally two per chapter) make sure that all comments are well taken into account.

 

The IPCC first assessment report was completed in 1990, and served as the basis of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC). 


 The executive summary of the WG I Summary for Policymakers report states,

"We are certain of the following:  emissions resulting from human activities are substantially increasing the atmospheric concentrations of the greenhouse gases: CO2, methane, CFCs and nitrous oxide. These increases will enhance the greenhouse effect, resulting on average in an additional warming of the Earth's surface. The main greenhouse gas, water vapour, will increase in response to global warming and further enhance it.  

We calculate with confidence that: ...CO2 has been responsible for over half the enhanced greenhouse effect; long-lived gases would require immediate reductions in emissions from human activities of over 60% to stabilise their concentrations at today's levels...

Based on current models, we predict: under [BAU] increase of global mean temperature during the [21st] century of about 0.3 oC per decade (with an uncertainty range of 0.2 to 0.5 oC per decade); this is greater than that seen over the past 10,000 years; under other ... scenarios which assume progressively increasing levels of controls, rates of increase in global mean temperature of about 0.2 oC [to] about 0.1 oC per decade.

 

There has been dissent with regards to the quality of the science, the quality of peer review, the validity of computer modeling used to make predictions, and the integrity of the process itself.

 

In The Greenhouse Debate Continued: An Analysis and Critique of the IPCC Climate Assessment, a panel of climate scientists from Great Britain, Germany, Sweden, New Zealand, Australia, and the United States independently reviewed the three IPCC documents and found numerous discrepancies between them. Major discrepancies include:

 

The 1990 "Policymakers Summary" claims that climate warming during the past 100 years is "broadly consistent with predictions of [theoretical] climate models" The 1990 Report and 1992 Supplement, however, present no firm evidence from human-induced greenhouse warming in the climate record.

The Summary predicts a rapid increase in global temperatures, based on climate model calculations. The Report questions the reliability of current climate models, none of which have been validated by existing climate data.

The Summary claims to be "certain" that water vapor, the most important greenhouse gas, will "further enhance" any warming effect from human-produced increases in carbon dioxide. The Report stresses the lack of observational data on the distribution of water vapor and on the role of clouds.

  During the summer of 1991, the Science & Environmental Policy Project mailed questionnaires to the more than 100 U.S. IPCC contributors and reviewers, as well as to a group of atmospheric scientists, active in research but not involved in IPCC. Of the 126 surveys mailed, 37 percent were returned, many with signatures.   

 

Only about half of the respondents thought that the Policymakers Summary reflects the text accurately; a majority said that the Summary did not reflect their own views and might convey a misleading message to policymakers. About 90 percent agreed with the following statement (on page 254 of the Report): "It is not possible to attribute all, or even a large part, of the observed global-mean warming to the enhanced greenhouse effect on the basis of observational data currently available". Only 15 percent believed that current GCMs accurately portrayed the atmosphere-ocean system, and less than 10 percent thought that current GCMs had been adequately validated by the climate record. 

 

The other survey, conducted by Greenpeace International, polled 400 climate scientists who had worked on the IPCC study or had published on relevant issues during 1991. The key question was: "Do you think there will be a point of no return, at some [unspecified] time in the future at which continued business-as-usual policies run a serious risk of instigating a runaway greenhouse effect?" Of the 113 respondents, 13 percent said "Probably" and 47 percent said "Probably not." 

 

The SEPP makes the following statement.

 

The SEPP analysis raises doubts about IPCC claims--put forth in the Foreword to the 1990 Report and in the 1992 Supplement--that the documents had undergone "peer review" prior to their release. The IPCC claim implies a conventional scientific review process in which an editor, independent of the research, enlists scientists to critique a report anonymously. Here, the editors' who were also among the authors, simply circulated the draft to a known group  of colleagues, and then accepted or disregarded comments according to their own views. The editors admit to "minority" opinions, which they "have not been able to accommodate." But independent surveys of IPCC scientists demonstrate a substantial majority disagrees with the major assertions of the "Policymakers Summary"--which has been touted as "a international scientific consensus."

 

When the IPCC report, Climate Change 1995: The Science of Climate Change (Cambridge University Press, May 1996) was printed, it was discovered that significant changes and deletions had been made to Chapter 8, a crucial part of the report dealing with the detection and attribution of global warming. Moreover, these changes had been made after the draft report had been approved by the government delegations. 

