Specialization is for insects.

A human being should be able to change a diaper, plan an invasion, butcher a hog, conn a ship, design a building, write a sonnet, balance accounts, build a wall, set a bone, comfort the dying, take orders, give orders, cooperate, act alone, solve equations, analyze a new problem, pitch manure, program a computer, cook a tasty meal, fight efficiently, die gallantly. Specialization is for insects.
-Robert A. Heinlein, Time Enough For Love

Don't just do something...

Don't just do something, stand there!
-Jonah Goldberg

Fundamental law

To understand the workings of American politics, you have to understand this fundamental law: Conservatives think liberals are stupid. Liberals think conservatives are evil.
-Charles Krauthammer

Nanny State

The fundamental insight of libertarianism is that the government is the government. It cannot be your mommy, your daddy, your big brother, your nanny, your friend, your buddy, your god, your salvation, your church or your conscience. It is the government. A big bureaucracy charged with certain responsibilities, some of which it is qualified to carry out, many of which it is not.
-Jonah Goldberg, Liberal Fascism blog

Utterly Dysfunctional

Now, the federal government is utterly dysfunctional. Its actual capabilities, under any conceivable leadership, peter out just the other side of delivering mail. Our billion-dollar intelligence agencies know squat. Our big entitlement programs are all headed for fiscal cliff edges. The Department of Education is sunk in puerile fantasies about there being no such thing as dumb kids. (Worse than that, even: they operate on the principle that there is no such thing as an un-bookish kid.) Does anyone know what the Departments of Energy, Labor, Transportation, and the Interior do? I'll guarantee, whatever it is, they do it badly.
-John Derbyshire, at The Corner

Rough Men Stand Ready

People sleep peaceably in their beds at night only because rough men stand ready to do violence on their behalf.
-George Orwell

Ugly Thing

War is an ugly thing, but not the ugliest of things. The decayed and degraded state of moral and patriotic feeling which thinks that nothing is worth war is much worse. The person who has nothing for which he is willing to fight, nothing which is more important than his own personal safety, is a miserable creature and has no chance of being free unless made and kept so by the exertions of better men than himself.
-John Stuart Mill