Dr. S. Fred Singer founder of the Science and Environmental Policy Project (SEPP) alerted scientists who had contributed to the IPCC report via the internet.  As a result of Dr. Singer's on-line correspondence, a letter reprimanding the IPCC, signed by a dozen climate scientists, was published in the January 1997 issue of the Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society; a similar letter appears in August issue of Physics Today. 

A Dec. 20, 1995, Reuters report quoted British scientist  Keith Shine, one of IPCC's lead authors, discussing the IPCC Policymakers’ Summary: "We produce a draft, and then the policymakers go through it line by line and change the way it is presented.... It's peculiar that they have the final say in what goes into a scientists' report."

 

On April 23, 1998, Michael E. Mann, Raymond S. Bradley and Stephen Malcolm K. Hughes published an paper in Nature Magazine which began as follows;

"Spatially resolved global reconstructions of annual surface temperature patterns over the past six centuries are based on the multivariate calibration of widely distributed high-resolution proxy climate indicators. Time- dependent correlations of the reconstructions with time-series records representing changes in greenhouse-gas concentrations, solar irradiance, and volcanic aerosols suggest that each of these factors has contributed to the climate variability of the past 400 years, with greenhouse gases emerging as the dominant forcing during the twentieth century. Northern Hemisphere mean annual temperatures for three of the past eight years are warmer than any other year since (at least) AD 1400."

 Within this article, was a graph labelled Figure 5b of the authors calculations of Northern Hemisphere mean temperature changes for the past 600 or so years.  This graph referred to by the authors as the MBH98 reconstruction has become famous as

"The Hockey Stick"

In 2001 The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) published "The IPCC Third Assessment Report, Climate Change 2001" wherein "The Hockey Stick Graph" became a prominent part of the evidence supporting the theory of man made Global Warming.

The IPCC Third Assessment Report reaches the following conclusions;

An increasing body of observations gives a collective picture of a warming world and other changes in the climate system (The global average surface temperature has increased over the 20th century by about 0.6 °C; Temperatures have risen during the past four decades in the lowest 8 kilometers of the atmosphere; Snow cover and ice extent have decreased)

The TAR estimate for the climate sensitivity is 1.5 to 4.5 °C; and the average surface temperature is projected to increase by 1.4 to 5.8 Celsius degrees over the period 1990 to 2100, and the sea level is projected to rise by 0.1 to 0.9 meters over the same period. The wide range in predictions is based on scenarios that assume different levels of future CO2 emissions. Each scenario then has a range of possible outcomes associated with it.  The most optimistic outcome assumes an aggressive campaign to reduce CO2 emissions; the most pessimistic is a "business as usual" scenario.  Other scenarios fall in between."

The report goes on to say,

"There is new and stronger evidence that most of the warming observed over the past 50 years is attributable to human activities."

 

 Stephen McIntyre and Ross McKitrick published a paper in Energy and Environment v14 #6, 2003 entitled

CORRECTIONS TO THE MANN et. al. (1998) PROXY DATA BASE AND NORTHERN HEMISPHERIC AVERAGE TEMPERATURE SERIES 

This paper begins as follows:

The data set of proxies of past climate used in Mann, Bradley and Hughes (1998,
“MBH98” hereafter) for the estimation of temperatures from 1400 to 1980
contains collation errors, unjustifiable truncation or extrapolation of source data,
obsolete data, geographical location errors, incorrect calculation of principal
components and other quality control defects.
 

We detail these errors and defects.


We then apply MBH98 methodology to the construction of a Northern Hemisphere
average temperature index for the 1400-1980 period, using corrected and updated
source data.

The major finding is that the values in the early 15th century exceed
any values in the 20th century.

The particular “hockey stick” shape derived in the MBH98 proxy construction – a temperature index that decreases slightly between the early 15th century and early 20th century and then increases dramatically up to 1980 — is primarily an artefact of poor data handling, obsolete data and incorrect calculation of principal components.

 

As you might reasonably expect, the fecal matter hit the fan almost immediately.  Name calling broke out all over the place.

 In an effort to defend their work, Michael Mann, Raymond Bradley and their associates, established their blog Real Climate.org  

An example of a third party response to the McIntyre, McKitrick paper can be found here. 

In an effort to defend their work, McIntyre and McKitrick established their site Climate Audit.org

 

McIntyre and McKitrick defended their work in a presentation to the National Academy of Sciences Expert Panel on March 2, 2006 

Here they repeated their objections to both the original and updated studies by "Mann et. al."

The study used “new” statistical methods that turned out to “mine” for hockey stick shaped series. These methods were misrepresented and/or inaccurately described in important particulars and their statistical properties were either unknown to the authors or unreported by them.

The reconstruction failed an important verification test said to have used in the study. This failure was not reported and the statistical skill was misrepresented both in the original article and by the IPCC.

Dominant weight was placed on proxies known to be inappropriate temperature proxies, along with, at best, misleading information about their impact and, at worst, actual withholding of adverse results;

The method of confidence interval calculation leads to unrealistically narrow confidence intervals;

Systematic obstruction was placed at every step of the way of replication attempts. The underlying data were exceedingly hard to identify and obtain. The methodology was not accurately described in the paper and the computational code was withheld until the intervention of a Congressional investigation.

 

On January 24, 2006 climatologists at the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies announced that the highest global annual average surface temperature in more than a century was recorded in their analysis for the 2005 calender year.

 A study by NASA scientists published September 25, 2006 stated that that the world's temperature is reaching a level that has not been seen in thousands of years. 

Climatologists at the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies (GISS) in New York City on January 6, 2008 announced that 2007 tied with 1998 for Earth’s second warmest year in a century.  And that eight warmest years in the GISS record have all occurred since 1998, and the 14 warmest years in the record have all occurred since 1990.

 

Stephen McIntyre (who seems to have time on his hands) again set out to verify the Goddard Institutes data, and methodolgy.  And found that NASA like Mann, does not fully publish the computer source code or the formulae they use to calculate the trends within their data.  Having reverse engineered NASA Goddard's process using the raw data and the processed data, he published a paper stating that having demonstrating the errors within NASA Goddard's findings.

 

NASA was forced to correct their findings.

 

In November of 2008 the Goddard Institute for Space Studies release it's statistics for October of 2008, and announced that October 2008 had been the warmest October on record, ever.  Within the data were findings that across Russia, temperatures were on average 10 degrees higher than normal for the month of October.

 

Stephen McIntyre (yet again), and Anthony Watts found this strange, since London had experienced its first October snow in 70 years. Chicago and the Great Plains states had broken several lowest-temperature records, some of which had stood for 120 years. Tibet had broken snowfall records. Glaciers in Alaska, the Alps and New Zealand had begun advancing. Sea ice expanded so rapidly it covered 30% more of Arctic than at the end of October 2007.   

 

Review of the data found that September 2008 data had been substituted for the true October data.

Nasa, Goddard was forced to correct themselves, again.

 

True believers in climate change would have you believe that the debate is over.

 After all, 2500 scientists can't be wrong!!!  

But wait, 31,407 scientists say, "It ain't so !!!!!!!!!!!!! 

 

To quote Muhammad Ali

Submitted by Roanman on Mon, 07/13/2009 - 07:51

 

I am the greatest, I said that even before I knew I was.
 
It's the repetition of affirmations that leads to belief.  And once that belief becomes a deep conviction, things begin to happen.
 
Champions aren't made in gyms.  Champions are made from something they have deep inside them-a desire, a dream, a vision.  They have to have the skill, and the will. But the will must be stronger than the skill.
 
What keeps me going is goals.
 
The fight is won or lost far away from witnesses - behind the lines, in the gym and out there on the road, long before I dance under those lights.
 
I hated every minute of training, but I said, ''Don't quit.  Suffer now and live the rest of your life as a champion."
 
If God ever calls me to a holy war, I want Joe fighting beside me.
 
Ali, "Old Joe Frazier, they told me you were washed up."  Frazier, "They told you wrong pretty boy."
 
I wish people would love everybody else the way they love me.  It would be a better world.
 
I got nothing against no Viet Cong.  No Vietnamese ever called me a nigger.
 
A man who views the world the same at fifty as he did at twenty has wasted thirty years of his life.
 
I know where I'm going and I know the truth, and I don't have to be what you want me to be.  I'm free to be what I want.
 
I have not lost [Allah's] hope in us to show compassion where none exists and to extend mercy in the most difficult of circumstances.  We as Muslims must lead by example.
 
We have one life; it soon will be past; what we do for God is all that will last.
 
Silence is golden when you can't think of a good answer.
 
It's not bragging if you can back it up.
 
 The man who has no imagination has no wings.
 
He who is not courageous enough to take risks will accomplish nothing in life.
 
Hating people because of their color is wrong.  And it doesn't matter which color does the hating.  It's just plain wrong.
 
To be able to give away riches is mandatory if you wish to possess them.  This is the only way that you will be truly rich.
 
You don't want no pie in the sky when you die.  You want something here on the ground while you're still around.
 
My way of joking is to tell the truth.  That's the funniest joke in the world.

 

To quote H.L. Mencken

Submitted by Roanman on Mon, 07/13/2009 - 07:50
  
 I believe that it is better to tell the truth than to lie. I believe that it is better to be free than to be a slave. And I believe that it is better to know than be ignorant.
 
Nature abhors a moron.
 
God is a Republican, and Santa Claus is a Democrat.
 
Democracy is the theory that the common people know what they want and deserve to get it good and hard.
 
I believe that all government is evil, in that all government must necessarily make war on liberty, and that the democratic government is at least as bad as any of the other forms.
 
The natural tendency of every government is to grow steadily worse  that is, to grow more satisfactory to those who constitute it and less satisfactory to those who support it.
 
The urge to save humanity is almost always only a false face for the urge to rule it.
 
You can't do anything about the length of your life, but you can do something about its width and depth.
 
You come into the world with nothing, and the purpose of your life is to make something out of nothing.
 
Conscience is the inner voice that warns us somebody may be looking.
 
Self-respect.  The secure feeling that no one, as yet, is suspicious.
 
To expect defeat is nine-tenths of defeat itself.
 
 
People will believe what they want to believe.
 
It is a sin to believe evil of others, but it is seldom a mistake.
 
The one permanent emotion of the inferior man is fear - fear of the unknown, the complex, the inexplicable. 
What he wants above everything else is safety.
 
A fool who, after plain warning, persists in dosing himself with dangerous drugs should be free to do so, for his death is a benefit to the race in general.
 
The trouble with Communism is the Communists, just as the trouble with Christianity is the Christians.
 
The theory seems to be that as long as a man is a failure he is one of God's children, but that as soon as he succeeds he is taken over by the Devil.
 
There is only one honest impulse at the bottom of Puritanism, and that is the impulse to punish the man with a superior capacity for happiness.
 
Evangelical Christianity, as everyone knows, is founded upon hate, as the Christianity of Christ was founded upon love.
 
I believe that religion, generally speaking, has been a curse to mankind - that its modest and greatly overestimated services on the ethical side have been more than overcome by the damage it has done to clear and honest thinking.
 
Perhaps the most revolting character that the United States ever produced was the Christian business man.
 
There is something even more valuable to civilization than wisdom, and that is character.
 
I'm against slavery simply because I dislike slaves.
 
It is hard to believe that a man is telling the truth when you know that you would lie if you were in his place.
 
History deals mainly with captains and kings, gods and prophets, exploiters and despoilers, not with useful men.
 
The men the American people admire most extravagantly are the most daring liars; the men they detest most violently are those who try to tell them the truth.
 
On one issue, at least, men and women agree:  they both distrust women.
 
Bachelors know more about women than married men; if they didn't they'd be married too.
 
A man may be a fool and not know it, but not if he is married.
 
If you want peace, work for justice.
 
Change is not progress.

 

To quote Henry Kissinger

Submitted by Roanman on Mon, 07/13/2009 - 07:47

                                                                             

                                                                                                              

 

 

                                                                                                                                

War and Revolution

Submitted by Roanman on Mon, 07/13/2009 - 07:40

 

                                                                                                                                              

                                                                                                                

                              

 

                                                                                                                     

                                                                                                                                                                   

                                                                                                                                                             

To quote William Tecumseh Sherman

Submitted by Roanman on Mon, 07/13/2009 - 07:40

 

War is hell.
 
Some of you young men think that war is all glamour and glory, but let me tell you boys, it is all hell.
 
War is cruelty.  There's no use trying to reform it.  The crueler it is, the sooner it will be over.
 
I am sick and tired of war.  It's glory is all moonshine.  It is only those who have neither fired a shot nor heard the shrieks and groans of the wounded, who cry aloud for blood, more vengeance, more desolation.
 
 Every attempt to make war easy and safe will result in humiliation and disaster.
 
You cannot qualify war in harsher terms than I will.  War is cruelty, and you cannot refine it; and those who brought war into our country deserve all the curses and maledictions a people can pour out.  I know I had no hand in making this war, and I know I will make more sacrifices to-day than any of you to secure peace.
 
 If the people raise a great howl against my barbarity and cruelty, I will answer that war is war, and not popularity seeking.
 
 In our Country one class of men makes war and leaves another to fight it out.
 
Grant stood by me when I was crazy, and I stood by him when he was drunk, and now we stand by each other.
 
I will not accept if nominated, and will not serve if elected.
 
 

 

To quote Adolph Hitler

Submitted by Roanman on Mon, 07/13/2009 - 07:33

 

 The higher you aspire the more you grow.

How fortunate for leaders that men do not think.

All propaganda has to be popular and has to accommodate itself to the comprehension of the least intelligent of those whom it seeks to reach. 

He alone, who owns the youth, gains the future. 

It is always more difficult to fight against faith than against knowledge.

The victor will never be asked if he told the truth.

Demoralize the enemy from within by surprise,terror, sabotage, assassination.  This is the war of the future.  

Our strength lies in our intensive attacks and our barbarity...After all, who today remembers the genocide of the Armenians? 

I use emotion for the many and reserve reason for the few.

The broad masses of a population are more amenable to the appeal of rhetoric than to any other force.

Through clever and constant application of propaganda, people can be made to see paradise as hell, and also the other way round, to consider the most wretched sort of life as paradise.

The art of leadership. . . consists in consolidating the attention of the people against a single adversary and taking care that nothing will split up that attention . . . . 

Success is the sole earthly judge of right and wrong. 

Hence today I believe that I am acting in accordance with the will of the Almighty Creator: by defending myself against the Jew,  I am fighting for the work of the Lord.

The greatness of every mighty organization embodying an idea in this world lies in the religious fanaticism and intolerance with which, fanatically convinced of its own right, it intolerantly imposes its will against all others. 

I am now as before a Catholic and will always remain so. 

I don't see much future for the Americans... It's a decayed country.  And they have their racial problem, and the problem of social inequalities... My feelings against Americanism are feelings of hatred and deep repugnance... Everything about the behavior of American society reveals that it's half Judaized, and the other half negrified.    How can one expect a State like that to hold together?

 

 

To quote Franklin Delano Roosevelt over and over and .....

Submitted by Roanman on Mon, 07/13/2009 - 07:30
 
 The only thing we have to fear is fear itself.
 
I pledge you, I pledge myself, to a new deal for the American people.
 
It's a terrible thing to look over your shoulder when you are trying to lead - and find no one there.
 
We, and all others who believe in freedom as deeply as we do, would rather die on our feet than live on our knees.
 
We are fighting to save a great and precious form of government for ourselves and for the world.
 
They (who) seek to establish systems of government based on the regimentation of all human beings by a handful of individual rulers. . . call this a new order.  It is not new and it is not order.
 
 Rules are not necessarily sacred, principles are.
 
If you treat people right they will treat you right -- ninety percent of the time.
 
Remember you are just an extra in everyone else's play.
 
Repetition does not transform a lie into a truth.
 
The value of love will always be stronger than the value of hate.
 
Whoever seeks to set one race against another seeks to enslave all races.
 
We must remember that any oppression, any injustice, any hatred, is a wedge designed to attack our civilization.
 
Any nation or group of nations which employs hatred eventually is torn to pieces by hatred.
 
True individual freedom cannot exist without economic security and independence.
 
People who are hungry and out of a job are the stuff of which dictatorships are made.
 
Here is my principle: Taxes shall be levied according to ability to pay.  Taxes, after all, are the dues that we pay for the privileges of membership in an organized society.
 
In this time of grave national danger, all excess income should go to win the war, no American citizen ought to have a net income, after he has paid his taxes, of more than $25,000 a year.
 
IIf I went to work in a factory the first thing I'd do is join a union.
 
It is one of the characteristics of a free and democratic nation that is have free and independent labor unions.
 
No business which depends for existence on paying less than living wages to its workers has any right to continue in this country.
 
The hopes of the Republic cannot forever tolerate either undeserved poverty or self-serving wealth.
 
The real truth of the matter is, as you and I know, that a  financial element in the large centers has owned the government ever since the days of Andrew Jackson.
 
  Self-help and self-control are the essence of the American tradition.
 
Men are not prisoners of fate, but only prisoners of their own minds.
 
A nation does not have to be cruel to be tough.
 
 The Nation that destroys its soil destroys itself.
 
An election cannot give a country a firm sense of direction if it has two or more national parties which merely have different names but are as alike in their principles and aims as two peas in the same pod.
 
I think we consider too much the good luck of the early bird and not enough the bad luck of the early worm.
 
Are you laboring under the impression that I read these memoranda of yours?  I can't even lift them. 
 
 

Pages

Subscribe to RSS - Just Thinking Chronology